Cherie Burbach posted an interesting article over at Working Writers today in which she discussed whether to take “low paying” work.  For anyone who is interested in freelancing, I’d recommend having a read of this.  I’d also like to expand on the ideas she raised myself.

I’m all for getting the most return out of your work, whatever that work may be.  Each and every one of us has bills to pay, and we deserve to be able to pay them if we’re producing something other people want; be it building industrial grade filters in a factory (one of my summer jobs before I went to university), analysing tax returns or writing the next summer blockbuster.  If you do something others value, you deserve to get paid. No exceptions.

But how much should you be paid?  Well, that sometimes comes down to what you can negotiate, and sometimes to what the other side will pay you.  As a freelancer, we don’t often have the benefit of rocking up to a job and being told “everyone else gets X per hour, so that’s what we’ll start you on.  Turn up at 9 tomorrow for your induction”.  We usually have to either take a job on the amount being advertised, or negotiate ourselves.  In both cases, you need to know two things before you can tell whether the job is worth your time:

1. How much you need to earn per hour in order to pay your bills; and
2. How long the project is going to take you.

I’ve explained the process of determining how much you need to earn per hour in this article for Suite101 on setting attainable goals.  In essence, you need to know what your monthly bills are, so you can break that down into daily amounts. Then you adjust for how many hours per day you can work, and go from there.

Now you know what you need to earn, you can compare it with the rate you’ll get for the project, if the project has an advertised rate.  If it doesn’t, you know how low you can go in negotiations.  I’d advise starting higher than your lowest rate when negotiating because it’s easier to come down than go up.

As a rule of thumb however: don’t settle for less than you need to pay the bills.  If you need to earn $15 an hour (or whatever), get $15 an hour or move on.  There are others who can survive on less, so let them take the jobs that are low-paying.  Always remember that you’re worth what you need to survive, and probably more on top of that.