Business Writing/Web Writing questions?

live4today · May 14, 2005

I've been reading many of the threads and learning a lot.

This past week I made 2 (maybe 3) contacts who are interested in having me do some technical writing - one is a small web designer and the other a business that wants me to take a look at their business sale ads and other promotional writing and maybe revamp them. I'm meeting each of them on Monday.

I know you can't tell me what to charge, and I've found info from links that people are charging $50-$75/hour.

Is hourly how one charges for web work and re-writes of business stuff? And how will I know if I'm charging too much... or too little? Is it best to start out low, and later raise prices - or to just have confidence and throw out an hourly amount?

I'm not even sure how to find out what other writers in the area are being paid for doing this type of work.

pconsidine · Jun 2, 2005

The current trend seems to be to quote prices on a per project basis, rather than hourly. Naturally, a sense of an hourly rate will help you develop your project price, but the client doesn't get a price based on time. The rationale is that as you improve, you will do the work faster, while still getting the same amount of money, which would raise your hourly rate without raising the price to the client (necessarily). The downside is that if you run into a particularly hairy project that takes longer than you thought, your hourly rate drops just as quickly.

Hourly is probably a much simpler way to price. There are a lot of other ways to price creative work (based on useage, based on distribution, etc.) that require a little more finnesse and experience, but hourly is a perfectly good place to start.

Business Writing/Web Writing questions?

live4today

pconsidine

Too Adorkable for Words