The ultimate salary guide for copywriters, content writers, editors, and proofreaders, Part 1.

Thinking about becoming a copywriter and wondering what you might expect to earn? Or maybe you’re already writing content or copy and you just want to see how what you make stacks up against everyone else.

We’ve got you.

This is the most comprehensive breakdown you’ll find anywhere of what copywriters earn for the work they do. We surveyed 942 copywriters, content writers, proofreaders, strategists, editors and others who write for a living and asked them about where they work, how much they work, the kind of work they do (and what they charge for 22 kinds of projects), and exactly what they earn in a year.

But before we get started, a note for clients…if you’re ready to hire a copywriter and looking for data to help determine what you should pay for the work you need, keep in mind that most of these are AVERAGE prices. If you pay AVERAGE prices, you’ll usually get AVERAGE copy. If you want expert copy that performs well, think about paying more.

What copywriters earn in a year.

656 of the writers who responded to our survey selected the title of “copywriter” when asked. Of those, 5 didn’t share any income numbers with us and another 19 reported earning $0 in the past 12 months from copywriting.

But the other 632 did better. Some of them, much better.

The average annual income for these copywriters was $68,586. Not bad. In fact, that’s almost exactly the median salary reported for writers and authors by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics ($69,510). 

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However, our number includes one copywriter who reported earning 3.7 million dollars last year (true). That number is big enough to skew our data by almost 10%. If we remove that particular data point from our analysis, copywriters who answered our survey earned an average of $62,672 last year.

Why is this number lower than the average reported by the US government? Our survey is world-wide and includes data from more than 200 international copywriters, including many from countries where pay is lower than we might otherwise see in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia/New Zealand. The total numbers here reflect this broader range of data. 

Does that mean all copywriters can expect an annual income close to $62,672? No. That’s the average. The lowest earner in our survey reported making just $10 in the course of a year. And at the other extreme, someone reported $3.7 million in annual income. As you might expect, far more copywriters reported an income closer to the bottom end of the range, than the top. The median income number (the one in the exact middle of all the data) is $36,228.

Fulltime copywriters (as you would expect) earned more than those who write part-time. A third group of copywriters work in other jobs and write copy on the side. Finally, two other groups—copywriters who work for agencies or in-house also reported different income numbers.

Here’s how those numbers break down…

The copywriters earning the most money are those writing solely for their own products (although the data set here is pretty small—just 17 people—and is skewed higher by two people who reported earning over a half million dollars). 

Copywriters who freelance full-time or work in-house earn more than the US national average. Part-timers and side hustlers earn a lot less on average, as you would expect as these writers work fewer hours. Although there are high-earners in both data sets.

Agency copywriters fall at the bottom of income statistics, but we think this is due in large part to the small number of agency copywriters who responded to our survey. If you’re an agency copywriter and want to help us make sure next year’s numbers are as accurate as possible, click here.

What content writers earn in a year.

172 of the writers who took part in our survey told us they preferred the title of “Content Writer”. We removed all of those who told us they didn’t earn anything last year from writing as well as those who didn’t share annual income numbers. 

That left us with 157 content writers who earned an average of $36,956 last year. While that number feels a little low (especially compared to copywriters), the highest paid content writers in our survey earned over $200,000.

Here’s how the numbers break down for content writers…

While we expected content writers to earn less than copywriters, this difference is more drastic than we thought. It may be in part to the smaller data set for content writers, but as we look at the data, we think it has more to do with the work both sets of writers take on.

Only 12% of content writers reported writing a sales page during the year, which makes sense as sales pages are generally thought of as “sales copy” not “content”. Content writers who DID take on a sales page charged an average of $457 for the work.

On the other hand, 45% copywriters reported writing sales pages as part of their work and they charged an average of $3,752 for the work—or 820% more. That’s a big difference and a major contibutor to the differences in income we see between these two groups.

Interestingly, when we looked at blog posts—a typical content project that many copywriters would rather not do—we expected to see something similar, but didn’t. 64% of content writers included blog posts as part of their services and charged an average of $312 for a single post. 42% of copywriters offer blog posts and charge an average of $338 for their work. The fact that copywriters don’t charge significantly more for blog posts suggests the market for high-priced blog content is somewhat limited.

What copywriters earn around the world.

What copywriters earn varies widely based on where they’re located (and partly based on where their clients are located). So we broke out annual income numbers for freelancers by region to get a better sense of the variation. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough data to run the numbers for in-house and agency copywriters by region.

                                                                                                         * Not enough data

How do these income numbers compare to the previous year?

We asked survey participants to tell us if their income had increased, decreased, or stayed the same since the previous year—and by how much.

39 copywriters said their income had decreased by an average of 41%. 142 reported their income had remained the same. And 427 said their income had increased by an average of 85%. We expected to see a large increase for many copywriters given that we were coming out of the years following the economic shutdowns related to COVID. 

14 Content Writers reported their income decreased by an average drop of 42%. 56 said their income was the same as last year. 80 reported an increase in their annual income with the average increase of 52%. This increase is a bit lower than the one experienced by copywriters, perhaps reflecting the lower prices paid for content as opposed to copy.

That’s a quick overview of topline numbers. Now let’s take a closer look at what these writers are charging for the different kinds of projects they take on.

What copywriters are charging today for 22 different kinds of projects.

We asked copywriters what they charged for 22 different kinds of projects ranging from blog posts to sales pages, and hourly consults to VIP Days. (We’ll show you the same data for content writers in a moment.) It’s not feasible to ask about every possible project a client might need help with, but using the data here, you should be able to figure out roughly what copywriters charge for any kind of project.

We’ve shared both the average and the median project prices to give you a better sense of the amounts copywriters are charging for these types of projects. When working with the data sets we have, the average is occasionally made higher or lower by one or two high or low performers, so the median number will give you a sense of where the “real” middle is.

Here’s what the average copywriter is charging for 22 different projects:

For a breakdown of these numbers by years of experience, click here.

And here’s how the data breaks out between women and men (we did not have enough data to look at what copywriters who don’t identify as one of these genders, so we’re a bit limited here). 

You’ll notice a couple of big differences between what women and men charge for their services—and given what we’ve seen over the past three years conducting this survey, there’s no surprise there. For an excellent analysis about why women charge less than men, read this. Worth noting… 42 of 353 female copywriters and 62 of 247 male copywriters reported earning at least six figures.

What content writers are charging today for 20 different kinds of projects.

Just as we did with our copywriters, we also asked the content writers who responded to our survey to tell us what they charged for 20 different kinds of projects (not enough content writers write VSLs or copy punch ups, so we don’t have data for those. Here are the results:

For a breakdown of these numbers by years of experience, click here.

Like we did with copywriters, we looked at both the average and median numbers to give you a fuller picture of how the data breaks down. Across the board, content writers charge significantly less than their copywriting friends. Given that they take on many of the same kinds of projects, content writers appear to have a value-proposition problem.

We also took a look at the differences between what men and women charge for content projects and were surprised to find that the differences were minor—in most cases just a few dollars and significantly less than the differences we found when comparing men and women who write copy. This may be in part due to the fact that content writers are charging less across the board so there is simply less range to separate men and women. Here’s a bit of the data.

Although content writers need to be aware of the market for their services (i.e., clients who hire content writers may expect lower prices than clients who hire copywriters), they would be better served by looking at what copywriters charge for their work before setting the prices for their services.

Next… Do copywriters need a niche? AND 50 six-figure niches to explore. Or jump to Do copywriters need a degree?, which includes a breakdown of pricing by years of experience.

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