by Nick Darlington | Feb 14, 2017 | Freelance Writing Tips |
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- Keep the pitch short.
- Start with an introductory sentence explaining what the email is about.
- Launch into your pitch. Mention the proposed titles and provide an article outline.
- 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.
by Nick Darlington | Feb 13, 2017 | Freelance Writing Tips |
Day 22 – Finding an editor’s email address
Let’s assume the following:
- You’ve chosen a major publication that you want to get featured in e.g. Huffington Post.
- You’ve done your research and understand the type of content they publish on their site.
- You have an article idea you want to pitch.
- You have the editor’s/relevant decision maker’s name (usually a Google search or a visit to the company About page reveals this)
The next step is to find that editor’s email address so that you can pitch your article. You always want to pitch the relevant decision maker or editor as opposed to going through online submission forms. This improves your odds of getting featured in that publication, especially in the larger ones where there are thousands of submissions daily.
But how do you find an editor’s email address particularly if it’s not on display on the website (often it is) and a simple Google search yields no results? You use email finding apps. Huh? Okay, so there are online email finding apps that let you find almost anyone’s email. And by anyone, I MEAN ANYONE. All you need is their name and website domain, and the app does the rest of the work for you.
There are plenty of these apps on the market, from Voila Norbert, FindThat, and Lusha to Hunter, Rocket Reach, and Rapportive. My personal favorite is FindThat. I used it yesterday to find an editor’s email address in just a few minutes. A friend was telling me he couldn’t find the relevant editor and email address for Huffington Post. I told him I’d give him that information in less than 15 min.
A simple Google search gave me the link to the companies about page, where all the editor’s names for the different Huffington Post categories are listed. Knowing the name and the company domain, I went over to FindThat, typed in the relevant information, and viola, it gave it to me.
It really is that easy. Certain people’s email addresses may prove more elusive than others, buy I guarantee that if you try all the apps, combined with Google searches and scouring company websites, you will eventually find it.
Hope this tip helps. For more freelance writing tips and daily rants check in daily.
If you want to say hello feel free to email me at nick@nickdarlington.com.
Nick D
by Nick Darlington | Feb 12, 2017 | Freelance Writing Tips |
Day 21 – places to find free stock photos.
When I started blogging I spent a lot of time trying to find free stock photos. Once I started digging I was confronted with many options. I tried many of them and soon realised that I’d need to choose a couple of go-to resource for images, otherwise, I’d waste time searching and choosing images for blog posts.
The one place I ended up using time and time again was Pixabay.
I found them to be one of the best photo aggregators. And the best thing? All their images are free. No attribution is required whether for commercial or personal use.
And when I didn’t find what I wanted on Pixabay, I’d turn to other places like Gratisography, picjumbo and Unsplash.
I recently discovered another gem, namely that of Pexels, and it’s replaced Pixabay, for now anyways. I find their images to be of higher quality. Not sure if that’s true or not. Perhaps I needed a change. Who knows?
Anyways, these are 5 of my favourite places to find free stock photos.
What are yours?
Please contact me if you need help to become a freelance writer or want any writing tips. My email is nick@nickdarlington.com
Cheers
Nick D
by Nick Darlington | Feb 11, 2017 | Freelance Writing Tips |
Day 20 – staying motivated as a freelance writer.
Launching your freelance writing business is one thing, but once you’ve launched it you need to continue finding clients and growing your business. Aside from marketing to grow your business, you also need to deal with yourself. Yourself who’s a stubborn fuck at the best of times. Yourself who sometimes loses motivation (without warning). I’m talking from experience here.
I spent two months building my writer’s website, establishing credibility, and cold pitching to land my first high paying clients. I wanted to achieve my dream of self-employment and location independence. The excitement was there. I was riding a wave; a wave that felt like it would never end. And when I announced I was self-employed (yes I announced it on Facebook), I felt proud and even more excited.
Then, a funny thing happened: a few months passed and I lost motivation.
Had I worked myself too hard? Was I getting bored? What was this feeling? I decided it was time to take five days off to regather my thoughts. I went away with a friend for the weekend and I didn’t touch my laptop. Upon returning, I felt a little spurt of motivation, but nothing compared to the initial wave I was riding.
I realised: the excitement came from working towards self-employment and location independence. Once I achieved it, it was almost like, now what?
Well, I’ll tell you now what. I have a business and I need to treat it as such. It’s not always going to be pretty. My motivation levels won’t always be there. This isn’t possible. We are human and our feelings shift from one day to the next.
What I can tell you is what carried me through the period (and continues to give me motivation). That’s simply: I remembered why I started. I remembered I wanted to be self-employed and location independent. I didn’t want to sit in an office every day. I wanted to be able to live and work from anywhere. I wanted to be in control of my life. It was a lifestyle choice.
Side thought – This reminds me of a letter from Hunter S. Thompson on finding your purpose and living a meaningful life. Aside from the contents of the letter, what’s even more remarkable is that he was 22 years old when he wrote it in 1958. In it he mentions, “Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living.” This has always stuck with me.
This is why I’m so set on your why. This is why when I created a post on a writer’s group of 2000 members offering to help someone earn their first $1000 and become a freelance writer, I insisted they explain why they want to do this. What’s their why? What’s their underlying motivation? Because if you know your why, it’s far easier to sustain that motivation in the long run. Money should never be the driving force. Money is only a result of the value you provide. Over the long run, money is a weak motivator. There are more important things like the lifestyle you want, helping others, and making a difference in the world.
So what is your why? Why do you want to become a freelance writer?
As always, if you’re an aspiring or established freelance writer and need help with anything, feel free to contact me at nick@nickdarlington.com
Adios,
Nick
by Nick Darlington | Feb 10, 2017 | Freelance Writing Tips |
Day 19. Today’s topic – create great headlines with one tool.
You’ve written a great blog post, made the SEO tweaks, uploaded a feature image, chosen your keywords, and shared the post with your social media channels. You’re excited and expecting a ton of traffic. Instead, you get minimal click-throughs, no traffic, and you’re left scratching your head.
The truth is: no one will click through to read your content if you have a shitty headline, no matter how great or valuable your content is. So, what do you do?
You make use of the Co-schedule Headline Analyzer to test and tweak your headline. It’s a tool I use often. I’ll show you how it works by taking you through the process I used to choose the title for this blog post.
My first proposed titles was: A Tool That Will Help You Create Clickable Headlines. I typed it into the search box and hit analyse.
The tool gave me a grade by analysing the structure, grammar, and readability. See below:
It highlighted my use of common and uncommon words and looked at emotionality and power. Based on the grade it told me what to improve.
While a grade of 70 is good I wanted to make more tweaks.
I tried One Powerful Tool That Will Help You Create Clickable Headlines.
I wasn’t happy so I changed the title to How to Create Clickable Headlines With This Powerful Tool, I got this:
I made another tweak and got this:
Still not happy, I made one more change after doing some keyword research with Google Keyword Planner.
I changed my title to How to Create Great Headlines With One Powerful Tool.
With a grade of 77, I called it quits, optimized my blog post for SEO, added a feature image, hit publish, and then shared across social media channels.
Have you used the Headline Analyzer? Why don’t you give it a try?
If you need any help to kickstart or advance your freelance writing career, please contact me at nick@nickdarlington.com. I won’t try and sell you anything or ask you to sign-up for my course (I don’t have one). I’m simply offering you help.
Cheers
Nick
by Nick Darlington | Feb 9, 2017 | Freelance Writing Tips |
Day 18 – Today’s topic – freelance writer websites you should follow.
I’m not sure what to write about today, and to be honest, I’m not in the mood. But I thought I’d share three freelance writer websites to help you kickstart and/or advance your freelance writing career.
This one’s no secret as I often refer to it on the blog. Professional blogger and freelance writer Bamidele Onibalusi provides practical advice and tips to help you become in charge of your writing career.
Sign-up and you’ll receive his free list of 110 websites that pay writers. He recently did an interview with Jorden Roper who went from quitting her job to building a $5000/month business in four months. She’s the owner of the next site I’ll list here.
I quote, “Stop Fucking Around, Start Winning High-Paying Clients.” Need I say more?
Carol has been a freelance writer since 2005, has worked with several top clients like Forbes and Entrepreneur, and runs the successful, Make a Living Writing Blog.
She also created the membership community Freelance Writer’s Den (I’m a member). The community connects you with thousands of other writers, provides a ton of resources, and has its own job board. For $25/month it’s an absolute steal.
These three writer websites provide a host of valuable content (free and paid). So if you looking for help, advice, tips, and resources they’re a great place to start.
As always, if you need help on your freelance writing journey, feel free to contact me at nick@nickdarlington.com. Again, I’m not going to sell you anything or ask you to sign-up for my course (I don’t have one), I’m only here to help you become a freelance writer and earn well.
Adios,
Nick
