215 minutes of video
215 minutes of audio
58 slides
72 pages of transcript
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The Magazine-First Approach to Organize Your Pitches to Ensure You Hit Your Goals
After our Idea-to-Pitch live workshopping series, a freelancer wrote us asking how you should organize your pitching initiative if you’re using a “magazine-first” rather than “idea-first” approach. It was such a great question because we usually recommend working magazine-first rather than idea-first!
The difference between “magazine-first” and “idea-first” pitch plans can be a huge difference in time investment, and, depending on your goals, ease of success in reaching the level you really want to be with your travel writing.
In this webinar, we’ll break down these two different ways of looking at your pitching, the pros and cons of each, and how to know which is right for you and when it makes sense to switch.
We will cover:
– Idea-first and magazine-first pitching: what do they really mean?
– How idea-first and magazine-first pitching work in practice
– Pros and cons of each process
– When do you want to use each pitching approach?
Your Personalized, Goal-Oriented Approach to Deciding Which Magazines to Pitch
After three years of running Dream of Travel Writing—helping writers find the right mix of writing to meet their financial goals—and our Travel Magazine Database, which breaks down exactly how to pitch each section of more than 500 magazines, we’re always shocked when writers still tell us they’re only trying to pitch major newsstand magazines like Travel & Leisure or big airline magazines like Hemispheres. Rather than pitch the same places that everyone else is pitching, your best chance of success, much like applying to universities, is to find the outlets that are a more specific fit to you overall in many different dimensions.
In this webinar, we’ll walk through how to begin to source them, cut down your list, and make sure you’re on track to also meet your assignment and income goals through the magazines you’ve chosen.
We will cover:
– Why pitch idea-first rather than magazine-first?
– The first step to building out your magazine list
– Think like the parent of a college student when refining your list
– What does a balanced magazine portfolio look like?
How to Create a Personal “File” on Every Magazine You’d Like to Target
In fundraising or any other sort of high profile deal making, people create in depth dossiers or “files” on their targets that include all sorts of details on the target, with particular highlights on potential points of intersection that offer an in for building a relationship. You can do the same for the magazines that you want to build relationships with.
The common advice (from both teacher and magazine editors) to “read the magazine!” only scratches the surface. In this webinar, we’ll unpack a detailed, organized, and objective-driven way of breaking your process of getting familiar with a magazine into actionable information you can use to put together the right pitches for each editor you’re looking to build a relationship with.
We will cover:
– Why pitch idea-first rather than magazine-first?
– How to start building your list
– Why creating personal files on each magazine is the linchpin of pitching success
– What does a personal file for each magazine look like?
– Creating one live!
Creating a Magazine Pitch Planner That Fits Your Needs and Goals
One of the most common questions that we get from experienced writers is about how best to track their pitches once they’ve been sent. But that misses out on the most important part of the pitching process, the area where most writers fall flat: planning which pitches they will write *before* they go out to make sure you meet your goals through the pitches you’re sending.
In this webinar, we’ll break through the structure, method, upkeep and rationale behind a very easy and flexible way to plan your pitches in advance. It not only allows you to always know what you should be working on (one of the biggest questions we see facing writers today!), but also make sure that you have pitches ready when you need them, rather than scrambling when an editor gets back to you with a request for more pitches.
We will cover:
– Why pitch idea-first rather than magazine-first?
– How to start building your list
– What makes this process not work + how to make sure it works
– The must-not-miss aspects of a pitch plan that works
– Creating one live!