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Topic: Trades, journalism's secret gold mine ... or not?
| Author | Message |
| joyeuxnoelle | Posted – 4/4/2008 4:39:00 PM | show profile When I first started posting on this board, it seems everyone used to talk about how everyone ignore trades for consumer pubs and how there's money to be made there, ut every time I pitch a trade I get offered peanuts. Like 2500 words for 275 dollars. Are they just low balling me or can they just not afford to pay standard rates? |
| jcpatterson | Posted – 4/4/2008 4:55:03 PM | show profile That seems awfully low to me, but remember that the "goldmine" in the trades is figured on hourly rate, not on raw number on the check. So, you are looking for the 1200 word piece that pays $300, but which you can complete in 3-4 hours (because it requires fewer sources, the editor has done some legwork getting sources, and/or there aren't multiple rounds of revisions). That means you are making $75-$100 an hour. Of course, you have to do these kinds of pieces in volume, but they are a really nice addition to your income stream. |
| WordyBird | Posted – 4/4/2008 7:10:53 PM | show profile It depends on the publication. At the risk of outing myself, some trades pay better than others, and they pay by word. I've seen as low as 10 cents a word and as high as $1 a word. Think of what what trade the publication is serving, too. If the members of the profession have high salaries or education, their publications may pay higher rates. For example, if it's medical, they might pay more. If it's a trade for folks in a lower paying field, that's when you're more likely to get the lower rates. I had one trade offer me 20 cents a word, but it was for a profession typically thought of as administrative, and entry level at that. |
| dribbledrive1 | Posted – 4/4/2008 10:20:09 PM | show profile Like consumer magazines, the pay for trades is highly variable. Many are low paying, But I write for trades that cover insurance, human resources, marketing, and law that all pay a buck a word. So there are decent paying trades out there; you have to look to find them. |
| chucho | Posted – 4/5/2008 10:06:32 AM | show profile It depends, but it seems that for the amount of work involves it prays petty well. One of Crain's trade pubs used to pay (this was a while ago, and thing might be different now) $35 per column inch (which was about 80 cents to a dollar per word) and paid $50-per if you provided any visual content (photos, graphs, etc.). And they take just about any kind of information for whatever sector they cover. That isn't bad because I remember being able to get $100 to $150 for like two-three hours of work. And sometimes you can get like $75 for 20 minutes of labor. Contributing to these publications is not extremely hard work. Chamber of Commerce pubs are variable, but it seems to me they tend to pay about the same as smaller consumer mags (they have less per-issue content and the budget is not tied to circulation or ad revenue) and, again, they aren't looking for extremely in-depth investigative writing. They know they get what they pay for. What I don't like about this is: it's a niche called "advocacy journalism". And if you are a committed journalist, or have a desire to become a staff member of a publication that does journalism proper, it's hard to get in if all of your experience and clips are from advocacy publications. Freelancers usually have to work to some degree with advocacy pubs, but unless you want to live in that niche, I would advise anyone to have a balance of advocacy and non-advocacy clips in your portfolio. This is less of an issue for freelancers. Everyone knows that freelancers write for essentially anyone that pays. But if you build a career around advocacy publications, it can be hard to get out of it, such as making a jump later to being a staff writer for a non-advocacy publication, likea major daily newspaper or something. (But that too has some exceptions, especially in financial writing that might want a highly specialized writer for on particular industry.) I stopped writing for advocacy publications after I met some lifetime advocacy journalists at Crain's. They were nice and all, but their entire professional lives revolved around cars, or plastics, or metals, or whatever niche they found. It scared the hell out of me that I would end up covering one little "world" for the sole purpose of helping me pay rent and helping businesses in that sector make money -- and spent ever Christmas office party discussing the pros and cons of brown plastic beer bottles, or the best industrial refrigerants. |
| snappiness | Posted – 4/6/2008 11:21:03 AM | show profile I quit writing for the trades a long time ago. Like you, I kept hearing how there was gold in them thar hills, but I never found the trades could match what consumer pubs pay. Now, custom publishing is another matter, but not the trades. |
| joyeuxnoelle | Posted – 4/6/2008 1:11:30 PM | show profile Custom Publishing? |
| snappiness | Posted – 4/6/2008 6:10:21 PM | show profile custom publishing Yeah, most (all?) of the big mag houses and some independent companies do custom publishing -- an example are the mags that American Express or MBNA sends to its high-end cardholders. Controlled circulation stuff. The pay is comparable to mainstream mag pay and you can find ones that are straight-ahead journalism (not client-driven puff pieces). I don't do a lot of it, but I have some steady clients and I have a couple of friends who support families with their custom pub work. |
| westsidestory | Posted – 4/7/2008 5:30:25 PM | show profile As mentioned, trade pay varies. The greatest benefit of trades is that they often turn into regular gigs. If editors like you they may contract for a series of articles, or put you on as a "contributing editor." Monthly and weekly columns often start in the $200-and-up range, but are worth in that readers get to recognize your name, and the pay is steady, once you get into the accounts cycle. Trades are also the secret gold mine...for contacts. If there is a particular topic area you want to do journalism in, it is far often easier to get an story source when you are calling from a trade publication the source sees on his/her desk/email each morning. A trade writer can, in a few months, get the direct extensions or personal emails of high-placed individuals in a particular field, and establish relationships that pay off when writing for related consumer publications. |
| dribbledrive1 | Posted – 4/8/2008 3:09:47 AM | show profile Dang, these days it's pretty easy to get direct extensions and emails of anyone. --Trades are also the secret gold mine...for contacts. If there is a particular topic area you want to do journalism in, it is far often easier to get an story source when you are calling from a trade publication the source sees on his/her desk/email each morning. A trade writer can, in a few months, get the direct extensions or personal emails of high-placed individuals in a particular field, and establish relationships that pay off when writing for related consumer publications. -- |
| writesonwater | Posted – 4/8/2008 9:19:49 AM | show profile I keep basically two trades and a regional mag in my stable of clients. They all pay 40 cents a word. Could be better, could be worse, but their editors are NICE to deal with, they give me ample turnaround. One of the keys for me is minimum. I'd rather write 2,500 words for $275 with just a couple sources than do 4 articles for $75 a peice where each diverse article had at least 2 sources. One topic, one sitting -- I can research long and write long. I usually have too much notes and quotes anyway. |
| caitlinkelly | Posted – 4/8/2008 10:22:01 AM | show profile westsidestory makes a good point about the high-level contacts you can make writing for trades...I've interviewed CEOs and CFOs when working for trades who would otherwise have been inaccessible. The fact you've written for a trade in their industry shows you have some decent understanding of their business. dribbledrive, get serious...you don't chat up C-suite execs without weeks of PR hacks running interference and vetting your credentials. |
| WordyBird | Posted – 4/8/2008 2:36:52 PM | show profile "Trades are also the secret gold mine...for contacts. If there is a particular topic area you want to do journalism in, it is far often easier to get an story source when you are calling from a trade publication the source sees on his/her desk/email each morning. A trade writer can, in a few months, get the direct extensions or personal emails of high-placed individuals in a particular field, and establish relationships that pay off when writing for related consumer publications. " While Dribble has a point--it's fairly easy to get at least direct e-mails--it's not always easy to get a response. With trades, however, the muckety-mucks might be more inclined to call you back not only because it's already inferred that you know something about what they do, but also because they want to be recognized among their peers and among the kahunas with the money for research funding who also read the publication. This is especially true with medical and scientific trades, I've found. |
| dribbledrive1 | Posted – 4/8/2008 3:02:43 PM | show profile I am not sure what you are saying. Are you saying that a CEO will speak to you if you have an assignment for a trade magazine but he won't if you have an assignment from a general business magazine? I don't find that the amount of PR interference is less if I am writing for a trade. --westsidestory makes a good point about the high-level contacts you can make writing for trades...I've interviewed CEOs and CFOs when working for trades who would otherwise have been inaccessible. The fact you've written for a trade in their industry shows you have some decent understanding of their business. dribbledrive, get serious...you don't chat up C-suite execs without weeks of PR hacks running interference and vetting your credentials.-- |
| snappiness | Posted – 4/8/2008 3:09:10 PM | show profile "get serious...you don't chat up C-suite execs without weeks of PR hacks running interference and vetting your credentials." I do, but I'm a business writer. I guess that functions as the grandaddy of all trade publications! |
| dribbledrive1 | Posted – 4/8/2008 3:36:59 PM | show profile I think maybe I understand what the person is saying. I think he means either (A) "If I call a C-level executive as a reporter from a trade magazine rather than another type of publication. he is more likely to take the call directly, rather than route it through P.R. I haven't found that to be the case. (B) Since I talk to the executives more frequently, they are more likely to take my calls themselves. That's true. But that's more of a function of being on a beat, rather than writing for a trade. As far as the weeks of vettting, that isn't necessarily true. A lot depends on the quality of the publication. If you call up IBM and say you want to speak to the CEO for a Fortune 500 cover story that will make the company look good, the CEO's schedule will immediately open up. If it's a lesser publication, and a story they don't care about, it will take longer. I've written for maybe a hundred trades, and I've never found that to be an open seasame. Doing a piece for the NY Times or Wall Street Journal gets action much faster, I can tell you. --"get serious...you don't chat up C-suite execs without weeks of PR hacks running interference and vetting your credentials." I do, but I'm a business writer. I guess that functions as the grandaddy of all trade publications!-- |
| xxxxx | Posted – 4/8/2008 4:30:56 PM | show profile spin-offs I write for trades where I think the spin-of potential is high, i.e., Variety is a trade magazine, and writing for Variety might alert you to something coming up in entertainment that you can then write about for Vanity Fair, or Entertainment Weekly, or whatever. (This isn't an actual example, but use your imagination.) So that means I look for trades covering subjects that lend themselves to consumer publications--restaurants, movies, books, travel, etc. The trade pay is decent, trade editors usually hand over a list of industry people they want included, and the spin-off pay is basically free money, as I've already done the research. I can't tell you how often I've opened up a consumer magazine and seen a trade article of mine rewritten this way with the same sources re-interviewed to say the same things, maybe in a slightly sexier way. A lot of journalists get their ideas from the trades on their subjects--why not work both sides yourself? |
| dribbledrive1 | Posted – 4/8/2008 7:54:26 PM | show profile That's fine. However, I wouldn't write for a low-paying trade based on the assumption that you'll spin the stuff off to higher paying consumer magazines. That's hit and miss, and you still have to do the work of marketing the material. --spin-offs I write for trades where I think the spin-of potential is high, i.e., Variety is a trade magazine, and writing for Variety might alert you to something coming up in entertainment that you can then write about for Vanity Fair, or Entertainment Weekly, or whatever. (This isn't an actual example, but use your imagination.) So that means I look for trades covering subjects that lend themselves to consumer publications--restaurants, movies, books, travel, etc. The trade pay is decent, trade editors usually hand over a list of industry people they want included, and the spin-off pay is basically free money, as I've already done the research. I can't tell you how often I've opened up a consumer magazine and seen a trade article of mine rewritten this way with the same sources re-interviewed to say the same things, maybe in a slightly sexier way. A lot of journalists get their ideas from the trades on their subjects--why not work both sides yourself?-- |
