In the UK and elsewhere, the price of everything has rocketed - especially food and energy. The latter particularly impacts freelancers, who mostly work from home.
The difficulty for freelance feature writers is that, with few exceptions, it’s the client who sets the fee for a piece of work.
While other small businesses can increase their rates if they feel they need to, journalists can’t. An editor will tell YOU what they will pay, rather than you saying what you will sell your work for.
So what can you do? It seems to me you can either get more work in (and work longer hours) or start working for publications that pay more. As a general rule, the bigger the circulation of a publication, the higher the rate they will pay.
Local titles pay notoriously badly, so if at all possible, pitch to national ones. If you have an idea for a local story, can you adapt it to make it appeal more broadly?
So you could see this as an opportunity to move up a level – it could really kick-start your freelance career.
We accept, however, that this isn’t always possible, and we know there will be times when you are just offered a very low fee regardless of where you are pitching.
So what can you do if you’re offered a very low rate?
Option one is to do the work – as quickly as you can. Work out how many hours you think it should reasonably take, given the fee. Don’t overdo the research or conduct more interviews than you need to. We’re not saying skimp on effort – but don’t put in more hours than you need to. Be ruthlessly efficient with your time.
Option two – ask for more money! There are ways of doing this, and I suggest being ultra-polite and reasonable.
You could email pointing out that you estimate it will take you, say, two days and given that, is there any way they can increase the fee? It would help if you could explain why it would take so long (perhaps you need to conduct four interviews, for instance).
The worst thing they can say is no. They may (may!) offer you a little more. It's also possible that they may make a change, such as dropping a sidebar that would take a couple of hours to research and write.
We appreciate this is difficult, and you are more likely to succeed with a publication you have worked for before.
