[Question] How to price a proofreading service?

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Chad Sexington

Chad Sexington

Some of my colleagues have suggested I charge for my proofreading skills at the university (I help friends/relatives for free) but I'm having trouble figuring out how to set a price for it. It had never occurred to me people would pay for this, although apparently it's done quite often as the writing services team gets fully booked about halfway through the semester.

So, thoughts? What would you pay? Would you pay? The papers I'd be most likely reading would generally be undergrad 10-20 page affairs.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Depends on the level of work.

If you're just checking for grammar, spelling, punctuation, you want to aim low, as in, think on a college student's pay level (not much). If you're going to be editing content and the like, then you want to aim much higher, into triple digits. Of course, I doubt the latter is allowed for college essay.
 
strawman

strawman

Just decide how much you'd be willing to trade your time for.

"I could be reading halforums or I could read this 20 page paper. I'd be willing to give up my halforums reading time for $20."

So you charge $20, or a dollar a page, which is probably on the cheap end, but also well within the budget of most students.

If you post that, and find you're turning people away because you don't have enough time, then you know you've priced it too low, and should increase the price incrementally until you are selling all the time you want to sell, but not turning people away. As your price increases, you'll get fewer customers, and eventually you'll find the sweet spot where you're making as much money as you can for the time you're willing to put in.

If you find yourself not selling enough, it might just be a dry spell, so don't reduce your price, put out a few coupons for discounts. Only if you consistently have low volume do you start reducing your price (although coupons and discounts can be used indefinitely, and have the advantage of making them feel like they got a good deal, so that's not a bad way to do it).
 
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