Content savings

What Does an Article Really Cost Your Business?

The price of content is more than the time it takes to write. Explore the people, software, training and production work behind every article—and see how TradeWrite can simplify the process.

TradeWrite CORE: $150.00 per article (Pilot estimate). One coordinated production system instead of a collection of disconnected tasks and tools.

Illustrative planning assumptions, not verified customer results or a guarantee. Nothing you enter is stored or sent.

Before you estimate: Read how to calculate the hidden cost of content.

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Switching keeps your entries. Article pricing, articles per month and client review hours are shared; other Quick fields don't feed the detailed model, so labor is never counted twice.

Article pricing assumption

Choose Custom to enter a negotiated or what-if rate.

Shared by Quick and Detailed. Estimate only—not a binding quote or a change to public pricing.

Annual estimates assume the selected article rate and monthly volume continue for all 12 months. A temporary pilot is not a promise of year-round pricing; post-pilot pricing is not modeled.

Whole number, 1 to 100. Shared with Detailed Analysis.

Every hour from brief to publish-ready. Decimals allowed.

Salary plus employer benefits and payroll burden, divided by productive working hours.

Your SME review and approval. Shared with Detailed Analysis.

Only costs that would truly stop, such as contractor invoices. Not fixed subscriptions or sunk costs. If a contractor's hours are already in the hours and rate above, don't enter their invoice here too.

Your Potential Production Advantage

Quick Estimate

These estimates compare the cost of producing equivalent content using your assumptions. Employee time recovered is valuable capacity, but it is not necessarily cash saved.

Estimated Annual Economic Benefit

$37,413.48

Fully allocated production cost difference, not guaranteed cash.

Production Economics

Fully allocated cost of equivalent content.

  • Monthly benefit$3,117.79
  • Benefit per article$311.78
  • Internal production cost per article$504.27
  • TradeWrite + remaining client cost per article$192.50
  • Potential cost reduction61.8%
  • ROI on TradeWrite-related cost162.0%
  • Annual internal cost$60,512.88
  • Annual TradeWrite + remaining cost$23,099.40
  • Remaining client-side costs per yearReview labor and other costs beyond the CORE price.$5,099.40
  • Break-even internal hours per articleInternal hours at which both options cost the same.3.4 hrs
  • Break-even gross hoursCORE price ÷ hourly rate, before review.2.65 hrs

Capacity Recovered

Staff time freed. Not reduced payroll.

  • Annual staff hours freed8.9 hrs internal vs 0.75 hrs remaining per article978 hrs
  • Modeled value of that capacity$55,413.48

Potential Cash Savings

Only costs explicitly marked avoidable. Never added to capacity value.

  • Avoidable internal costs per year$0.00
  • Potential annual cash savingsEnter additional avoidable expenses to estimate.Not yet estimated

Allocated vs avoidable, per article

Internal cost breakdown per article
CostAllocatedAvoidable
Internal production labor$504.27$0.00
Additional avoidable expenses$0.00$0.00

Per article: internal vs TradeWrite

Zero baseline. Hover or read the table for exact values.

Per article: internal vs TradeWrite
ScenarioCost
Internal$504.27
TradeWrite + review$192.50

Annual cost comparison

Switch to Detailed Analysis to compare Traditional, AI-assisted and TradeWrite.

Annual cost comparison
ScenarioCost
Internal$60,512.88
TradeWrite$23,099.40

Nothing is saved or sent. Copy, print or download to keep this estimate.

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Assumptions and results summary

TradeWrite — Content production savings estimate
Model: Quick Estimate; comparison: Quick Estimate
TradeWrite CORE: $150.00 per article — Pilot estimate assumption, not a binding quote.
Annual estimates assume the selected article rate and monthly volume continue for all 12 months. A temporary pilot is not a promise of year-round pricing; post-pilot pricing is not modeled.
Internal production cost per article: $504.27
TradeWrite plus remaining client cost per article: $192.50
Economic benefit per article: $311.78
Monthly economic benefit: $3,117.79
Annual economic benefit: $37,413.48
Internal annual allocated production cost: $60,512.88
TradeWrite annual cost: $23,099.40
Production cost reduction: 61.82730023756926 %
ROI on TradeWrite-related cost: 161.9673238265929 %
Gross break-even hours: 2.6473702788563362 hours
Internal break-even hours including review: 3.3973702788563362 hours
Annual staff hours freed: 978 hours
Annual capacity value (not payroll savings): $55,413.48
Explicitly avoidable internal costs, annual: $0.00
Potential net cash savings, annual: Not yet estimated

Internal cost breakdown:
Internal production labor: $504.27/article allocated; $0.00/article explicitly avoidable
Additional avoidable expenses: $0.00/article allocated; $0.00/article explicitly avoidable

Input assumptions (Cents fields are integer USD cents):
Article price offer: Pilot estimate assumption
Selected CORE price: 15000 USD cents/article
articlesPerMonth: 10 input
internalHours: 8.9 input
hourlyRateCents: 5666 USD cents
clientReviewHours: 0.75 input
additionalAvoidableCents: 0 USD cents

Planning estimates, not verified customer outcomes or guarantees.
Capacity recovered is not necessarily reduced payroll. Capacity and cash savings are separate and must not be added.
Potential cash savings are net of the TradeWrite purchase and applicable remaining expenses; negative values are additional cash cost.
Hiring/training and fixed overhead allocations are not automatically avoidable.
Outputs are rounded once from high-precision amounts. Displayed rounded components may differ by one cent from totals.
CORE includes a researched, human-edited English article, key summary, narrated audio, transcript, AI-generated featured image, basic SEO/AI-search metadata and organized deliverables.
TradeWrite does not automatically publish. Technical accuracy and final business approval still require appropriate client/SME review.
Marketing, SEO, lead-generation and customer-service outcomes are outside this production-cost estimate.

How every number is built

How the Quick Estimate is calculated
internal = hours × rate + additional avoidable = 8.9 × $56.66 + $0.00TradeWrite = CORE price + review hours × rate = $150.00 + 0.75 × $56.66benefit = internal − TradeWrite; monthly = benefit × 10; annual = monthly × 12

Annual estimates assume the selected article rate and monthly volume continue for all 12 months. A temporary pilot is not a promise of year-round pricing; post-pilot pricing is not modeled.

Each reported figure is rounded once from unrounded values, so annual may differ by a few cents from multiplying the displayed per-article amount. Baseline defaults give $504.27 internal, $242.50 TradeWrite and $261.78 per article; $2,617.79 per month and $31,413.48 per year.

Loaded labor rate
annual employment cost = salary × (1 + benefits% + payroll burden%)loaded hourly rate = annual employment cost ÷ productive hours per year

Quick Estimate uses your single average rate ($56.66/hr). Detailed Analysis uses each role's manual or derived rate.

Productive working hours

Paid hours minus holidays, leave, meetings and administration. Fewer productive hours means a higher loaded rate per working hour.

Fixed versus variable costs
fixed per article = monthly subscription ÷ monthly articles + (implementation + administration) ÷ (monthly articles × 12)

Variable costs scale with each article. Fixed licenses usually continue unless you actually cancel or reduce them.

Allocated versus avoidable expenses

Allocated cost is a fair share of everything used to produce an article. Avoidable cost is the portion that would actually stop. Allocated hiring and training is rarely avoidable cash.

hiring/training per article = (recruiting + training + ramp-up) ÷ articles during tenure, counted once per role

Enter a contractor invoice once: either as task labor or as an extra expense, never both. Flags for training, coordination and overhead already in loaded rates prevent double counting.

Capacity value versus cash savings
hours freed = (internal hours − remaining hours) × articles per month × 12 = 978 hrs

Freed hours have economic value ($55,413.48/yr modeled) but are not reduced payroll. Cash savings count only explicitly avoidable costs and are never added to capacity value for the same hours.

Break-even hours
gross = CORE price ÷ rate = 2.65 hrsinternal = review hours + (CORE price − additional avoidable) ÷ rate = 3.4 hrs

Gross ignores your remaining review; the internal threshold includes it and assumes one rate for production and review. A zero rate makes break-even unavailable.

ROI
ROI = benefit per article ÷ TradeWrite-related cost × 100 = 162.0%

Shown only when the TradeWrite-related cost is positive.

Production cost reduction
reduction = benefit per article ÷ internal cost × 100 = 61.8%
What this calculator does not estimate

Production economics only. It does not predict SEO rankings, leads, payroll reductions or customer-support savings; those require your actual performance data. These are planning assumptions, not verified customer results.

What $150.00 buys

Every CORE Article Package includes

  • Researched, human-edited English article
  • Key summary
  • Narrated audio file
  • Audio transcript
  • AI-generated featured image
  • Basic SEO and AI-search metadata
  • Organized deliverables for client review and publishing

TradeWrite does not automatically publish to your website or social platforms. Technical accuracy and final business approval remain with your client or subject-matter expert review.

You're not just paying $150.00 for an article. You're paying for a more efficient way to produce one.

See What TradeWrite Can ProduceRead how production works