You Don’t Have Time for This

Very few writers know their worth when they dive into the frigid waters of freelancing. I certainly didn’t—when I launched my freelance career, I was one of those poor souls who was absolutely astounded that someone would actually pay me to write something. My first writing jobs paid me so little that a more rational person would have immediately spruced up their résumé and looked for a job in fast food. But like a lot of writers, I felt like I was getting away with something every time I got paid to write. It’s my favorite activity1—I do plenty of it on my own time for free—and I still struggle with the irrational fear that someone will eventually notice I’m getting paid for it and launch some kind of investigation.

Knowing your worth is about more than just how many pennies you’re getting per word, though— you also have to know how to value your time. Those early jobs that paid peanuts were kind of demanding, but the bulk of the work wasn’t writing, it was everything else— stuff like image sourcing, search engine optimization (SEO), and research.2 I remember thinking that if these low-paying jobs were that demanding, I couldn’t even imagine how much nonwriting work betterpaying clients would require.3

I now literally make 100x what I made on my first freelance jobs, and I also know I was totally wrong.

Because the ratio of nonwriting work to pay rates is actually the inverse: The more you get paid to write something, the less nonwriting work you have to do.

DOING IT WRONG

A client I picked up fairly early in my career is a great example of this phenomenon. They paid less than $0.10 a word for long-form articles; at the time, the rate seemed pretty good to

me, and the writing covered a fun range of topics I enjoyed digging into.

But writing those articles was drudgery: The style guide was enormous—instead of simply using Chicago or AP style with some minor deviations, they had a lengthy style bible covering every possible question.4 Worse, the style guide changed frequently, and they usually didn’t alert you to those changes; you were expected to just keep up with it. I also had to source—and size and crop!—images for every piece, and they were very picky about the image quality and, of course, had a dense set of requirements about where you could source from and what the images depicted. I was also required to follow SEO guidelines that resulted in sentences that were English only by association,5 and source every statement of fact. Every. Single. One.

Worst of all, though, was their attitude.

Looking back, it’s amazing how long I stuck with it, because my editors at this job were kind of rude. Minor mistakes were highlighted with the exasperated tone of the Very, Very Patient. They kicked back articles for revision for a lengthy list of minor offenses and complained bitterly—and at length—about each and every one as if I was purposefully ruining their day.

As I started making higher rates with other clients, I noticed that the more a platform or publication paid, the more likely it was that I was free to focus on the writing (as opposed to worrying over image sourcing or style minutiae), and the atmosphere and attitude were much more collegiate and professional.6 People acted as if my writing, my voice and unique insight, was the valuable thing, not my ability to use the SEO phrase “monkey hair banana” organically 12 times in a 500-word article.7

I stayed with that job for far too long, in part because I actually enjoyed the freedom of writing about a variety of subjects at my discretion, and in part because my creditors still refuse to accept poems as payment.8 Slowly, though, I realized that not every freelance writing job was an exercise in existential dread, because the more you get paid to write the more you’re getting paid to write instead of being paid to manage content.

THE JOB DESCRIPTION

The root of the problem lies in what I described at the beginning of this article: The writerly tendency to feel like we don’t really deserve to be paid for our work. If you apply for a job as the Assistant (to the) Regional Manager, you look at the job description and decide whether the compensation you’re being offered is worth it. As writers, we often don’t ask to see a job description at all. We assume that the only way to justify the money we’re being paid to do something we’d gladly do for free is to lard up a job with a bunch of unrelated work.9

The core problem with this sort of work is that acceptance of your articles (and thus, receiving payment for them) is tied not to the writing but to the mechanics of the content management system you’re tasked with using and all the other stuff, but you are most likely still being paid by the word. So, you research, conduct interviews, and write a terrific piece—but your pay is contingent on a bunch of stuff you are explicitly not being paid for, because you’re being paid by the word or for the article, not the sized image or the properly inserted HTML tag. The fact that these unpaid services are usually the things writers aren’t particularly good at is just a little extra salt in the wound.

Of course, it’s easy to say “don’t take low-paying gigs that require all kinds of unpaid work” when your rent is paid and you’re not routinely climbing out of bathroom windows to escape creditors. But keep in mind the simple fact that the more you get paid to write, the less your time will be wasted. WD

Jeff Somers always wanted to learn ballroom dancing, but became a writer instead. Since that fateful day, he’s published nine novels, numerous short stories, and Writing Without Rules, which seeks to tempt others into making the same mistake. He lives in New Jersey with a Duchess and numerous cats.