Price is a funny thing. Charge a client too much and they think you are ripping them off; charge them too little and they think you are not providing the value they deserve. I have discovered that it is much easier to give clients an overall price per project as opposed to trying to break some of the fees down. But clients always want to understand how we come up with our pricing. Of course pricing depends on how much we pay our team members. So every few months, I have to evaluate our pay structure to make sure that we remain competitive within the market place. Trying to gather information about appropriate rates normally involves visiting several industry web sites, looking at trade magazines and evaluating our current project load. Since I am an advocate of publishing prices for B2B companies, I wanted to answer the question of how much should you expect to pay for a web copy project?

I did a little search and discovered that some of my friends at webmaster world don’t mind paying $5 per hour for a copy writer. As a matter of fact, there is an Indian company that is relentless in sending emails about the quality of their writers and how fast they can turn the material in. I do not know about you, but to write for an American audience, I am a firm believer that the writer must be a native speaker and lives in North America. No matter how much an Indian writer may think he/she understands the culture, watching American movies is not the same as living in this country. I wonder if that Indian company would actually quit emailing me if they read this blog.

Some of the big names in the field of copy writing charge close to $15,000 for creating a sales letter. The logic they follow is simple. A well written sales letter can generate hundreds of thousands in sales. Of course the idea of copy writers getting paid on performance, while popular amongst writers, is not very popular with their clients.

Math is the secret behind paying a copywriter

Before you determine a “correct” rate for web copy services, you need to determine the revenue generated as result of the project. If all you expect from a landing page to generate 10k, I would not think you want to pay more than $500 for it. On the other hand, some of our ecommerce clients can generate tens of thousands of dollars from a well optimized landing page. A well designed and written landing page can easily double if not triple the conversion rate for the client. The moral of the story is “do the math.”

What is involved in creating successful web copy project?

Keep in mind, completing a meaningful web copy project involves a lot more than hiring a copywriter and telling them to write. Completing the copy is normally one of the last steps in creating a website that will actually generate revenue. We usually ask our clients to provide us with a marketing assessment, online visitor persona development, site story boarding, and general wire-framing before we start doing any copy work. Only when all of these elements are provided, is it meaningful to discuss the rates per project.

Rates vary based on the type of the project and the experience the company brings to the table. Here is a quick survey of the on going rates for two large categories of copywriting  projects we have been involved with.

Rates for web copy for a single page (landing page):

Assuming the client developed all the elements required to create a successful a single landing page, these project are small in nature. Rates for a single landing page project can vary from $350 on the low end to $5,000 on the high end. Sean Carton gave a nice break down of the fees associated with creating a single landing page. Although Sean’s breakdown contains cost for other team members besides copy writers, I think it gives a good idea of what is involved in full landing page implementation. With our own projects, the client is responsible for supplying us with site personas, information architecture design and page layout. These projects involve usually a single copy writer who will work for about 2 to three days on completing the copy for that one particular page. At a rate of $125 per hour, the total cost for these projects starts at around $2,000.

Rates for web copy projects for a whole site:

True web copy projects normally involve staffing between 2 to 3 copy writers on the project. Similar to single page project, I am assuming that the client will do most of the marketing analysis required prior to creating the copy. Rates for a full site web copy creation range from around $1,200 on the low end to upwards of tens of thousands of dollars. For our own projects, we assume the client will be provide us with marketing assessment, persona development and information architecture elements.  These projects do not involve developing story boarding or any wire-framing for the site. Projects as such start at around $10,000. 

To recap, the following are the factors that impact the price you might pay for web copy project:

• Size & Complexity of project/Website
• Size of Organization
• Reputation & Demand for the copy Firm
• Amount of work supplied by client

Tell me what do you think?

Tags: B2B-fees, Copy Writing, online-marketing
Posted in Business, Copy Writing