Freelance Guide. Contains lots of useful advice for freelance journalists
and photographers.
www.writersclub.com
To equip you with the knowledge and skills required to become a freelance
journalist either as a full or part-time career or as a profitable sideline.
To help provide you with the knowledge and skills to gain entry-level
employment as a journalist in mainstream media. This is accomplished
by helping you to build a valuable portfolio of published material which
is usually the determining factor in being offered mainstream media
employment.
www.authorzone.com , The Free Community for Authors!
Online press agency
where news editors from print, broadcast, and online media can purchase
original news content directly from freelance journalists worldwide
How much do full-time
journalists need to charge to make a moderate living?
Freelance writers spend a tremendous amount of time looking for work
(researching and pitching articles) and revising. While some articles
can be done in a week and others may take three months, for most full-time
freelance writers, selling and writing 3,000 or 4,000 words a month
is about the best that they can expect to do -- two feature articles
or the equivalent in smaller pieces. (This is more than most magazine
staff writers write -- which is about 2,500 words a month.)
At this level of
output, a rate of a dollar a word means a gross income of $36,000 to
$48,000 a year, out of which has to be taken expenses, insurance, and
other benefits. This is the equivalent of earning a salary, with benefits,
of about $30,000 to $40,000 a year. So for a college graduate working
as a full-time freelance writer to bring in even a moderate income that
includes benefits, requires at least $1 a word.
The median income
of full-time, college-educated workers in the US is around $50,000,
plus benefits. So to earn as much as the average college graduate would
require somewhat more, between $1.25 and $1.60 a word.
How much do magazines
pay their staff writers?
The average wage for staff positions ranges from $35,270 for news reporters
to $45,500 for staff writers, plus benefits, according to the Bureau
of Labor Statistics. Based on our examination of largely staff-written
monthly magazines, the average staff writer's output is between 20,000
to 30,000 words per year. This means that per-word rates average around
$1.60 a word, not including the value of benefits. If benefits are included,
this works out to close to $2 a word. (To be conservative, we used the
Bureau of Labor Statistics' figure for staff writers. At the actual
magazines we surveyed, most staff writers are paid at least twice that,
which would mean per-word rates come out to about $4 a word.)
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