Technical writing freelance rates advice

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1

Hi,

I need to make a bid for my first technical writing job in Taiwan and I’d be interested in some help as to how the local technical writing freelancing market works here.

The work is an extremely low level technical user-manual paper that requires a lot of knowledge and some technical skills, will probably take a while to learn/write and will probably not have a high word count per hour. There’s a very basic document already provided that would need revision and is half way done (about a 100 pages).

Questions:

  • What is an average technical writing salary in Taiwan?
  • Is calculation here usually hourly/monthly/word count/page count?
  • How long does an average project like the one described expected to take? (yeah, it might sound weird, but I’ve learned that such expectations vary between different countries)
  • Is there some English technical writing guild in Taiwan like the ones I’ve seen at other parts of the world?

Thanks in advance,

fiLi (filination@spymac.com)

2

Hi fiLi

I have just started working in a Taiwanese company as a technical writer. It is a full time job so it might not be so relevant, but anyhow:
Monthly salary NT$55,000 before tax
One month expected to complete a project (to edit a user manual)

I have 10 years of work experience (not in tech.writing field) but since I had some unemployed period in my resume they ‘deducted’ some amount.

3

I haven’t done any freelance work, but I wouldn’t mind taking that up as I have some free time right now. So I am also interested in the rates for freelance work.
I think it really depends on how many changes you need to make or if you need to start a manual from scratch. If they already have a set format, than it should take a lot less time. Starting a manual from scratch takes a while.
Also, it depends on how complicated the product is and is it hard to operate. Hardware is usually easier to write than software.

The average wage as a tech writer in Taipei is around 55,000 for someone with little to no experience.

For someone with about 1 year’s worth of experience, around 60,000 and up.

That’s the average. I’ve known tech writers with experience who are getting much more than that - in the 70,000-80,000 range.