Press Business

Roughly 1,000 magazines are launched every year, according to Samir “Mr. Magazine” Husni, a magazine consultant and chair of the journalism department at the University of Mississippi. Nearly 20,000 consumer and trade publications exist in North America, according to the National Directory of Magazines. These statistics don’t include many of the small, independent start-up magazines.

New magazines can be a goldmine to dig up freelance work. Editors of new magazines are eager to find freelance talent to write regularly or to pitch articles and column ideas for at least four to six issues in advance, depending on the magazine’s frequency. New magazines can offer you, the freelance writer, an easier and quicker way to break into magazine writing.

I use various sources to uncover new magazines. My favorite is Ulrichsweb.com, an online directory of magazine serials. Before a magazine launches, the publisher or publishing company applies for an ISSN # and Ulrich’s records the ISSN #, along with the publication’s information, such as launch date, frequency, category, and contact information. Ulrichsweb.com is useful if you want to locate publications before they launch and before they publicly announce their debut via the newswires.

If you do not want to pay for a subscription to Ulrichsweb.com, you can use other free resources, such as MagazineLaunch.com and MrMagazine.com. These free resources track new magazine start-ups by researching the newswires and subscribing to press release services.

Writing for new magazines has some downsides. Firstly, circulation is usually at the low end and so is the magazine’s exposure in the marketplace. Secondly, the pay rate usually isn’t competitive with similar magazines. Thirdly, editors usually won’t pay you until after they publish your piece, instead of paying you on acceptance. Fourthly, many new magazines fail within the first year and it is possible the magazine could fleece you.

HOW TO BREAK IN AND SELL YOUR ARTICLES

Whether the publication or website has writer’s guidelines or not, your aim is to pitch your query letter, article idea, proposal, or full article to the editor. Most writers prefer writing a query letter and sending it to the editor. Follow this process:

1) Go to the publication’s website. See if the website posts its writer’s guidelines. If not, go to the Contact Us page. Contact the editor or the editorial director. On smaller start-up publications, contact the publisher as he usually plays dual roles. Request the publication’s writer’s guidelines. Make sure you address the editor or publisher by full name. Do not send an e-mail with “To Editor” as the subject. It will get deleted.

In addition to requesting writer’s guidelines, I advise you to make a short sales pitch in your e-mail, and include a brief bio. under your name with any relevant qualifications and skills as a writer. If you have a website, include a link to it. If an editor sees your sales pitch, he may want to know more about what you can offer.

2) If the editor’s response is they don’t provide writer’s guidelines, then you need to take a “marketing” approach. You’ll need to craft a query letter and pitch your article idea (or your availability as a freelance writer).

3) If you can’t break in, don’t move on just yet! Mail (yes, snail mail!) the editor your business card and a brief letter about yourself, your qualifications, references, and where to find samples of your work online. Explain how using you as a freelance writer can increase readership for the publication. Explain some of the topics you can cover, who you can interview, and any exclusive information you can obtain regularly.

Many writers e-mail the editor their information to keep on file; however, I also find that mailing my correspondence to the editor gets results. You force the editor to read and touch your correspondence, and this increases the chances of him remembering who you are and what you can provide.

Convincing an editor to outsource work to you or accept your articles for publication has a lot to do with how well you pitch and present yourself and your ideas. This is why writing a near perfect query letter is vital to getting work.

Since 2002, the time when online marketing business got its face transformed, many web platforms emerged but WordPress is the most extensively used application for building your websites.

WordPress is undoubtedly a semantic publishing platform that emphasizes greatly on usability and intuitive web standards. It helps in building a website that can bring success at your finger tips.

What makes WordPress stand class apart?

1) WordPress enables you to alter the format of your website by browsing through the core PHP files and modifying the relevant codes.

2) This publishing platform undergoes upgrades from time to time and the only thing you’re required to do is upgrade the version when there is a potential threat of any security breach.

3) Using WordPress, you can modify your website to a static page that promotes your specific products/services effectively.  This would give your website a very professional look.

4) The platform is quite flexible and it’s too easy to jump from one theme to another. You can also enhance the functionality of your website using its plug-ins and integrate custom programming into the same and that too, absolutely free of cost.

5) It’s an impactful content management system that helps you build great web pages and you can manage considerable audio, video, text etc.

6) It’s also quite easy to create article directories, e-commerce sites, portfolio sites etc. using WordPress.

7) You can easily optimize the content of your website using SEO plug-ins of your WordPress, which would fetch your website higher search engine rankings.

The platform entails base source code that interlinks PHP with MySql and hence, quite easy to install. It creates your website in minutes and it’s live & running.

9) WordPress is styled by CSS  and hence all its installations compley with the set web standards.

10) It takes a very less amount of time to deploy any installation process and integrate themes, plug-ins etc. hence, it becomes easy to complete your project on or well before time. Also, it offers cost-effective web solution to individuals and SMEs around the globe, which set up small-scale sites.

There are a number of good web hosting providers that support WordPress Hosting such as LimeDomains, Yahoo!, BlueHost etc. So if you’re planning to set up a site of your own and wish to get your online presence noticed, get started today.

If you want to make the most of social media marketing today, you better sign up with Facebook. According to a recent report from the Orlando Business Journal, Facebook has far outpaced its competitors in the first quarter of 2009, garnering 78 percent of US social network participants against MySpace’s 42 percent, LinkedIn’s 17 percent and Twitter’s 10 percent.

Worldwide, Facebook was reported to have 307.1 million unique visitors in May 2009 while MySpace had less than half with a mere 123.2 million unique visitors. According to Facebook, its members are sending each other one billion chat messages each day.

As early as 2008, a study done by Internet Retailer and Vovici showed that most online retailers in the US chose to use Facebook as a social media network to help boost sales. A separate study done by Rosetta among the top 100 US online retailers showed that 59% had set up a Facebook fan page. Among these retailers were Best Buy, Kohl’s, Wal-Mart and Toys “R” Us.

In order to make the most of your company’s Facebook fan page, though, you should familiarize yourself thoroughly with social media marketing as a whole, and with the way Facebook itself works in particular. It would be wholly counterproductive to make an online faux pas and earn ill will. Each social media network has its own temperament, after all, and its own set of rules and online etiquette. Members and users also have certain expectations from other members and users.

Perhaps it would be best for a company not to risk experimentation by assigning this task to a newbie. Learn from the mistake of the New York Times whose new social media editor had no extensive knowledge of Twitter before diving in. As a result, her repost meant to point other Tweeter users to an online article ended up taking them to Ebay instead. Do not make the same mistake in Facebook or you will get a lot of negative comments instead of the favorable ones you need. It would be best to leave the task of handling your company’s social media marketing efforts to the experts.

Social media marketing is one of the services offered by Web Dot Com Website Development Philippines, Inc. as a full service web site developer and a web hosting provider with domain name registration services. Web Dot Com recognizes that social media marketing, along with search engine optimization and search engine marketing, is now a necessity in the online marketplace. Having a good website with good landing pages are no longer enough.

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Web Dot Com Website Development Philippines, Inc.

Address:

2nd Floor, BT&T Center

#20 E. Rodriguez Jr. Ave., Libis (C-5),

Quezon City, 1110 Philippines

E-mail: info@webdc.com.ph

Telephone numbers: (632) 634-4625; (632) 635-6104