TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
The time you spent writing the proposal is the cost of doing business. You should have added some of that time to your costs somehow if you thought that was too much time to spend.
Personally? I have easily spent 40 hours on a proposal for projects we didn't get. Cost of doing business.
-----Original Message-----
lyndsey -dot- amott -at- docsymmetry -dot- com
said:
I was recently asked to write a proposal for tightening up the text of 12
subdomains for a company's website. Each subdomain was approximately 13
pages. It took me a total of 18.5 hours to
- figure out the similarities and differences among the subdomains
- figure out how I would approach the job
- write the proposal
I estimated that it would take me 75 hours to complete the job, and, because
I really wanted to write for this company, I said that I would not charge
for any hours over 75 (don't gasp--this is not the problem).
Second, and this is the main question, should I bill for the 18.5 hours I
spent on the proposal? Without the proposal, I can bill for only 28.5 hours,
but with the proposal, the total hours would be 47, which might strike the
company as rather unbelievable in light of the fact that I said I'd do all
12 subdomains in 75 hours. Normally, I don't bill for the time it takes to
write the proposal, but a proposal usually takes only a couple of hours to
write and results in work that lasts for the hours estimated. I'm not sure
how to proceed.
SEE THE ALL NEW ROBOHELP X5 IN ACTION: RoboHelp X5 is a giant leap forward
in Help authoring technology, featuring Word 2003 support, Content
Management, Multi-Author support, PDF and XML support and much more! http://www.macromedia.com/go/techwrldemo
>From a single set of Word documents, create online Help and printed
documentation with ComponentOne Doc-To-Help 7 Professional, a new yearly
subscription service offering free updates and upgrades, support, and more. http://www.doctohelp.com
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archiver -at- techwr-l -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
