Are you being paid $1 a word? 11/04/10

Following discussion at the annual general meeting held recently at the Flying Scotsman, WAJA has launched a Name & Shame campaign to publicly expose shamefully low freelance rates being offered by some WA news outlets.
If you know of anyone offering less than the Alliance recommended rate of 89c a word, please send details to msjones@alliance.org.au. All sources will remain confidential.
Author and journalist Margaret Simons, who writes the media blog Content Makers for Crikey, has been running a survey to find out what freelances are being paid around Australia.
To find out if you’re being paid fairly or not, be sure to follow her subsequent post which has a table which shows publishers who pay freelances $1 or more a word.
The bad news for WAJA freelances is that of the 13 publishers listed, West Australian Newspapers is the lowest payer by far – at 34 cents a word.
The Media Alliance’s recommended rate for freelances is 89 cents a word.
If you want a copy of a spreadsheet template to help you calculate the true cost of your work (and hence what you should charge) be sure to follow the link on Margaret’s first article to this piece by a Silicon Valley blogger.
But beware, it’s also got a link to the scary story of the photographer whose photo was used on the cover of TIME magazine – and he was only paid US$30.

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