Victoria Groves is an instructor at mb who will be dropping some knowledge on fee negotiation in Boston in a few weeks. She's sharing some of her tips with you today, so if you want to learn more, sign up!

Whether you write on the side for a little extra cash,or write to put food on your table, you must:

1. Know what your writing is worth
2. Demand this from your editors
3. Ensure that the terms of your agreements are always
met in full

While most editors respect writers, some may try to lowball you, or haggle with you over your fee, and this is to be expected. But ultimately, they know that\ it is our content that brings readers back for more and puts money in their (and their advertisers)
pockets.

Typically, publications calculate their freelance payments in one of two ways:

- Per word. Rates can range from a cent a word to over $1.25 a word at some well-known publications. In almost all cases, this rate will be calculated after the editor (or copy editor) edits your article. So, if your rate is .10/word and you turn in a 1,000-word article, you may expect payment of $100. But if that article got edited down to 800 words for clarity, space, etc., you might only see a check for $80.

- Flat fee. A publication may decide that since all of their feature stories range between 1,200-1,500 words, that they will pay $650 (or in some cases, a range like $650-800) per feature story. If there is a range, you'll of course want to convince the editor that you deserve the higher end even though it's often reserved for writers who have already contributed multiple articles to the publication. We'll talk more about this kind of negotiation later in the course.

Remember, you should be negotiating no matter what. Always ask for more for two reasons:

1. You might get it

2. It will give you practice in negotiation

Even if you only increase your compensation by .02/word, for a 1,000 word story, that extra $20 could pay your Internet bill for a month.