| 주제 내 페이지: [1 2] > | What's your minimum fee and how often does it work in your favor? 스레드 게시자: Adieu
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I recently made mine $50 USD, and to my surprise, end up collecting it ~3 - 4 times per week on microscopic jobs (usually 300-400 words and often review or MTPE at that). Works out surprisingly well.
What about you guys?
[Edited at 2021-01-28 11:25 GMT]
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Adieu wrote:
I recently made mine $50 USD...
When I started out 20 years ago, I set it at USD 25, and I've never really changed it since then. However, some of my clients automatically make the PO for more than that, e.g. USD 50. Most of the clients in my most active market balks at anything more than USD 15, however.
Some of them ask me for my minimum fee, and when they discover it is *more* than the per-word fee would be, they try to renegotiate the job to the per-word rate. One would think that a minimum fee is always more than what the per-word fee would be, but a number of clients apparently find that surprising (inexperienced PMs, perhaps?).
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Which works out at $70-80.
I probably do around ten of these each month. Although it feels profitable being paid an hour for ten minutes of work plus ten minutes of admin, I sometimes wonder whether the interruption of my flow on longer jobs cancels out the financial gain.
But psychologically you can’t beat free money!
| | | | Adieu 
우크라이나어에서 영어
+ ...
주제 스타터
Chris S wrote:
Which works out at $70-80.
I probably do around ten of these each month. Although it feels profitable being paid an hour for ten minutes of work plus ten minutes of admin, I sometimes wonder whether the interruption of my flow on longer jobs cancels out the financial gain.
But psychologically you can’t beat free money!
Expensive language pair? Specialist topics? Interpreting? Or just compensating for very high tax rates?
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Adieu wrote:
Expensive language pair? Specialist topics? Interpreting? Or just compensating for very high tax rates?
To a degree, sometimes, no and no.
Mainly dizzying biz skills and electrifying charisma served on a bed of linguistic brilliance spiced with an undeniable sexual allure.
| | | | | Good question | Jan 28, 2021 |
Many years ago I used to state half an hour's work or 150 words (150 Danish Kroner back then or the equivalent in pounds or euros). That caught most of the really tiny jobs one particular client used to send.
(He, poor man, was juggling with all these snippets in 20 + languages!!)
They had to be fed into Trados before the days of packages, but it sometimes found a 100% match or a 95% with only a tag or a capital letter making the difference. On other occasions these tiny jobs calle... See more Many years ago I used to state half an hour's work or 150 words (150 Danish Kroner back then or the equivalent in pounds or euros). That caught most of the really tiny jobs one particular client used to send.
(He, poor man, was juggling with all these snippets in 20 + languages!!)
They had to be fed into Trados before the days of packages, but it sometimes found a 100% match or a 95% with only a tag or a capital letter making the difference. On other occasions these tiny jobs called for some creative rephrasing, or I had to bear in mind that my English version would be sent on to other colleagues who could not read the Danish or Swedish source.
The same client also sent a lot of larger jobs and his basic rate was above average.
Then another agency started exploiting my minimum - they would send a text of about 148 words plus a video, which I had to install and watch before I could translate the 'speak' that went with it. I tried to increase my minimum to an hour, but then for a whole lot of reasons the agency and I fired each other instead!
Now my minimum fee is a bit arbitrary. That means it does not apply to my two biggest clients - I do small jobs as a favour, or at the normal word rate. They pay quite well on bigger jobs and everyone is happy.
I have tried to ask for an hour's fee with potential new clients who send very small jobs plus a lot of so-called onboarding paperwork, but it usually scares them off!
My normal rates scare many of them off too - 1000 source words translate into around 1200 target words, so they think I am expensive. I never go below the average for Danish to English on this site, and some clients pay me more.
I maintain that they get value for money, and I usually have as much work as I want. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Meaning of minimum | Jan 29, 2021 |
Samuel Murray wrote:
Some of them ask me for my minimum fee, and when they discover it is *more* than the per-word fee would be, they try to renegotiate the job to the per-word rate.
I had one like that earlier this year. The same PM also misrepresented other fee information I had provided. I explained the meaning of the word "minimum" and declined to pursue the collaboration any further.
My minimum fee is currently 30 euros, which is the same as my minimum hourly rate. I reckon that by the time I've dealt with the correspondence and the bookkeeping, even a zero-word translation would take me an hour.
| | | | Dan Lucas
영국
Local time: 05:07
회원(2014)
일본어에서 영어
Chris S wrote:
Mainly dizzying biz skills and electrifying charisma served on a bed of linguistic brilliance spiced with an undeniable sexual allure.
Sounds like a great client, but what about you?
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My minimum fee is currently 40 EUR, which is the same as my editing hourly rate, but I agreed on a different minimum rate with two of my regular customers (food labels ‒ juices and meat products ‒ usually no more than 100 words) and I don’t apply a minimum rate to some of my long-standing customers (they seldom have small projects and I’m more than happy to give them a freebie once in a while), provided they keep sending work it will work in my favour…
| | | | Adieu
우크라이나어에서 영어
+ ...
주제 스타터 | Interesting new dilemma | Jan 29, 2021 |
Just did another one, 400 words of MTPE for 50 bucks American
However, this one was kind of brazen. It gave me a whopping 1 hour window to deliver it (at 2 AM of course), and considering the pharmaceutical topic, that was actually razor thin.
I did complete it in a timely fashion, but then politely reminded them that they forgot to put a rush surcharge on that.
Which raises the following questions:
1) DOES a rush surcharge actually multiply a minimum ... See more Just did another one, 400 words of MTPE for 50 bucks American
However, this one was kind of brazen. It gave me a whopping 1 hour window to deliver it (at 2 AM of course), and considering the pharmaceutical topic, that was actually razor thin.
I did complete it in a timely fashion, but then politely reminded them that they forgot to put a rush surcharge on that.
Which raises the following questions:
1) DOES a rush surcharge actually multiply a minimum charge? Or just the word count?
2) Am I coming across like a person who is picking a fight over 15 bucks? Matter of principle or good chance of Pyrrhic victory? ▲ Collapse
| | | | | My minimum fee | Jan 29, 2021 |
My minimum charge applies for very small jobs. It is deliberately high because I usually don't want those small jobs - unless they're for a regular client.
[Edited at 2021-01-29 10:45 GMT]
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Adieu wrote:
1) DOES a rush surcharge actually multiply a minimum charge? Or just the word count?
2) Am I coming across like a person who is picking a fight over 15 bucks? Matter of principle or good chance of Pyrrhic victory?
I don’t charge extra for rush jobs per se. Either I have time or I don’t.
I do charge double for evening and weekend work though.
It’s up to you what you do. Playing hardball either works or it doesn’t. I have a good core of long-term clients so it doesn’t matter to me if people choose not to pay what I ask.
Earlier in my career I might have been marginally more flexible, but not much.
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Adieu
우크라이나어에서 영어
+ ...
주제 스타터
Chris S wrote:
I don’t charge extra for rush jobs per se. Either I have time or I don’t.
I do charge double for evening and weekend work though.
It’s up to you what you do. Playing hardball either works or it doesn’t. I have a good core of long-term clients so it doesn’t matter to me if people choose not to pay what I ask.
Earlier in my career I might have been marginally more flexible, but not much.
Oh, that's where the irony comes in. I didn't come up with this. They did. I simply filled out a rates form that listed a rush surcharge before they signed me on.
However, the translations managers and accounting seem to be entirely unaware that HR or whoever included that clause in their own rates form.
[Edited at 2021-01-29 11:53 GMT]
| | | | Lingua 5B
보스니아-헤르체고비나
Local time: 06:07
회원(2009)
영어에서 크로아티아어
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| Depends on situation/client | Jan 29, 2021 |
New clients: €50-100
Regular clients that I billed over €5k total: €15 (providing they don’t make those small jobs a habit, they normally don’t)
Problematic clients, clients with long payment terms: €1000
Now there may be some other categories that I can’t think of right now and everything in between.
If I try to impose those terms, it almost never works. I simply don’t respond to/don’t apply to small jobs, it’s a waste of time as my mini... See more New clients: €50-100
Regular clients that I billed over €5k total: €15 (providing they don’t make those small jobs a habit, they normally don’t)
Problematic clients, clients with long payment terms: €1000
Now there may be some other categories that I can’t think of right now and everything in between.
If I try to impose those terms, it almost never works. I simply don’t respond to/don’t apply to small jobs, it’s a waste of time as my minimum fee won’t change their mind. Therefore, it’s a waste of time responding to those offers.
As for interpreting, it’s standardized at 4 hours/half day or 8 hours/full day as minimums.
[Edited at 2021-01-29 12:41 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | I never budge on my minimum fee | Jan 29, 2021 |
it's just not worth it...
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