Amy asks: A job opportunity I encountered asked my rate for articles. How would you suggest is the best way to determine rates I should charge per word for articles? I hate to charge too much and not get a chance at the assignment. How do I know what the magazine wants to pay?

This question is actually a compilation of several e-mails I’ve gotten this week as I get this question all the time. My response: First, I hate when potential clients and employers ask for your rates, because they’re basically asking you to guess what they’re willing to pay. Why can’t they just say, “We pay 25 cents per word” and let qualified, interested writers respond? I’ll tell you why — because they’re hoping that they’ll get a frenzy of writers offering 1,000-word articles at a fraction of a penny per word, because they’re worried about being underbid by everyone else.

For pricing, the thing is that you have to figure out what would be worth it for youto do an assignment — you can’t guess at what the magazine can/will pay. Otherwise you’ll end up writing for less than you would like and feeling resentful, and not able to pay your bills as well. But I always do keep in mind that the smaller the magazine, typically the less they pay. So I may offer a small magazine my 50 cents/word minimum rate, but I’ll ask for more from a bigger magazine.

You also need to figure out your minimum rate for writing work — and stick with it. You can turn to Writers Market, which offers a list of average rates for different types of writing, as a starting point. But you also need to determine how much you need to earn per hour to actually, you know, make a living — keeping in mind that not every hour you work will be billable. For me, a minimum of 50 cents per word usually works out — and I earn up to $2.50 per word for the higher-end (read “higher PITA”) magazines — because I’m a fast writer and at those rates I can make $250 per hour and even more.

I realize it’s a crap shoot, and we hate the idea of charging too little and being ripped off, or asking for too much and not being considered for the job. But really, you’re writing to make a living. You can’t spend all your time trying to underbid everyone else while still not screwing yourself out of decent pay. All you can do is set the rates that will let you earn the income you need, give out that rate when someone asks, and let the chips fall where they may. If that client can’t afford you, don’t worry — there are plenty out there who can, and you can spend your time working to get those clients. [lf]

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Kim asks: My question has to do with the state of the magazine market now compared with a few years ago. I heard there are fewer magazines: are they hiring fewer freelancers? And with everyone and their grandmothers attempting/pretending to be writers due to lack of jobs with the economy, how do we deal with everyone paying freelancers less now because these people are flooding the market?

Let me address your concerns one at a time.

The Bad News: Magazines are folding.

The Good News: There are plenty more where those came from.

When writers bemoan the state of the magazine industry, they seem to be considering mostly newsstand magazines. But there are literally hundreds, even thousands, of paying markets that are not on the newsstands: Trade magazines, custom publications, alumni magazines, association magazines, and more. I make my living writing mostly for custom pubs and trades these days, for reasons I explained in this post.

Throughout my career, I’ve lost many clients due to magazines going belly-up. But every time I’ve lost a client, I’ve been able to find another one to replace it.

Finally, as Jennifer Lawler talks about in this guest post, we writers always do better if we diversify. I’m sure there aren’t many writers out there who make 100% of their income from magazine writing and are able to pay their bills that way. Most of my income comes from magazines (and websites), but I top off my bank account with copywriting, writing books, teaching e-courses, and even doing copyediting for one client. If you don’t rely solely on magazines for your income, the state of the magazine industry won’t impact you as much.

The Bad News: Many markets pay ridiculous rates like $4 per article.

The Good News: That doesn’t affect professional writers.

As I said in this post, “Markets that pay $1, $2, and more per word are not going to start offering $4 per article ‘just because they can,’ because they can see from these content mills the kind of quality that payrate buys. It’s like saying that McDonald’s grill-jockeys are depressing the rates for master chefs.” There are plenty of markets out there that pay decent rates, but many writers are too lazy or too inexperienced to find them and work to break into them. And some writers just prefer the easy way out of writing $4 articles that they can find as easily as clicking on Craigslist. For the rest of us, there are lots of good markets to go around.

The Bad News: Thanks to the Internet, everyone and their brother finds it easy to deluge markets with pitches.

The Good News: When editors find a professional, skilled writer, they usually stick with her.

It’s more difficult to break in these days than it was when I started 14 years ago, and I believe it’s because the Internet makes it so easy for any wannabe writer to fire off dozens of crappy pitches — which makes it harder for professional, skilled writers to stand out.

But truly great pitches do stand out, and once you do get in the door and wow an editor with your writing and professionalism, she’s likely to stick with you. An editor would rather stay with a tried-and-true great writer than risk her job by taking a chance on someone who may not come through (which is probably 90% of the writers out there, according to one newsstand magazine editor I talked with). This works against you when you’re pitching, but for you once you break in. (And if you’re good, you will break in.)

Now, I have had the experience of an editor who previously loved me suddenly not returning my e-mails — but that’s the rare exception. In general, I have a core group of clients I write for over and over again.

So that’s my take. Now, don’t accuse me of having my head in the sand. I know these are tumultuous times for writers, and I understand that the industry as we know it may not exist several years from now. That’s why I love this blog post from Carol Tice over at the Make a Living Writing blog, where she insists that “There has never, ever been a better time to be a writer.” She has a great attitude that I think we can all learn from. [lf]

Stacy asks: What should I blog about? I’ve thought about having a blog about my freelance journey, but I’m afraid it may be boring. Plus, I find it hard to write about myself. I’ve also thought about having a blog about short story writing, which I also pursue, but I haven’t had anything published and am far from it. But I’m afraid that editors and businesses won’t be interested in reading anything about that.

My initial reaction is that if there’s nothing right now that stands out to you as a good topic, and nothing you feel passionate enough about to blog about, why not hold off on the blog? It’s not like it’s imperative to have one. You could always just have your bio, portfolio, etc. on your website until you feel ready to blog.

Don’t get me wrong — I think having a blog is a great way to show prospective clients and editors what you can do, and I recently landed a client who saw my blog listed in the Top 10 Blogs for Writers contest. And having changing content on your site (in other words, a blog) will help you in search engine rankings.

But blogging is a huge commitment…I post two to three times a week every week, and have done so for the past five years. That’s over 600 posts on one subject! You don’t necessarily need to post so much, but you do need to post consistently. If you’re not passionate about what you’re writing about, it’s hard to stay consistent over the long haul, and nothing is worse than a stagnant blog that hasn’t been updated in months. You also need to publicize your blog to attract readers and links — incoming links are another way to boost search engine rankings — and it’s easy to fizzle out on that if you’re not committed to and motivated by your blog and your topic.

I’m not recommending that you forgo blogging for good — just until you hit upon a topic that you know you’d love to write about regularly.

I hope that helps! [lf]

Kelly asks: I have always been a bit leery about mentioning names of experts in a query and am not sure of the best way to go about actually approaching one. Specifically, do you mention in a query that you will have an expert before you actually get the expert to agree to an interview? Or, do you get the expert to agree to an interview first before submitting your query. This has never been made clear to me so I hope you can help clarify the process for me.

I always get the experts to agree first, and I usually do an interview or two so I have quotes for the query as well. You especially need to get buy-in first if it’s a key source who may be hard to nail down for an interview. Nothing stinks more than to pitch an article trumpeting that you’ll interview some celebrity doctor (or whatever) and then when you get the assignment, the source is not interested and you have to tell your editor.

If your sources are somewhat interchangeable, though, and you don’t want to hunt down or interview experts for the query stage, you could always say, “I’ll interview experts like X, Y, and Z to tell your readers…” That’s not the way I do it, but I know other writers who do. [lf]

Alyssa asks: What if the magazine you’re querying asks for clips specific to that niche, and you’ve only written for other types of publications? For example, you’re trying to pitch a love and relationship piece and you’ve written mostly about news and politics? I know that not all publications ask for clips specific to their niche, but I have come across it… and am wondering whether I’m supposed to just write something on my blog on that topic and use that coupled with something else published? Or could I just use an older clip and explain that I have not yet written about X topic but am experienced in Y and read the magazine religiously?

Good question! I’m a big fan of shooting high and using what you have, instead of holding off on a pitch until you have the exact “right” clips. So if you want to write a relationship story and all your clips are politics-related, I would wow the editor with a stellar pitch that shows you know the market and then send a few of my best politics-related samples. Clips show more than that you can write on a certain topic — they show that you know how to write for publication, period. So even if your clips are not relevant to the topic you’re pitching, paired with a great query they do have impact.

I hope that helps! [lf]