Five Things a Freelancer Should Know Before Querying a Magazine

Know the magazine’s submissions / writer’s guidelines

The easiest way to find out what a magazine wants is to let them tell you. Many magazines post their writer’s guidelines on their web site. If you can’t find them online, contact one of the editors and ask for them to email or snail mail you the guidelines. A directory such as Writer’s Market can be helpful for your initial search, but don’t rely on them for all of your information. Any number of things can change between the publication of those listings and the day you decide to send your query. Not only do writer’ guidelines tend to address content issues, but they can also tell you what format the publication prefers their submissions in. One magazine may want you to email them a text file, another might want you to send a paper copy and a third may want you to upload a Microsoft Word file. You won’t know if you don’t do the research.

Sample Guidelines:
The Atlantic Monthly
Antioch Review
Birder’s World

Know who the magazine’s editors are

Knowing the right person to send your query to is one of the little details that can make a big difference when you are trying to make a sale. If you query the wrong person, any of a number of bad things can happen. The person who receives it might dismiss your query and throw it away because it isn’t what they are looking for. The person who receives it may know who should get it and plan to give it to them, but never get around to doing so. If your query does finally get to the right person, they may hold the fact that it was addressed to the wrong person against you. Always take the time to find out who the right recipient for your query is. Check the magazine’s masthead for the latest information and don’t be afraid to call or email to confirm your choice.

Sample mastheads:

New York Magazine
Backpacker Magazine
Time

Know the magazine’s editorial calendar

In addition to guidelines, many magazines have an editorial calendar that covers such things as publication lead times, deadlines for holiday or seasonal items and upcoming special editions or subject focuses. Some magazines dedicate issues to a single topic. Knowing what a magazine is looking for and when they are looking for it can give you a serious advantage over the competition. When you request submission guidelines, be sure to request the calendar as well.

Sample Editorial Calendars
Variety
Information Week
Expansion Management

Know the magazine, front to back

Don’t assume you know what a magazine wants just because you have read their writer’s guidelines. The proper way to research a magazine is to read it. Get your hands on a copy of the magazine (the more copies the better). Check the magazine’s website if they have one. You don’t have to read every word of every article, but take the time to get familiar with the different sections and the general writing style. Be sure that what you are proposing fits in well with the publication’s approach to content and style.

Know how to write a query letter

Your query letter needs to demonstrate both the quality of your idea and the quality of your writing. Additionally, it should demonstrate that you know how to follow the magazine’s submission guidelines. Many editors receive dozens of queries each month. For major publishers, the number of queries can climb into the hundreds. This may seem intimidating, but the number of queries that are actually well-written and well thought out is quite small. Most queries are terrible. They are badly written, inappropriate or fail to follow the magazine’s guidelines. It is easy to rise above the crowd if you know what you are doing and you are willing to make a genuine effort to create quality query.

How to write a query letter

Blogging as a Publishing Business: Personal Blogs (Diaries)

The personal blog or web diary is a staple of the blogging community. These blogs contain the thoughts, opinions and experiences of the blog author. The person writing the blog wants to share their life with the world and perhaps get a little recognition from their readers. They may also have motives such as finding romance or publishing their stories and poetry. This is by far the most popular (from the standpoint of number of people running their own blog) form of blogging today.

The concept of blogging grew from these personal diaries. While these blogs are at the heart of what was originally considered blogging, they are rarely the type of blog that will make a profit. That isn1t usually a problem because most of the people who create these types of blogs aren1t in it for the money. If you want to make a profit blogging about your life, you1d better have a very interesting life.

A good place to get a look at a lot of personal blogs is at myspace.com.

Blogging as a Publishing Business: What is a blog?

The term blog is short for web log. The original meaning of the term was any diary or journal kept online. The goal of blogging was to create a site in which one person or group wrote about their lives and invited other people to comment on what they wrote. The concept began to grow, however, and now encompasses a far wider variety of subjects and providers. There are now corporate blogs, professional blogs, job blogs, political blogs and many other types of blogs. Just about any topic can be turned into a blog, so the concept of it as a diary is a little outdated.

For our purposes, a blog is more about the technology and the presentation than the subject discussed. Blogs use server-side software to present their information. In other words, the person writing the blog typically does little more than type and format the article. The programming and presentation are automated using software that originates on the web site, not on the person�s computer. Blog scripting allows a publisher to automatically post information. This greatly increases the speed in which a site can be developed and updated.

One of the most important features/limitations of blogs is that blogs are chronological. The most recent entry appears at the top of the page and subsequent entries appear below the first entry or on separate pages. The relevance and positioning of an article is determined by time. The timeliness of the information presented is vital. People are most likely to read the most recent blog entry and less likely to read older entries. This is what differentiates a blog from a standard web site. On a standard web site, the designer decides what information goes where and determines the relative importance of the articles/links that appear.

Blogging as a Publishing Business: Political Blogs

Political blogs get most of the press these days and for good reason. Many political bloggers have managed to uncover government fraud, mismanagement and other scandals. They have also been known to rabidly attack people who may or may not deserve it. These blogs have a very public face and there is some potential for profit in political blogging, but it can be a real challenge.

There are so many political blogs out there already that it can be difficult to get your voice heard. If you have the ability to dig up secrets about the lives/lies of political figures, then you have a chance at generating traffic. Otherwise, you are entering a very crowded battle with very little weaponry. If you do succeed you have the possibility of generating a lot of hits and hits translate into profit.

Unfortunately, a secondary problem with the profitability of political blogs is the lack of revenue generating products associated with politics. Beyond some books and bumper stickers, there is very little to buy.

Here are some political blogs to look at:

• Wonkette
• Talkleft
• Freerepublic

Blogging as a Publishing Business: Business Blogs

Business blogs represent companies, both large and small, who want to connect with their customers, the press and the general public. These blogs discuss such things as company goals, customer service, upcoming products, community services and the like. They are generally upbeat and focus on either promoting business or solving problems.

Some of these blogs are more personal than others but all of them are built around representing the company. Although business blogs have a financial aspect in that they hope to encourage either customers or investments, the primary purpose of a business blog is public relations. The blog itself is not expected to make a profit.

One way to make money with this type of blog is to get hired by a business to write the blog for them. At that point, however, you are a paid freelancer or an employee and not a publisher.

Here are a few business blogs:

• Tim O’Reilly
• Ford Mustang
• Maytag Skybox

Blogging as a Publishing Business: How Much Money Can You Make?

I’m not going to tell you that blogging will make you rich. As I’ve already said, blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Your goals need to be realistic and you must be willing to put effort into your site. I understand that people want to see dollar signs when somebody discusses making a living, so I will share mine.

In the past year, my blogs have earned about $17,000 from various advertising sources. Before you get turned off by that number, however, understand that this has been a part-time income for me. For most of the past year I have both worked a full time job and been a full-time graduate student. I generally spend about two-to three hours a day on my blogs. I estimate that I dedicated 700 hours to my blogs in the past year. That means my hourly income was about $25.

This is my second full year of blogging (although some of my sites are older than that). While I would love to have made more money, I believe my profits were very realistic considering the hours spent. Now that the sites are up and running, I am moving towards full-time blogging and I hope that next year’s income will continue to reflect that hourly rate.

My advertising revenue comes from several sources. These include direct payments from individuals as well as affiliate advertising though Amazon, Google, Commission Junction and Yahoo. There are several other services and I will discuss affiliates at length in a future post. Some people may also look to sell items or services directly through their sites.

Because of confidentiality agreements with the various advertisers, I cannot give you exact numbers about how much money one service pays versus another. I can give you this general number for my site however. I have found that between all of the advertisers I average about $9 per every thousand page view on my sites. My blogs are about a variety of subjects, so they probably earn about an average amount. Some topics (such as medicine and finance) will earn more than others, but this is a good yard stick. By this measurement, you can see that the more visitors you can appeal to, the more money you can make. A site with 30,000 visitors a day will probably make a substantial amount of money while one with 300 visitors a day won’t even buy your lunch.

One of the facts that needs to be clear from the beginning is that you won’t be making money the first day. Your blog will require time to build an audience and for a long time you will need to write with the knowledge that not too many people will be reading your original posts. You will still need to write them as if you are writing for a large audience though, because quality and continuity is what will bring people back and get them to recommend the site to their friends.

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