I'm so glad this was useful! When it comes to pricing, I base all my editing pricing on a per-word rate, unless it is something very short/uncomplicated, then I might do a project rate - by which I mean just decide my hourly rate and estimate how long the project will take and then give the client my final number.
Some editors do hourly rates for editing. I like per-word rating for myself, simply because I don't really track my hours and I do a lot of context-switching, which can really affect hourly work!
One way to determine your rates is to decide what you want to make per hour. Let's say you want $50 per hour and you know you can edit 3-4 pages per hour (just an example). One page of text in a google doc is ~400 words. So you can take $50 divided by 1600 words and decide you want to charge 3-4 cents per word (or simply charge $50 per hour times how many hours you think it will take).
Then, you would raise your prices as you do more professional editing work.
I personally charge (this is for book manuscript editing) about 7 cents per word for copyediting and 10-12 cents per word for developmental editing (after a manuscript first draft is complete), and dev editing does often include some rewriting and content-related changes.
These days I do not really do much dev editing, as I find I am a strong copyeditor (which includes content editing and structural suggestions and wording changes plus proofreading, but not rewriting. I tell the writer what should change and give specific notes and feedback but don't do the rewriting myself).
So, if they come to me with a 50,000-word manuscript, I tell them $3500, 25% required upfront, the rest on completion (spelled out in my contract - https://jyssicaschwartz.medium.com/have-a-free-freelancer-contract-template-4a009f181830).
When I first started manuscript editing, I started around 3-4 cents per word for copyediting and I think 7-8 cents per word for dev edits.
The important thing is to know what you want to be making per hour/month/year, as once you know that, you can break down the number further to get what you need to charge to reach that annual pay goal.
Just don't undervalue your skills and time. If it takes you an hour for 2 pages, that's what it takes. If someone can't afford it, it's up to you if you want to negotiate, but have a hard line you won't go under. Your time is valuable!
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