Charity work...

[All Write..?]

Hi All,

Firstly, THANK YOU JTM for your help - as you suggested, I wrote to a few charities offering my services and 2 have come back accepting my offer! I am soooo pleased, it's a good start and gives me a chance to gain more experience, as well as a few more references to add to my portfolio...!

I do have a question though - how do you work out how long a piece of work should take? I was told that on average, you should complete 10 pages an hour....
But how do you work out how long a piece will take if you've only been given a word count? For example, I've been told that one of the charities wants to send me a 5,000 word newsletter to proof - so how long should that take me??

Many Thanks
Shazza

[Bumbadum]

I've tried my best to insist on seeing a sample before I start working on anything. This isn't always possible, but I imagine charities should be fairly reasonable and able to send you 500 words or something which you could then give a decent estimate based on.

[gpuss]

A word count is MUCH more accurate than a page count, which can be practically meaningless. Imagine a page with three illustrations on it, or four sections, each separated by 3 line spaces, or a page written in 14pt Courier ... compare all these to a page full of copy set in 10pt Times. The second page could be four, five ... who knows how many? ... times bigger.

As for how long it will take, that's down to you. Ten "normal" pages per hour is a good ball park figure, but make sure you time yourself working on these charity jobs, and divide the words by the time and you'll get a words/hour rate. You'll get a bit faster as time goes on, so keep assessing yourself.

[JTM]

You're welcome! And congratulations on getting some work from the charities - great news!

I had the same problem as you when I first started out. I knew I'd be much slower than establised proofreaders, but obviously didn't want to quote customers how long it was actually taking me. I trawled through other proofreaders' websites as some of them actually listed how long it took them by word count; then I averaged it out. Once I got going and got my own pace, I could confidently set my own timings, but this was really useful for me at first.

Good luck!