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X Factor winner Alexandra Burke has smashed previous records by becoming the first female solo artist to sell more than one million singles - but the poor girl is still only pocketing £250 for each show she performs. And there we were thinking these pop stars were living the life of luxury!

Her Christmas number one hit single Hallelujah - a cover of the Leonard Cohen original - became the best-selling song from a British woman of all time.

The single has been so successful, that it is making its merry way to becoming the best-selling single by any female the world over for this decade - which means it would overtake Kylie’s 2000 hit Spinning Around, which sold just under 1.1 million copies.

Burke also smashed another record with her single after it became the fastest-selling single by a female solo artist. Phew, the public are on her side!

However, the powerful singer is yet to gain American success like her predecessor Leona Lewis, despite Burke’s single outselling Leona’s. It is still early days though, as it took Leona a good while before she ‘broke the US’ market.

Leona’s debut album, Spirit, sold over 1.17 million copies in the US, which makes the 23 year old singer the seventh best-selling artist of 2008.

However, despite all that record breaking and singing her heart out, Alexandra Burke will still only receive £250 per concert as part of the X Factor sell-out tour.

Fellow contestants, Eoghan Quigg, Laura White, Diana Vickers and Rachel Hylton will receive a similar salary, while it has been reported that runners-up JLS will only get £100 each for their performances.

An insider said to the Daily Mirror newspaper, “The acts are worth much more, especially when you think how much money the tour generates.”

In fact the singers will pocket much less than £250 per show after taxes, 20 per cent commission for their agents on top of their own expenses. Hmm it’s not easy this pop star malarkey is it?

The Dublin gig went on sale for £30 to £45 per tickets and a show at London’s O2 Arena is set to take as much as £600,000.

All of the finalists have signed their souls away for the next six months, which bans them from performing any non X Factor show without prior permission.