Freelance Writing and Research

How Much Research?

It is not often that I underestimate how much time will be spent researching information but it is very easy to do and then you lose out. Like most freelancers when I am deciding how much I should charge for writing articles I try to allow some of the cost for research. If I am charging $0.02 a word I cannot afford to spend a lot of time researching for the article. Yesterday however, I completely underestimated the amount of research needed for a particular piece of work which meant I earned $20 in two and a half hours - more than half that time was spent on research. That is way below the basic wage in the UK - sure I have the convenience of working from home but that is just plain daft.

Research and Writing

I normally allow twenty minutes tops to research and write and article of 450 words, the article that I wrote was three times that length so give or take a bit it should have taken an hour and a quarter at the outside - allowing for proofreading which I don't have to do too much of because I am a reasonably fast and accurate typist. Taking all this into consideration I worked a further hour and a quarter for nothing. I will be more careful in future when I accept a price for a job. Just to say whenever you give a quote for a job try to assess how much time you will have to spend researching information. If it is more than half the time that it takes to write the article then either don't do it or raise the cost to reflect that extra work.