"Paying a copywriter per word is like paying a stunt driver per mile. You're overlooking the true investment of the task, and decanting the value into something that doesn't actually have any."
“Freelance Copywriter required - £10 per hour!”, boasts the agency's ad. But is the work really freelance? And does it really pay £10 per hour? Both questions can be difficult to answer. And that cloudiness is in many cases loopholing the UK minimum wage.
For UK copywriters over the age of 25 – which is the majority – the minimum wage here in October 2020 stands at £8.72 per hour. But if the work genuinely does qualify as freelance, there's no obligation on the hiring party to meet or exceed that rate. Technically, the freelancer is selling a service, rather than receiving a wage or salary, so it's up to them what they choose to accept.
Free rein for hiring parties to beat down freelance copywriting rates to 1p per word then?…