Blog Writing Costs 2025: Per-Word Pricing is Dead

Blog Writing Costs

In the past, paying per word for a blog made sense because producing words required most of the effort in creating the blog. But in today’s world, where AI can generate thousands of words in just minutes, words aren’t worth as much as they used to be.

• What does that mean for blog writing costs?
• Should you still be paying per word for blogs?
• How much do blogs cost in 2025?
• What pricing model should you look for when purchasing blogs?

In this article, we’ll answer these questions and more to help prepare you when looking for blog writing services.

How You Should Look at Per-Word Pricing

ChatGPT was released in 2022, and since then, words have come in abundance. So much so that Google releases Helpful Content Updates (HCU) to help rid the internet of low-quality content. This begs the question: What’s the point of paying per word for blogs when anyone can now produce words so easily?

Technically, it doesn’t make sense to charge per word, but because it’s an easy way to price blogs, the model isn’t likely to go anywhere; however, it’s still important to have a fresh outlook on blog prices:

When looking at the price of blogs, don’t look at the words you’re getting; look at what’s included with those words.

Are you getting helpful content published on a regular and consistent basis?

Are you getting a good marketing strategy?

Are you getting on-page and off-page SEO?

How Much Do Blogs Cost?

Blogs cost anywhere between $0.01 to $5.00 USD per word. The lower end—anything below $0.15 per word—is likely to get you AI-generated, low-quality content. On the other hand, the higher up the spectrum you go, the higher the quality should be.

At this point, you’re probably wondering what makes a blog high or low quality.

The quality of blogs is determined by the strategy they come with. The more comprehensive the strategy, the better results you’ll get. As you go down in price, you also go down in strategy. You’ll eventually get to the point where the only thing you get for your blogs are words, which don’t do much for online visibility and conversions on their own.  

To help you better understand the level of strategy used to determine the cost of blog writing in 2025 and beyond, we’ve separated the price of blogs into three tiers.

• Tier 1: High-quality blogs
• Tier 2: Functional blogs
• Tier 3: Basic Blogs

1. Price of High-Quality Blog Writing ($1 – $5 per word)

High-Quality Blog Writing (1.50 USD – 5 USD per word).

High-quality blogs help increase online visibility, leads, and profits. Blogs don’t do that by themselves. 97% of content gets zero organic traffic from Google, and there are billions of blogs on the Internet. How can blogs drive results if nobody sees them?

Blogs need a marketing and SEO strategy behind them for maximum benefits. Since resources are needed to drive that sort of marketing results, these are the types of blogs you should expect from ROI-driven digital marketing and SEO agencies.

The price of these blogs should already include things like SEO, content marketing, and monitoring. Most marketing agencies don’t charge per word for this reason; they usually charge on a retainer because blogs are just one aspect of a result-driven marketing strategy.

In other words, if you’re paying that much for a blog, you should also be paying for more than words.

2. Functional Blog Writing ($0.50 – $1 per word)

Just like high-quality blogs, functional blogs are also offered by ROI-driven agencies. The difference between the two tiers is the depth of the overall marketing strategy provided.

If you’re paying over $1 USD per word for a blog, you should expect SEO features alongside those blogs that are going to get you results like higher engagement rates or increased organic search traffic. We wouldn’t recommend paying more than $0.50 per word for a single blog, because one-off blogs won’t get you results that justify such high prices—consistent quality production is needed for high results.

3. Basic Blog Writing ($0.15 – $0.50 per word)

These are the blog prices you can expect from freelancers or content mills. Basic blogs can be well-written and keyword-optimized but lack the strategy and depth needed to drive traffic, conversions, or ROI. If you are already ranking high on search engines and have an in-house team that can make good use of blogs, then you can justify the cost of blogs when they don’t come with their strategy, because you’ve already got that covered.

Keep in mind that the lower the cost of blogs, the higher the likelihood of receiving low-quality, plagiarized, or entirely AI-generated content. In fact, below a certain price threshold, you’re probably guaranteed it.

A rule of thumb is to stay clear of anything less than $0.15 cents per word.

How Are Blogs Priced?

Besides per-word pricing, blogs can be priced hourly or by retainer. It’s important to consider that if you want to increase your organic search traffic and SEO, publishing blogs for your website should be an ongoing thing. For this reason, the retainer model is usually the best option because it ensures that you receive ongoing blogs for a set amount of time, usually 6 months or a year.

The retainer model also has its advantages because the blogs you receive usually come from a well-thought-out content strategy that is designed to achieve your particular goals.

On the other hand, per word and hourly work best for one-off blogs or in the scenario where you have already developed a content strategy and need a certain number of blogs to fulfill it.  

Should You Pay Hourly for Blogs?

You might consider paying blog writing costs per hour. After all, paying by the hour sounds fair, right?

But the reality is that hourly pricing shifts focus away from results and instead puts the emphasis on time spent. That’s why it’s probably not the best idea to pay hourly for your blogs.

It’s not that hourly always creates inefficiency, but it certainly has the ingredients for it. Instead of focusing on the blog’s impact, SEO, or conversion value, paying hourly for blogs can cause blog writers to focus on the clock. This could be a problem because quality blogs take time to create, especially if they are part of a content marketing strategy designed to increase your organic search traffic:

• Creators with a strong work ethic may under-report hours to avoid looking inefficient, which over time reduces their productivity and limits the effort they put into creating truly valuable content.
• Creators with a poor work ethic may inflate their hours, especially with AI making it easier to generate content quickly while logging extra time.

When you consider that AI can be used to generate content in just minutes, paying hourly for the cost of blogs might not be the best idea.

Should You Pay Per Word?

Paying per word is the most common pricing model for freelancers because it’s easy to price a single blog post per word. Infact, the best circumstance for paying per word for a blog would be when you need a few blogs, between 1-5. Any more than that, you should consider paying per project, or on retainer for maximum benefits.

What About Project-Based Pricing?

Blogs priced on a project basis—whether as a single blog or in packages—are often a better alternative to per-word or hourly models. With project-based pricing, the cost of blogs is set and agreed upon upfront, eliminating your worries about under-reporting or inflating of hours. This allows the blog creator to focus on the goal and the blog itself, ensuring that strategy and quality take priority over the clock.

Retainer Pricing: The Best Long-term Choice

A retainer model is the best way to pay for blog writing services if you want to see long-term business growth. Blogs alone aren’t enough—they require multiple features to effectively fuel marketing efforts, drive website traffic, and increase conversions.

When you pay for blogs on retainer, you’re allowing the service provider to include SEO, regular content updates, competition analysis, strategy creation, and distribution into the retainer price.

These essential blog-enhancing features are exactly why agencies typically only offer blog writing through a retainer model—it makes it so that every blog is part of a larger, results-driven strategy rather than just standalone content.

A Breakdown of Which Method is Best For You

Freelancers vs Agency vs In-house Writer For Blogs

In 2025, there will be nearly 80 million freelancers in the United States, 80% of whom are writers. That’s approximately sixty-five million six hundred thousand freelance writers in the U.S alone. That number is projected grow due to AI, so for many of these freelancers, very little writing is actually being done. So the question is: should you hire freelancers to create your blogs?

Should You Hire a Freelancer For Blogs?

Freelancers work best for one-off blogs, bulk content needs, and when you do your own optimizing and publishing; however, they are not ideal in the long run. For sustained growth, authority-building, and a long-term content strategy, you’re better off hiring in-house or using an agency.

Here are some insights from my personal experience with freelancer bloggers:

• Saturated Market– With AI-generated content and a low barrier of entry, platforms like Upwork and Fiverr are overwhelmingly filled with freelancers competing at scale.
• Divided Focus – Even if you find a good freelancer, they are often working for dozens of clients at once, meaning they don’t always have the time to deeply understand your business, industry, and audience. These things have a huge impact on the quality of the blogs you receive.
• Depth of Strategy – Freelancers typically write words, not develop effective marketing strategies. Some can create well-written blogs, but they lack the resources to drive real business growth and rank those blogs.

Hiring In-house for Blog Writing

Hiring an in-house writer offers certain advantages.

The advantages of hiring an In-House blog writer include:

• Dedicated Focus: An in-house writer can fully immerse themselves in your business, leading to content that aligns closely with your brand’s voice and goals.​
• Consistency and Control: Having a writer on staff ensures consistent content production and allows for greater control over editorial standards and schedules.​

While an in-house writer addresses content creation, a comprehensive SEO strategy requires additional expertise, so in addition to hiring an in-house writer—which in the U.S. can cost you upward of 60,000 USD per year—you might also need to hire:

• SEO Specialist: To ensure your content ranks well on search engines, an SEO specialist is essential. The average salary for an SEO specialist in the United States is approximately 62,490 USD per year. ​
• Content Strategist: Developing a content strategy that drives engagement and meets business objectives requires a content strategy. The average salary for a content strategist in the United States is around 79,404 USD per year. ​
• Manager: In-house teams require management to train, guide, and replace team members who don’t perform. Marketing Managers could cost upward of USD 70,000 per year.

Collectively, building an in-house team with these roles can lead to significant annual expenses, often exceeding 200,000 USD when considering salaries and benefits.​

✅ In-house works best for: Businesses that want full control over content and have the budget to build an in-house team (SEO, content strategy, analytics) to support blog effectiveness.

❌ Not ideal for: Businesses wanting a cohesive marketing strategy without the high overhead costs required for blogs to generate real growth.

Hiring an Agency for Blogs

For many businesses, partnering with a specialized agency can be a cost-effective solution. Agencies offer a cost-effective approach, providing access to a team of experts without the overhead of full-time salaries. Agencies can produce high-quality blogs that achieve your marketing goals; in fact, the thing that makes blogs high-quality is the ability to meet those goals.

Agencies Handle the Hardest Part: Execution. They also handle the second hardest part: the process. One of the biggest hidden costs is the back-and-forth. Freelancers require constant oversight, and in-house requires constant management. A good marketing agency should eliminate these struggles.

• The hiring process – You don’t have to source or vet talent.
• The execution – The content, SEO, and strategy are usually built with the blog writing costs.

Final Thoughts About the Cost of Blogs

The amount you should pay for blog writing should depend on what you’re getting. With AI being everywhere, words are easy to create, and blogs that drive real results depend on more than just words; therefore, paying per word is not ideal in this day and age. Paying for strategy is more important.

The more strategy behind your blogs, the higher the likelihood of higher returns on your investment. Well-strategized blogs consist of SEO, regular content updates, and conversion optimization. To get those things, you need a provider that is virtually immersed in your business. When you fail, they fail. When you succeed, they succeed.

Freelancers will always have their place in the blog-writing market, and they should. But the results they provide are limited because their resources are limited. If you’re going to hire a freelancer to write your blogs, make sure you develop a strategy so that you can use blogs in a way that can drive results. To get a proven blog strategy that eliminates all the guesswork and helps you get found on Google, book a consultation with us—we believe the cost you pay for blogs should get you results you’re happy with.