The development costs for white papers vary in range dependent upon several elements including content acquisition, research, writing, editing and layout. Costs may be very low if existing content is used, or very high if a team of experts needs to be setup.

Licensing Content - Obtaining a license to reuse some or all of the content from another source can be relatively low if repurposing existing content (such as licensing content from a book publisher) to over $1000 per page if the content is custom produced.

Research - White paper research involves the identification and gathering of materials. This may include finding references (good for link tracking information) and interesting factoids. A skilled researcher may spend 5 to 10 hours finding good reference materials and the person who provides direction (objectives) for the researcher (such as the project manager and subject matter expert) may spend 1 to 3 hours defining objectives.

Writing - White paper writing may be performed by several people including the project manager, subject matter expert and an experienced copywriter. The project manager may spend 1 to 3 hours creating an initial description of the scope of the white paper and a preliminary outline. The subject matter expert may be highly experienced in their field resulting in relatively high costs ($50 to $100 per page). A copywriter may spend 2 to 10 hours rewriting the white paper content so it is presented in a form that readers will find interesting and rewarding.

Editing - There may be several types of editing performed on the document such as copy editing and SEO review, and edits may be performed multiple times on the same document. Copy editing costs (grammatical corrections) are commonly charged on a per page basis and can range from $1 to $5 per page. Search engine optimization editing requires the use of an experienced Internet marketing professional. Because the SEO expert may require time to review the subject matter and perform some keyword research, SEO editing can cost anywhere from $2 to $10 per page or more.

Layout - Layout is the process of positioning text and image elements within the document. Layout is commonly performed using design software such as inDesign or Quark which provides more presentation controls than word processor programs.

It can take an experienced layout designer 5 to 15 minutes to layout each page and all pages in the white paper need to be created in the layout program. This can result in a layout cost of $50 to $500 per white paper.

After the document has been produced, it needs to be converted into formats for distribution such as PDF files. It is possible to produce white papers using word processor programs and simply print to PDF file format. The layout designer may be able to perform this function which does not take much time and may add an insignificant amount of cost to the project.

Figure 1.x shows some of the costs associated with the development of a white paper. The research performed includes gathering reference materials and searching for interesting factoids to site in the white paper ($20 to $2000). The cost of writing white papers includes using a subject matter expert (SME) and a good copywriter who creates motivational text ($500 to $5000). The editing costs can include a copy editor (grammatical editor) and a search engine optimization (SEO) editor ($100 to $1000). The layout costs include converting the text and image materials into a presentable form and converting the final version into a form (such as PDF) that can be distributed. This results in a total development cost that can range from $1120 to $10,000.