NUJ Freelance Fees Guide: Online/digital media - Editing+Production

Online/digital media / Editing+Production

Please note that the suggested rates below are minima; that rates for copyright works are for limited licences; and that VAT is not included. See notes on negotiating rates and find a freelance.

Rates vary enormously. On the one hand, simple sub-editing on a stable production system may pay little more than magazine sub-editing, even though more technical knowledge is required and mathematically rigid style constraints may be essential to the production working at all.

In the middle, design work that involves the use of authoring and styling languages (HTML and CSS at a minimum, increasingly often XML and Flash scripting and so forth) can pay in the scale of computer programming work rather than sub-editing.

On the far other hand, some jobs are in effect business consultancy - what the client needs to know is how a website can change the way they make their living. Rates of £425 per hour were on offer for this in January 2006.

Read me first! Editing+Production advice

Uploaded: 2008-05-05; if you have a printout, check the current version at www.londonfreelance.org/feesguide/OnEdiRat.html

Reported rates, to compare for Editing+Production

The suggested rates (know a better rate? tell us!)

NUJ members discuss rates etc for shifts in general

RATES: Sub-editing Editing+Production

Sub-editing with HTML coding: per day		240
Sub-editing/day		160

Notes:

Allegedly simple sub-editing for the web and other database-like media is almost always more demanding than for print media. Whether the freelance is striving to write headlines of precisely 48 characters for old-skool Teletext, or is dealing with tagging articles with keywords selected from a "controlled vocabulary", they're doing things that sub-editors of normal language do not have to do.
If the work involves markup - whether the <em>simple codes</em> that determine the appearance of the run of text or <div class="abstract">structural markup</div> - it should attract a higher fee.

RATES: Website design and production Editing+Production

Consultancy and information architecture for complex corporate sites: per day from		1200
Design basic 5-page brochure site, corporate: say two days		700
Design basic 5-page brochure site, non-profit: say two days		600
Design and code complex sites: per day from		400
Design basic brochure site, corporate: per day		350
Design basic brochure site, non-profit: per day		300

Notes:

The fees quoted for design of small sites - such as local businesses' brochure sites - assume the freelance is starting from scratch and will take around a day to produce a basic original home page and a template for further pages. Working from an existing template, it may be possible to do four or five pages a day - or more. The more complex the site, the more the freelance should charge.
The fees assume the freelance is working with supplied content. Creating words, and finding pictures and sounds will add to the amount charged - as will any necessary copyright clearance.
The work to be done on larger sites varies enormously. Some clients may already have templates. Others may want something which looks original but in some way fits within a house style - for example a "micro-site" for one of a broadcaster's programmes. Or they may have a blank screen and a need for what is in effect business consultancy... in which case they should be prepared to pay business consultancy rates
If the client wants a site whose words and images are stored in a custom database, the job becomes a database analyst's and appropriate rates apply. Many "content management systems" are available but none actually work "out of the box" in the real world: in order to tailor them to any sane client's requirements, they require almost enough understanding of the programming to be able to write them from scratch.
Doing database coding and writing user content at the same time is not a good idea - as with any conversation held in three languages at once, the quality of all will suffer. As, you may conclude, you see here.

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Code of practice for commissioning journalists

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The National Union of Journalists must not, can not and would not wish to dictate rates or terms of engagement to members or to editors. The information presented here is for guidance and as an aid to equitable negotiation only.

Suggestions apply to contracts governed by UK law only. In any event, nothing here should be construed as legal advice.