The two numbers that decide your year are what you charge and how long the job takes. This page assembles the commercial half of freelancing: quoting, invoicing, pricing the revision the brief did not mention, and turning clean copy around fast.
Not here: royalty maths, print costs and copyright pages. You are not the publisher. If you are also writing a book of your own, that lives on the self-publishing page.
The most expensive mistake in freelancing is a number you picked because it sounded about right.
Sourced market ranges by discipline, cross-filterable and cited row by row.
Open tool→Per-word, per-hour and per-project rates, against EFA benchmarks.
Open tool→What writers earn by state, from BLS data. The number to argue from.
Open tool→An itemised quote, priced against real benchmarks.
Open tool→Including the work that arrived after the brief was signed.
A client-ready one-page portfolio, styled and downloaded from your browser.
Open tool→A clean, numbered invoice, made privately in your browser.
Open tool→Price the extra round, with the wording to ask for it.
Open tool→Every one of these runs in your browser in seconds. Your effective hourly rate is a function of how fast this step goes.
Catch what a client would catch, before they do.
Open tool→Flesch scores and reading time, for a plain-English brief.
Open tool→Paste a draft; the filler lights up.
Open tool→What dangles in each sentence, then the fix.
Open tool→Length, structure and clarity, with every rule shown.
Open tool→The grammar term you half-remember, defined with an example.
Open tool→Common spellings side by side, for whichever market the client writes for.
Open tool→A vetted directory of job boards, marketplaces, agencies and paying markets, grouped by type with pay disclosure noted.
Open the directory→Where the work is posted, and which boards are worth it.
Read the guide→A column or feature angle to pitch when the well is dry.
Open tool→Filter letter-writing apps by platform and price.
Open tool→Filter free software by what you write and price.
Open tool→The clause you skim is the clause that costs you. What contract terms mean, and what you may quote in the work you deliver.
Kill fee, all rights, work made for hire, indemnity: what each clause means and where it bites.
Open tool→Lyrics, poetry, prose or a brand name in your piece: the rules, with sources shown.
Open tool→Whether that older work is free to quote, from its publication year.
Open tool→Refreshed on a schedule. The magazine database carries a pay-rate field, the one that matters when you choose where to spend an afternoon.
Markets that pay, each with a rate quoted from its own page and an AI policy where stated.
Open the database→Open windows, pay rates and response times. Pay is the point.
Open the database→Deadlines, fees and prizes. A prize is a clip and a fee.
Open the database→Both of them, in one chronology, soonest first: what closes next.
The Thursday Deadline Digest lists the contests, grants and magazine windows closing soon, across every genre, once a week. You also get a short welcome series and the occasional writing email.
Prefer no email at all? Every genre is also acalendar feed you can subscribe to.
What you sent where, privately in your browser.
Open the tracker→Your deadlines, submissions and saved work, on one page.
Open your desk→Probably not, and we would rather say so than sell you something. Writer's Toolkit Pro syncs a submission tracker and sends deadline alerts for writers who submit to markets constantly. A freelancer pitching clients by email is not doing that. The calculators, invoice generator and editing checks here are free, and they are the ones that earn you money.