An Honest Reflection of the Media Landscape, Plus the Rate Chasm Between SEO and Essays

Let's break this down while we have a breakdown. How quaint

Last week I wrote a brief explainer on what work looks like right now (bad!). Since then, I’ve received a bunch of questions about why I’m taking so much commerce work. I’ve also had other writers asking how to balance SEO assignments with writing they’re passionate about, which demonstrates how universal this is.

I don’t have a great response to either question. I take so much commerce work because I need to pay my bills, and the opportunities for Good Work seem to diminish by the day. And how do I balance SEO assignments with work I care about? Not well at the moment! Which brings us here.

The media landscape feels incredibly bleak, while my cost of living continues to rise. This means fewer options for work I care about, paired with additional commercial assignments to pay my bills. Ever since my features editor was let go in a Hearst bloodbath several years ago, I’ve seen countless feature departments and editorial teams decimated favor of listicles, SEO-based commerce, and clickbait fluff.

Each week seems to bring a new round of layoffs. The week after Esquire published their landmark feature on being unhoused in America, they shuttered their features department. Then, a few months after a friend wrote a phenomenal reported story for Cosmopolitan, her editor was laid off.

“Wait stop! I might need this photo for a bike roundup”

Each time I get the news, I miserably open my spreadsheet of editors and publications I want to pitch, and delete that row. It’s pretty soul crushing to think about how hard I worked over the past 10 years to amass connections, narrative skills, and reporting experience for these types of features, only to sit here and watch the opportunities disappear.

It goes back further than 10 years. Third-grade Maggie read her own stories out loud during read-aloud time while everyone else chose actual books to share. Later, becoming editor in chief of my high school newspaper was the first time I felt like I belonged in school. Putting words to a page and witnessing the silent lunchroom each month when we distributed the paper—that thrill followed me to my first job at the local magazine, my columns at Backpacking Light and Backpacker, and my featured stories over the past few years. The joy of having my voice out there hasn’t become any less rewarding since those silent high school lunchrooms. You don’t get that from gear roundups.

The writing friends get it

So why am I writing so many sock reviews?

I need the money, I’m good at it, and other opportunities are getting slimmer.

Earning a living as a freelancer means being at the mercy of publications, editorial teams, and the industry as a whole. I don’t have a trust fund or a partner to share the bills—I am responsible for 100% of my expenses. At the moment, that results in an unbalanced workload and lack of bandwidth to pitch in an unstable industry. I have a well-earned scarcity mindset, and I feel pressure to accept high-paying SEO at the expense of more gratifying stories.

Getting ready to take sunglasses photos for one of 13 commerce pieces in April.

Here’s the reality of my rate-to-time ratio for different categories.

I am paid per assignment, and my rates are a set fee that varies between outlets. I listed my approximate hours for each type of story to come up with a rough hourly estimate.

Commerce: $650, ~5 hours, no revisions
SEO: $350, ~4 hours, no revisions
Single-item gear review: $300, ~1.5 hours, no revisions

Personal essay: $500 ~12 hours, two round of revisions
Reported outdoor industry story: $600, ~25 hours, three rounds of revisions
Narrative feature: $1250, ~100 hours, four rounds of revisions

This is the hourly breakdown, which is currently causing an IRL breakdown:

Commerce, SEO, reviews: $123 / hour
Essays, features, reporting: $18 / hour

My bare minimum for commerce ends up around $70 per hour (which means I accepted a lower-paying, higher-request assignment), but I can make around $250 per writing hour if I’m more selective. Before you ask for a loan, remember that this hourly rate doesn’t take into account doing all my own comms, calling in product, taking photos, invoicing, following up on late invoices, answering emails, and everything that comes with running your own small business. That rate also just reflects writing time, which is not 40 hours per week.

Now consider the $18 / hour for work I want to be doing.

That $18 per hour for essays, features, and reported pieces doesn’t include the admin work I listed above. Those stories also require research, interviews, transcriptions, filing backup, fact-checking, and several rounds of edits. When you take all of those elements into account, it’s probably $7-8 per hour.

To make it even harder to justify, each of those essays / features don’t land in my lap like a commerce assignment. I spend time researching the topic I want to pitch, finding the best editors to pitch to, and crafting a pitch that probably won’t land because of bandwidth or budget cuts.

It is becoming increasingly hard to land acceptances for the kinds of stories I want to write. Narrative publications, budgets, and feature departments are being slashed left and right, and the editors who remain are worked to the edge of sanity. I’m not pitching trend stories or SEO-friendly click-bait, so my pitches can take a half day to put together. Even with a strong portfolio, comprehensive pitches, and plenty of market research, this is what my last few months of pitching look like.

This is soooo shameful but honesty is my policy here

While I am so grateful for work that pays my bills, I feel a sense of despair (akin to grief?) when I consider how different the industry looked five or six years ago. I was flinging out pitches left and right, putting together four essays a month for different outlets, writing advice and outdoor stories, and landing the occasional reported feature. I’m hoping there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and we can put our collective freelancer heads down, do a good job with our assignments, and the good work will come back.

For now, if this is what my workday looks like, it’s not the worst thing

I do have two essays for new publications in edit right now, and I’m excited to write another for Backpacker this month. I’m also grateful for my editor job with Switchback that allows me to panic less about money each month. I’m hoping for a better balance in the next few months and the bandwidth to generate more ideas.

I hope this answers some questions about why my name is on so many sock roundups these days, but let me know if you have any other questions!!

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