VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

Bruce

I'm guessing it's time to have our biannual discussion of rates for writing, and how much copy is "normal" to produce in an hour.

I think I'm a fairly clever, thorough, yet quick writer, and I've got a client asking for a series of 4 to 5 minute long audio scripts (600 to 750 words). It takes me about an hour to write these and I'd say 20 or so minutes of each hour is research on the web and in other sources to inform myself. The client is an expert on the topic and I know about 60% of what I need to know before I write, thus the research. My point is he thinks I'm slow (therefore charging more than he'd love to pay) and I think I'm on the mark, + or -. Fellow writers?

Second half: What might be a fair rate for 4 to 5 minute narrations? One at a time, and in this case he's asked me to write about 25 of these over the next couple of weeks.

Many thanks for your discussion and input.

B
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Mike Harrison · Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 9:28 am Post subject:

Holy Cow, Bruce! Only an hour to write a 4- to 5-minute piece on topics you first have to research? I think that's fantastic!

I don't have experience writing anything longer than :60 radio spots (and the occasional VO- or audio-related article), but I certainly wouldn't ask anyone to do any better than you're doing.
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jsgilbert · Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 10:30 am Post subject:

Maybe there's a biiiiig difference in what you're doing and my personal experiences writing, but it would probably take a total of about 4 hours to do one of those and that doesn't count "wait state" produced by the back and forths to clients, clients of clients and other team members who want to be able to use the "track changes" feature in MS Word.

I do know of speed witers for the web who often simply re-purpose existing articles and blog entires for sites in order to get SEO, etc. Often they use sophisticated, but relatively inexpensive software programs to change sentence structure enough to con the spiders and search bots enough.

Otherwise, researching and writing 700 words in an hour is somewhat Herculean to me.
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CC Heim · Backstage Pass Joined: 27 Sep 2010 Posts: 401

ahhh, Bruce. I think you are quite expedient given what you've outlined.

Reminds me of the same people who post jobs that say "it's just a quick 3,000 word narration, shouldn't take you more than about 20 minutes to knock it out. I'll pay $20 -- so about a dollar a minute for your time!"

todd ellis · Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 6:05 pm Post subject:

that seems SUPER fast to me.
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Philip Banks · Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 2:10 am Post subject:

For such a task I would charge a fixed daily rate of £500 which is around $850.

bransom · DC Joined: 06 Nov 2008 Posts: 650 Location: St. Louis, MO

Bruce,

I'm married to a writer and, based on what I see here, I think you're flying. A 5-minute audio script for an hour's billable time? Your client is getting a hell of a deal. Well, unless your hourly is a $1000.
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ricevoice · Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 11:29 am Post subject:

I remember a few months ago reading about professional writers providing cheap web content/articles for around $15 a pop. I don't think this is the same article but it's similar:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_demand_media_produces_4000_new_pieces_of_content_a_day.php

Anyway, I'm wondering if the guy who thinks Bruce is charging too much is using this model in his thinking. And as CC Heim mentioned above, it is along the lines of the "it'll take 5 minutes to voice this so 10 bucks is a great deal" mentality of potential clients.
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Lee Gordon · Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 4:32 pm Post subject:

It's hard to estimate how long it should take to write a piece. The better it turns out, the less time it will have taken to write. But you won't know that until you've written it.
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Billy James · Posted: Sun Nov 14, 2010 12:36 pm Post subject:

"It's hard to estimate how long it should take to write a piece. The better it turns out, the less time it will have taken to write. But you won't that until you've written it."

This is an absolutely brilliant, on-the-money observation. In fact, it should be on BrainyQuote.com.

For some reason, it reminds me of this legendary bon mot:

The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.
- Blaise Pascal

Well said, Lee.