What to charge?

[expatana]

[Lynn Terry]

Can you not turn down the offer, and look for offers more suited to your expertise?

[Jim Guinn]

[expatana]

[expatana]

[Jim Guinn]

Hi expatana.

Yes, I do mainly web-based work, but I have written manuals, also. To date, no one has complained about my billing hours. I think those I have worked for know they are getting a good deal. One thing I have going for me is my English degree and experience as an English teacher. Most of my jobs have been for people/companies whose first language is not English. Most of my work is rewriting or proof reading, but I have also written original text based on their needs. I consider ghostwriting to be the writer behind the published author, writing either from scratch or from the input of the customer, i.e. ideas, notes, facts, figures, etc.

Have you worked with Word before? It is really not that difficult to pick up.

Jim

[expatana]

Hi Jim,

Yes, I've used Word lots, just not all the features. The ones I'm being called upon to use here are tables of content (he really has them scrambled, no tabs set), a lot of listing of facts, margins and tabs, and headers and footers -- all of which I'm still learning and some of which have confused me in recent office jobs.

I did editing of business, scientific and academic documents translated from Japanese to English when I was teaching English in Japan. I got good at it, although since I didn't have Japanese, I had to do some guessing. I'd be far better with those from Spanish, which I know pretty well.

It wasn't my business to ask what you charged, or to comment on it publicly, but I appreciate your kind input there. If you don't mind ... how did you come to that figure? How did you research it? Did you start out charging that, or did you raise your rates as your experience grew?

Thanks,
Ana

[Jim Guinn]

[expatana]

Hi Jim,

Wow, it seems you lucked out. I googled editing sites and the ballpark for proofreading/copy editing was $25-$40 an hour, with most sites actually charging by word or page. The average hovered around $18 per 1,000 words.

That was for proofing/editing only, not complete rewriting or ghostwriting, which was more. Some of those more advanced services may have hovered near what you charge.

I still haven't decided what I'm going to charge him. Another forum is advising me to charge $25 per hour, with one page each half hour, making the fee about $1,000. But my Google research says no, it's not a competitive rate.

But it's a big job, with not only some heavy editing but lots of formatting.

Thanks again,
Ana

[expatana]

[Jim Guinn]

[expatana]

Is there any chance this thread can be bumped or something? I have set my fee for this job and emailed the potential client. He was most eager before ...

Now after hearing my fee, which was well within the ballpark for what I'd be doing (much lower than yours, Jim), and even on the low side, he's hedging, saying he's "not ready yet," he may be in a couple of weeks. But the hardest part for a beginner like me is ...

He wants my samples. I don't have any. I just plain forgot about this necessity. You see, I wasn't quite ready to market this yet when I met him at the seminar.

All I have is a freebie I did for another webmaster, a very simple editing job that has none of the substantive work I'd be doing for this guy. It's no longer marked. And I'm not sure I'm allowed to show it to others anyway.

It would take me considerable time to make up "fake" samples to show him (is that what you use to start out -- fake samples?), then mark them all up, in the time required. He's naturally expecting a pro to send them right on.

Help! How in the world do you get started?

Ana

[Steve MacLellan]

[expatana]

Hi Steve, Jim and group,

I've been mostly absent from the group recently, getting the job done, now that he's hired me. I ended up having to subcontract out for some of the formatting, because I'm not 100% on Word, and -- wouldn't you know it? -- the person I hired did a lousy job and I'm having to spend hours learning to correct her!!! My client wants his final revision this Friday.

Pressure!! I can't believe I have to correct someone I'm paying who I thought was an expert -- and I don't know how to correct her.

It's turned out to be pretty bad.

Thanks for your good advice. I definitely didn't undercharge, and I don't feel I overcharged, either. I had to be careful this first time, because as you said, Steve, this is my very first paying job and I don't know everything. So I couldn't charge the moon. Then, I have to pay the (incompetent) formatter the agreed-upon fee, so I'm not getting much for an enormous job.

Oh well ...

See ya,
Ana

[Steve MacLellan]

Hi Ana,

Sometimes it's hard to get good help...

I don't know if this will help, but if you're working for a webmaster and you need to format a lot of html for his manual, you can copy the code into lots of text html editors (many you can download for free), format the code there, and most of these editors will color the various elements.

Then you just copy and paste it into Word.

Here is an example taken from a new page I'm doing for a client. I opened my text editor with the html document, copied the code and pasted it into Word. For this example, I've converted it into a pdf file, but this is just so you can see what it would look like. Example here: http://homebusiness-websites.com/format.pdf

You will see it maintained the same formatting and color from the text editor -- without ever having to know about how to do all of this by tabbing and Tables in Word.

Best Regards,
Steve MacLellan