But pitch whom?

If you’re a magazine writer, there are too many publications out there to wrap your head around — or not enough, depending on your field. (Sheep-farming mags, anyone?)

And, as if finding good pubs to pitch weren’t hard enough, trying to find out whether they actually pay can make your head implode with frustration.

Or say you’re a content writer, blogger, or copywriter. How can you find businesses that could use your services—while weeding out the tire-kickers and cheap-os from the hundreds of possibilities?

Where to find writing clients

If you’re scouring your local newsstand to sleuth out magazines to pitch, or driving around your city seeking good business clients, head straight home, park your car and try these ideas instead.

1. Google

I can hear you now: “Google. Really? How very original.”

But Google is not as obvious a choice as you would think. I can’t even count the number of times a coaching client would say something like, “I want to write for trade magazines for the flooring industry and can’t find any” — and before she’d even finished with her complaint, I would have Googled up a list of a dozen flooring trades.

The trick is to look for directories or lists instead of searching for publications or businesses one by one. Rather than Googling, say, “pet product manufacturers,” try “pet product manufacturers directory.” Chances are, someone else has helpfully compiled a nice list you can use. In this case, it’s the American Pet Products Association Member Directory, which is available to the public.

(By the way, in case you were wondering: There are many, many trade magazines for sheep farmers. Do a Google search and you’ll find them easily!)

2. Writer’s Market (but not for the reason you think)

Writer’s Market is a directory of hundreds of publications that pay writers, divided up by topic. However, the real secret is to use Writer’s Market to find publications that aren’t in Writer’s Market.

Here’s the deal: If you find a magazine in Writer’s Market that looks promising, check to see if it’s put out by a publishing group. If so, look up the company online to see what other magazines they put out; chances are, they have some that aren’t listed in Writer’s Market.

For example, some trade magazine groups publish a dozen or more magazines—and if the one you found listed in Writer’s Market pays a good rate, the other ones probably do too (though this is no guarantee).

3. Industry association membership lists

Many industry associations keep membership lists complete with each member’s contact information. If you join (which may require you to pay a fee), you’ll often have access to the list.

However, do check the organization’s guidelines to make sure it’s okay to pitch other members.

4. The Content Council

Custom content companies create magazines, newsletters, blogs, and more for their clients—and they often hire freelancers, and pay well to boot.

Lucky for us, The Content Council maintains a publicly available list of its member companies searchable by account sector (like Health or Retail), complete with contact information.

5. Trade magazine directories

Trade magazine directories abound online. I like the one on WebWire, which lists hundreds of trade pubs in categories ranging from aviation to workforce management.

Trade directories aren’t meant for writers, so once you find a pub that looks good, you’ll need to visit its website and do some digging to find the assigning editor’s contact info.

6. Right here

You read that right — here on The Write Life you’ll find info on more than 225 publications that pay Freelance Writers.

But do they pay?

By now you should have dozens of markets to pitch, but there’s no point researching and pitching a publication or business if it offers a rate of zero dollars per word (aka “exposure”), no negotiation allowed.

Here’s how to narrow the field of potential clients to the ones that are most likely to be worth your time.

1. Go for the money

Many new copywriters and content writers like to pitch mom-and-pop shops, because they think these businesses will be easier to write for. The bad news is, these tiny businesses usually can’t afford to pay what you’re worth…and the worse news is, they often need a ton of hand-holding because they’ve never hired a writer before.

Look for businesses with $5 million+ in profits, which ensures you’re reaching out to prospects that can afford to pay.

2. Check Writer’s Market (again)

Writer’s Market assigns each publication from one to four dollar sign symbols to indicate how much they pay; with the online version of the service, you can narrow your search to those markets that have, say, two or more dollar signs.

Each publication’s entry also includes more detailed information on pay.

3. Visit the Who Pays Writers website

According to their site, “Who Pays Writers is an anonymous, crowd-sourced list of which publications pay freelance writers—and how much.”

You’ll discover, for example, that Artforum has paid writers from 20-40 cents per word.

4. Ask your friends

If you belong to any writers’ forums, email lists, or communities, ask if any other writers know how much Blog X pays or whether Company Y pays freelance writers.

5. Browse the pages

Take a look at your target magazine’s content and advertisers. You can get a good feel for whether they pay (and how well) by the look of the pub and the readers they’re targeting.

Slick ads for expensive gas grills or top-of-the-line hair care products? Good. Cheap-looking design, typo-ridden articles, and random Google ads? Not so good.

This isn’t a foolproof method — there are plenty of publications that target high-worth readers but don’t pay writers — but it can be a pretty good clue.

Do you have a super-secret trick for finding and qualifying writing markets? Spill the details in the comments!

You know what’s really sweet about self-publishing?

You control everything.

There are no gatekeepers telling you what you can and can’t publish. No one telling you what to charge, and no one taking most of the money and giving you a paltry 15 percent royalty. No ten-month lag time between starting your book and seeing it published. And most important, no annoying editors and fact checkers correcting your writing and asking for endless revisions.

That’s the line the publishing “gurus” feed you, anyway. You know, those marketers who tell you you can achieve instant riches through self-publishing … and you can buy their course to learn how!

The reality is that creating a compelling, sellable book is most often a team effort.

What are the chances you’re good at every single aspect of publishing a book, from cover design to proofreading? (Hint: Pretty slim.)

I learned about the importance of outside feedback while working on my newest book, How to Do It All: The Revolutionary Plan to Create a Full, Meaningful Life — While Only Occasionally Wanting to Poke Your Eyes Out With a Sharpie.

Warning: Endless revisions ahead.

My first draft was awesome! Oh, wait…

I thought my first draft was great, and proudly sent it to my business partner, Diana. I was all ready to bask in her praise and then send the manuscript along to my 20 beta readers!

She tried to let me down gently.

Diana told me the Do-It-All Plan in my book wasn’t making sense. I shared too much personal information in some places and not enough in others. I used too many em-dashes and ellipses, my advice was too generic, and a lot of my tips required spending money.

And those were only a few of the issues she pointed out.

After Diana’s close eye, this excerpt:

Important note: You don’t have to get up early. I know every personal development book and article in the known universe says you must rise at 5 am if you want to not be a total loser. And somehow, people who go to bed at 1 am are seen as either lazy or workaholics, while those who get up in the wee hours are heaped with praise. Well, I say we D-I-A women all need to do what’s right for us. If you’re a night owl, try staying up a little later every night until you feel tired the next day, then move your bedtime back a bit.

Became this:

Important note: You don’t have to get up early. I know every personal development book and article in the known universe says only losers sleep past five a.m. and that people who go to bed at one a.m. are lazy or workaholics. Well, I say we D-I-A women all need to do what’s right for us. If you’re a night owl, try staying up a little later every night until you feel tired the next day, then move your bedtime back a bit.

But the second draft was fabulous, right?

I rewrote the entire book, printed out all 200-plus pages, and had my writer husband look it over.

He covered my manuscript with so much red ink it looked like he had sacrificed a goat on it.

He fixed typos, tightened up the copy, and helped the writing flow better.

Thanks to that awful red pen, this:

But we’re misled to believe we can’t or shouldn’t do it all, even if that’s what we really, really want. After all, doing — and caring about — lots of things can lead to (gasp!) stress.  

Became this:

But we’re misled to believe we can’t or shouldn’t do it all, even if that’s what we really want. After all, doing and caring about lots of things can lead to stress.  

Surely the third draft was ready to go! Umm…

I finally sent the manuscript to my 20 beta readers, and compiled all their insights.

Like these:

• My jokes fell flat.
• The Do-It-All Plan still wasn’t quite right.
• The chapters were not in the correct order.
• My intro was too braggy.
• Some small chapters needed to be combined into bigger ones.
• I swore too much.
• And much, much more.

I went through the book and made it just about every change my beta readers suggested.

This:

The First Rule of the D-I-A Plan: You do not talk about the D-I-A Plan. Er, I mean, complete any Level of the D-I-A Desire and you are done with that Desire and it’s time to move on to the next one…unless you’re so inspired you want to go on to the next level right away! (And that’s actually the only rule, but I wanted to get in that Fight Club reference because I’m a dork.)

Became this:

In the D-I-A  Plan, you’ll be adding one Desire — one new goal, event, experience, skill, or accomplishment — to your life at a time. For each Desire you’ll be filling out the corresponding Desire Worksheet, and using the other Worksheets as instructed in the next chapter to help keep you motivated and on track. Once you’ve reached your Desire, you’ll then move on to the next one in the same way.

Now it was ready, right? Right?

Well, then I sent the book along to the proofreader I had hired.

He ended up being more of a developmental editor, and had a ton of good suggestions on making the subheads work, rearranging the chapters, and more.

He also mentioned I had more than 150 parenthetical asides that I thought were hilarious, but that actually distracted readers from the main message and made me come off as less than an expert.

I went through and made most of his changes, and when I printed out the resulting draft, I then had to clean up all of the new typos that had made their way in during the final editing process.

So this:

Go (back) to college. If the skill you want to pick up is more complicated than what you can learn by reading a book or taking a single class, or you want to go deeper into the subject or even turn it into a new career, consider going (back) to college or a trade school, or earning a certificate.

Became this:

Get schooled. If the skill you want to pick up is more complicated than what you can learn by reading a book or taking a single class, or you want to go deeper into the subject or even turn it into a new career, consider earning a college degree, attending a trade school, or earning a certificate.

It took me four weeks to write How to Do It All — and seven weeks to edit it.

I originally believed my first draft was perfect. After all, I’ve been writing full time for almost two decades!

But looking back after reading the final version, I can see that the original manuscript was a mess.

You may be looking at these examples of my edits and saying, “They got rid of all the personality!”

I thought the same at first.

But the edgy, humorous writing style I had been relying on became tiring in a 60,000-word book. Now, my personal style still shines through, but without the crutches of swear words, parenthetical asides, and lame jokes.

Don’t do it all alone

Writers are often blind to your own errors and the quirks of your writing.

You blip right over those phrases you tend to overuse. Passages that would confuse readers are completely clear to you, because you wrote them!

And of course we always miss typos, even if you rake over the copy 20 times with your own eyes.

It takes an outside perspective to make your writing as good as it can be.

Those marketers who tell you that you can churn out a book in a few hours, toss it onto Amazon, and create a sustainable income? They’re either lying, or have been unbelievably lucky with their own books.

Seek insight from others, and your writing — and sales — will be much stronger.

How much time have you spent on your own self-publishing journey? What advice would you give to an author just starting out?

This post contains affiliate links. That means if you purchase through our links, you’re supporting The Write Life — and we thank you for that!

They’re hoping I can send them a link to some magical job board or bidding site where big-name copywriting clients and $1/word magazine editors are posting ads seeking writers.

Well, here’s the thing: There’s an inverse relationship between how easy a gig is to get and how lucrative it is.

So the question is: Do you want to do it the easy way — or the way that will land you assignments?

Where the writing gigs aren’t

Tons of writers flock to job boards and bidding sites, where they fall prey to clients who offer to pay them peanuts.

(That’s a metaphor, but actually, I think a jar of peanuts would be worth more than the cash these writers would earn from a typical article.)

Good clients don’t advertise for writers online because they have professional writers coming to them. For example, you’ll probably never see $1 – $2 per word magazines like Redbook, Entrepreneur or Health posting on job sites. (And if you do see it, it will likely be the case that they’re looking for “citizen journalists” — another term for “unpaid writers.”)

Carol Tice of the Freelance Writers Den likes to say that businesses that advertise for writers are dysfunctional — and not the kind of clients you want to write for if you can help it.

And she’s right: What else would you call clients who are willing to sift through thousands of applications from low-quality writers who are slavering to score $5 for an 800-word article? You’re not one of those low-quality writers, so these clients are not for you.

Yes, there are some paid job boards that vet listings to make sure they pay a decent rate. But those free ones most writers flock to? Not so good.

OK, now I’ve scared the jelly out of you by saying there is no easy way to find writing gigs. But the good news is, if you put forth more effort in seeking out, qualifying and approaching prospective clients, you can land assignments that pay a hundred times what you would make from some content mill that advertises online.

A great truth of freelance writing is:

Shoe leather counts

Here’s an illustrative example. Let’s pretend we’re interviewing the writer who earns mere pennies and the one who makes a good living writing, and have asked each of these writers, “How do you find gigs?”

Here’s what the cheapie writer would say:

“So, I go to sites like Elance and spend a few hours looking through the ads, and I apply to the ones that will pay me at least $5 per article.

“When I get an assignment, I bang it out super fast so I’m making $10 per hour! I spend a lot of time scrolling through ads, and write to a couple of potential clients every week.”

And the writer who rakes in loads of moolah would say this:

“OK, so I search around online and keep my eyes open in the real world for trade magazines I might be able to pitch, since that’s the market I like to write for. I write for the banking and credit union industry, so another thing I do is when I go to a bank or do any banking online, I ask the person working with me what industry trades they read.

“When I find a good market, I read it online and figure out what kinds of articles they run and whether the articles are written by freelance writers, staffers (which means they don’t use freelancers) or industry experts (who typically aren’t paid).

“Then, if the magazine looks like a good match, I write a customized Letter of Introduction that outlines a few targeted article ideas and my credentials. I search through LinkedIn or the magazine’s website to sleuth out the best editor to pitch and their email address, and then I send my LOI to that person.

“I do this non-stop, even if I have a full plate of assignments. I typically earn 50 cents per word — so a 1,000-word article will pay $500. That would take me six hours to research, interview and write, so I’m earning $83 per hour.”

Bake your own loaf

A metaphor I like to use is that many writers go out and pick up crumbs tossed out there by clients who advertise gigs — where they could learn to bake their own entire loaf.

Do you see the difference in the amount of effort the two writers we interviewed expend in landing writing gigs? One works to find high-quality markets to approach and customizes her pitch for each one (that’s the loaf baker), and another waits for markets to extend an engraved invitation asking him to apply for low-paying gigs (that’s the crumb collector). And you know which one makes the big bucks.

If you want the impressive-byline, lucrative writing gigs, you need to go out and get them. Search for businesses in the industry you want to write for. Read magazines at the bookstore, at the library and online. Pore over magazine directories like Writer’s Market.

Learn how to write a compelling query letter and kick-ass Letter of Introduction; these formats are challenging at first, but they get easier the more you do them. Research how to cold call potential copywriting clients. Take the time to qualify your prospects and pitch only those you have figured out will pay you well.

Don’t just wait for assignments to fall into your lap. Make them happen. Bake your own loaf.

Your effort will be paid off in dollars — and you’ll be laughing in the face of the clients who want to pay you pennies.
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You don’t know any good publications for your idea off the top of your head, so you slog over to the local Barnes & Noble and rifle through the newsstand.

And…you find only one magazine that fits your idea. Is it even worth writing up a query letter? You head home, despondent, scrap your previously promising idea, and vow to try again with another topic.

If this sounds like something you’ve done, I want to tell you a secret. Come closer… closer… no, not that close! Here it is:

By relying only on your local newsstand, you missed out on hundreds of publications you could have pitched.

There’s a metric buttload of publications out there, just waiting for enterprising writers who think beyond the newsstand. So leave the bookstore to the writers who don’t know any better, while you pitch these lesser-known but often well-paying markets.

Trade magazines: They’re not glamorous, but they pay well

For years, my stock in trade was, well, trade magazines. These are business-to-business publications that are read by people in a certain industry. For example, I’ve written for:

• In-Plant Graphics, for owners of in-plant print shops

• The Federal Credit Union, for CU execs

• Pizza Today, which targets pizza restaurant owners and managers

• Boating Industry, for businesses that make and sell boats and boat-related products

• Independent Joe, a magazine for Dunkin’ Donuts franchise owners

I admit it — with trades, the glamour factor is missing in action. You won’t get the same thrill seeing your byline in Boating Industry as you would in Glamour.

But guess what? I’m not in this game for the bylines. I’m in it for the paychecks. (Agree? Click to tweet this idea.) Trades’ payment levels are all over the map, but the ones I wrote for typically paid from 30 to 50 cents per word.

Even better, trades are much easier to break into than newsstand pubs. Instead of crafting a fully fleshed-out query letter, you can often get your foot in the door with a query/letter of introduction hybrid — a letter that introduces you as a writer and quickly presents three or four ideas you have for the magazine.

Find trade magazines in Writer’s Market and directories like Tradepub.com.

Foreign magazines: Look around the world to find paying markets

Born in the USA! Proud to be an American! And all that jazz!

Sure, the United States is home to tons of magazines that hire freelancers. But other countries have paying markets too – and a lot of them need English-speaking writers, so your natural knowledge of your native tongue can be an advantage.

Because most American writers stick to U.S. publications, the competition for overseas gigs is a lot less fierce. And — hooray! — the pay can compare well to what you’d earn from an American market, depending on the country.

In terms of finding international magazines, Google is your friend: Just type in the country with your keywords and start surfing through the results. For example, if you write about architecture, a quick Google search comes up with this extensive list of English-speaking architecture magazines around the world.

Target international publication gigs the same way you would sell to U.S. markets: with a well-crafted query letter.

Custom publications: Hiding in plain sight

The magazine you get at Hannaford supermarkets. The publication your insurance company sends you in the mail. The one you pick up at your kid’s Taekwondo school while he’s working on his roundhouse kicks.

You may not even think of these as potential markets, but many of these magazines — called custom publications — assign articles to freelance writers. Not only that, they pay well: up to $1 per word and even more.

Custom publications are basically marketing vehicles, but you write for them in a journalistic style just as you would for a newsstand magazine. Some examples are:

• ATA World, the magazine of the American Taekwondo Association

• Fresh, for Hannaford supermarkets

• WagWorld, for Purina’s Beneful dog food

• Stronger, a magazine for Gold’s Gym members

• Costco Connection, for customers of — guess what? — Costco

Keep an eye out at the businesses you frequent and in your mailbox for custom publications you can pitch, and also visit the Custom Content Council and search for companies that create materials in your niche.

Break in with a query/LOI hybrid or a well-researched query letter on a topic of interest to the publication’s readers. Don’t worry about trying to be “salesy” — these custom media projects are not at all about the hard sell, but instead aim to educate, entertain, and inform their readers.

Business communications: Go directly to the source

I’m going to say something crazy: You can find places to sell your articles by skipping magazines and online publications altogether.

So what’s left?

Actually, what’s left are the tons of businesses that need articles ghostwritten for magazines, newsletters, websites, and blogs. (I count blog posts as articles because of the popularity these days of long-form posts.)

For example, an online shoe retailer may need articles on how to find the best fit for its newsletter, or a consulting firm might want ghostwritten articles they can submit to trade magazines in their industry.

If you aim for successful, profitable, medium-to-large businesses, the pay can be pretty darn good: I’m talking $75 per hour or even more.

The trick to landing these business clients is to pick a niche where you have some experience — whether it’s through a previous job or your education — and write a letter of introduction where you show you’ve researched the company and have found something they’re missing. For example, the company may not have a compelling newsletter, or their blog might be stagnant. Then you sell the benefits of these projects — and yourself as the perfect writer.

The next time you have a brilliant article idea, sure, check out the local newsstand. But also widen your scope to trades, custom pubs, international magazines, and businesses — and watch your portfolio grow.