WHERE was I? Ah yes, working in my spare time to build up my freelance business. Fifteen years ago when I set out on this road, the internet was just a twinkle in the eye of a few highly intelligent geeks. There was no e-mail, very few computers and I can’t remember there being word processors. I thought I was at the cutting edge having an electric typewriter!
However, the basic principles were the same as they are today: know your market, be totally reliable and write well.
At first I wrote about anything that took my fancy in my own style and sent off the articles to magazines. Not surprisingly, they nearly all came bouncing back again.
It was true I had a few successes but I know now that the acceptances were the result of luck rather than judgement. At the rate I was going I would never be earning enough to have my own successful freelance business.
It soon dawned on me that I had to study the market if I were to be rewarded for all my hard work.
I started to read magazines voraciously. Not just the ones I liked, but anything and everything. I bought quite a few and I found many on the shelves of my local library. If I found one that I thought was a potential market, I went through it with a fine toothcomb. I started to ask numerous questions. What “style” were the articles? Were they chatty or serious or a mixture of both? Did they use short sentences and paragraphs or were they wordier? Which articles appeared to have been written by staff writers and which by freelancers? Regular columns are almost always written by staff writers, for example.
What kind of people was the magazine designed to appeal to – was it for young women or pensioners, for children or middle-aged men? Were they business people, family orientated, rich, poor, upper class, working class? I read every advert trying to get a fix on the readership.
Now I wrote articles not in my style (although they still had my individual stamp about them) but in the style of the magazine.
Soon the acceptance letters began to increase. However, I was sure there was still more that I could do ……
Watch this space!
However, the basic principles were the same as they are today: know your market, be totally reliable and write well.
At first I wrote about anything that took my fancy in my own style and sent off the articles to magazines. Not surprisingly, they nearly all came bouncing back again.
It was true I had a few successes but I know now that the acceptances were the result of luck rather than judgement. At the rate I was going I would never be earning enough to have my own successful freelance business.
It soon dawned on me that I had to study the market if I were to be rewarded for all my hard work.
I started to read magazines voraciously. Not just the ones I liked, but anything and everything. I bought quite a few and I found many on the shelves of my local library. If I found one that I thought was a potential market, I went through it with a fine toothcomb. I started to ask numerous questions. What “style” were the articles? Were they chatty or serious or a mixture of both? Did they use short sentences and paragraphs or were they wordier? Which articles appeared to have been written by staff writers and which by freelancers? Regular columns are almost always written by staff writers, for example.
What kind of people was the magazine designed to appeal to – was it for young women or pensioners, for children or middle-aged men? Were they business people, family orientated, rich, poor, upper class, working class? I read every advert trying to get a fix on the readership.
Now I wrote articles not in my style (although they still had my individual stamp about them) but in the style of the magazine.
Soon the acceptance letters began to increase. However, I was sure there was still more that I could do ……
Watch this space!
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