Should I be charging by hour, by word or by page, for copywriting?

As the number of quarries increases many clients ask me how I charge.  Till now I have been charging by pages and those pages contain particular number of words.  Beyond that word limit I charge extra for every extra bracket of hundred words.  Recently I charged by hour  and grossly miscalculated the number of hours required to accomplish the task.  I told my client that I could finish the document in five hours whereas it took me more than 15 hours.  That sucked big-time.

I charge differently for different content requirements but I mostly charge per page (assuming a page contains between 300 and 400 words).  Many people on various freelancing blogs suggest that one should charge by hours because this way you can charge a fixed rate no matter what the client wants you to do.  For me it doesn’t work because I want to provide a flexible quote to my clients.  Besides sometimes I also outsource my work and I am never sure how much time the writer is going to take.  It is better to pay him or her a fixed amount for a document of a particular size.

Anyway I am still in the process of deciding how I should charge but for the time being I am charging by page.  I have been charging like this for more than 3 years now.  Just because I have been charging this way for such a long time doesn’t necessarily make it right but my clients seem to prefer this. The method of payment should be useful both for my clients and myself.  What I mean is I would like to charge in a manner that my clients don’t have to overpay me and I don’t end up undercharging.

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About Amrit Hallan

Amrit Hallan is a professional content writer who helps businesses improve their conversion rate through credible and compelling content writing. His main strength lies in writing search engine optimized content without compromizing quality and meaningfulness.

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