Reality check: the importance of a stable income
Freelancing can be (and often is) financial hell, don't just quit your job and make sure you plan ahead!
So… it’s been a little while — almost two years, to be precise.
Welcome back to The Freelance Fraud, the newsletter where I write about my personal and professional struggles as a freelance writer and journalist with actual, practical advice. Subscribe if you haven’t already! It’s free.
Let me catch you up. Since the last newsletter arrived in your inbox, I have worked full-time as an editor while freelancing (pretty much full-time). It nearly killed me. I burned out so badly and developed a weird chronic fatigue thing (dozens of blood tests later, doctors don’t know what it is). On top of object impermanence, this meant that I had to give up newsletter writing for a while and focus on finding a balance and building back my health.
Since May this year, I’ve been back to freelancing. I work part-time (one day a week) at gal-dem magazine still as a climate editor and spend the rest of my free time working enough to break even financially. If I secure more work than I intended, I tend to work less the next month. My fatigue (and some reading up on labour rights) has totally changed my approach to work. I no longer aspire to be a freelancing “girlboss” (puke), even ironically. I am always girlresting and girlsleeping.
But also, spending a few more years in this industry has opened my eyes. In my previous newsletters, I naively implied that full-time freelancing is a piece of cake if you learn all the rules of the road. Pfffft, in this economy? Absolutely not. And this is what this week’s newsletter is about — having a financial reality check and the importance of a stable income for your sanity and the quality of your freelance work.
P.S. I apologise if I glamorised or romanticised freelancing as a writer/journalist in the past; three years on, I can tell you that it can be pretty stressful and financially risky!
Why securing part-time or long-term work is important
Whether you manage to get a part-time staff job, some shifts in a local shop or bar, or have some other regular source of income, financial security will mean that you can pay your bills if things fall through, if you don’t get paid on time or work dries up.
My experience with this
In the past two years, I’ve had some regular freelance gigs that I knew would help me make up my monthly income. My weekly climate column at The Face Magazine ensured that I earned £600 per month. Unfortunately, this eventually got cut, which meant I had to find another regular source of income. I also had a regular bi-weekly podcast that paid me a generous sum per episode, but again, that was only for a specific period. Outside of the media, I have done copywriting and commercial copy, which can pay well too.
Now, my regular part-time income is my one-day a week at gal-dem. Sometimes I pick up some overtime. I know that I can pay most of my bills this way and whatever I earn on top funds the rest of my expenses.
Securing part-time work requires planning, but it’s worth it once it comes through. It also means you can approach your work differently and do more of what you want to do rather than what you feel you have to do.
P.S. To be transparent, I’ve temporarily moved back home because of changes to my housing situation, so I’m not paying rent at the minute, which is how I can afford to work as little as I do now.
Freelancers have different rights to staff and are almost always in more precarious positions
Freelancing can be great if your work is in demand, lots of money flows around, and it fits your schedule. However, in more tense economic times (like now and the road ahead), publications almost always diminish freelance budgets or fire a bunch of people meaning that more freelancers will be looking for a limited amount of work.
Freelancing is incredibly precarious, and if you haven’t already, you should join a union for more support and understanding about your position in the workforce. The NUJ freelance office can advise on fees, contracts, copyright, employment rights, insurance, etc. It can also assist in pursuing late payers. Alternatively, NUJ members can contact the freelance industrial council.
‘I still want to be freelance full-time. Is that fine?’
Only you know when it’s the right time to drop everything and go freelance. I’d suggest saving up a bit of money and giving it a go for a few months to see if it’s financially tenable. It’s scary; it’s risky, but it’s also an experience you can learn a lot from.
All I’m saying is, if you don’t need to give everything up, maybe don’t just yet and spend time building up your contacts, your relationships with commissioners and your work portfolio.
“How did you get into this?”
This is a new series within the newsletter, where I speak to people I admire about how they got into doing what they do.
This week’s guest is Hussein Kesvani — a journalist, writer, editor, media producer as well as a consultant. Hussein has written the Orwell Prize-nominated book Follow Me Akhi: The Online World of British Muslims and is the iconic co-host of the popular UK political podcast Trashfuture, and its spin-off show, Ten Thousand Posts. He has also previously worked as the UK and Europe editor of MEL magazine, a religion correspondent for BuzzFeed News, and freelanced for the BBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, VICE, Monocle, The New Statesman and The Spectator, among others.
How did you get into doing what you do?
What I do has changed greatly from what I was supposed to do, or wanted to do! Because it’s been a long and weird journey, I’ll try to make it succinct. I’m currently a journalist, editor, media producer and podcaster.
I started out as a reporter in 2014. I wanted to become a lawyer, and to get onto the vacation schemes that would fund my training, I needed some extra-curriculars. So, in my final year at university, I got an editorial position at the student newspaper, where I mostly edited and wrote opinion pieces. After failing to get on any of the vacation schemes - and being unable to really pay for law school myself - I took what was left of my student loan and did a fast-track NCTJ course instead. My first “job” - it was mostly expenses only - was working at a trade publication for newsagents and greengrocers. I got the gig, mainly because my family ran a newsagent, and I’d seen all the weird and bizarre stuff that made for good stories (eg. cigarette fraud, newsagents moonlighting as betting insurers etc).
After, I took a few short stints in various media start-up projects. I worked as an editor for an audio news start-up, a production editor for an Islamic TV channel’s news segment, and did transcriptions for a wire service. Obviously, I did the standard freelance work at the Independent and the Guardian - neither of which landed jobs and which were, as you can imagine, mostly unpaid. My ‘break’ so to speak, was when I got hired as a religious affairs reporter at BuzzFeed UK, where I was trying to work out how to do ‘beat’ reporting in a country that didn’t really have the style established. I left just after a year, and worked as a social media manager for a think tank called Theos, before returning to journalism as the UK/Europe editor of MEL magazine, who were trying to re-invent the idea of a ‘men’s magazine’.
At that time, I was also really interested in podcasting. Around about 2017, I was listening to a lot of them - I was living with my parents in Kent and had quite a long commute into London every day - and one day my university friend and I had the idea of making one, which was called No Country for Brown Men. It was extremely rough, and I was learning how to produce audio from my laptop, but it was well received enough to get written up and even got nominated for a podcasting award. After that venture ended, I met the guys doing a small podcast called Trashfuture, and eventually joined them. The show has grown a lot, and thanks to Patreon, it’s formed a decent portion of my income, allowing us to perform internationally and internationally. The show also let me experiment with different writing styles, such as comedy sketches and radio documentary work.
During the pandemic, after I got let go from MEL, I spent a lot of my free time thinking about what the past decade of producing content online actually meant and how it shaped mine, and other people’s view of the world. I was lucky to be awarded a scholarship to do a master’s degree in Digital Anthropology at UCL. I’m now using some of that research work for a book proposal and to go on to an eventual PhD, although I’m not sure of that yet.
What’s your number one tip for people starting out in the media?
I’m not sure how helpful or useful this is, but I’d say that if you want to work in media - and obviously, this can mean many things - start thinking about yourself and your work as a business.
I mean that very seriously. You’ll likely be entering the market as a freelancer in more precarious conditions. When I started out, if you got fortunate or had connections, you could get a low-level gig at a national paper, tv station or radio channel and work your way up. In my case, I did a combination of shift work, non-journalism work and freelancing in the evenings and weekends before getting any semblance of stability. Many of my classmates I did the NCTJ with, left the media after a couple of years, or have chosen to work in PR, Advertising, Sales etc. I think about three of us are still “in the media” as writers, reporters etc.
One thing I wish I had spent more time on was learning how to operate as a business, as a sole trader or as a limited company. As a freelancer, you have to be diligent with your time and money, and strike a balance between taking on work you love (but might not pay that well) and work you need to do to keep yourself going. I went through periods of pitching my favourite places, writing stories that I didn’t get paid for etc., and while I got the exposure, its effects on getting other commissions and paid gigs were limited. This meant giving up on gigs that I felt were low-brow, or wouldn’t give me exposure to the “right” people, and I regret giving those up. Basically, if you’re going to stay in this for the long term, you need to be smart about the work you’re doing, know how to plan that work on a cost level, and treat your work as a business. Also, as a freelance journalist, your working hours are already extremely blurred, and editors will take advantage of that. So part of the thinking of yourself as a business is also learning early on, how to set healthy boundaries - I really do think that an inability to do this early in my career affected my mental and physical health, deteriorated my friendships, and had a big toll on my romantic relationships too.
There are a lot of good guides and resources available online now that there are more freelancers, so do take some time out to browse on youtube/podcasts to look at potential models. Not only will they help on the financial side of things, but they also provide good insight into the working practices of freelancers juggling multiple projects, which I imagine most freelance journalists entering the industry at this time will find themselves doing.
Follow Hussein on Twitter @HKesvani, listen to his podcasts and buy his book Follow Me Akhi.
Things I really loved this week:
I loved watching Stutz on Netflix, which is Jonah Hill’s documentary about his therapist, their relationship and his therapist’s ‘tools’ which have transformed his life. I am very into this kind of stuff, and if you feel a bit stuck in yourself or are dealing with unresolved psychological issues, I’d recommend watching it!
I also enjoyed reading the first instalment of Rachel Connolly’s newsletter, which you should subscribe to!
I’m finding it really hard to read online articles at the minute because I have the attention span of a goldfish and get distracted by TikTok. So instead, I’ve been forcing myself to get off my phone and read some books. I leafed through Asylum Road by Olivia Sudjic, which was incredibly atmospheric and unexpectedly dramatic.
Stuff I’ve written recently:
gal-dem — Climate change is forcing Kenyan women to leave their homes behind
Huck Magazine — Inside the winning fight to stop the Rwanda deportation flights
The i Paper — Greta Thunberg is right: young people can no longer be expected to pursue climate action alone
Subscribe to my new newsletter — The Green Fig Tree!
I’m launching a brand-spanking new newsletter containing a regular array of my observations, recommendations and temporary hyper-fixations. This is because I will be working on a long-term project for most of 2023, so I needed a space to write regularly and scale back on short-term commissions.
I always envisioned The Freelance Fraud as a resource that can live through time and space and only be updated infrequently, so at some point soon, I hope to finish writing it! If you want more regularity — I’d suggest subscribing to me on there.
And finally… if you found this newsletter useful, you can buy me a coffee!
This newsletter will always be free, and I’m grateful that many of you have found it useful over the years. A few people have asked how you could say thanks or donate a bit of money, so I set up a page where you could do exactly that.
If you want to say thanks, I’d be delighted if you could buy me a digital coffee! But also absolutely zero pressure in this day and age.
Thanks for being so open about the freelancing struggles! Wishing that you get well soon and hope that you get more work-life balance.