Writing for Money: Tips for Planning Your Next Article Pitch

If you have expertise with web technologies, there's good money to be made writing for online publications like SitePoint.

Don't worry if you feel you're not a great writer. The most important thing is your knowledge and enthusiasm for your subject.

As an editor for SitePoint, I've compiled a list of the most important things to consider when planning and pitching your article idea.

Deciding What to Write About

Not every topic is suited for an article, so start with some planning and research. Here are some things to focus on.

Know your subject

Think about what you're best qualified to write about. Sure, you can do some research on a topic you don't know much about and then knock out an article. But it's better to write about something you're intimately familiar with, as it lends depth and authority to your writing.

Pick an appropriate topic

The internet is full of amazing blog posts on all kinds of topics, some of them pretty niche --- which is fantastic, and long may it last! But when writing for money, it's important to remember that your publisher can't afford to pay for content that few will read.

You can help your chances of getting published by ensuring there's widespread interest in your topic. As an expert in a particular area, you should have a feel for what's trending, and the kind of information people are currently looking for.

For programming languages, there will always be new specifications, libraries, modules and APIs to explain, new techniques to explore, better ways to get things done, and new solutions to common problems. And there will always be a demand for new insights into Design and UX, Accessibility, Entrepreneurship, Content and Marketing.

A good way to gauge current interest in a topic is to look at what's happening on news groups, social media, forums and so on. I often get pitches for topics that used to create a buzz but are now basically old news. Ask yourself whether your proposed article could have been written one or more years ago. If so, it's probably better to focus on what's changed since then --- especially given how fast web technologies and practices are evolving. (Of course, a new take on an old topic is an exception, but it takes skill to make a splash with these.)

Has it been done before?

Ideally, choose a topic that needs more coverage generally. If a topic has recently been done to death across the web, it may not be the best choice, even if your publisher is yet to cover it. At least try to offer something new on the topic, or a different angle, and highlight this in your pitch.

It's also a really good idea to check if your topic has already been covered by your publisher. Search their site, either through their internal search tools or via Google, like so:

site:sitepoint.com my topic idea

If the topic has been covered, all is not lost. You could argue the previous articles are out of date, or that you have a different slant on the topic that's worth publishing. This can be very helpful to the editor.

Writing an Outline

Along with your topic pitch, I highly recommend you include an outline of your article. This really helps an editor assess the viability of the topic. It also helps you to plan your writing and to ensure it has a clear purpose and goal.

An outline is like a skeleton, showing an article's limbs and bones. It's similar to what you'd glean by quickly scanning a finished article: the title and main headings give you a sense of what the article covers, and the first line of each paragraph gives you a bit more detail.

Try to write an outline without referring to notes. If you can't, it probably means you're not quite on top of the topic yet, and that you need to do some more thinking, planning or research.

So let's look at the elements of an effective outline. At the end of this section, I'll include the outline I used for this article as an example.

Title

An editor will help you with the title, but it's still a good idea to put thought into this yourself. A title can make or break an article. Try to capture the essence of the topic in a way that will attract readers and also maximize its SEO potential. Longer titles of around 50 or 60 characters are preferable to shorter ones.

Introduction

A good introduction is crucial. It gives readers a clear idea of what the article is about, why it's important, whether or not it's relevant to them, and what they can hope to learn from it.

Your outline should include a brief list that covers these points clearly.

Headings

The main headings of your article are really important, and you should be able to list them in an outline when pitching a topic. Readers often scan headings to get an overview of an article, so they should give a clear sense of what the article covers.

As with the main title, word them carefully, so that they clearly summarize what's to follow.

Listing discussion points

Under each heading, list the main points you'll be making. These list items may or may may not represent actual paragraphs, but it's useful to think of them like that. Often readers will scan headings and then the first words of each paragraph, which should give a sense of what they contain.

Conclusion

It's always good to round off an article with some concluding thoughts --- such as ones that help to elucidate, clarify or reiterate the main points made in the article, and that point readers to what they can do next.

Your outline should include a simple list of these concluding points.

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by Ralph Mason via SitePoint