How to Create a Simple Pitch That Gets Accepted

Day 23 – creating a simple pitch

Yesterday I wrote an article on how to easily find an editor’s email address. Today I want to follow it up by discussing how to create a simple pitch to help you get featured in a major publication like Huffington Post. I’ll also provide you with a pitch template you can use.

Guidelines for a successful pitch:

1. Pay attention to the subject line of the email. Even if you have a perfect pitch, it won’t matter if the editor doesn’t open your email.
2. Keep your subject lines short and descriptive. Editors are busy people, so make it easy for them to decipher what the email is about before they even open it. For example [Guest Post} How to Land Your First Writing Gig is short and tells the editor it’s a guest post about freelance writing.
3. Keep the pitch short.
4. Start with an introductory sentence explaining what the email is about.
5. Launch into your pitch. Mention the proposed titles and provide an article outline.
6. Make sure you re-read for any grammatical errors. If you have poor grammar it will reflect badly on you. Install the Grammarly chrome extension to catch the grammatical errors.

What does this look like in action? Well, here’s my successful pitch to Huffington Post.

No bullshit. Straight to the point.

And, in case you don’t believe it was accepted, here’s their reply a day later:

So, here’s the pitch template:

Hi {insert name},

I would like to become a contributor for the {Insert name}.

Here is my proposed article:

Title: {Insert Title}

Concept: {talk about the angle you're going for and reference 
research studies}

I look forward to hearing from you

Best Regards

{Insert your name}

**Thanks must go to Bamidele for this template.

Feel free to contact me at nick (at) nickdarlington  (dot) com if you have questions or need help.