How to estimate the rate for freelancing writing projects?

Undoubtedly freelancing gives you priceless freedom of working and choosing your type of work, boss-free life, work from anywhere but it brings a lot of responsibilities and should be done with the discipline to be your own boss.

My first triage with cost estimation as a consultant:

🤔 The year 2008, my client asked me how much you will charge?

Hmm, I can complete this work in 1.5 days and I m earning 30k/mo so 1k will be the correct figure. If I ask for more he may not give this project to me and finally, after deep thinking  I quote INR999.

Do you think it was the correct approach?

NO-It was a disaster even he sign 5 more projects with me. To estimate the per hour rate for a freelancing project is one of the trickiest questions that come to our mind before taking any consultancy project?

Continue reading otherwise your situation will be something like mine 🙂

🔥Not only in technical documentation, but you also face similar trouble in any freelancing work.

In this blog post, I have written 💯 about the significant challenges and solutions for freelancing cost estimations. Share your experiences about cost estimates in the comment section.

How to estimate the per hour rate for freelancing technical writing project is one of the tricky questions that come to the mind before taking any technical documentation project. Not only in technical documentation, but you also face similar trouble in any freelancing writing assignments like content writing, medical writing, and blogging. In one of my blog posts, I have written about the significant challenges of freelancing. Read the post before you foray into technical writing.

I do not oversell freelancing for technical writers because freelancing work is limited in technical writing. You will get plenty of work in content writing, resume writing, Generally you will get contract technical writing work n which client will ask to write from client premise.

There are many calculators available to calculate per hour rate for a freelancing project, but I firmly believe that you are the best person to judge “What should be your value”.

In our content charcha (webinar) we recently invited Scheely to talk about her journey of freelancing. You can enjoy the recording of the webinar.

Yes, there are many parameters which you should take into consideration before you fix your freelancing price. Pricing is one of the crucial aspects of any right business price that can win or lose you a project.

Read “Pros and Cons of Contract Technical Writer Work” consider the points mentioned in it before doing any math for your rate.

Math for calculating the hourly price for content freelancing work

Simple maths you can do is take your monthly gross salary before deductions, round it up to an even number, and divide by 176 (the average hours per month,22×8).

Suppose you want to earn INR 100000/month. In this case divide 100000/176=568.18.

So, you should never ask anything less than INR 750 after negotiation you can quote a minimum INR 600.

I will suggest quoting INR 1000 because you cannot work for 8 hours and many unseen issues can do your math wrong. Keep reading to know those unseen issues.

By now your freelancing resume is ready and shortlisted by the client. If you want to learn about freelancer resume consider reading.

Hope you get a rough estimate but before finalizing the rate consider the few points also.

Points to consider for estimating the freelancing price of writing work-

1. How many of your daily working hours are billable?
2. How many days off do you need for holiday.s, sick days, and personal days each year?
3. How much vacation time do you want each year?
4. The number of visits and duration of meetings with the client. Make sure who is going to pay for this.
5. Travel cost, phone bills, and courier charges if any.
6. Investment in hardware, software, electricity, Internet bill even on coffee or water.
7. Insurance cover, EPF, marketing, promotions, taxes, etc.
8. Be ready for the negotiation, so always have Negotiation buffer.
9. The duration of the project also matters. You can reduce the hourly rate for larger assignments.
10. What kinds of documents will you be writing? Online help, Print docs, Web articles, Newsletters, Website content etc…?
11. What kind of skill set is required? General or Rare?
12. How desperately you want this project. Is it going to be an entry for you in a new line of business? If yes, quote less.
13. Your existing or future relationship with the client.
14. What is your expertise and experience level and how clients value that?
15. Marketing expense. Like chasing the client, writing emails etc.

You can get good freelancing work from the website like Upwork, e-lance,freelancer.com, etc. You can also contact agencies like Technowrites, Commit, ibruk etc.

I got my first work through my friend Jeno Joy who was working with Dots consultancy in Mumbai (W). His company was in need of a freelance content writer and my journey started. It was the year 2008.

Conclusion

In freelancing it is also very important to estimate the time. If you have a correct estimation of time, you very quickly calculate the cost.

Do not forget to fix the payment terms and conditions like advance and full payment duration. The client may ask for GST and invoice. So be ready with all these.

Acceptance criteria and definition of done should be clear. How the quality of content will be measured and how many times you will rewrite the content should be clear during price and time fixation.

Read how to estimate the time for a freelancing writing project.

Always keep adjusting your fee, after all, you deserve increment:-). I’m eager to listen to your freelancing story please share in the comment.