Job is Listed as a Fixed Price, but the Job Description says Flat Fee of $5 per article

[baef4b76]

Hello, Upwork.  I'm enjoying this platform.  I landed a ghostwriting contract within my first 72 hours of using the service, so I'm pretty stoked.  As a newbie, there are some things I'm still getting my brain around.

Another job is looking for ghostwriters to write e-books on various topics.  The ghostwriter gets paid $1.00 for every 100 words and the e-books could be 15,000-30,000 words.  

So it clearly portrays the job as an ongoing deal with books of varying length which means varying pay.  When submitting a proposal for the job, I have to make a bid.  

Um, I don't know what sort of ebook I'll be given to work on first, so I have no idea what to bid.  And they're looking for a long term partnership so submitting a fixed price is kinda pointless.  With this sort of setup is the bid just a formality?  The bid doesn't even reflect the mechanics of earning a buck for every hundred words.  What's the "proper" way to send a proposal to a job with that sort of setup?

The budget is $5,000 so I don't know what to put.  A 30k project is only going to be $300.00 Should I just shoot them a random number?

I appreciate everyone's time on this one.

- Richard

[wescowley]

For something like that, I'd expect to see milestones for each book. I'd submit my bid based on the high end of the size range (which sounds like 30K words) and make it clear in the proposal (and the interview if it gets that far) that's what the bid is based on and what the rate per word/100 words/1000 words/whatever is.  Just be very careful when the offer is made that the first milestone is funded for the right amount. If it's not, don't accept the offer.

[martina_plaschka]

You just convert your rate per word times number of words into a dollar amount and bid that for a fixed price job.