Well, my bid may seem high but since you asked for a bid per item let me break it down for you.
You estimate about 15 minutes per item entry, which I then estimated about 4 items entered per hour. I need my work time to earn me money, as everyone does- so I figured I typically work for about $12 per hour on data entry assignments, which comes out to be about $3 per item. That would be a bid of $18,000 when I compared that to the typical bid you're getting I realized wow.. that can' t be right! So I read through the pmb and found that most is copy and paste, and perhaps once I got into a rhythm I could become quite efficient and maybe get 5 or 6 items entered in an hour- which would be about $1.20 per item to reach my $12 per hour rate. So therefore, I placed my bid at $7,200 for a project of 6000 items to be entered.
Because this would be a lengthy project, I'd prefer to set up a weekly or a monthly payment arrangement. It could be based on the number of items entered in that week (or month). 500 items entered would be a $600 payment. I would also consider a payment for every batch of 200 items entered- but would not- in this case, accept the project if it meant entering all 6000 items before any payment is received. I've been burned in the past with freelance projects that are lengthy and when they got finished- I didn't receive payment, so this is why I insist on payments along the way on large scale projects.
Thank you for the opportunity to bid.
Debbie Dragon