About 2 years ago, a question was posed on Reddit: “How fast can you write?” the author challenged every responder to write the following sentence and time themselves.
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
According to the post, the average WPM (words per minute) is around 29.5, with many respondents to the post falling within that range, give or take.
Handwriting as a Service Company
We reached out to another company that formerly offered handwritten letters as a service out of their garage, and at the time, the average human employee could write about 150 letters per day.
Furthermore, each person was given 7 days to complete 500 letters with about 20 words and the accompanying envelope. This flexible timeline allowed them to rest their hands and budget their time accordingly to meet the quota.
At the time this company was doing this around 1987, charging $.50 per card plus the cost of the stationery and stamp. I looked up the cost of stamps at the time ($0.22/each) and guessed the card/envelope to be around $0.10 each, making the total approximately $0.82/card.
With the inflation adjustment, they charged approximately $2.71/card in today’s dollars. (Note: This is comparable to what we charge at GhostHandwriter.)
With these numbers in mind, you could hire this company to produce 1,000 handwritten cards/envelopes weekly using 2 people.
Downsides of Using Human Handwriting Services
There are some significant downsides when considering using humans vs. robotic handwriting machines.
1. Diminishing Handwriting Quality with Increased Fatigue– If you’ve ever had to write bulk letters for weddings or holidays, then you know that your handwriting with the first and last cards may not look the same because your hands start to fatigue with repetitive motion.
2. Turnaround Time– Knowing that each person hired for this specific task could produce about 150 items daily, you could be limited on launching entire marketing or lead generation campaigns due to turnaround time. Our machines can write about 1,000 letters and envelopes daily- give or take.
There may be other factors to consider. However, those two items come to mind first when considering which service to use.
Summary
It’s interesting to know that before robotic handwritten services were a thing, human handwriting services led the way. With better technologies, we could create machines that mimic human handwriting indiscernibly while producing at a rate of 5X-6X what humans could do.
Ready to supercharge your handwriting campaign? Send a message to hello@ghosthandwriter.com and get started today!