How do we charge?
One of the questions we’re asked most frequently is how we charge for our services – especially writing projects.
Some people may want an initial idea of costs so they can budget accordingly; others need an exact quote before deciding whether to go ahead with a project.
Either way, the price usually depends on several factors. We’ve listed some of these below, to show what's most likely to influence the cost of your project:
- Background materials - will you be able to provide background materials? Will we need to carry out research as part of the project?
- Interviews - will we need to interview anyone in your organisation? If so, will there be one interview or several? Face-to-face or over the phone?
- Revisions - how many rounds of revisions would you like to include? Is there a single point of sign-off for these revisions, or would you like us to incorporate feedback from several different people?
- Deadlines - do you have an urgent deadline, or do you have a bit of time before you’ll need a first draft? (The more notice you can give us, the easier it will be to plan in your project and avoid extra costs for quick turnarounds)
- Format - do you have an existing format or template for your project, or would you like us to develop this? Do you have any samples of similar projects you can share?
- Project management - would you like regular updates during the project? Are you happy to work through Basecamp, the project management tool we use?
Once we’ve understood exactly what’s required, we can put together an exact quote. We usually charge a set project fee to give clients certainty about what they will pay.
For smaller projects, we request a deposit of 50% of the project fee before starting work, with the remainder payable on completion. On larger projects, we may request staged payments – for example one-third as a deposit, one-third at a mutually agreed project milestone, and the remainder on completion.
We accept payments directly into our Hong Kong HSBC account, or clients can pay online.
If we work with a client regularly, we're also happy to discuss a standard rate (e.g. per word) to enable us to start work more quickly on future projects.
We have also recently started to introduce writing packages, such as this case study package, to allow you to buy certain writing services directly online. If there are any packages you would particularly like to see in future, please let us know.
Do you have any other questions about how we charge? Is there anything else you'd like to know? If so, please leave a comment below.