How to Find Paying Magazines Online

In this webinar we're going to look at my top strategies for finding paying magazines online. While my book lists many options, I'm only going to focus on four. These are:

• The Gale's directories • Keyword research

• Freelancewriting.com

• LinkedIn

Before we get started I want to cover one thing from my book and is one of the number one complaints from writers: “I have nothing to write about…” I hear this all the time. In reality, you have an enormous amount of life experience and business knowledge.

One powerful way of tapping into your history is to use a mind map.

A mind map is one of the fastest ways of coming up with new ideas. You place your name in the center and circle it, then let your mind come up with all sorts of ideas and write them down, no matter what they are. The process takes only minutes. After that, choose between 3-6 ideas and use them as the basis for researching magazines.

How Magazines Pay For Your Work This is one of the most important areas in this section, because it will have a bearing on which publication you write for and when. Magazines pay for articles in three ways. These are: • By word • By page • By assignment

• If you write for a magazine that pays by the word (say 25 cents per word) and you write a 1,000 word article, you just earned $250.00.

• If you write for a magazine that pays by the page (say $50.00 per page) and you write four pages, you just earned $200.00.

• Finally, there are magazines that pay a flat rate, say $500.00 per article (and they will tell you how many words they want in the article).

The second thing you need to know is when the magazine will pay you. Like the section earlier, there are three main methods: • On submission • On acceptance • On publication The first method is my favorite way of being paid. When you submit your article you can also submit your invoice at the same time.

On Acceptance: In this case, while the publication has received your submission, they still have to review it, edit it, and make corrections before they accept it. Once they do, you can expect payment. On Publication. This is when the magazine has a spot in their editorial calendar for your article and will publish it at that time. If you work for publications that do this, be prepared to wait for 60, 90, 120 days or longer.

If this creates havoc with your cash flow, do not write for these publications.

Now we’re ready to look at how to find paying magazines. As I said earlier, our first stop is the Gale’s directories. To find that online go to Google and type in: fauquier library gales directories

You’ll see something like this. Click on the second listing.

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This brings up the following website. Click on the Gales link.

This brings up the Gale Directory Library. Click on the Advanced heading.

Choose Gales Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media. Enter the keyword: travel.

This brings up 621 results.

Note the marked listings.

Marked Items list and email or print options.

Talk about enRoute listing.

enRoute online.

The Write for us section.

Writer’s Guidelines

More info.

One thing that’s not mentioned in the guidelines is how much they pay. In the past, that information was posted on their site. To find out, you’ll have to send them an email and ask. Once you’ve gone through the back issues and have a good sense of the guidelines, you’re ready to write a query letter. The entire structure of that, and how to get the best results is in my book.

How to Find Paying Magazines with Search Engines

There are four main types of search: • Broad match

• Phrase match

• Exact match

• Long tail keywords

Broad Match: This keyword combination uses all the words in the search. If you search for the keyword: golf bags on Google, you get 19,500,000 results. This is because the search is for both “golf” and “bags.” Phrase Match: When you use this method, your results match the exact phrase. Here is how it works. You add quotation marks around your keyword, like this: “golf bags” In this case, the result comes back with 7,370,000 matches. This is still quite substantial but, as you can see, we are narrowing things down.

Exact Match: This keyword combination is for searches that are for that phrase only and as written, without any other words in the search. Here is how you would use it in a search: [golf bags]. In this case, we received roughly 19,500,000 results, which is too much. Sometimes this search gives you the exact opposite of what you would expect. To narrow it down further we’ll do a phrase match search for: "leather bagboy golf bags“ This gives us only 2 results.

In another example, I’ll type in the keyword: magazines into Google . It returns 1,720,000,00 results.

Phrase match: “american magazines” 318,000 results

An example of the results

Getting back to search. In this case I’m refining the search term with the keyword phrase “american woodworking magazines” Note what happens above as I type in my search

I accepted Google’s suggestion. Note the results.

I used a broad match search here. Note the results.

I used a phrase match search here.

As you can see, there are many different ways that you can search. To get different results, add words like: • list of • directory of • catalog A larger list of options (and sites that I’ve found) is available in my book: Secrets of Profitable Freelance Writing.

How to Find Magazines with Websites

In the previous section, we looked at how to find magazines using search engines. During the course of my searches, one of the sites I found was freelancewriting.com, which has just shy of 1,000 links to Writer’s Guidelines in different categories. We’ll take a look at how that works in this section.

Here, we focus on the Writer’s Guidelines

The Writer’s Guidelines Database and categories

The health listings

Abilities Magazine summary

How to Find Magazines and Editors on LinkedIn

The “People” search on LinkedIn. Keyword: editors

Keyword: editors computers

An unexpected bonus: http://www.howtofindworkfromhome.com/write-for-us/ Another great way to find work is to use: “write for us” in several ways, such as: • write for us business • write for us computers • write for us travel • write for us software

It will take a bit of digging with each search phrase but you’ll find many publications you can write for. And remember, if they don’t list information about payments, write to them and ask.

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