How much should I charge for data entry?

I am a virtual assistant and I charge $15 per hour. However, I have a client who would like to pay per entry. I will be entering their clients contact info into a spreadsheet.





How much should I charge per entry?





Does anyone else have experience doing this?





Thanks!

How much should I charge for data entry?
Determine how many you can enter in an hour. Divide 15 by that number then make it half bigger and bid that.


i.e. You can enter 5 per hour. 15/5=3. half of 3 is 1.5, so make an initial bid of 4.50 per entry (in this scenario based on these numbers.) So If you maintained 5 entrys per hour you would realize $22.50 per hour.
Reply:Hi Jess,





I've been doing data entry for local customers out of my home since 1995. Data entry should generally be billed on a piece rate (or per record rate).





It's all about how many records you can input per hour. So things like what you are typing from (i.e. handwriting is harder to read and will slow you down), the format the customer requests (i.e. upper/lower case is slower to type than all uppercase), and any special handling (unfolding, removing items from envelopes, etc.) should be considered when quoting the project.





I use the following criteria to price data entry projects:





-Is the original source typed (1 cent) or hand-written (2 cents)





-Are there multiple records per page on the original source (no charge) or is it only one record per source (2 cents)





-All uppercase (1 cent) or upper/lower case (2 cents)





-With Punctuation (1 cent) or Without Punctuation (no charge)





-Count up all alpha fields. I keep FirstName and LastName fields separate so they can be sorted properly when the project is completed. In my market, I charge 1 cent per alpha field.





-Count up numeric fields (i.e. zip code). I charge 1 cent per numeric field.





-Count up alpha/numeric fields (i.e. street address). I charge 2 cents.





-I charge 2 cents for an email address and other fields that may be more difficult and time-consuming to type.





I can type an average of 250 records per hour that are all uppercase, name, address, city, state, zip, from a typed source, and I generally bill out 11 cents per record, plus a $25 set up fee.





Make sure your piece rate comes out to what you wish to earn hourly ... your first few projects might be off a bit since you're not really sure how fast you can key. But basically, divide your hourly rate by the number of records keyed per hour to compute a per record rate.





Example:


$15.00 hourly rate / 200 records per hour = approx .08 cents per record.





Data entry is a high-demand service, and since you are already working as a VA, you might want to market yourself in this area more heavily ... since it is a piece rate, you can make pretty good money.





There's more info on my website, or you can email me.





Good luck on this project!
Reply:ask the customer for all there money