Following our conversation on [date]. This is a fixed-price, fixed-scope pilot with one payment and no subscription. Send it back signed, or tell us what to change.
The problem, in your words: [quote back exactly what they said in discovery]
What success looks like in ninety days: [their answer, verbatim]
Who approves: [name, title]. Competitors named: [two or three].
We ran a content gap analysis against [competitor one] and [competitor two]. The three largest gaps:
| Gap | What they have | What you have | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| [subject] | [n pages] | [none / one, dated] | [the query and who is asking it] |
| [subject] | [n pages] | [none] | [reason] |
| [subject] | [n pages] | [none] | [reason] |
The full report is attached and is yours whether or not you go ahead.
| Scope | Ten briefs you approve, ten finished articles of up to 1,500 words each, every one edited by a professional editor at Proofed and returned as tracked changes. |
| Where the ten come from | [e.g. six from the gap analysis, two rebuilt from existing pages, two written from your recorded webinar] |
| Timeline | Thirty days from the kickoff call. Kickoff within one working day of payment. |
| Price | $2,500, one payment, excluding VAT or sales tax. No other charges arise. |
| Payment | An invoice at net 14, or a card payment link we send you, with work starting on payment. Purchase order number if you need one on the invoice: tell us at kickoff. |
| Contract | The one-page pilot agreement, attached. Acceptance criteria are Schedule A to it. |
| When | What | Whose move |
|---|---|---|
| [date] | Kickoff call, thirty minutes. Style guide, brand guidelines, five published pieces you like. | Both |
| [date] | Ten briefs sent, all at once. | Us |
| [date] | Briefs approved, amended or rejected. Three working days. | You |
| [date] | First batch of three delivered. | Us |
| [date] | Second batch of four delivered. | Us |
| [date] | Final three delivered, and published to [destination] if you want that. | Us |
Design, stock photography, link building, ongoing strategy, articles beyond the ten, translation at volume, rewrites of an article produced to a brief you approved and later changed your mind about, and any second full edit after your team has rewritten a delivered piece. Any of these can be quoted separately.
Nothing automatically. There is no subscription and nothing to cancel. If it has been useful there are two shapes, and we will price whichever you prefer at day 21:
Austen Pro, $299 a month for fifty articles across five projects, with human editing added per piece at $55 per 1,000 words.
A done-for-you retainer at [$2,000 or $2,500] a month for eight finished, professionally edited articles.
Austen is new and we are not going to name a customer we do not have. The editing is done by Proofed, an established editing business whose own site names SoFi, Pinterest, Emeritus, Samsung, Substack, Forbes Books, the Financial Times, Fujifilm and JP Morgan Chase as clients of its editing work. None of them uses Austen and we are not suggesting they do. You would be early, which is why every brief is approved before anything is written, every edit is shown to you as tracked changes, and revisions against the agreed acceptance criteria are free until the article meets them.
Sign below, or reply to this email with "approved" and we will send the invoice or the payment link. Kickoff is within one working day of payment.