Am I being underpaid/what can I do?

Entelechy said:

Her rationale? She gets $100. for the press release & she can't pay me more than 25% of what she makes. Has anyone heard of that formula? When I had my meeting planning biz I had two girls, ages 18 & 19 working for me & eighteen yrs. ago I was paying one of them $15. an hr for secretarial, admin & help with organizing conferences.

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Not actually to do with writing, but with outsourcing work: We run our own business and when we use freelancers to do any work, we pay a percentage of what we get from it. We usually pay 90% of what we get paid, but sometimes if the freelancer is new and their work needs a lot of fixing when it comes back in, we might go as low as 70%. Under no circumstances whatsoever would we consider paying as little as 25%. That's pretty much daylight robbery IMO.

Freelance91: I would expect to be paid less money for a salaried job than for freelance work, but I would hope that it comes with some benefits. 16 hours for 1000 words seems a lot to me, as well. I would expect to take a maximum of 2 hours to write 1000 of non-fiction, including research, although I imagine that would go up if it required interviews as well (I don't have any experience of interviewing, so don't know for sure). If the employer is going to allow you up to 10 hours, I would think that is very generous. You might need to do a little bit extra in your own time, until you have gotten into the habit of churning things out a lot quicker. Yes, that will bring the hourly rate down even more, but you're be building up some good experience and hopefully will be able to speed up fairly quickly.

(And now I look up again at the rest of the posts, I see that the original was posted months ago, so perhaps Freelancer91 has not come back again!)

Tish Davidson said:

It is true that if you come to a subject with minimal background, you'll do more work. This is why people who freelance for a living tend to develop specialties.

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True enough. Developing a speciality overcomes the intensive, get-up-to-speed approach I mentioned earlier. Less reinvention of the wheel.

The only difficulties I see with a speciality are: i) are there enough outlets/markets for the work?; ii) you have to like it enough so as to not get bored. When boredom impinges on your work, it comes through, and can only have a deleterious effect on your bottom line.

ATP

Minding your own store

Just wanted to chime in with a tip that a multi-millionaire recently told me: "In business, don't count the other guy's money."

If someone handed me a fact sheet and said, "I'm making $100 for a write up that you will be doing, but because of (insert whatever reason here), I'm only paying you a fourth of what I'm getting," I would have a piece of information that may or may not come in handy at some point later. But in the greater scheme, it really wouldn't matter. I don't get bogged down in what other people are making; it's better to focus on what I'm bringing to the table.

The only decision I'd have to make would be whether to accept the offer or not. My choice might be based on other factors that haven't been brought up in this thread -- such as whether the compensation itself aligns with my own perceived value, regardless of what my client was making in the deal.

If I would make $25 for a half-hour's work, I'd probably go for it. It would depend on the client and the nature of the work. In fact, I DID accept a similar offer a year ago and it led to much higher paying, fairly easy, regular work that so far has generated about $4,000.

So I guess it all depends. But I'd like to hear more from everyone else ... this is a great topic!

Entelechy said:

Her rationale? She gets $100. for the press release & she can't pay me more than 25% of what she makes. Has anyone heard of that formula? When I had my meeting planning biz I had two girls, ages 18 & 19 working for me & eighteen yrs. ago I was paying one of them $15. an hr for secretarial, admin & help with organizing conferences.

Judy

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I'm very new at this, so maybe what I have to say won't carry much weight, but quite frankly, if you're "saving her butt" by helping her out, she should be glad you're making time for HER client. Afterall, is she going to give you credit when she turns the work into the client? I'm guessing you're ghost writing your part, in which case, she gets to impress the client and you stay silent... which alone should be worth more. You won't get the credit in the end, she will. And she, not you, will likely get the continued business from the client as well.

I ghosted a piece for someone recently and he paid me most of what he was paid. It was more important to him to keep the client and no lose face by going back and saying he couldn't meet his client's needs on this one item. Though I need credits myself, I won't get any for this piece. But at the same time, I was well compensated for my time. In the end, his client loved the work and he will likely get more work from him. Repeat business ... I know he still benefited, despite not coming out of this one project with much in the way of $s.

Freelance91 said:

My articles have been appearing on a multitude of other sites on the web, and obviously, my employer reaps the monetary reward. What do you think of this arrangement and is this typical when you write for a website?

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"Obviously" – well, maybe not. Other site owners may have copied the articles without your employer's knowledge. That happens a lot. You might want to tell him or her about the duplicates.

If you signed an "all rights" or "work made for hire" agreement, the employer can use your articles any way he or she wants, and you get no extra money. If that person is really your employer, "work made for hire" is assumed. If you're a freelancer, it isn't. It's in the interest of freelancers to get agreements that assign limited rights and specify additional compensation for additional uses of their work. Whether you can get such an agreement varies with the relative power of the two parties, how tight the budget is, and how fair-minded the site owner is, for example.

It's up to them, but you might feel better if your name was on the article if it's appropriate. People at newspapers get a byline, right? They might be a little touchy about it, but if you have a good relationship and can present it in the right way you might get it to fly. When I worked for a large corportion, and was writing software books, writers didn't get their names in the books, and I didn't really care.

I don't know the specifics of your situation to know if the above would be appropriate, but it may be something worth considering.

It's no different to any other job; being a writer doesn't make you special. Your job is worth what your employer is willing to pay.

If you don't like it, you have two options - decide what you consider to be a fair rate, and ask for it, or walk.