There's been discussion on freelance journalist pay recently after Nate Thayler published a blogpost titled A Day in the Life of a Freelance Journalist—2013. The whole business is in trouble, or as Alexis C Madrigal pointed out Man, I feel everyone on how scary it is to be in journalism

The same questions on compensation were in the air when I participated a National Union of Journalists meeting in London last month. A paper was circulated among the crowd and freelancers would anonymously write how much they made per story, how many characters the story contained, which publisher the piece was written for and how happy they were with the experience. Someone mentioned that he had doubled the pay for a story by just sticking with his standard rate.

In a job that involves passion, freelancers often end up getting paid poorly. I myself have done some work as stand-up comedian and I have heard enough excuses for not getting paid. There's definitely need showing the value of the work and one way of doing that is anonymous transparency.

Being able to see how much other writers are making is one of the features we have in mind with Writer Profile that we are working on and so far the reception has been good. Let me know what you think of that or what else you would like to see included. Tweet me or send email  for further discussion