subject: What You Must Know Get Paid For Your Online Technical Writing [print this page] When starting out as a freelance writer, there are many aspects of the business which are crucial to your long-term success. Two major considerations we will look at today concern how magazines pay for your work and how they accept submissions. When you write articles, there are three methods which magazines use to pay for work, which are by word, by page and by assignment.
To elaborate, if you get an assignment for 500 words and the magazine pays 20 cents/word, you will earn $100.00. If the magazine pays $75.00/page and you write 2 pages, you will be paid $150.00. And for assignment, this is where the magazine offers a flat fee for the article and they will tell you how many words they want you to use.
The next major thing to learn about is when you will get paid. There are 3 options, on submission, on acceptance and on publication. On submission is simply that. When you submit the article you can also send in your invoice. In my opinion, this is the best way of being paid. On acceptance means that while your article has been received, there is likely to be some editing and other forms of clarification, first. Once that's out of the way, your article will be accepted and you can send in your invoice.
The last option, on publication is one I don't recommend, unless you have a great relationship with the publication or deep pockets. If the publication pays within a reasonable amount of time, that's great. If not, be prepared for a long wait. This is because the magazine will only use your work when they have a space in their editorial calendar. The reality is that you could be waiting for many months to get paid. In one case a magazine hadn't paid me for 9 months. Needless to say, I stopped writing for them.
Note: It's important to understand that even when a magazine accepts your work, you probably won't get paid right away. Many magazines have a 30 day payment policy. Some have a 60, 90 or even a 120 day payment policy in place. If this creates havoc with your cash flow, don't write for these publications.
