Christine B.

Why do major magazines pay their writer $1 per word on average? Well, let’s see… why would anyone pay anyone a decent to large sum of money for their time? Ah… of course, it’s got to be because they want the job done right! If you want someone to do a great job, you’ll have to make it worth their while, otherwise you get what you pay for: sloppy and rushed work. I never pride myself in rushing a writing project, but sometimes the pay just does not warrant me to be thorough or extremely creative and careful. Once you drop below minimum wage on an hourly scale, it is no longer worth it. If I am going to “just get by” with my job as a freelance writer, then I’d rather get a “fixed” job somewhere, and write on the weekends on projects I enjoy. Don’t be mistaken, some projects are just work, and not every writer gets turned on by spitting out pages and pages of information that will likely never be read by anyone but search engines.

The morale of this story goes in two different directions: one, many writers are making their own bed by accepting ludicrous wages. Two, clients should expect to pay someone what they would want to earn if they were to do the job themselves. That seems fair doesn’t it? I hope that honestly blogging about the ins and outs of my life as a writer will not negatively impact me, but rather help others see our work for what it is: a craft, a science and a real job that deserves proper compensation.

Now in all fairness, the above $1 per word mentioned is paid out in large publications, who have large advertising accounts. It is fully understandable and natural that the average online publication will not be able to pay quite as much (not even close in most cases). These are still worth writing for, but in comparison online articles are also a bit shorter and in most cases require less leg work, in terms of calling across the world for quotes, etc.

Thankfully I made this decision a long time ago, but I felt the need to reinforce this again after reading Deborah Ng’s blog on “just getting by”.