Types of contracts as a localization copywriter
As always, from first hand experience
From the bottom of my heart mind
Fresh stories from a Spanish Copywriter.
Today I wanted to cover a topic that most of people (both freelancers and hiring managers/HR/Project Managers) think about… even too much.
Why too much? Because for me, what really matters is the work. Those technicallities might be good for Project Managers and the general wellbeing of the project, but is not something I like to have around my head.
So first, try to be good at localization. Develop your service, get experience, work on real projects. And the rest will come.
Different types of agreements:
Monthly fee: this is like a regular contract: you have different tasks and assignments over the month. Sometimes is more, sometimes is less. Usually you sign this for several months so you have stability.
Pros: You just have to worry about working, without the stress of counting hours or not know if next month you’ll have the contract.
Cons: At first could be difficult to calculate this fee, so is a good idea to review it after some months in case your role or tasks change.
Hourly fee: You calculate how much is an hour of your work and then you invoice the hours you work for the specific client. It can be set (i.e.: 10 hours a week) or be different from month to month, depending on the work.
Pros: Is quite standard, you can set your prices (and compare with the market) and is easy to adjust in case you have more/less work in a specific month.
Cons: You need to calculate carefully those hours and, if needed, justify why it took you that time. The client also need to trust you.
Project based: You work for a specific project (a specific marketing campaign, for example) and you set a fix price for that project.
Pros: If it is a very specific project, and depending on the budget, the price can be higher.
Cons: Usually they are one-time projects, so you know you’ll have work for it, but there is no long term guarantee.
Task based: This is a mix between the hourly fee and project based. You put a price to your different services (write an email, create a landing page) and, at the end of the month, you invoice those services.
Pros: Easy to calculate (for the copywriter and the client) and to manage on the long term.
Cons: You have to do a lot of maths to count your task, assign a price to each of them and then combine them in your invoice. As the one before, a bit tricky in terms of long term security.
Per word: You set prices per word (new content, translation, review, etc.) and, at the end of the month, you invoice each piece based on that. This is most common when writing/translating blog articles or SEO tasks.
Pros: In content writing and UX translation is pretty standard, so is easy to calculate your rates
Cons: For creative projects this might be tricky to calculate. Personally, I don’t like this one since every language is different and the number of words are not that relevant.
Knowing this, which one do you feel more comfortable with? Any other that I didn’t mention?
Market-in
Resources to reach your peak level.
💡 “Localized content gets 12 times more engagement than non-localized content.” If you are looking for good reasons to localize, this article from the Lokalise blog has a few of them.
Outside the desk
Where the magic really happens.
🕴️ I’m actually spending a lot of time in the desk this week, since from Sunday I’ll be traveling in Sri Lanka. Wrapping up project, communicating with clients, etc.
🗺️ I had a friend visiting over the weekend. Is funny how you just visit some places in your city when you have people around.
🦍 I went to the cinema on Monday to see “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”, I’ve seen them all over the last month. Ape not kill ape
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All the best for the rest of your week,
💙 Ricky from Textonality.com 💙