Fair Wages for Freelance Writing
A recent story in The Australian caught my eye. The title of the piece is “Online magazine offers less than 2c a word to freelancers”. The name of the online magazine is Breathe Magazine Australia (BreatheMagazine.com) and it is scheduled to launch in April 2012.
The Australian journalists’ union, called Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) has a recommended word rate of 93c a word (which is comparable to U.S. currency). The MEAA criticized Breathe Magazine’s owner, Flujo, stating that “Employers must realize that journalists must be paid properly for their work.”
Flujo is looking for three full-time writers, and is asking journalists to agree to write a minimum of six 400-word articles throughout the course of a month in the hopes they are hired for the full time gig. A 400-word article, by Breathe Magazine’s pay rate, is $7.
Many established freelancers would scoff at that rate—and it’s unclear by this article if the full-time writer would be paid more than that once hired.
The editor of Breathe Magazine Australia, Cedric Chenefront, conceded that it was a low rate but defended the offer on the grounds of his publication’s limited advertising budget.
“We’ll give it three months (at the $7 per article rate) but we’re hoping to pay them more as soon as we have more budget,” he said. —theaustralian.com.au
When I first started freelancing for a couple of monthly publications in Boston, MA in my early 20s, I wrote for free. I was testing the waters. I had a full-time job that I liked, but I was trying to figure out if I wanted to go back to school to become a journalist. I got perks—like free movie tickets and DVDs—but that wasn’t what I cared about. I wanted to see my name in print for the first time ever. I didn’t care about getting paid.
Fast forward 10 years and I have a graduate degree in journalism under my belt, and a handful of bylines at newspapers and magazines along the East Coast. I work as an editor for a regional publication and I do some freelancing on the side. I have some great credentials and I have a lot of experience. Heck, I even teach undergraduate courses at a local university. I am a good writer, and there is no way I would accept a job that paid 1.7 cents a word—not in the stage of my career today. I know my worth.
If you are just starting out in the freelance world, writing for little to no pay might help you get some clips under your belt. If you’ve never written before, you might have to write for free (or very low pay) because you have no experience. We’ve all been there at one time or another. Once you start building your portfolio and getting better paying clients, you can start turning down work that doesn’t help your bottom line. And pretty soon, 1.7 cents a word is going to sound pretty ridiculous to you, too.
“It is clear from the work that the alliance has done into freelance rates in Australia, $7 for a 400-word article is clearly well below the rate a professional journalist would expect to receive for their work.” —MEAA spokesman, Jonathan Este
It always makes me roll my eyes when any magazine offers the following retorts when faced with people complaining about their low pay rate:
- We may be paying below the industry standard, but your byline will get tons of exposure on our site.
- We’re hoping to pay our readers more as soon as our budget increases.
- We’re a new publication and don’t have a lot of advertising revenue.
These are excuses, and not a sound way to run a business. Clearly, magazines that are not willing to pay their writers a fair wage, are not overly concerned with publishing the best content.
Freelance payment should be worked into a publications monthly budget from the get-go, and should not be predicated on how much advertising revenue is generated. What happens, say, if you raise your rates because you are generating more revenue, and then have a few months when your ad sales are abysmal? Are you going to pay your writers less because your ad sales team is not doing a good job? Good luck keeping any of your best writers on board.
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That is really horrible. Here I thought $20 per article was a slave wage…
Not only is this insulting, it is exploiting foreign writers. No matter how low your cost of living anywhere in the world, you should never work for less than the “western” standard minimum.
I write for a magazine that doesn’t pay me and a website that pays me $7-9/post. That’s not much, but here’s why I do it–exposure. I’m still starting out (a year ago yesterday) and I’m trying to build my platform by getting my name in front of as many people in my audience as I can. I wouldn’t write for $9 for a readership of 5, but 10,000? Yep.
I’m hoping to get into $300-500/article territory soon as a couple of those a month would really help my bottom line (and keep my wife from bugging me about not making enough money).
Paul
It always cracks me up when publications tell writers that they’re new and they don’t have much of a budget so they can’t pay a fair price for your work. What other industry lets you do that?
If the editors were building a brick-and-mortar store, would they tell the bricklayers, electricians and plumbers, “Yeah, we’re a new business so we can’t really pay you for your hard work until we start turning a profit. That’s understandable, right?”
SMH. It’s insane. It’s bad enough that pubs in the US haven’t budged on the $1 per word average in over 30 years. These “Craigslist publications” (that’s what I call them) are just adding insult to injury.
Good points, Candace! In no other industry (that I know of) are people asked to work for free until the company makes money. I wish MY bills were predicated on how much money I make.
Candace, that always cracks me up too. I want to tell them, ‘Okay, well I’m not that good of a writer and it’s hard for me to get things in on time… oh and the content I write might be low-quality crap!’ Would they still hire me?
> These are excuses, and not a sound way to run a business. Clearly, magazines that are not willing to pay their writers a fair wage, are not overly concerned with publishing the best content.
Well, of course not.
> Freelance payment should be worked into a publications monthly budget from the get-go,
And they don’t. They almost never do. The key consideration is profitability. That’s assuming that one considers the majority of cheap content mills paying $0.02 a word that are on the web are anything resembling a “publication”. Which IMO they are not.
Every commentary I have ever read from freelancers of any stripe (writers, software developers, etc) about low rates always sounds like the writer is on the defensive and wishing for the world to change its ways.
(Usually it sounds bleating and shrill like “poor us, quit beating us”, so this one wasn’t too bad. )
The narrative from the freelancer side always, without fail, goes like this: hard-working, honorable writers (programmers|web designers|artists) will keep getting screwed until clients reach a state of intelligent enlightenment and stop being cheap.
NOT. GONNA. HAPPEN.
The facts are these, and they never vary, ever. I mean never.
1) The return (profitability) on most content sites is razor thin, if it even happens. So the money you get paid for jobs like these is *always* coming out of someone’s pocket. You’re literally being paid spare change. Just like coins you’d toss into someone’s hat. And begging on a street would have more dignity than most of these content projects, and would return more per hour of effort spent.
2) There is a tidal flood of individuals, either with rock bottom self esteem or who are in the developing world, available on the net, willing to work for almost nothing. Once they are burned out and need to earn a real living, there are a bunch of fresh faces to replace them. So there is always another patsy to work for very cheap.
Look, folks. Grow up and find a business need. The only way to earn what you’re worth is catering to demand from businesses with real growth, real revenue, real money to spend on new development.
Even then, it’s difficult at times. But learning someone’s business needs and determining how your talents can support what they are doing will always pay a lot better than working for someone’s unprofitable pipe dream. Which is what $0.02 per word writing truly is.
Stop dreaming and stop whining. The world will not change. This is the way it is – unless you change.
Sadly major news outlets here in the U.S. do this too. I’ve covered stories for
a national organization that pays freelancers nothing, under the mantra of “exposure.” I’m looking at you Huffington Post.
Thanks for looking at the HuffyPo, Chris. Because I am too.
One of my closest friends recently drank their “write here for the exposure” Kool-Aid. And, of course they’re not paying her. Far be it from them to do that.
Exposure only gets you so far. It’s not going to fill my oil tank or pay my student loans….
Same thing happens to photographers. Here’s a story from the Martha file:
I was asked to share some of my photos with a local non-profit organization. I told the person making the request that I’d be happy to work out a licensing agreement. Her reply: The organization had no money for such a thing.
I guess I was supposed to take pity on this organization and share my work, but I didn’t. Something just didn’t seem right. After all, this outfit has a well-paid staff and a nice downtown office. I later found out that its annual budget is more than $1.5 million.
Martha, the same thing went through my head reading this article. I’m a photographer too and yep, same thing happens to as as writers, magazines want it all for free in exchange for “exposure”. Last time I checked my bank didn’t accept exposure for my mortgage payment… The best thing we can do is say no. If all of us stuck together and agreed to not work for free or cheap, then they’d have to eventually cough up fair pay. I have never understood why we as artists should work for free so they can run a profitable business.
Hear hear for all you freelance photographers out there! You have one hard job and have to stick up for your talent and products at every turn.
I used to write articles for 5 dollars per 500 word article. It was funny, because I had plenty of business and many repeat buyers… Only after a year of working like a dog for pennies did I find out that websites and magazines will pay 50 to 100 dollars (USD) per article. In retrospect I have to laugh because all of my past clients always told me how affordable I was. I just never realized how affordable I was. (That and I always thought that you had to have a journalism degree in order to make any money with writing.)
Yep, this article is well debated. I do agree that some people do not pay what workers are worth, but I also agree with Don: this is the way life is.
I am quite established on Elance, but I am now trying out oDesk to see how it works out. On the bottom of job posts, I actually see statistics where web developers have been paid $0.01/hour! The best thing that I can do is simply not apply to this persons job because they are cheap.
I have a minimum pay, and if I do not see that the employer has paid near that in the past, I will simply use my credits to apply for jobs elsewhere.
I give no free lunch!
“Freelance payment should be worked into a publications monthly budget from the get-go…”
AMEN.
I don’t think $0.02 per word is too, too low – depending on what the writing requires. Obviously, if you are getting interviews and quotes and starting from scratch (writing wise), then, yes, it is slave labor. However, if you are simply re-working copy to populate a site – it’s a going rate – Unfortunately!
For some strange reason, everyone seems to think they can easily write well or that written content doesn’t have to be well written. I think the proof is in the pudding – meaning showing clients how the Google-bots and other search engine bots react to well-written content versus content received from a content mill.
The problem won’t go away, though, because there are so very many writers in non-English speaking countries who will write for peanuts. I’m not sure what the more balanced approach is – mainly because there is lots of cheap labor out there (writing wise) as competition for the work.
I wish I had a better answer.
I used to work for a pretty popular online publication, but I managed the tech side of things. They were kind of unique in that they paid a small amount upfront, and then paid a pretty fair bonus based on the performance of the post. Not all posts had pageviews sufficient to get a bonus, but it was a nice little extra for people whose content pulled in ad dollars.
I have read your post, it is very helpful for freelance writers. I hope more posts in future from your site.