Freelance Writing Advice on Pricing Jobs: How I Lost Money on an Editing Job – 3 Tips to Avoid It

Editing

So, I’ve a good deal of expertise pricing freelance editing and writing tasks. But, I seriously underestimated one lately, that cost me over 50% of the possible profit. It only goes to show that with expertise, you can fall in to this trap if you are not careful.

Following are 3 pieces of information on several precautions to consider when estimating / pricing freelance editing and writing tasks so that you get paid the entire amount you are owed — each moment.

I. Do Not offer a Business Estimate: you shouldn’t ever provide a firm estimate unless you are absolutely certain you are able to finish the job in this timeframe. Everything you ought to give in cases where you are unsure is a conditional quote freelance editing.

In my instance, I gave a company estimate since I had worked with this customer on several occasions before.

What’s a conditional freelance writing project quote?

FYI, it is when you type of hedge your bet on a project till you know additional information, eg, can go through it completely and then craft a more exact quote, which brings me to my next suggestion…

II. Properly Evaluate the Job: My error was not entirely going through the task before committing the company quote. The record was just 12 pages and that I must have looked at each of them before return to the customer. Rather, I just looked in the first couple of pages.

The issue isthe pages which had the most work were in the rear of the record.

III. Stick with Your Freelance Policies: In my (search engine optimization ) writing firm, we do not start on any job until at least a 50 percent deposit is created. Afterward, the editorial calendar is ready based on what date that is.

In cases like this, the customer missed the first agreed-upon deposit date, which could have pushed the expected date of the job back. Though he paid afterwards, ” I told him we might deliver the job on the first agreed-upon deadline.

This triggered a domino effect with various additional projects, which would not have occurred had I stuck into my institution’s coverage and transferred the deadline according to if payment had been made.

I got a bit lax on many fronts estimating this particular job. Plus it cost me profits. Find out more about how exactly I badly under-priced this freelance editing project .