Website copywriting service: the second hire nobody budgets for

Quick answer: a website copywriting service starts around $4,000 for a proven specialist, and published rates reach $9,900 for up to eight pages. That is for the words alone, with no design and no build. Ours is inside €3,590 plus VAT, written from one conversation. What follows is what you are actually buying when you buy copy, and why it is a second purchase almost nobody budgets for.

The figures here come from published service pages at Between the Lines Copy, Jill Wise and Copywriting Crew, plus the web design guide at newmedia, all read in August 2026. The three copywriters describe nearly the same process as each other. It is also, almost exactly, the process a website should already include.

What does a website copywriting service cost?

What you are buying	Published price	What you still need
Copy for a ten-page site, per a web design guide	$2,000 to $6,000	The design and the build
One long-form sales page, specialist	from $3,900	Every other page
Website copy, proven specialist	from $4,000	The design and the build
Website copy up to eight pages, specialist	from $9,900	The design and the build
The Startklar website, copy included	€3,590 plus VAT	Nothing else

None of those numbers is inflated. A specialist writing eight pages runs a strategy call, a persona questionnaire, market research, up to ten interviews with your past clients and a live editing session. That is weeks of work by someone who is good at it, and $9,900 is a fair price for it.

The problem is not the price. It is where the price shows up.

What does a website copywriter actually do?

Read three service pages side by side and the shape is identical.

Between the Lines Copy runs a 60-minute kickoff call, sends a custom persona questionnaire, does market research, optionally interviews up to ten of your past clients, talks to your designer, holds a live 60-minute review session, and includes two rounds of edits. Copywriting Crew promises to "research, write, and deliver high-converting website copywriting services in just three to five business days," with "unlimited revisions and changes within seven days" of the first draft.

Then there is the sentence that should stop you. Between the Lines describes what the client has to do: "Your only responsibilities during our project are filling out your questionnaire, and giving your feedback."

A questionnaire. A conversation. Then somebody else writes it and you react.

That is the whole shape of the service, and it is worth holding onto, because it is not what the web design industry assumes about the same work.

The second hire

Two industries are selling halves of one thing, and both are honest about their half.

The web design industry sells you a website and treats the words as yours to supply. newmedia says it outright in its own package guide: "Most packages don't include copywriting." The copywriting industry sells you the words and treats the design as somebody else's problem, which is why Between the Lines lists "communication with your designer" as a line item it performs. Nobody is hiding anything. Between the two of them sits a gap, and the buyer falls into it.

Call it the second hire. You hire the first one because a website is the thing you knew you needed. You discover the second one afterwards, staring at a finished design with placeholder text in it.

Now put the two bills next to each other. newmedia prices the copy for a ten-page site at $2,000 to $6,000. Jill Wise puts the specialist market at "$4k and upwards" and her own rate at $4,000 for a simple website, and that is after a separate brand messaging engagement. Between the Lines starts at $9,900.

The second hire can cost more than the first one.

Those are dollars and ours are euros, which moves that comparison by a few percent rather than by a multiple. It also runs the other way in one important respect: those copywriters are not overcharging, they are charging what the work takes. The number is only shocking against a website package that quietly assumed you would do it yourself at midnight.

And the order makes it worse. The copy bill arrives after you are committed, after the design is approved, at the exact moment when saying "I'll just write it myself" is cheapest and least true.

Why is it so hard to write your own website copy?

Because the problem is distance, not vocabulary.

Jill Wise makes a living writing website copy for other people, and she is unusually honest about her own: "it's so hard to write your own website copy. Even with years of experience I still struggle to write my own sometimes. It's hard to get out of your own head and write copy for yourself."

If somebody who does this professionally finds her own the hardest, the missing ingredient is clearly not skill. It is a second person. Your business is obvious to you, which is precisely the disqualification: you cannot tell which parts a stranger needs said out loud, because none of them feel worth saying.

This is also why the writing is not the part that takes the time. Getting the first honest sentence out of your own head is.

Do you need a copywriter if you already have a website designer?

That depends on one line in the designer's scope, and it is usually not in there.

The tell is small and easy to miss. If a package promises a page count, a design, hosting and SEO, and never once says who supplies the text, the answer is you. "Content guide," "content template" and "copy guidance" all mean the same thing: here is a document to help you do the writing.

The second tell is in the copywriter's own scope. Between the Lines sells coordination with your designer as part of the service, which only makes sense in a world where the writer and the builder are two companies who have to be introduced to each other.

Our answer is that it is not a second hire, because it is not a second purchase. Where the two bills come from is a question about how the price was put together in the first place, and we ran those numbers in what a website costs.

Where our copy comes from

€3,590 plus VAT includes every word of the launch version, written by us from one conversation.

Before we write anything we research what your customers actually search for, and the pages get built around those words rather than decorated with them afterwards. Copy that reads beautifully and nobody finds is half a job. The kickoff runs about two hours, you tell us about your business, and that conversation is the input. There is no writing homework, no content guide, and no document waiting for you in a shared folder. After handover you change any of it yourself in the editing system, at no cost, and a page can carry up to 3,000 words, which is far more than a page normally wants.

If you sell in more than one market, another language version is €1,390, and we adapt the copy for that market rather than running the English through a translator.

If you would rather read the output than the promise, Naura is a site whose every word came out of one conversation, including the guides that answer what clients ask before booking.

Now the honest limit, because this piece would be dishonest without it. A specialist who completes a brand messaging strategy first, interviews ten of your past clients and sits with you through a live editing session is doing more than we do. If your positioning is genuinely unsettled, if you cannot yet say in one sentence who you are for, that is the right purchase and it is worth $9,900. What we write is the launch version of a website's copy for a business that knows what it does. Those are different jobs and only one of them is ours.

Five questions to ask a website copywriter

Whether you hire one or buy a website that includes one, five questions settle it:

1. Is the copy in the website price, or does it arrive as a second invoice?
2. What do you need from me before you can start writing?
3. Is keyword research part of the writing, or is it sold separately?
4. How many rounds of edits are included, and what happens after those?
5. Who writes the copy for pages added later?

Five answers tell you more than any portfolio. Here are ours:

Question	Our answer
The price	In the package. There is no second invoice for words.
From you	One conversation of about two hours. No questionnaire to write, no draft to supply.
Keywords	Researched before we write, and the pages are shaped around what we find.
Edits	One consolidated round within fourteen days of handover. The next is €450, published in advance.
Later pages	Yours to write in the editing system, or ours at €590 for a page of up to six blocks.

If you want to see what the words cost when they are not a separate line, our website package is published in full. Or book an intro call. It takes twenty minutes and costs nothing.