Wow. That’s the most confusing payment algorithm I’ve ever heard of. And I’m with you — custom pubs get better readership demographics. No wonder he folded — he doesn’t sound like he knew his market very well.

I had a client once offer to pay me “for the portion of the article I use” — which meant if he used 1,000 words out of 2,500, I’d have wasted a lot of time. When I said that writing a 2,000-word piece and getting paid for 500 wasn’t what I had in mind, he said he doubted that would happen.

And he wasn’t willing to sign a contract of any sort. He “hadn’t needed one” with his other writers, he said. Right. That’s where we parted company.

Oh, and he’s the one who said he “rounded down” the amount owed. So if I wrote 1,549 words, I’d get paid for 1,500.

That could be why he was looking for new writers….

Did his formula place values on the time I spent researching and writing? No. He placed numeric values on the TYPE of publication (commercial, trade), the publication’s paid circulation, a separate value for it’s pass-along readership, and even the ad rates the publication charged, and word count. I think there were additional values – maybe national vs regional, glossy vs newsprint, color or black and white photos. By his formula, the first (only) piece should have paid $3,000, but the publication was a custom publication, so he gave it the lower “trade” value, which cut the rate a lot. I argued that the custom publication when to a highly targeted base of CONSUMERS. I think we disagreed on other parts of his formula – he initially said he’d pay around $800 or something, but after I used his own formula to further confuse him, we finally settled on $1,000. (Honestly, the $3,000 seemed like pie in the sky considering the hardest part of the project was dealing with the business owner.) He issued a vague threat that arguing I was owed more than his initial offer would jeopardize further work for his company, but I wasn’t THAT stupid. I told him, in writing, I would never again consider working for anyone with such a needlessly confusing pricing system.

Quick update: I wound up getting my first really nice clip from that experience, and that guy’s business tanked.