While browsing some job boards to get a feel of what's where, I came across a particular posting at getafreelancer.com, and I have a few questions.
1. Is it a bad idea to look at these things before I have the skills to competently complete a job? (Granted, the average person off the street probably has skills meeting what this person is willing to pay for. I'll let somebody else choose to work for a dollar an hour, though.)
2. Why or why not?
3. To try to get a feel for what somebody would be earning with the project budget vs. what the job would be worth, as well as to get practice doing such comparisons, I tried to do some estimates. Are the below numbers way off? Where? (I'm not asking whether the offer is reasonable, but whether the estimates and assumptions I made make sense and whether the process could be applied to other offers).
This is the posting:
Quote:
Need original sound files in good clear American English for dictionary. This project is for 8000 words. Bids that provide good samples for the words "breakability", "bronchiole" and "pertinaciousness" will be favored.
Each word should be in separate wav file without leading or trailing silence, and easily tracked to the relevant word (e.g. with filename corresponding to the word, or a sequential filename matching the word number in the word list; separate files can be generated automatically fairly easily by splitting long single files of words at silences). You should check your work by listening to all the separate files and checking they agree with the original word list.
Mother-tongue American English speakers only.
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The project budget is $30-$250 (Note that $30 is the minimum bid allowed on the site).
For free accounts, GAF takes a commission of 10% or $5, whichever is greater. Therefore, working within the project budget means receiving $25-$225.
Since this is not normal, connected text, but distinct words, the edited audio (before separating into individual files) should run no more than 45 words per minute, probably less. This gives a total running time of 178 minutes (2.97 hours) finished audio.
The normal estimate of recording and editing time is 3 minutes work per minute of finished audio, but this seems like it would be an exception. No matter how large his or her vocabulary, the talent would most likely need to look up some words, which would add time. Splitting into individual files, naming, trimming, and checking would add significant time. Is 5-7 minutes work per minute of finished audio a reasonable estimate? If so, that gives 14.85-20.79 total working hours.
The maximum hourly rate, then, is ($225/14.85 hrs) $15.15/hr. The minimum rate is ($25/20.79 hrs) $1.20/hr.
To get an idea of what the project might actually be worth, I went to voices.com's "standard" rate sheet, realizing that union and many non-union talents' fees would be significantly higher. The closest category I could find was for e-learning (well, you do learn from a dictionary...is there a better match?), which is $300 for the first hour, then $100/hour of session time, not finished audio. That and the above time estimates give a fee of $1700-$2300.
Does that make sense? 8000 words, almost 3 hours running time, about 15-21 hours working time, $1.20-$15.15 per hour if within project budget, $1700-$2300 fee by voices.com "standard" rates? At this point, should I worry about being able to make this sort of estimate?