Going over budget on hourly copywriting task for client: what to do?
Stupid newbie here again. I took on a job that I thought just involved editing some pre-written sales copy for spelling and grammatical issues. The client said this task would just take a couple of hours.
I briefly skimmed the copy and gave them an estimate of 3 to 4 hours, saying I'd stop and check in if it took longer than 5. The client agreed to pay my normal hourly rate.
Well, after I started, I realized that minor editing wasn't gonna cut it. The website copy wasn't just written by a non-native speaker, it was written by someone who didn't know how to write copy in the first place.
I scrapped just about everything and started rewriting from scratch. Once I hit the 5-hour mark, I stopped logging, checked on my progress, and realized I might actually need 10 to 15 hours to do this.
What do I do now?
I know I could finish this task a lot faster by just editing the poorly-written sales copy that's already there, but I honestly feel terrible about myself whenever I'm providing less than my best effort on writing gigs. I've wanted to be a writer since I was a kid and I'd feel like I was kicking my dream by not giving 100%.
So, how do I explain to this client that I'm gonna have to go way over-budget to provide quality results without earning myself bad feedback?
Or should I even do that?
- Jack Trout
- Jack Trout