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Who Pays Writers?
- narshaven 7y agoIf you really think writers are not paid, then you're wrong homie
- dondawest 7y agoFor real. Who pays writers? Readers.
- k__ 7y agoI got paid by buyers of my book and a startup that pays me for blogging.
- Veen 7y agoFor me, it’s tech companies and executives who need (ghost-written) content but lack the inclination or ability to write their own stuff. You can make a decent living, but it’ll never make you rich.
- sbisson 7y agoYes. It helps to live somewhere with decent healthcare too.
- sbisson 7y agoAt the end of the day, yes. But we get our pay checks from the publishing companies that commission our words.
- notfromhere 7y agoAs a former writer, the only market with real cash to spend for writing is commercial b2b/b2c. Everything else is a pittance unless you're the next twilight that hits critical mass and sells off the movie rights. if you're writing for the creative thrill, b2b works a good way to kill the soul. creative writing basically has no real market, and even the best are going to be scrounging mid 5 figure incomes.
- unicornfinder 7y agoI think that's true of a lot of creative professions to be fair. Musicians don't have much of a market unless they're exceptional, same for artists. But there are ways to adapt your skills to be more valuable than they would be otherwise. That said, programming is, in my opinion very creative as well, and that clearly does have a market.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y agoWriting, music, and art are like other businesses. You have to actively find customers and a market fit that works for you, rather than putting something out there and hoping someone notices. There's much less information on how to make this happen than there is on on creating the work. And success can depend as much on chutzpah and on working out how to bypass the usual selection processes as on talent. Unlike software, they're extreme power law businesses. A handful of extremely successful people earn ridiculous money, a slightly larger number are comfortably professional, and an absolutely gigantic ocean of dabblers, wannabes, and part-timers earn little or nothing. You can a completely mediocre developer and do just fine. It's not easy, but it is possible. You can't be a completely mediocre creative. You have to stand out in multiple ways, through confidence and charisma, talent, originality, timeliness, presentation, and/or self-promotion. The ability to do that is - by definition - not mediocre.
- notfromhere 7y agoyou can be a mediocre developer and there's a decent job waiting for you making CRUD apps somewhere. You can be an amazing/well-above-average writer/singer/other creative and make absolutely no money doing it despite all your efforts. the irony is that everyone wants to consume art but also wants to pay no money for it.
- notfromhere 7y agoplumbing can be creative, but i wouldn't call it art.
- djtriptych 7y agoTV/Screenplay writers can make great money on a popular show/film. Other than that you're probably looking at startup exit odds of ever making 6 figures - maybe a 10% chance.
- kristiandupont 7y agoIt's a sort of bucket list item for me to write a Shouts & Murmurs. I would never expect to be paid for that, so I guess I am undermining the market? Obviously, as I have no professional writing or comedy experience I am very unlikely to ever be published which makes the point rather moot but I still wonder how the industry at large deals with this.
- sago 7y agoCreative writing has an oversupply and underdemand problem. Most novels are self published. Most don't even sell three figures. For short fiction, there are hundreds of literary magazines, and more appearing every day, but only a minority pay anything at all. In a niche such as poetry, the minority becomes vanishingly small. MFAs churn out tens of thousands of credible writers every year, plus all the retirees (hai), midlife crises, career breakers, redundancy moneys, job hunters, stay-at-home parents, etc. So by and large the industry doesn't deal with it. To a first order approximation, creative writing is a leisure pursuit.
- vinceguidry 7y agoAnyone looking to make money in creative writing should consider erotic literature. Erotic content on Patreon is a growing segment.
- dondawest 7y agoI thought Patreon specifically banned erotic content / porn?
- vinceguidry 7y agoThey're playing the game of trying to ban some of it but not all of it. For erotic literature specifically, they're trying to forbid certain genres. It's a weird cat and mouse game and I'm having trouble picking sides.
- 7y ago
- montenegrohugo 7y agoSite crashed for me.
- gureddio 7y ago404 BOOYAH This is also the 3rd time it's been submitted to HackerNews since 2016
- ben11kehoe 7y ago> ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE Sounds about right.
- fareesh 7y agoIs it a joke like nobody pays writers, or is the site actually down?
- dinkleberg 7y agoIt was up when I checked ~30 mins ago. It appears to be down now though.
- seapunk 7y agoIt seems to be down: https://web.archive.org/web/20190722133107/http://whopayswriters.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190722133107/http://whopayswri...
- stubish 7y agoIt's meta fictional.
- mooreds 7y agoHug of death. Though when I looked earlier this morning, I saw some sweet $0.03/word and $0.00/word "jobs" /s
- SimeVidas 7y agoIf they want to go that route, they can return HTTP status code 402 Payment Required.
- knodi123 7y agoAt the bottom, a link goes on to explain: > The Compensation Foundation is a public, online, platform for collecting, sharing, and analyzing how contingent workers (freelancers, contract workers, creative professionals, permalancers) are compensated. > Information clearinghouses empower workers to negotiate their compensation agreements and make more informed decisions about their careers. We hope that increased transparency will create competitive conditions for employers, as well as foster environments where standards and best-practices can emerge.
- kallemoen 7y agoHug of death
- overcast 7y agoWhat exactly are sites like these running on, that they can't handle MAYBE a few hundred simultaneous users? I don't get it.
- mooreds 7y agohttps://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://whopayswriters.com/ https://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://whopaysw...
- overcast 7y agoEven the cheapest droplet can handle that workload. I've spun up dozens of projects at that level, and few have gotten hugged without any adverse affects.
- rchaud 7y agoIt's worrying that it's on Digital Ocean and seemingly can't handle at best a few thousand connections. I know HN is a popular site, but I imagine that a good number of people coming across the link today skipped by it. I've got a $5 droplet on which my personal site is hosted. Is there any way to estimate what kind of load it can handle?
- mooreds 7y agoI've used jmeter to load test for cheap. You can spin up a VM and hammer a site pretty good.
- throwanem 7y agoThe problem isn't going to be that it's on DO; the problem is going to be that whatever they're using isn't proxied or optimized to handle the kind of load you get when you're on the HN front page.
- jnbiche 7y agoHas nothing to do with Digital Ocean, and everything to do with how the website is designed (which is often, but not always, a function of what framework was used). Stick a properly configured nginx or Varnish in front of whatever they're running, and we'd not be having this conversation.
- DoreenMichele 7y agoPrevious submission three years ago with meaty discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11688397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11688397
- GaryNumanVevo 7y agoThanks!
- metalrain 7y agoI would have expected sorting, like who pays the best rate. But I guess it's more like does this publisher pay in timely fashion or at all.
- petercooper 7y agoWho Pays Writers has been around many years and does a good job of sharing info. I wish there were more entries on it, though, especially in technical disciplines. BTW, if there's anyone here on HN who is genuinely good and can write about modern JavaScript, Ruby, Go, React, Postgres, or front-end development techniques, hit me up (see profile). We pay!
- sixhobbits 7y agoI put together a tech focused version here [0] but it's still pretty small. Can I add you to the list? Happy to share how much you pay and more details about application process? [0] https://github.com/sixhobbits/technical-writing/blob/master/write-for-us.md https://github.com/sixhobbits/technical-writing/blob/master/...
- kvee 7y agoWe're looking to work with a copywriter too at our company too. If you're genuinely good, please hit me up!
- your-nanny 7y agoSo, I've always wanted to write novels, and after some nice feedback on some vignettes, I've decided to give it a go. But, not quitting my day job as a programner. My wife is a visual artist: I know how that goes. The realities of the market are sobering if you think this is gonna be a lucrative side gig. But I like how writing creative fiction makes me feel; it'll save me mental health bills I guess.
- Merrill 7y agoLawyers probably get paid the most for writing.
- sjf 7y agoThey are not exactly getting paid for writing, they are getting paid for their domain knowledge and certification. In the same way you could say devs get really well compensated for typing.
- Merrill 7y agoI'd think that most writers who get paid are writing about some domain knowledge. This would seem to be true of fiction writers, even if the domain is an understanding of human relationships, insights about sex or ambition, etc. Otherwise the pay is likely to be very poor.
- DoreenMichele 7y agoA lot of their writing gets done by people making less than them, like legal aids. I've written content for lawyer's websites for not much money. I also wrote legal notices as part of my corporate job. I started at like $9/hr and was make $12-something/he when I left. Some letters got reviewed by the legal department and approved by my boss, but I wrote them (using a form letter to get me started, then fill in the specifics).
- wpw101 7y agoHi! This is the admin of Who Pays Writers. It appears that our site was down for a bit due to high traffic but it seems to be working right now. Please be aware that this is a small website run by 1-2 unpaid volunteers. While we love spreading the word about these issues, we also feel the need to remind folks that Who Pays lists rates for journalism only. We don't list rates for sponsored content, content farms, legal, or technical writing. Thanks for reading and sharing. -WPW
- issa 7y agoI love this site! My company started because paying freelancers was such a headache...it is a pain point close to my heart. https://outvoice.com https://outvoice.com
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- stubish 7y agoThanks for the work! It is appreciated. Writing is an industry I've been peripherally involved in for decades and certainly needs the visibility. And poorly funded at the coal face, so we need volunteer efforts; nobody is going to fund an impartial professional effort.
- cm2012 7y agoHere's also the top earning writers on Patreon: https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators/writing https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators/writing I give $30 a month to number 10 Wildbow because I greatly look forward to his stuff.
- digitalsushi 7y agoWhen these posts on the site say 'cold pitch', what does that mean? Contextually I am picturing someone literally writing up a contact off the publisher website, saying 'Hey would you pay me to write this?' and they get back a 'yup, send it in and we'll pay you something'. I have no awareness of this but I am fascinated by it.