Writers bill in more units than almost any other freelancer — words, articles, hours, projects — and each unit needs to appear differently on the invoice to make sense to the person paying it. Add the trade's peculiar mechanics (kill fees, revision rounds, the ghostwriting premium) and the invoice becomes a small contract summary. Here's how to write one that a content manager approves without forwarding it to anyone.
Match the line item to the unit you sold
Per-word is standard for journalism and much content marketing. Use the quantity field for the word count so the math is visible:
Feature article: "The Quiet Comeback of Night Trains" — 2,150 words @ $0.50/word ... $1,075
Settle one thing in advance and restate it in your terms: is the count the assigned length or the published length? Editors cut. If you wrote 2,400 assigned words and they ran 1,900, you should not take a $250 haircut for their trim — bill assigned length unless agreed otherwise.
Per-article/flat fee is cleaner for ongoing content work: "Blog post, 1,200–1,500 words, incl. 1 revision round — $450." Scales beautifully into monthly batches: quantity 4, rate $450.
Hourly fits editing, interviews-heavy work, and anything unpredictable: "Developmental editing, Sept 1–12 — 8 hrs @ $90." Use it sparingly for writing itself — hourly punishes you for being fast.
Project fee for white papers, case studies, and books: one line, milestone billing (50% on start, 50% on approved draft) for anything over a couple thousand dollars.
Revision policy: on the invoice, in numbers
"Includes revisions" is a blank check. "Includes 2 revision rounds; further rounds $95/round or $90/hr" is a policy. Put the included rounds in the line item itself, because the invoice is what the client looks at when deciding whether round four is reasonable. Two boundaries worth writing down in your terms:
- A "round" is one consolidated set of feedback — five separate emails of notes is five rounds' worth of context-switching, and pricing rounds encourages clients to consolidate.
- A revision is not a rewrite. If the client changes the brief after the draft ("actually, make it about a different product"), that's a new assignment, quoted fresh.
Kill fees: getting paid for work that never runs
Publishing kills pieces — editors leave, news moves, budgets vanish. A kill fee is the agreed percentage you're owed when the client cancels an accepted assignment; 25–50% of the full fee is the common range, with 100% owed once you've delivered an acceptable draft. The kill fee lives in your contract or assignment email, but it's collected by invoice, and it should say exactly what it is:
Kill fee (50%) — commissioned feature on regional food systems, assigned July 8, cancelled Aug 30 per editor email ... $600
Naming the assignment date and the cancellation keeps the line self-explanatory when it crosses an accounting desk months later.
Byline vs. ghostwriting: same words, different products
Work published under your name pays you twice — once in money, once in portfolio. Ghostwriting pays only in money, so it costs more: premiums of 25–100% over your bylined rate are normal, and full transfer of credit and rights should be explicit. Reflect the distinction on the invoice:
Ghostwritten thought-leadership article for CEO byline (1,000 words, full rights transfer, no attribution) ... $850
That parenthetical isn't decoration. It documents that the client bought your silence about authorship and the right to publish under another name — the two things that justify the price. For bylined work, the default is you keep copyright and license one-time publication rights; if a client wants "all rights," that's an upsell, listed as one.
A worked example
A monthly invoice for a content-marketing client mixing flat-fee posts, a per-word feature, an extra revision round, and a kill fee.
Example: monthly freelance writing invoice with a kill fee
Flat-fee posts, a per-word feature billed at assigned length, a billed third revision round, and a kill fee for a cancelled assignment.
Note the currency: the writer is in Chicago, the client in London, and the invoice simply bills in GBP because that's what the client budgets in.
Invoice in less time than a nut graf
The free invoice generator for freelancers handles every structure here — per-word quantities, batch lines, kill fees, 25+ currencies — with no signup and no watermark on the PDF. Autosave keeps this month's invoice around so October's is a duplicate-and-edit job.