How are articles *actually* priced per word? - Data Analysis

[PaulMaplesden]

You know how much I love my spreadsheets, so in an effort to shed more light on average prices per word on CC and the sweet spot for articles, I have dug into the data once more.

I collected information on around a hundred articles selected from across the site, both from the general article catalog, in specific topics that sell well and also from our more prolific and successful writers here.

I then broke down this data into the following:

Number of words per article
Price per article for Full, Unique and Usage rights
Average price being charged per word for each of those rights

Here's what I found out.

High level data
Average article length: 648 words
Average Full Rights price: $52
Average Unique Rights price: $47
Average Usage Rights price: $36

High level data without 'identical' license pricing
I then filtered the data to remove Unique and Usage prices where they were the same price as the 'Full Rights' licenses (since if all three are priced the same, unique and usage would never be sold to the buyer, just full rights) - This gives a more realistic price for Unique and Usage.
Average Unique Rights price (Excluding identical pricing to Full Rights): $46
Average Usage Rights price (Excluding identical pricing to Full Rights): $32

Excluding outliers
If we exclude the top ten percent and bottom ten percent of prices (to remove outliers), that shows us the following:

Average article length - Middle 80%: 617 words
Average Full Rights price - Middle 80%: $49
Average Unique Rights price - Middle 80%: $45
Average Usage Rights price - Middle 80%: $34
Average Unique Rights price (Excluding identical pricing to Full Rights) - Middle 80%: $44
Average Usage Rights price (Excluding identical pricing to Full Rights) - Middle 80%: $30

Price per word
Across all articles and all license types, the average price charged per word is: 7.03 cents per word (including identical license pricing) and 6.5 cents per word excluding it.

Here's the breakdown:
Average Full Rights cost per word: 8.02 cents
Average Unique Rights cost per word:7.3 cents
Average Usage Rights cost per word: 5.8 cents
Average Unique Rights cost per word (Excluding identical pricing to Full Rights): 6.6 cents
Average Usage Rights cost per word (Excluding identical pricing to Full Rights): 4.9 cents

Excluding outliers
Average Full Rights cost per word - Middle 80%: 7.8 cents
Average Unique Rights cost per word - Middle 80%: 7.1 cents
Average Usage Rights cost per word - Middle 80%: 5.5 cents
Average Unique Rights cost per word (Excluding identical pricing to Full Rights) - Middle 80%: 6.7 cents
Average Usage Rights cost per word (Excluding identical pricing to Full Rights) - Middle 80%: 4.7 cents

What does all of this tell us?

The data shows that overall, the sweet spot for pricing is as follows:
Full rights licenses: 7.5 to 8.2 cents a word
Unique rights licenses: 6.2 to 7.3 cents a word
Usage rights licenses: 4.2 to 5.1 cents a word

Here are some other random facts:
The shortest article I sampled was 256 words, the longest was 2,017 words.
The lowest full rights license was $18, the highest was $200
The lowest amount per word for full rights was 3.9 cents, the highest was 16.1
The lowest amount per word for usage rights was 2.4 cents, the highest was 11.5
Almost all articles are priced at either the $X0 or $X5 price point (so $20, $25, $30) etc.

As always, I hope you find this insight useful and that it helps you with your own pricing strategies.

[ReneeF]

Once again, and awesome colleague and data analyst.

[PaulMaplesden]

Once again, and awesome colleague and data analyst.

Thanks ReneeF, glad you find it useful.

[SuzanneBosworth]

That's a fantastic resource, Paul. Thanks so much for sharing it.

[JDWhang]

You're shedding light on things that I've always wondered about, but was never able to get a straight answer on. Thank you!

[EFowler]

Just wanted to add my thanks for the great stats you've been kind enough to share Paul!

[PaulMaplesden]

You're all very welcome, glad that it's of use.

[Judith]

You've certainly done a lot of great research that will be helpful to the writers. The only thing that worries me is if writers start lowering their prices based on how someone prices their work. I have noticed a lot of low priced articles selling lately. Unless I am submitting an article for use (only because it is also listed somewhere else), I price my articles at 10 cents a word or higher. I have no problem selling them. I make a few exceptions for quantity work that might go for nine cents, as well as some work that goes for 12 and 15 cents a word. If you have expertise in an area, you don't want to give it away. My sales percentage is high, so I know you don't have to give your work away. Remember, 35% of each sale goes to CC. If you charge eight cents a word, what are you really making? You will only be making 5.2 cents a word. It's important to think of how much your 65% will equal when setting your prices.

I have worked for years using an agent and he received a percentage for doing basically what CC does. When I priced my print writing for magazines, I priced by the amount I wanted to make after the commission was paid, not before. Now I am my own agent (thank you Internet), but I still include the commission amount in my pricing and use that amount for advertising etc.

[ReneeF]

You've certainly done a lot of great research that will be helpful to the writers. The only thing that worries me is if writers start lowering their prices based on how someone prices their work. I have noticed a lot of low priced articles selling lately. Unless I am submitting an article for use (only because it is also listed somewhere else), I price my articles at 10 cents a word or higher. I have no problem selling them. I make a few exceptions for quantity work that might go for nine cents, as well as some work that goes for 12 and 15 cents a word. If you have expertise in an area, you don't want to give it away. My sales percentage is high, so I know you don't have to give your work away. Remember, 35% of each sale goes to CC. If you charge eight cents a word, what are you really making? You will only be making 5.2 cents a word. It's important to think of how much your 65% will equal when setting your prices.

I have worked for years using an agent and he received a percentage for doing basically what CC does. When I priced my print writing for magazines, I priced by the amount I wanted to make after the commission was paid, not before. Now I am my own agent (thank you Internet), but I still include the commission amount in my pricing and use that amount for advertising etc.

I price mine at 5 cents per word and I feel I'm worth more than that, each article represents about 3 hours or more of work on my end. I can barely get stuff to sell at 5 cents. And I know its good content, relevant, evergreen, and on trend.

So you recommend we bump our prices up?

[Lysis]

There is someone going through each category and buying use articles. It's cool, because he's buying old old articles (he bought mine from 2009 and 2010). This also skews the above data, because the above is for a month and the big buyer is probably skewing the results. Plus, he is manually pulling numbers, so the data is (and I think he admits this) inaccurate. But, it does give you a reasonable idea.

If I need cash faster, I lower the price, which currently I'm doing to generate some income. But, yeah there are a few low low ballers.

But, I usually price around 10 cents too and I don't normally have issues either. It just takes longer to sell.

For me, I usually stick to what I know or what I've experienced, so it takes me 30 mins to an hour to write something, depending on the length.

[ReneeF]

There is someone going through each category and buying use articles. It's cool, because he's buying old old articles (he bought mine from 2009 and 2010). This also skews the above data, because the above is for a month and the big buyer is probably skewing the results. Plus, he is manually pulling numbers, so the data is (and I think he admits this) inaccurate. But, it does give you a reasonable idea.

If I need cash faster, I lower the price, which currently I'm doing to generate some income. But, yeah there are a few low low ballers.

But, I usually price around 10 cents too and I don't normally have issues either. It just takes longer to sell.

For me, I usually stick to what I know or what I've experienced, so it takes me 30 mins to an hour to write something, depending on the length.

It takes me longer, not because I dont know the content ,because I do, but because I've become a grammar and punctuation nazi. PLUS my husband is currently working from home while his company remodels their offices, and we have two preteen boys out of school for summer and they cant seem to do much without supervision.

[Lysis]

That sucks. I need quiet.

Sometimes, I do a lot better if I just write and then proof the next day. You'd be surprised the amount of changes you make if you wait a while to proof.

[ReneeF]

That sucks. I need quiet.

Sometimes, I do a lot better if I just write and then proof the next day. You'd be surprised the amount of changes you make if you wait a while to proof.

I write on mondays and tuesdays, proof those two days later, so wednesdays and thursdays, then analyze keywords and proof read again on Friday and submit. I need quiet, been trying to get up at 5:30 and work before everybody is up, but the 11yo decided to join me and argue about everything along the way. Its now 10 here and we have finally got them both down for a nap so we could work. I really miss being single and having complete and utter quiet when I work. I will be so happy when hubs goes back to the office and the step-kids go back to school. I'll get real work done. If we didnt desperately need the income to move on in 3 weeks, I'd be doing design work or marketing my blogs or anything but writing in a noisy house!

[ReneeF]

There is someone going through each category and buying use articles. It's cool, because he's buying old old articles (he bought mine from 2009 and 2010). This also skews the above data, because the above is for a month and the big buyer is probably skewing the results. Plus, he is manually pulling numbers, so the data is (and I think he admits this) inaccurate. But, it does give you a reasonable idea.

If I need cash faster, I lower the price, which currently I'm doing to generate some income. But, yeah there are a few low low ballers.

But, I usually price around 10 cents too and I don't normally have issues either. It just takes longer to sell.

For me, I usually stick to what I know or what I've experienced, so it takes me 30 mins to an hour to write something, depending on the length.

I just bumped my full rights price from 5 cents to 10 cents and usage from 4 cents to 5.

Last week I bumped usage from 3 to 4 and full rights from 4 to 5. Now I need to work far less to make it work. I was going to have to do minimum of 25 articles per week, now I can relax at 10 to 15.

[PaulMaplesden]

There is someone going through each category and buying use articles. It's cool, because he's buying old old articles (he bought mine from 2009 and 2010). This also skews the above data, because the above is for a month and the big buyer is probably skewing the results. Plus, he is manually pulling numbers, so the data is (and I think he admits this) inaccurate. But, it does give you a reasonable idea.

If I need cash faster, I lower the price, which currently I'm doing to generate some income. But, yeah there are a few low low ballers.

But, I usually price around 10 cents too and I don't normally have issues either. It just takes longer to sell.

For me, I usually stick to what I know or what I've experienced, so it takes me 30 mins to an hour to write something, depending on the length.

I agree about the skewing, and that's always a danger with limited data sets - As I continue to collect data, this should start to even out and we'll see more rational rates. In terms charge per word for usage vs full and unique, I've been able to do a bit more data wrangling and can now provide answers for how much average prices per word are by license type and area.

Full rights - Average cost per word by area

Arts & Culture: 7.1
Business: 6.7
General: 11.1
Health & Lifestyles: 6.2
Home: 5.8
Merchandise: 4.3
Recreation : 4.8
Regional: 3.8
Relationships: 5.9
Science: 5.1
Society: 10.3
Sports: 5.8
Technology: 7
Total : 6.4


Usage rights - Average cost per word by area

Arts & Culture: 2.5
Business: 3
General: 2.1
Health & Lifestyles: 2.9
Home: 2.9
Merchandise: 2.1
Recreation : 2.7
Regional: 3.3
Relationships: 3
Science: 3.2
Society: 3.5
Sports: 3.9
Technology: 3
Total : 2.8


I hope this is useful.