I know that I could write ten articles of 1000 words each a lot faster than I could write one 10,000 word article. If the subject was the same for each of the ten articles, say gardening, why would it take longer to write a 10,000 word article on gardening the ten individual ones? As far as what you should charge, that's next to impossible to answer. The minimum wage in the US is $5.15 hour, if it going to take you 40 hours -- 5 eight hour days, to write the article, then you need to charge at least $206. Dee
An hourly wage working for an employer unfortunately can't be equally compared to an hourly wage working as an independent contractor / freelancer, b/c it's not accounting for the extra out-of-pocket expenses (even if small for many writers) or for the added self-employment tax (at least in the US). 10 shorter articles, even in the same general niche, would almost always be quicker to write. Coming up with 10,000 words on a very general topic like "gardening" can obviously be done (heck there are huge books on the subject), but selecting what could go into those 10,000 words and what would have to be excluded would be more difficult than if you wrote 10 shorter articles each covering a very narrow niche within the larger gardening topic, b/c there would be more clear-cut limitations on what to include. I'm sure I'm not expressing that well... I'm in burn-out mode today.
I wasn't comparing the two, I was suggesting that the person at least charge what he/she could earn flipping hamburgers. It's interesting that you feel it's easier to write the ten small articles and I see the effort is about the same. That may be because I'm used to writing longer materials. In a life, long, long ago I wrote business plans for clients on a consulting basis. I am not a proponent of long business plans but the documents usually ended up between 15 to 30 pages which is about 6000 to 12000 words. I also write books and even though the books range from 80,000 to 100,000 words, they're broken into chapters. And each chapter has subheadings, so in a way they're a series of article length essays. All very well organized of course (grin). Dee
Well that is an interesting question. Depending on your reputation and skills, I would suggest $450+ would be a good fee. Now some people will do this for much less depending where they live. Non native speakers will do this for $200. You have to put a price on your work depending on your experience and knowledge.
Structuring a short article is easier just because you have fewer information points to deal with, and it's easier to hold the whole thing in your mind. For a longer piece, you have more data and more options for where each piece of information belongs. So in addition to choosing between words, and watching sentence structure, you have a whole framework to create. Reviewing for accuracy, consistency of style, and consistency of content is also much more difficult for a longer piece. Latoya mentioned small houses versus big houses. It isn't just that you need more pipe to plumb a big house, but the plumbing becomes much more complicated.
Structuring a short article is easier just because you have fewer information points to deal with, and it's easier to hold the whole thing in your mind. For a longer piece, you have more data and more options for where each piece of information belongs. So in addition to choosing between words, and watching sentence structure, you have a whole framework to create. Reviewing for accuracy, consistency of style, and consistency of content is also much more difficult for a longer piece. I agree that writing a longer piece is more of a challenge than a shorter piece, but that's not what we're comparing. If I know I have to write ten - 1000 word articles on the same subject, that is no more work for me than writing one - 10,000 word article. I don't agree that reviewing a long article for accuracy, consistency of style and content is much more difficult than for a longer piece. It just takes more time. Just my opinion, we each have our own methods of research and writing. Just out of curiousity, if you had to write a 10,000 word piece (nonfiction) on a subject that you knew, and enjoyed writing about, how long would it take you? Dee
I would still say, $ 500 for a PLR project is ideal. It's PLR. It's one essay of 10000 words. Genrally people charge $ 25.00 for a 1000 word article but I guess, this is not exactly the same. Formatting and presentation will take a lot of count. It's pure blood and sweat. Regards, Ronak.
If I were to pay $200 for a 10,000 original high quality article that I would be reselling than it may be fine. But for an article to be placed on my site, that's an enormous price. Honestly, for the subject I am really good at, at 78 words per minute my average typing speed, plus a few minutes to thing between paragraphs, it would take ma up to 3 hours to get an article down.
I could write 10,000 words on a subject I'm familiar with, all in one piece, at somewhat more than whatever my typing speed is (no clue), but it wouldn't be an article, it would be a mind dump. Everything I happened to know about something spewed out in whatever order came to mind. I don't think I'd even take on a project that long.