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Outsourcing...will you pay $10/page for 6 screenshots with 100 words?

by John2810
10 replies
I got quoted this amount from a bidder for a screenshot based manual I'm trying to create

But I kind of find $10/page VERY hard to justify?

one A4 size page with 6 screenshots, some arrows and highlight boxes, and some text to explain what is going on.

I'll probably be creating a 200+ page manual. Don't think paying $2000 bucks is worth it.

What do you guys think?
#$10 or page #100 #outsourcingwill #pay #screenshots #words
  • Profile picture of the author Marx Vergel Melencio
    If it were in a niche that'd be quite easy to spot people with specialized university knowledge and real world expertise in, then this is what I'd do:

    • Do the first few pages on my own for 4 hours straight, including proofreading and edits. And:

    This will draw a baseline for what I could expect from a qualified person who'd be working on this 8 hours/day. So:

    If I could do 4 pages per 4-hour day, then I'll find someone qualified to do this on a full time basis (8 hours/day, 20 days/month), hire him or her for a 25-day contract project and pay this person standard professional daily full time wages x 25 days. Now:

    It'd be fairly easy to determine the daily professional writer wage rates of the country where you intend to outsource to...
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    • Deep Learning & Machine Vision Engineer: ARIA Research (Sydney, AU)
    • Founder: Grayscale (Manila, PH) & SEO Campaign Manager: Kiteworks, Inc. (SF, US)
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  • Profile picture of the author Charanjit
    As long as your patient I am 100% sure you can get it done cheaper with oDesk.
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    Want to learn more, read read and read more. http://www.mannusblog.com/index.php/...e-optimisation

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    • Profile picture of the author ExRat
      Hi John2810,

      It's impossible to answer without more information.

      What format is the finished manual? You mention A4 size - is it a physical manual, IE made of paper? Or is it an online manual, IE pdf? What format do you require the work to be delivered to you in?

      Who takes and formats the screenshots? Do you provide them or does the outsourcer? Where do they have to take these screenshots from?

      Who provides the text? Do you provide it or does the outsourcer have to write it themselves?

      If you can answer some of these questions and any more that are relevant you have a better chance of someone being able to advise you here.
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      Roger Davis
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      • Profile picture of the author John2810
        Thanks...left those details out.

        Format of the work will be in basic Word doc (97-2003) .doc format. Simple formatting.

        Screenshots will be used extensively, with minimum wording (about 100 per A4 page)
        -There will be no aligning of screenshots, only inline formatting will be used.
        -No tables to be used to align content
        -Screenshots will have to be highlighted using arrows / boxes (color to be designated), and remain editable in work output.

        The outsourcer will be providing the screenshots and the text.

        The screenshots are easily taken via a key-combination resulting in fixed height/width. Then the screenshots are resized to a fixed width into the Word doc.

        All the outsourcer I have contacted are in possession of the equipment / software.

        I have done the whole book by myself for the previous edition, and found that I can do 10 pages in 1 hour plus.

        So if the outsourcer is asking for $10/page, that's $100/hr?? I find that's way too high?
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        • Profile picture of the author Marx Vergel Melencio
          Originally Posted by John2810 View Post

          I have done the whole book by myself for the previous edition, and found that I can do 10 pages in 1 hour plus.
          Assuming that you can use the book's previous edition as a sample to effectively show what you need to be done for this project, then 200 pages would take a qualified person 20 hours to complete. Now:

          Let's say you're much faster, since you know very well what needs to be done. This means:

          You can require this project to be done, including edits and proofreading, in 40 hours or five 8-hour work days. And:

          Let's say the standard daily 8-hour work day wages of an entry level professional writer in California is $160/day. This means you can offer $900 for this entire project with a 5-work day delivery timescale. And:

          If you want to outsource this project to a qualified person based in a developing country like the Philippines, for example, then $300 will provide this person with buying power (purchasing power and not forex value) here in Manila that's similar to the buying power of $900 in California, which is quite reasonable, in my opinion.

          Drop me a PM in case you want me to help you out in this regard...
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          • Deep Learning & Machine Vision Engineer: ARIA Research (Sydney, AU)
          • Founder: Grayscale (Manila, PH) & SEO Campaign Manager: Kiteworks, Inc. (SF, US)
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        • Profile picture of the author Myles Sinclair
          Originally Posted by John2810 View Post


          "....I have done the whole book by myself for the previous edition, and found that I can do 10 pages in 1 hour plus.

          So if the outsourcer is asking for $10/page, that's $100/hr?? I find that's way too high?
          Based on you own figures, you're assuming the job can be done in six minutes.

          It doesn't really matter how many pages you can create in an hour. What is relevant is how long will the job you want doing take?

          It would take me a lot longer than six minutes for six graphics and 100 words of text. At $10 you're getting a bargain.
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  • Profile picture of the author writeaway
    You can probably get it done cheaper, way cheaper, via Fiverr. Maybe 2 tutorials for $5.
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  • Profile picture of the author seobro
    Hi Johnny:

    I had an american do an e-book for me that was similar in size. Cost was $250 and the quality was super. There are many starving students than can use some money.

    QUESTIONS:
    Do they get any credit?
    Can they use this on a resume?
    What non-monetary rewards can you give?
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    http://www.seobro.com
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    • Profile picture of the author John2810
      Originally Posted by Marx Vergel Melencio View Post

      Assuming that you can use the book's previous edition as a sample to effectively show what you need to be done for this project, then 200 pages would take a qualified person 20 hours to complete. Now:

      Drop me a PM in case you want me to help you out in this regard...
      Hi Marx, thanks for that calculation. dropped you a PM, please check!

      Originally Posted by canhdongz View Post

      you can find a cheaper service on Fiverr, sure!
      Originally Posted by Jeff Harper View Post

      Hi Mate, try subcontracting that task to Odesk. You can be sure that it is very cheap. But if you want high quality work, offer considerable amount too.
      I did tried both. Got some responses from Fiverr via posting a job, but when I tried to contact them, I didn't get much responses. Post the same job on oDesk and couldn't get much responses.

      I posted on Elance, Freelancer and Guru.com as well. Same thing, not much bidders. Got one who wanted to charge 10 bucks per page...

      Originally Posted by seobro View Post

      Hi Johnny:

      I had an american do an e-book for me that was similar in size. Cost was $250 and the quality was super. There are many starving students than can use some money.

      QUESTIONS:
      Do they get any credit?
      Can they use this on a resume?
      What non-monetary rewards can you give?
      Credit? as in cash? I'm good to pay reasonably as long as the quality and delivery is good. You have any contacts?
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      • Profile picture of the author samanthamilner
        Banned
        I always have a normal rate of $2 per 100 words for writing. However if they are writing ebooks etc I would double that because they are editing all the images, taking the screenshots and its much more time consuming than writing one big ebook.

        But consider how long it takes and then decide if its worth it or not.
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