TV news reporters & producers at affiliate stations don't make squat.
People think you are a millionaire because you are on TV but in most markets these folks make very little money and working extremely long hours, evenings, weekends, and holidays.
Todd
Depending on the market, TV news people make no money. When I started in the biz I was making 15,500! Hard to believe. Not only does it not pay well but it's pretty stressful also. All of those years of making no money can actually come back to hunt you when you want to buy a house and actually start saving. It can be really hard to play catch up.
Cristin Jordan
Axia Public Relations
Being a doctor. The cost of training to get there is huge, the CPD is expensive and
never-ending, and you won't earn much until you're at least a senior house
doctor or even more senior than that.
Max Holloway
SEO Executive
Doctors.
Alexis Conason, Psy.D.
Licensed Psychologist
Photographer/Journalist.
Carrie Devorah
Having spent some time managing a veterinary hospital, I can say with certainty that based on the education cost of becoming a veterinarian, along with the undergrad degree, the position doesn't pay over $100k unless you OWN THE PRACTICE. The pay structure is that these docs are paid a base salary of around 40-50k (depending on experience and following) and the rest of their compensation comes in the form of a bonus that's based on the quantity of clients they see that month.
These people have difficult jobs -- although many of them are anti-social because they prefer animals over people -- but the best doctor in the practice I was with in the beautiful 'burbs of Philadelphia earned a max of about $85k.
Large animal docs earn much less because most farmers can't afford to pay. One tech who was working with us shared a story about how her parents were disappointed in her because she was going to vet school to treat large animals vs. small animals -- where it pays better.
Kimberly A. Patterson
UNconventionalHR.com
An excellent example of a job that people think pays a lot but in fact doesn't is Engineering.
My own education was at one of the top schools for Mechanical Engineering worldwide, Imperial College London. This cost around $75k including living and tuition. In terms of the salary that it will give a graduate, they could do a lot better being a plumber or electrician. The electrician will have no student debt, and could easily be earning more than the Engineer, who will be sitting behind a computer all day. There is also an issue of quality of living; personally I would much prefer to be walking around during my working day than being sat at a computer.
I have a Masters in Mechanical Engineering but have chosen to take a career move to Marketing, where I have started my own company. Expected first year earnings are well over double what the engineer would earn.
Mark Dean
Director at Strategic Reputation Management
People think lawyers make a lot of money. There are a few who do. But the majority make a lot less than people think. They are stressed by "keeping up appearances" to look successful. Law school loans are like another mortgage. A recent study showed that lawyers who have some of the lowest paying jobs - public service, legal aid, etc. - are the happiest and most satisfied. Maybe it is because they've surrendered.
J. Kim Wright, J.D.
I am always astonished at how little architect friends get paid, if they don't actually own the firm.
Chris Grant
I have a party entertainment service (I'm in NY but it's national) and I book a lot of celebrity impersonators. The prices for a good performer, who does private parties (vs. somebody who does a regular stage act) range from $500-1000 for one hour.
Clients often say, "Wow! I'm in the wrong business!" They seem to think that these performers make that much money per hour, 40 hours a week. But many of them only work only a handful of jobs in a month. From that money, they have to pay for custom costumes and cleaning of those costumes, special makeup and makeup lessons, dance and vocal lessons, custom musical arrangements, gas/tolls/car maintenance, publicity photos and videos, agent fees, etc. not to mention their general living expenses. A good portion of them have second jobs to make ends meet.
The start-up costs are very high, also. You can't get work unless you have professional costumes, photos, video, promo materials and those things are expensive, so to be in this biz, you really need to make that commitment whole-heartedly and then sell the hell out of yourself!
Adrienne Gusoff
Professional Yenta
I am an actress based in Los Angeles. In response to your HARO inquiry, I think a lot of people assume that actors on television are making tons and tons of money. Some of them are (we've all heard about sitcom stars making $1M/episode), but in reality, the average working actor is just making a living wage.
Allison Marie Volk
SAG-AFTRA
Being an author. They think everyone is a Stephen King.
Tim Glass
Author
Spent 25 years in the private emergency services sector wearing many hats. One as a paramedic. If you ride the career out as a paramedic for "many years" you can make $20-25/hr. But most START at $12-14 for doing the same job as the twenty year veterans.
People have always thought that EMS made as much as police and fireman ... not true. To be honest though many EMS systems aren't out there "saving lives" all the time. 95% of the work load is waiting around and/or transporting basic "routine" calls.
J. Brian Pfeiffer
"Retired" Paramedic/Manager
Honestly, web development is really the one. For example, supposed I charge X amount for a website, X being the industry standard for a simple website (for a dentist let's say, or a restaurant). That number takes into consideration the design and implementation of the project but what I've learned over the years is that if you consider time spent communicating with client, making the many "minor" design or content changes they request or any marketing/SEO/social media consultations that might come afterwards, what at first appeared to be a lucrative contract in the end is not.
Many do indeed believe that web developers make good money, see here for example:
http://webdesign.about.com/od/pricing/qt/salaries2009.htm
You also hear about all the rock star developers working at Facebook, Google, Twitter, Foursquare, Dropbox etc which add to the buzz.
But that's not true for freelancers, mostly because the industry is so competitive (you have web agencies competing against student freelancers who constantly drive the price down, and then you have companies that offer websites as a service, e.g. wordpress or wix, which add to the competition. Then of course you have the guys in Asia spamming every business out there for a lead.). And it's not true for the industry either: most junior level web development jobs in Montreal pay 30-40K/year only.
It's not as lucrative as people think, though that's just what I have seen from my experience. I've done well in the field but I know for a fact that the field is packed with "web developers" that just aren't very good & drive salaries down to compete. To further validate my point I've also interviewed many web developers, SEO "specialists", web advertising agencies and so on and so forth via LoansCanada.ca and DriveMarketing.ca.
And deviating from that point, you could argue that dentistry is a career path with diminishing returns (the more dentists you have, the cheaper the service, the better the care...the smaller the demand), another that comes to mind is accounting (if you're not certified, you're in an extremely saturated field), financial advisors (I have friends paying IG or Freedom55 to sell their insurance services, and boy is it competitive!).
Cris Ravazzano
For most people working in the adult film industry, this is the case. Women make $600-1,200 per day for a few hours of work, but they typically only work a few days per week and only last about 1-2 years in the business, then they leave with nothing plus the social stigma of having done porn.
David Mech
Dave Pounder Productions LLC
Radio news: I have a bachelor's degree in journalism -- and I finished college in 1978, back when having a bachelor's degree still differentiated you from the masses -- yet my starting salary at my first job was minimum wage. But it really hit home ten years later, when I was sitting in on teacher budget negotiations in Norfolk, VA. We've all heard teachers complain about how low their pay is, right? Well, the starting salary for a teacher was more than I was making as a radio news reporter/anchor, and I had ten years of experience.
Still, I stuck with it. I worked my way up, and after twenty years, I landed a job as a tape editor and part-time producer at a radio network. My fabulous salary was less than $35,000/year. When I was laid off, I landed a job as a legal secretary, and was making more money almost immediately.
Novelist: I've now been a published novelist for three years, first with a small press and now as an indie, and I am just now starting to make enough money to pay the cable bill every month. People think a contract with a big publishing house in New York will be their ticket to the good life -- but what they don't realize is that for the vast majority of authors, the advance is all they will ever be paid for their work. It's called an advance because it's an advance against earnings from the number of copies of your book the publisher thinks it can sell. But the publisher is just guessing. Nobody knows which book will be the next bestseller -- not even publishing professionals. The business is rife with stories of authors whose bestsellers were rejected numerous times first.
Most books -- the majority, in fact -- are not bestsellers. In fact, in a lot of cases, the book doesn't even sell well enough to earn out the advance. Thankfully, if that happens, the publisher doesn't ask for a percentage of the advance back!
In regard to radio news and publishing, as well as a lot of other jobs in the media, it's the glamor that attracts people to the profession. What you see from the outside is Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh, J.K. Rowling and Stephen King. They're all making pots of money, and so people think every job in the field pays very well. The truth is that what you're seeing is the tip of the iceberg -- and just like with a real iceberg, the people in the business who you can't see are (financially) underwater. ;)
Lynne Cantwell
My brother is a commercial airline pilot. The early years are the worst: lots of student debt, very long hours for shockingly low pay. It used to be that you could put up with this until you'd paid your dues and then have a cushy career with lots of flexibility in what you fly, when you fly, and where you fly. For the last few decades that hasn't been true: unions, bankruptcies, and mergers have meant that the pay isn't as awesome, the perks aren't as forthcoming, and the career stability is absent. And of course a single bad medical exam could destroy your career. But you still get to fly a plane for a living, so there's that.
Vincent Clarke, Marketing Director
A job as an emergency medical technician is one that you would think would pay well, especially considering the risk. However, the average salary is roughly $27,000 per year.
Architecture pays relatively low and also requires a lot of education. The average salary for a beginning architect is approximately $35,000 per year. Internships and licensing exams that are generally requirements in order to be considered a qualified architect are both time-consuming and expensive. Even after several years in the field, an architect earns only about $69,000 annually.
A news correspondent is another job that you may think comes with a high salary, but usually doesn't. News reporters make on average about $33,000 per year - and such a career requires working very long and non-traditional hours under tight deadlines.
David Bakke
Money Crashers
