A few weeks ago, as I was reading the My Career section of the Sydney Morning Herald (as one is wont to do when one is self-employed), I stumbled across their "Hot Salaries" section, which basically consists of an industry, a few positions in the industry and how much you can expect to receive for those roles. This one was reviewing salaries in the media industry. I was gobsmacked at the amount they were touting, something in the stratosphere of $70-80K+ pa. I understand that editors and deputies and senior subs might get that much but the average journalist certainly DOES NOT.
Anecdotally and personally, the average salary tends to hover around the $40-50K pa mark if you've managed to make it to Grade 3. You'd be lucky to get more. When I left the company-that-shall-not-be-named, I was pulling in a meagre $33k pa and that was after I saw my MEAA (Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, my union) rep about the award and demanded a pay rise from my ed-in-chief. I didn't think I was going to get much more as a freelancer but I thought I'd get rid of most of the 60% of the bad bits of my job. Which I have, so that's a plus.
Anyway, my new 'bad bit' as a freelancer is getting invoices paid. Not just getting them paid on time, which is a struggle at the best of times, but just getting paid at all. For example, two stories that I did in May last year, including one that involved a trip to Melbourne, still haven't been paid. Yep, that's 10-11 months worth of evasion and "sorry, we've misplaced it"-type excuses. It's also over $2K worth of invoices, which in the old scale is about a month's worth of salary after tax. These days it's about 3 months' worth of salary as I'm currently being frugal (see buying ban in previous post).
So here's the clincher. I go onto the MEAA website to seek some advice about how to recover my money from these thieving mags and I encounter the 2005/06 Freelance Rates document. Now, I read this before I went into freelancing but haven't glanced at it since. Today I took a look and almost fainted. In short, I'm supposed to be earning a minimum of $770 per commission and a rate of 77c/word for every word upwards of 1000 words.
If there ever was a case for WISHFUL THINKING, I think the MEAA has all the evidence here. Any freelancer could tell you that 77c/word is the exception rather than the rule. And forget trying to get $770 for a commission under 1000 words. Unless you specialise in a particular topic, and your expertise is crucial to the story, you're not getting very much more than 60c/word. The lowest word rate I've encountered is 15c/word for The Big Issue ($15 per 100 words), which is understandable as they have very little advertising and are a not-for-profit publication, and Wellbeing magazine ($150 per 1000 words), which is not so understandable. Then there's YEN at 30c/word, Dynamic Business at 45c/word and Australian Traveller at 50c/word (all niche publications) and then Vive, body+soul (and I assume other NewsLtd supplements) at 60c/word.
For my level of expertise, I think 60c/word is as high as I'm going to go. Despite the freelance rate card, I'm happy with 60c/word. Especially for chunky, 1000+ word articles. But then there's the thing about any commission over $450/month being able to get you superannuation...
Geez. As long as I'm getting paid. Which brings me back to unpaid invoices. Grr!
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