payments ncluded
and subscribers to make one-off payments. “The money that kind readers added to it paid for my food for a couple of weeks, so I do know how valuable readers who are prepared to tip their favourite writers can be and I’m fully in favour of writers setting up their own Ko-Fis,” said Jones. “I truly believe a job – any job – should pay enough so that the person doing it doesn’t have to rely on what is essentially the generosity of strangers in order to earn a living wage, and I worry that publications could use ‘Oh, but you can earn tips from this’ as an excuse to not pay writers properly, if at all. We need to figure out how to make digital publishing work.” One person trying to figure this out is Anna Codrea-Rado. Laid off from Vice in 2017, she has since set up a campaign to push editors to pay freelances on time. She also founded FJ&Co, a business that teaches writers how to be successful freelancers. “For the majority of freelances and younger people coming
in now, it’s really hard to make it work financially just through journalism,” she said. “Particularly for online publications, the rates are just not high enough.” Codrea-Rado recently conducted a poll on Twitter, asking
followers how many features they could write a week. She applied the average rate of pay, and found this would bring in £20,000 a year – not far from the living wage in London. “It’s smart business sense to have multiple income streams,
no matter what business you’re in,” said Codrea-Rado. Some journalists make newsletter writing a full-time career. Sian Meades’ first newsletter, called the Friday Wish List,
featured seven to 10 products she had seen that week. The affiliate marketing revenues paid for half of her university fees. It led to her to co-found the Domestic Sluttery newsletter, which won a PPA award in December. She also launched a weekly newsletter called Freelance Writing Jobs, which had hundreds of subscribers before it went live. “What we worry about is writing a really great newsletter,” she said. “That has changed how much I use social media and what we’re chasing – it’s not about hits and traffic each day.” Meades’ advice for budding entrepreneur hacks is to be
clear in your intentions from the start and not to be ashamed of seeking compensation – if it’s done well. “Knowing what you want from your newsletter is a good
start,” she said. “It could get big and become something amazing, but that is hard. The average TinyLetter [newsletter distributor] readership is a few hundred.” She added: “If it comes from a good place, selling isn’t bad.
It’s making money from your work. We’ve glamorised working for free. We’ve been told money shouldn’t be your first aim. It doesn’t mean we should be fuelled by money, but we should want financial gain for our work. When you start seeing your time as money, that’s when you will start to value your time.”
theJournalist | 17
MOVIESTORE COLLECTION LTD / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
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