How Much Do Blog Management Services Cost?

Blog management costs whatever the writing costs per post, multiplied by how many posts you publish, plus the hours spent planning, editing, publishing and reporting on them. At published freelance rates, four solid posts a month with full management lands somewhere around $2,400 to $3,650; cheaper offers exist, and they are cheaper because they include less.

Most pricing pages hide that structure behind a package name. This guide rebuilds it line by line, so you can work out a sensible budget and see exactly where two quotes differ.

The Two Parts of Every Quote

Every blog management price, however it is presented, is made of two parts:

• The writing: the cost of producing each post, usually priced per word or per post. It scales directly with volume and length.
• The management: keyword planning, briefs, editing, images, uploading, internal links, reporting and refreshing old posts. It is mostly hours, and it is the part that varies most between providers.

A quote that looks cheap is nearly always light on the second part. A quote that looks expensive should be able to show you the hours behind it. For the full list of deliverables a monthly package ought to contain, see what is included in monthly blog management.

What the Writing Costs

The most useful public benchmark is the Editorial Freelancers Association rate chart, based on members' 2025 rates. For blog posts it lists 25 to 45 cents per word for work-for-hire writing (or $74.50 to $87.50 an hour), and 25 to 40 cents per word for ghostwritten posts.

Length matters too. Orbit Media's 2026 survey of 1,042 content marketers puts the average blog post at 1,312 words. Rounding to 1,300 words, the arithmetic looks like this:

The last row is our own published writing rate, included because it is the one we can state precisely. Specialist subjects such as legal, medical or financial content generally cost more, because they need more research and a more careful fact-check.

What the Management Adds: A Worked Budget

Management is harder to benchmark because almost nobody publishes hours. The table below is an illustration, not a market rate: the hours are our assumptions for four posts a month, priced at the EFA's hourly range for blog work.

Add that to the writing at EFA rates ($1,300 to $2,340) and four managed posts come to roughly $2,417 to $3,653 a month. Swap in your own inputs: two posts a month roughly halves the per-post lines, while a blog that also needs old posts refreshed every month adds hours.

What In-House Actually Costs

The usual alternative is "someone on the team can do it". That time is not free. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics gives a 2025 median of $76,910 a year, or $36.98 an hour, for writers and authors, and Orbit Media puts average drafting time at three hours and twenty minutes per post.

So drafting one post costs about $123 of salary time at the median wage, before research, editing, images, publishing and reporting, and before employer costs such as tax, benefits and software. The real question is rarely salary against fee; it is whether anyone internal has 15 to 25 spare hours a month and the skills to fill them. In-house vs outsourced blog management works through that decision.

The Four Pricing Models

Retainers make the most sense for genuine management, because planning, refreshing and reporting are continuous work. They make the least sense when the whole scope is one line such as "blog management, four posts". Ask for it to be broken down.

What Moves the Price

• Volume and length: the biggest driver. Doubling posts roughly doubles the writing line; the management line rises less steeply because planning and reporting are partly fixed.
• Subject difficulty: technical and regulated topics need research, expert input and a slower edit.
• Who supplies the expertise: if your team gives the writer interviews, examples and data, the posts are better and quicker to produce than ones researched from scratch.
• Publishing work: delivering a document is cheaper than uploading, formatting, sourcing images and linking inside your CMS.
• Refreshing old posts: often left out of packages, although on an established blog it can be the best-value work of the month.
• Approval speed: slow sign-off creates rework and missed slots, and some providers price that risk in.

Matching Scope to Budget

If the full figure is more than you can spend, cut volume before you cut management. Three workable shapes:

• Writing only: you keep the keyword plan, the briefs and the publishing. Works if someone internal is genuinely good at those jobs and has the hours. Keep an editing pass in the scope even here.
• Writing plus production: the provider edits, formats, uploads and links; you plan quarterly with them. A sensible middle for most small businesses.
• Full management: planning, writing, publishing, reporting and monthly refreshes of older posts. Worth it once the blog has enough posts that maintaining them is a job in itself.

The decision rule: two well-planned, properly edited posts a month will usually do more than six unplanned ones, so if something has to give, let it be the post count.

How to Compare Two Quotes

Put each quote into the same grid before you look at the totals:

1. Posts per month and words per post, in numbers, not "long-form".
2. Who writes them: in-house staff, named freelancers or a subcontracted pool.
3. What happens before the draft: keyword plan, brief, outline approval.
4. What happens after: editing, fact-checking, images, upload, internal links, meta title and description.
5. Revisions: how many rounds, and what counts as a revision rather than a new brief.
6. Reporting: which numbers, how often, and whether recommendations come with them.
7. Refreshes: whether updating existing posts is included, and how many a month.
8. Contract terms: notice period, minimum term and who owns the content.

What to Do This Week

• Decide how many posts a month you can realistically approve; how often a small business should publish helps you pick a number you can hold.
• Write down which tasks your team will keep (usually approvals and subject expertise) and which you want handled.
• Ask two or three providers to quote against that same scope, line by line.
• Set the success measure before you sign, so you can judge the spend later; calculating blog management ROI shows how.

For reference, our blog writing starts at $12.95 per 100 words, written in-house, with revisions until the brief is met and no lock-in. If you would like a quote built on the grid above, our blog management service page sets out what we cover.