Why I switched from hourly to per-word pricing
Like most tech editors, for most of my career I’ve charged an hourly rate for my services, until I had the thought a couple of months ago to switch to a per-word rate. I feel like this isn’t a super common pricing structure for tech editing, in fact I’ve never heard of another editor doing it, but surely I can’t be the only one!
I’ve really been enjoying the new structure, and so I thought it would be fun to write a blog post about it to talk through why I made this decision, what the benefits are, and how I came up with the rate I use.
I definitely had a lot of selfish reasons behind this decision, but there are also ways in which it benefits my clients as well, and I’ll start with those first.
Benefits for my clients
No more estimates: I used to receive a pattern, estimate how much I think it will take me to edit it, wait for the client to agree to that, and then start editing. Now I save both myself and the client an email because they can figure out the price on their own because they know my rate.
Predictable costs: Before a client even shares their pattern with me, they’ll know exactly how much the edit will cost. They don’t have to worry that I’ll give them an estimate, then halfway through the edit, turn around and say I need more time.
Benefits for me
I can take my time editing: I have a tendency to over edit patterns, as in I'll do more reviewing than necessary because I'm worried about missing something. I've never known how to factor that in because designers shouldn't really be paying for that time because it's not really a necessary part of the edit. By switching to a per-word rate I can take as long as I want and not feel bad.
I used to underpay myself when I went over my estimate: Whenever I took longer on an edit than I had anticipated, I would just eat that cost rather than bill for higher than I promised before I started the work. On the flip side, I also only billed for the time I actually spent on those occasions I came in under my estimate. So I was already sort of doing flat rate pricing, but without the benefit of edits that take shorter than expected balancing out the edits that take longer than expected. I was doing a lot of work for free, and I’ve got a business to sustain, so I needed to do less of that.
I spend less time on invoicing: Before, when I went to bill for work, I needed to consult with my estimate, the last email with a client when I told them the final time spent, and my time tracking software, and make sure all three lined up. Now I just add the word count to my spreadsheet at the start and it calculates what I need to bill.
How I came up with my rate
Doing a per-word pricing structure is best for an editor who’s edited several patterns already, because that’ll give you the data you need to figure out what you need to charge. I’m planning to add crochet to my tech editing services soon, and when I do that I’ll probably go back to hourly for a bit because I imagine my per word rate will be slightly different for crochet than knitting, so I’ll need to figure out what that number is.
To figure out my rate, I put together a spreadsheet of the patterns I edited in the past two years and listed the word count, the time spent, and the total cost at my regular hourly rate. Then I divided that last number by the word count to come up with the cost per word of each pattern. Finally, I averaged that out and added .01 to my average just to make it a nice even number of $.065/word.
