Tutorial: How To Outsource Content to India
Lesson 10: How do I negotiate terms?
chilliwriter writer — Trixie Asirvatham
How do I negotiate terms? Do I pay per word, per page, per project or per month?
The cost of a project would depend on its scope, skills needed and urgency.
Many of our customers like a flat rate per month for hiring a writer. They manage and we provide the writer. But there are many other ways of working with us. For example we can work on a project by project basis.
Although some professional writers have a per word or per page rate, it is better to negotiate a rate for the project as a whole. That way you wouldn’t be caught off-guard by hidden surprises and added costs at the end or at a critical stage in the project life-cycle.
That said, most content providers have an indicative rate like a per page rate, (250-300 words), per article rate (500 - 600 words, 1000 words) and so on.
You may find yourself comparing costs in this way, but the quality of writing is even more important than the number of words. Writing for the web, for instance, requires search engine optimization by judiciously using keywords in the text. Some writing requires a writer with experience and insights. The cost for this will be much higher than say a simple news article or product description. Expect to pay well for this kind of high end writing.
Recently we had a request for some very high end writing.
I would like a writer with extensive sales/marketing experience and business management understanding for a joint partnership in creating all our sales proposals and marketing/sales copywriting. Have you anyone who has great sales experience and marketing understanding? Someone who can write "winning business proposals". Someone who knows about sales. Knows what is needed to win a proposal and what must be in it to sell our idea to corporate business CEOs.
This kind of writing takes a special writer or even a team. To put it bluntly - you get what you pay for so if you want good quality content then expect to pay for it. There is a big range of writing and thus costs. In order to help the vendor to give you an accurate estimate of the cost,
Define the scope of the project
Describe your project and your needs clearly. Is this a one-time need like developing content for a web site, or will there be recurrent or cyclic requirements (such as email marketing content or articles for newsletters?)
Agree on a deadline
Think of a realistic timeline for your project. Even professional writers need time to understand your needs and to research the subject in order to provide the solution you need.
Approximate Cost
To give you a rough idea of the cost and provide you with the ability to compare apples to apples we will now give you some of our base fees.
We charge about USD$00.10 per word or $10 per hour. This compares to about USD$00.50 per word and $19. per hour in the USA.
Our customers seem to prefer a monthly rate for hiring a writer. They manage the writer and we provide the person and infrastructure. The base rate for this is $1150 per month. This compares to a cost of about $6000 per month that an employer must pay in the USA.
This cost is calculated based on a salary of about $3500 per month and then adding other costs like insurance, management, office rent, computer software and hardware etc.
Since a writer can be contracted on a month by month basis it also can save money because they can work only when needed and save the expense of having someone idle when work is not required.
.....................................................................................
Tutorial Contents:
