Our Reward System

On August 16th, 2016, we hosted a webinar to explain how our reward system works for bookings. In case any of you missed it, we've done a recap for you to have all the information in hand!

How are rewards calculated?
To calculate a reward, the system uses rates per word count. When you created your profile, you'll remember that we asked you to choose some rates.
For Voice, you assign rates for 5, 50, 500, 5000, and 50000 words, and for Writing it's for 500, 800, 1300, and 2000 words per article. We take the values on each segment into account when we calculate the rewards. Rewards are difficult to calculate as rates are exponential, (the bigger the word count, the lower the price-per-word) so we have chosen a formula specifically to make sure the calculation is as accurate as possible.

For Writing, we ask you to set a rate for the middle point of each word count. Projects' word count goes from 400 to 600 words, from 600 to 1000 words, from 1000 to 1600, and from 1600 to 2400 words. So, for example, if you get an invitation to write a 400 to 600-word article, we're going to pay you the value you'd charge for a 500-word article. Whether you write 400 or 600 words, we'll pay you according to the value you set in your rates.

For Voice, our formula will make the reward go as near as possible to the values set in the rates. For example, you receive a project of 17 words. We do not have an exact value for this word count, but using the values you've set, we are able to calculate an accurate reward.

For fixed word counts (where you assign your rates), we will pay you the values you've set, or more depending on the calculation. We'll never pay you less than the value you have set on your rates. You can see how it works in the following graph.

Image: For 500 words, the point value set in the rates is higher than the one our formula calculated, for this word count, we will ignore the calculation and pay you that exact value. However, for 5000 words, our calculation is higher. In this case, we will pay you what our formula decided was fair.

Our Markup
After having calculated the rewards, the next step is to add our markup and any other extra charges that may apply, like syncing and partition fees. For these 2 extra features, we will also pay you a percentage as you’re having to do extra work. Also, we have an extra fee for languages where the number of pros is lower than the demand (i.e Bengalese, Mandarin, etc), as we'll have to put an extra effort to fulfill these projects. For this reason, you’ll see that a contest in, say, Azeri is more expensive than one in English - North America which is the language where we have the highest number of pros.

Our markup covers our operational costs. As a service that relies solely on our clients (we don’t have investors), we need to make sure that our markup covers all the efforts that are put into keeping a great service. Server maintenance, our Customer Experience team, our UX and UI design team, our Pro Operations team, Analytics Team, etc. In short, this markup helps sustain all the areas and teams that are vital to Bunny Studio's optimal performance and who allow us to give you a great experience all the time!

Now, there may be cases when a pro's rates are somewhat low. In these particular cases, we have to make sure that our operational costs are covered and, as such, we have a base markup to make sure that projects are sustainable. So, if a pro’s rates and our markup results in a price that is not enough to cover our operational costs, we make some calculations and charge our base price for projects. Keep in mind this base price differs from project to project so don’t be scared if you see that the markup for one of your projects is higher than for others. This is all expected behavior.

Some useful tips!

1. Don't underprice your work. You are the best one to determine how much is your work worth and all the costs you incur while working on what you love to do. Keep in mind that your rates should reflect your industry experience, quality of your equipment, and speed response.

We do not tell you exactly how to charge as we want to make sure you get what’s fair for you. Market prices work differently from one country to another, so we believe it would be inaccurate for us to tell you exactly what to charge without knowing how that works in your country.

2. Update your rates moderately and only when necessary. Keep in mind that you have clients that are booking you regularly. Making huge leaps from a low price to a very high one can make result in you getting fewer bookings as they may end up looking for another talent. This works also for contests and speedies: huge leaps can also prevent you from getting the invites you’re used to for these projects.

3. Start with lower rates and increase them while you get better stats. When you sign up and get started with us, we give you a boost in stats as a brand new talent (to be developed in a future webinar on stats) so that you can get projects and start competing with our experienced pros. If your rates are super high right off the bat, you will get fewer projects reason why it may take you longer to build up your own reputation. Start with rates that you consider competitive. Once you have built a good reputation, you will be able to increase them as you go.

4. Keep in mind the initial reward when requesting extra revision fees. When you get offered a reward we're calculating it based on what you said you'd like to receive to complete and finish a project. We know that recording revisions might entail additional work, but keep in mind that the initial reward should include the possibility of getting some revisions from the original recording. We trust that you will always request fees that are similar to your rates, so keep those values in mind when you get revisions. Finally, note that revision fees are paid directly by Bunny Studio. These extras are taken from the markup we calculated when charging our client initially.

5. If you see something odd with your reward report it. As we have a dedicated engineering team that is constantly working on improvements for our platform, sometimes these new improvements may make conflict with other features. Don’t hesitate on letting us know if you see something odd with your reward so we can look into that. In order to report these or other things, you can always flag the projects as explained in previous webinars or email us at support@bunnystudio.com. 

Get advice in our Community. Other pros, as well as members from our team, review the Community every day to answer any questions you may have in regards to several topics. The link is always in the email we sent you inviting you to this webinar and you’ll find it as well in the new help button you’ll find in your dashboard.

Also, remember to rely on our Knowledge Base. It’s filled with articles we have created throughout the years that may help you through your journey as a Pro. Most of your questions will be answered here for sure!