Writing is a rather self-serving activity, don\u2019t you think? We derive great pleasure from the process of stringing and weaving words together. We thrill at the idea of moving someone to tears or laughter through our writing. We love coming up with new and interesting ways of presenting a thought, dialog or information. And, as writers, we can create material strictly to please ourselves\u2014that is, until we start writing for publication. <\/p>\n
Some writers, when they decide to turn their writing into earnings, find a niche\u2014a specific area of interest. Two of my writer friends write almost exclusively for animal and pet publications. Others do only travel writing. There are freelancers who write primarily for the childhood education, gardening or senior markets. <\/p>\n
How do they earn enough money to keep writing when they write only on one subject? By using every creative fiber in their being to expand on and rework that subject. <\/p>\n
For example, let\u2019s say that you typically write a pet column in a local newspaper, submit regularly to a paying newsletter for dog owners and occasionally contribute to various national pet and animal publications. You could conceivably increase your earnings by doing a little extra research, altering some of your pieces and submitting them to regional, family, environment or senior magazines, for example. Your column piece on local dog parks and how to behave when visiting them could be reworked to fit any community or state publication and several other types of magazines. Your article featuring the dangers of walking your dog in wilderness areas could be altered for any number of regional magazines. <\/p>\n
I once wrote a piece for a parenting magazine on how to teach your children responsibility. I sold a similar article called, \u201cHow to Teach Your Child Responsibility Through Horse Ownership,\u201d to a horse-related magazine and, \u201cHow to Teach Your Child Responsibility Through Owning a Cat,\u201d to a cat magazine. So an article that originally paid around $400, suddenly blossomed into a $800 or $900 paycheck. <\/p>\n
I write on a variety of topics. But, over the years, I\u2019ve also submitted hundreds of articles to a niche market. That niche is writing and publishing. I\u2019ve also written over 400 blog entries related to writing and publishing. How can one person come up with so many different ways to present material and insight on a single topic? By knowing the questions.<\/p>\n
What does that mean? Well, in order to write for a particular audience, you must know what that audience cares about, needs to know, is interested in, could benefit from and what they are asking. Listen to people. Visit forums and blogs in your area of writing interest. Read newsletters, magazines and books on your topic. Be in constant research mode whether you are surfing the web, watching TV or chatting with someone in the supermarket. <\/p>\n
And once you come up with the original article idea and sell it, begin immediately looking for ways to change or expand on it. Here\u2019s another concrete ideas for those of you who find this difficult: I once saw an article in the newspaper about raised gardens for the disabled gardener. My research led me to eventually write several articles on therapy gardens, therapeutic gardening, gardening tools for the handicapped gardener, healing gardens for the ailing and meditation gardens. These articles appeared in family, senior, regional, general, health and walking magazines. <\/p>\n
This week, why don\u2019t you work on expanding and altering some of your most promising or popular articles to use in other types of publications. I\u2019d love to hear of your successes.<\/p>\n