Self-hosted WordPress.

The reason I ask is because your design seems different then most blogs and I’m
looking for something unique. P.S My apologies for getting
off-topic but I had to ask!

Anyone can bill themselves as a professional freelancer — there are no credentials, no standardized qualifications, and no real way of sizing up the abilities or knowledge of someone who claims to be an expert on their subject. People who are actually not professional writers and who want to be — or want to call themselves professional — see these opportunities and jump on them, thinking they will be the next great American writer to be discovered. The fact is, they won’t; at least not by writing for some fly-by-night website run by someone who is just looking to make money without actually doing a lot of work. If their work isn’t buried amongst the hundreds of thousands of similar articles on any given subject, it will more than likely stagnate due to a lack of support. Very few of these sites offer any sort of editorial support or critique so a person who writes crap is probably going to continue to write crap without anyone telling her or him that it’s crap.

I spent 12 years as a professional journalist and another eight years as a freelancer who was published on a fairly regular basis. I still write occasionally, but not as much as I used to because of the reduced market in jobs that actually pay what the job is worth. As you said, if I don’t want to write for $20 for 750 words, don’t do it. I don’t do it.

I don’t because I realize something these aspiring writers who do write for that price don’t realize: the actual writing of an article is only a small percentage of the work you do. A 3,000 word feature — for which I would be paid between $375-$450 — I would write for a print magazine would take me anywhere from one-to-two hours to actually type, proof and edit. Maybe a little more. On that basis, a paycheck of $20 looks acceptable — $10 per hour, at least.

But when you take into consideration that before I ever sat down at the keyboard, I would put in anywhere from 60-150 hours research (depending on the complexity of the subject) even that $450 would shrink to about $3.00 per hour. These hopefuls — if they actually do due diligence, or even know how to do it — research is a hell of a lot more than looking at a Wikipedia page — are actually working for about six cents per hour. One trip to the library will put them in negative figures.

I am a professional, as many who read this blog are. No one would expect an electrician or a plumber or a doctor or attorney to work for less than professional wages, so why should we? The skills needed to be a good writer — and a good journalist — are just a specialized and just a important as any other, so why should we settle for peanuts?

But the fact remains that the Internet is changing the shape of writing for a living. Many print magazines — those that are left these days — are getting the idea that they can pay cut rates as well by offering the same lame promise of exposure. What good is exposure if you’re not going to realize a reasonable return on it.

We need to find and support writer’s guilds that are going to assure the quality of the craft and those who profess to be good at it, and that will work to assure a reasonable pay for their members.

Let the wannabes work fall for the scams. But those of us who are actually professionals need to resist that “temptation” and insist on being paid a reasonable amount for high-quality work. There will be markets that will want the kind of quality we have to offer and who will pay for it. But we need to have an advocate who will help us fight for it.

I’ve got no problem getting what I feel is great dollars for articles of about 400 – 500 words in length.

Is it just the niches I occupy?

Agreed Eric. Complete and honest communication on both sides is necessary.

And as a side note, people need to be sure that if they’re promised a link to their website as part of a deal, that it’s a DoFollow link.

What I don’t like is when someone says one thing and does another. Usually, even a gratis guest column has strings, or at least some reward for the writer. All parties need to be up-front about this. As long as expectations are communicated and met, no problemo.