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There is a charity in Boston that helps the homeless by publishing a newspaper for which they write articles. The thinking is that if a panhandler has a newspaper to sell, as opposed to merely asking for a handout, people will be more likely to give him or her money and he'll evade anti-solicitation laws. As a happy byproduct, the theory goes, the downtrodden acquire valuable skills by cranking out content for the good sports who fork over cold, hard cash.

What a great idea; help people out of poverty by turning them into freelance writers. While we're at it, why don't we take away their deposit cans and bottles?

As someone who first sold a freelance article for $100 35 years ago (adjusted for inflation: $3.26), and worked the better part of a summer on it, all I can say is if you want to lift people out of poverty, freelance writing is as good a tool as any. If by "any" you mean maypole dancing.

As a freelance writer, you deserve to be treated like a professional, although with pay-for-print articles being as low as it is, you may feel like you're preserving your amateur status for some future Freelance Olympic Games.

I sold 32 freelance articles in 2013. At the everyday low prices that prevail in the marketplace for unsolicited non-fiction, my take-home pay averaged 20 cents a word. Not bad, you think. You've got plenty of words - you're the Wal-Mart of words! The problem is, no one wants to buy the Big Gulp size; everyone wants to buy the little, teensy 430-word piece.

And then there's the phenomenon of reverse literary panhandling. One editor to whom I sent the taboo-breaking article "How to Tell Your Teenaged Son From a Dead Rodent" told me how much he enjoyed it and that he wanted to run it in his suburban weekly. "Of course, I have no budget for freelance articles," he added with a fraternal tone, as if an experienced writer like me would know that one doesn't actually get paid for this sort of thing.

"Mais oui, mon ami!" I replied with a blasé devil-may-care attitude, like Maurice Chevalier. "Why should you pay me for something that will mean so much to your readers, when it is but a trifle to me!"

The purchasers of freelance writing have a well-deserved reputation for responding as slowly as possible, thereby increasing your pleasure in much the same manner that the Pointer Sisters longed for a slow hand. I was surprised in 2007 by the jackrabbit response of a publishing company to an over-the-transom Hail Mary I sent them. "Thank you for your submission," their friendly, personalized form letter read. "You should hear back from us in approximately six months." I set my snooze alarm for January of 2008, and waited for the big check to arrive, Ed McMahon-style, at my front door.

Time passed. Buildings rose and fell outside my office window. The Tampa Bay Rays went to the World Series, an African-American president was elected, the Arizona Cardinals played in the Super Bowl. We were surely in the end times predicted in the Book of Revelations, but I had to wait another year to get my official rejection letter. All I can say is, it's a good thing I didn't send them a live report from Pearl Harbor.

And then there are the unintended consequences of training the currently unemployed to become freelancers. My going rate for a 500-word article is $100. My "hit" rate for print articles last year wasn't bad, around 95 percent, which was Larry Bird's career-high free throw shooting average, so I'm in good company there. Online it was about the same, but the prices were a fraction - around 10 percent - of what newspapers pay. No wonder they're going out of business.

So additional writing supply from panhandlers means prices will go down even further, leading to uncomfortable negotiations like this:

ME: So unless we rescind the Hungarian Toy Tariff right now, we face the collapse of the domestic Play-Doh market.

EDITOR: Um-hmm. What kind of fee were you looking for?

ME: Well, my usual.

EDITOR: I don't know. There's a guy sleeping in the vestibule who'll do a three-part series on how the Pope controls his bladder - for a 50-ounce jug of Thunderbird wine!

ME: (Pause) Okay, I'll do it for the 750 milliliter bottle.

- Con Chapman

Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer whose works include The Year of the Gerbil, a history of the 1978 Yankees-Red Sox pennant race, and two novels, Making Partner and CannaCorn (Joshua Tree Publishing). He is the author of 30 plays, 10 of which are published. His articles and humor have appeared in national magazines and newspapers including The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe, The Boston Globe Magazine and Salon.com, and he's a frequent contributor to The Boston Herald.