I received this question from a fellow copywriter, but I thought that the method could easily be used by any other specialist in any industry.

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Hi Dina,

My name is John Doe. I saw an article you wrote about how to set a freelance copywriting rate and have seen your business website.

I am a journalist and writer and I am taking some time off from daily newspaper writing to do some freelancing. I write news articles, but have also taken on some work writing a bit of website content and am now ghost-writing an e-book.

A friend of mine is doing a redesign on her business website. She’s self-employed, but doing well. She has hired someone to do the redesign, but has put out an RFP for a copywriter to rewrite her website content.

I believe I am more than capable of bringing a fresh and engaging voice to her site. I am planning to bid on it but I have absolutely no idea how much to charge. I really can’t even ballpark a figure. I asked her if she had a deadline and whether she had a range for acceptable bids, but she said she has neither.

I am trying to get advice from more experienced freelance copywriters about a bid to submit.

Taking a look at her RFP materials, I suspect it will take me 1-2 weeks to rewrite everything, with additional time for revisions.

I am expecting to lowball her a bit because she is a friend with a small business and I am an inexperienced copywriter, but really can’t guess at what an appropriate lowball bid would be.

Would you be able to help me to determine how I should be bidding, what kind of starter rates copywriters have, especially for small-scale projects that are done to gain a portfolio, but still earn a bit of cash?

Anyway, thanks advance for any help you can provide.
John

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MY REPLY:

Hi John Doe,

How much do you need to make per year to meet your expenses?

How much would you make in a “9 to 5 corporate job” at your same level of expertise/years of experience?

Figure out that number, a salary per year. Then divide by 50 weeks (assuming you’d like to take 2 weeks off).

Then divide the weekly amount by 40 hours per week (assuming 40 hours is your target).

Now you know your hourly rate. So figure out how many hours it would take you to draft one page of copy, in a Word document, assuming it’s 400 to 650 words or so.

If it takes you two hours and your rate is $40 per hour, then think of your projects as being worth $80 per page draft.

Next, factor in extra billables like research time, communicating with clients, and doing revisions. This will be an estimate of course, based on what you “expect” from the client. It’s never exact.

Let’s say that you predict you’ll be spending 2 hours reading/researching the client’s niche. You have 4 pages to write. You “guesstimate” that you’ll spend another 2 to 3 hours revising the copy once the client makes corrections.

So now you have 2 hours plus 8 hours plus 3 hours. That’s 13 hours, times your hourly rate of $40 per hour. The total estimate is $520.00 for four pages of copy including a draft revision. But in order to not scare your clients or shortchange yourself, you want to tell your client, “I estimate this to be anywhere from 10 to 13 hours, which works out to be anywhere from $400 to 520.00. You will be billed for the actual hours spent working, and no more.

Does this make sense? Good luck.

Warm regards,

Dina Giolitto
Wordfeeder.com

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