Interested buyer ask to pay per hour. What i have to do?

[riccardoarmelli]

Good evening, a buyer has written to me privately asking if I can do medical reports on a topic every 2/3 days and get paid by the hour because he calculated that it should be 5 to 10 hours of work per week. I don’t know how to manage his request. I was thinking of proposing to get paid by 2/3 different orders per week… Thanks to anyone who can help me out.

[english_voice]

I would be a little wary about this approach. For three reasons.

1. In the freelance writing world it is very unusual to pay per hour. The expected practice is to pay per article or to pay based on word count.

2. Who determines how long an article will take to write to research and write? They might say it will take you three hours, but you might need six hours. In my experience, people who want to pay per hour are looking to buy a service on the cheap.

3. Following on from the above point, I foresee the potential for disputes. If your buyer is a bit of scammer / looking for articles on the cheap - they might respond to your delivery with something like “It’s not as good as I wanting and I can’t see how it took you three hours. I will pay you for two hours”. Believe me, these people exist.

On the other hand your prospective buyer might be totally genuine and just a bit naive about the way freelance writers are commissioned. However, I do think that payment per article or per an agreed word count (e.g. $5 per every 250 words) is safer as there can be no dispute over what the buyer ordered and what you delivered.

[benedictrm]

I would be a little wary about this approach. For three reasons.

1. In the freelance writing world it is very unusual to pay per hour. The expected practice is to pay per article or to pay based on word count.

2. Who determines how long an article will take to write to research and write? They might say it will take you three hours, but you might need six hours. In my experience, people who want to pay per hour are looking to buy a service on the cheap.

3. Following on from the above point, I foresee the potential for disputes. If your buyer is a bit of scammer / looking for articles on the cheap - they might respond to your delivery with something like “It’s not as good as I wanting and I can’t see how it took you three hours. I will pay you for two hours”. Believe me, these people exist.

On the other hand your prospective buyer might be totally genuine and just a bit naive about the way freelance writers are commissioned. However, I do think that payment per article or per an agreed word count (e.g. $5 per every 250 words) is safer as there can be no dispute over what the buyer ordered and what you delivered.

As far as I am aware Fiverr doe not have any sort of hour tracking system. Some others do. The one I have used takes screenshots every now and then so if the buyer thinks you were wonking off they can see the screenshots and check if you were on-task or not.

Without one of those, I’d be with Mr Voice and have the buyer pay for things in Results. So 1 article = $456

🙂

[riccardoarmelli]

I would be a little wary about this approach. For three reasons.

1. In the freelance writing world it is very unusual to pay per hour. The expected practice is to pay per article or to pay based on word count.

2. Who determines how long an article will take to write to research and write? They might say it will take you three hours, but you might need six hours. In my experience, people who want to pay per hour are looking to buy a service on the cheap.

3. Following on from the above point, I foresee the potential for disputes. If your buyer is a bit of scammer / looking for articles on the cheap - they might respond to your delivery with something like “It’s not as good as I wanting and I can’t see how it took you three hours. I will pay you for two hours”. Believe me, these people exist.

On the other hand your prospective buyer might be totally genuine and just a bit naive about the way freelance writers are commissioned. However, I do think that payment per article or per an agreed word count (e.g. $5 per every 250 words) is safer as there can be no dispute over what the buyer ordered and what you delivered.

Yes, I absolutely agree! I will propose to the buyer to get paid for each report. I also thought about getting paid with a week-long order (where I send him reports every 2 or 3 days and he downloads and reviews them), but I don’t want to risk him canceling the order before the end. Thanks for the reply, I appreciated it so much!

[Guest humanissocial]

They’re just being controlling. This is easily made into project work. Run away.

[j6nyc6]

Good evening, a buyer has written to me privately asking if I can do medical reports on a topic every 2/3 days and get paid by the hour because he calculated that it should be 5 to 10 hours of work per week. I don’t know how to manage his request. I was thinking of proposing to get paid by 2/3 different orders per week… Thanks to anyone who can help me out.

a buyer has written to me privately asking if I can do medical reports on a topic every 2/3 days and get paid by the hour

Is this how your gig is set-up? If it isn’t, why compromise the way you work? You are the one who dictates the way you choose to get work done.

As a lyric writer, I can’t imagine a buyer telling me something like, “I want to pay you $10 an hour. I can write a verse in 2 hours so I will pay you $20, not the $40 you usually charge”.

[erikawinter]

They’re just being controlling. This is easily made into project work. Run away.

@riccardoarmelli I have to agree with her, this is incredibly suspicious.

Like many have said above, you shouldn’t compromise the way you work. You have written out your gig, the details, your pricing. The client should adapt to the best of their abilities and pay you per report.

This sort of messaging leads me to believe they’ll try to cop out on the payments or start disputes with Fiverr. In my opinion, for all it’s worth, I’d steer the client to use your gigs as intended or not at all. Naturally, it’s just my opinion.

[Guest humanissocial]

@riccardoarmelli I have to agree with her, this is incredibly suspicious.

Like many have said above, you shouldn’t compromise the way you work. You have written out your gig, the details, your pricing. The client should adapt to the best of their abilities and pay you per report.

This sort of messaging leads me to believe they’ll try to cop out on the payments or start disputes with Fiverr. In my opinion, for all it’s worth, I’d steer the client to use your gigs as intended or not at all. Naturally, it’s just my opinion.

Like many have said above, you shouldn’t compromise the way you work.

Exactly. As the freelancer you set the mode of work, plus it makes no sense to do it hourly. She’s just trying to see if you’ll let her control you. And once she pays you she’ll manipulate you more and more.

[catwriter]

The buyer could simply be more used to other platforms, where work per hour is one of the options; if that’s the case, explaining how you work (and how Fiverr is meant to work) should be enough.

If they still insist on paying you per hour after you explain things to them, it might be a good idea to tell them that you’re not a good match for their needs.

[smashradio]

The advice given by @english_voice is absolutely something you should take into account. He’s right.