You know that Fortune 500 companies have marketing plans. As freelance writers, so should we.

A handful of the writers I work with object to the idea of a marketing plan (or marketing, or plans).

The theory is that we artistic types are too spontaneous and creative to be constrained by such a left-brain activity.

But the truth is, the more spontaneous and creative you are, the more you need plans and systems to keep your writing business alive.

If you’re lucky enough to have come to writing from a business background, you already know how to do this. For all the other writers, here are six (reasonably) easy steps to creating a marketing plan to move your writing and your business in the right direction.

1. Run Your Numbers

Open your bookkeeping software or bank statements and find out exactly how much money comes in and how much you spend on business and personal expenses.

If you share your finances with a partner or spouse, you can divvy up expenses for this purpose – or count your partner’s income as one stream for your business and cover all the household costs.

Do this for the three most recent months, so the average will account for any outliers from a big assignment or one-time expense.

2. Set Your Goals

Look over your budget from step one. Where would you spend more money if you had it?

Would you pay off debt more aggressively, establish a vacation fund? How about setting free a few extra bucks for a meal out or some retail therapy?

Create a “goal budget” and find out how much more money you need to make to live that life. Go for a few reasonable changes here, and set a new goal once you achieve them. Aiming too high at first just sets you up for disappointment.

3. Analyze Your Output

Work out how much you make, on average, per assignment and divide the result of step two by that number. If you want an extra $500 a month, and write assignments for an average of $100 each, you need five more assignments per month to reach your goals.

Broken down like that, the new lifestyle you want seems (and is) more attainable. If your prices vary widely, break your output goals into sections. That $500 could come from a single $300 top magazine column and four $50 blog posts.

4. Study Your Marketing

Check your email history and other notes for the past few months and find out how many contacts you make with leads for each assignment you actually get. A “contact” includes any communication you have directly related to getting the gig.

Divide one by the other to figure out your ratio. If you get one gig for every 10 contacts, that’s a 10:1 ratio. Don’t include one-off check-ins with regular clients here. They’ll skew your numbers, and it’s better to estimate low and overperform than estimate high and get a nasty surprise.

It also helps protect you from a bad month if you know how much marketing you need to do to get the clients you need.

5. Establish Your Benchmarks

Time for some math. You can do it!

Take the results of steps three and four, and put them together. If you need six new assignments per month and have a 10:1 contact-to-assignment ratio, you need to make 60 new contacts per month to reach your income goals.

That’s 15 a week, or just three every work day. Make those three contacts a line item in your planner or to-do list.

6. Track Your Progress

This final step has two stages. First, make sure you get those contacts in every day. If you miss on one day, double your efforts until you’re back on quota.

This constant system of prospecting creates a continuous stream of new work. Second, check your numbers at the end of each month to confirm you set the right goals.

It might turn out your ratio was a bit low, and you need 70 contacts in the next month. You might have spruced up your website and only need 30.

No marketing plan is ever complete.

This system not only helps you stay on top of your marketing, but helps fight the temptation to procrastinate by giving you a clear to-do list of promotional tasks.

It really is that simple, no matter how much your buddy with the MBA would like to tell you otherwise. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, though.

Do you have a marketing plan for your freelance business? If so, share how you do it.

Jason Brick is a freelance tramp who covers whatever topics clients will pay him to write about. He speaks about the business of writing and coaches new writers. See more of his articles about the writing business at brickcommajason.com.

That can be worth it, too. I’ve gotten some amazing connections and clients from blogging on popular sites.

But I believe writers should be paid for their work. And sites that take guest posts still get a piece of writing out of the deal.

So I did a crazy thing…

Back in late 2010, I did something sort of nuts — I decided to start paying for guest posts.

At the time, my audience was pretty small and I was still earning most of my living from freelance writing.

It didn’t make economic sense on the face of it. I just thought it was the right thing to do.

I needed to put my money where my mouth was. I hoped I might inspire (or is that shame?) some other bloggers into paying for posts as well. I also hoped being different from the norm by being a paying writing market might get this little blog some attention.

And it worked

On both fronts, it worked! Make a Living Writing has received loads of attention, subscribers, and traffic from being published in many digests of paying markets. Even better, quite a few sites decided to pay after seeing me do it.

But I’ve neglected a critical last step here — to connect you to those paying markets so you could rake in some cash.

Fixing that now. Here’s my personal list of blogs that pay around $50 a post or more, from my own writers’ guidelines page. They’re listed in the order they began paying for posts, most recent first:

1. Your Online Biz — Thrilled to have inspired Darnell Jackson to top me — he began paying $100 a post in March 2013. Nice job, Darnell.
2. Write Your Revolution — Sarah Russell’s blog joined the ranks of $50-a-post paying markets in February.
3. Be a Freelance Blogger — Sophie Lizard has joined the smart set and now pays $50 a post.
4. The Renegade Writer – Excited to add Freelance Writers Den’s Other Den Mother Linda Formichelli to the list of people who’re taking the high road and paying $50 a post.
5. ReadLearnWrite – Paying $50 a post after seeing my Problogger post about paid guesting in Feb. 2012.
6. David Worrell’s blog, Rock Solid Finance (formerly Your Inside Guy) was the first niche blogger to jump on board my bandwagon and start pay $50 for guests posts back in late 2010. So I think he’s the coolest. You should definitely read his blog.
   
7. Freelance Switch – they pay around $75 per post. So I think they’re cool. And now I even guest blog for them on a regular basis myself. (They are owned by Envato, which has a half-dozen other sites that pay, too.)
8. HouseLogic – This site operated by the National Association of Realtors pays $1 a word — I had an opportunity to interview their editor a while back for an article for The 2013 Writer’s Market. If you’ve got a good twist on a shelter story and strong reporting skills, you know where to go now.
9. One Spoon at a Time — Paul Wolfe was inspired to start paying $50 a post back in Fall 2011. This one was inspired by my announcement…feels good to know I’m helping to create new paid markets for writers.
10. OnText – OK, they only pay $40 a post. But maybe some of you would like to know anyway, I’m betting.
11. Patch – AOL’s Patch.com, as of this writing, often pays $50 and up for short blog-postlike articles.
12. Make a Living Writing — can’t forget to mention my own site! Still proudly paying $50 a post. (Due to overwhelming response, I now only take guest posts from students or grads of Freelance Writers Den or Jon Morrow’s Guest Blogging course.)

Those dozen get you started. Fortunately, a couple other bloggers have been busy compiling more helpful info on blogs that pay, and now there are several other good lists out there — and I’ve collected links to all of them here.

How to find 100+ more paying markets

Two are by Bamidele Onibalusi of the newly renamed Writers in Charge (formerly YoungPrePro), and one is by the abovementioned Sophie Lizard of Be a Freelance Blogger. One older list is from the freelance-training site Matador. The assignments range from blog posts for niche bloggers to fully reported online feature articles for major national magazines’ online sites.

Here are links to those below:

•  Writers in Charge’s original list of 30 paying markets (which really lists 33)
• Sophie Lizard’s 2012 list of 45 Paying Markets (has good deets on the rest of those Envato sites I mentioned above)
• Writers In Charge’s 2013 list of 45 More Markets (which really has 46).
• Matador’s 2010 list of 27 markets feature a wide range of pay rates up to $1 a word+ and Matador is itself a paying market, as Oni notes on one of his lists. Rates may have changed at some markets since this was published, but it’s a nice compendium of higher payers.

I got curious and compared all these lists to see how many listings were unique. Eliminating all the duplication between the lists and counting my 12 above, there are nearly 120 unique paying websites and blogs listed in all. Nice, huh?

I’m thrilled to have helped add a few names to these lists of places that pay. Possibly my finest achievement here on the blog.

Now that you know how many markets pay, I have to ask:

Why not get paid?

As a blogger, you’ve got a choice when you look to guest post. If you’re going to guest post for exposure, I say, why not get paid, too?

I recommend making paying guest markets your top priority. That’s what I’ve done and it’s allowed me to earn quite a lot while also getting attention for my writing and my blog.

And if you have a blog you’re looking to build, consider paying for guest posts. Just a suggestion.

Ever gotten paid for a guest post? If you know more paying markets, please add to my list.

It’s a way to find better clients by tuning into your own feelings.

The fun thing is, your main guide to additional freelance success can be an emotion you might not associate with business that much. But it’s one we all really enjoy feeling.

Have you guessed what it is?

A few hints:

“Do what you ___ and the money will follow.”

“All you need is ____.”

“God is _____.”

That’s right. Could it be that simple? Yes, it can.

How to love your way to higher rates

I recently encountered the theme of employing love in your business twice in the past few weeks. Which was enough repetition to finally bring it home to me what a road to riches this emotion can be.

First, my pal Linda Formichelli sent me a chapter of entrepreneur and Sufi teacher Mark Silver’s book, Unveiling the Heart of Your Business. The chapter was on how to raise your prices using your heartfelt feelings as your guide.

When you think about a range of prices, sense your level of discomfort. If you tune into it, Silver says, you can discover the point where you feel love and harmony when talking about a price — and that’s where your rates should be.

Forget about market research and what competitors are doing. What feels right at heart? Where you can radiate positivity and love when you say that price? That’s the right price for you.

Try saying your proposed prices aloud and notice what happens with your body. Too low, and you’ll feel uncomfortable. Same with too high.

Open a loving heart to what you deserve to be paid, and you’ll see what to charge.

The formula for freelance love

Next, I headed to SOBCon, where one of the speakers was someone I’ve enjoyed learning from before — leadership expert Steve Farber, author of The Radical Leap Re-Energized.

Steve teaches people how to be bold and fully actualized in their careers.

One of his core sayings was a theme of SOBCon this year. It’s a simple formula for skyrocketing your freelance earnings and your job satisfaction level, too. It goes like this:

“Do what you love in the service of people who love what you do.”

I don’t know any better way to describe how to end up making a great living as a freelance writer doing projects you’re thrilled to write.

This formula has two sides. First, you need to figure out what types of paid writing you enjoy most.

Then, you look for people who truly appreciate your talents, and will pay you well as a result. When you get the love going both ways, you have a terrific project — one that will create a great sample, get you a glowing testimonial, and be a pleasure to work on.

That tends to lead to more work you love with other great clients. If you haven’t noticed, the good ones tend to talk to each other and will refer you.

How to make the leap from losers to lovers

If you’re stuck doing assignments you dread for clients you loathe right now, you’ve got to make some changes to your formula to grow your income.

It can seem impossible to turn this around. But you can.

Start by changing one side of the formula. Maybe you just start working only for clients who appreciate you more and drop the whiners and boundary-pushers.

Or you only write about topics you adore.

Gradually, get these two to line up. Find the clients who love your work in your favorite type of writing. And boom! You’re there.

My freelance client love story

Here’s the story of a client love affair I had once that shows what can happen when you live Steve’s credo.

This client approached me (which I always love!) through LinkedIn. They were a Fortune 500 company I happened to know and adore. Obviously, they had a marketing budget to spend on editorial.

I shop their stores and had covered the company in the past as a reporter. They were big fans of my more recent magazine articles on business topics. I thought their CEO had the highest ethics and admired how the company treated its employees.

They wanted me to write newsletter articles for their business clients about some of their services, the sort of business-writing challenge I enjoy. I’d get to talk to their customers and managers to write the stories, something I also find fun.

Then they asked me to bid it. I said it sounded like $1 a word.

They thought about it and got back to me and said, “That’s not enough. We think it should pay $2 a word.” And they did.

Find the writing you love. Find clients who love how you do it.

Not only will your income explode, but you’ll find yourself loving your freelance writing life, too.

Are you doing what you love for people who love what you do? Leave a comment and describe how it’s working — or what you’re doing to move in that direction.

Freelancers — especially those of us writing for magazines and newspapers — can feel it’s out of our control how much we make and what we can reasonably charge.

This isn’t true.

I’ve learned over the last decade as a freelance journalist, blogger, and author, that experience matters. Your previous work and credits matter.

And if you’re doing a fantastic job for your clients, be they magazine editors or corporate clients—they will pay you more than your peers in order to retain your services.

When do you know it’s time to take a look at your business and raise your rates? Here are 5 telltale signs:

1. You’ve started procrastinating

Assignments that once seemed challenging now seem effortless to you. You procrastinate on them because they no longer require any effort from you and you don’t seem to enjoy them as much.

If you’ve begun to use phrases such as “I could do this in my sleep,” it’s time to acknowledge that your experience and your expertise has grown. And start charging higher for it, of course.

2. You’ve had a steady gig for over 6 months

Your editor is happy with your performance, edits are quick and painless (if they’re painless for you, they’re painless for your editor as well), and more assignments keep coming through on a regular basis.

If you’ve been working for a publication that loves you and loves your work for more than six months, it may be time to ask for a raise. If an editor has the budget, she will be more than happy to compensate appropriately someone who makes her life easy.

3. Readers love you

If readers are writing in frequently about your work and in large numbers in the form of letters to the editor or comments on your post, it’s a clear sign to your editor that what you’re saying resonates with the readers of his publication.

Writers like this are valuable to publications because they bring in loyal followings of fans and editors are hesitant to let talent like this slide away.

As a writer, of course, you should be taking advantage of what you’re bringing to the table.

If you’re bringing all that loyal readership to a blog or publication along with your actual writing, you need to factor that into your price. Don’t undervalue yourself.

4. You’re turning down work from new clients

You’re so busy keeping your current clients happy that you’re now turning down work from new clients.

A few years ago, I faced this dilemma. I was being offered a monthly $1 a word slot by an editor I respected but I had limited time and something else would have to be replaced.

The lowest client I had was a 50-cent-a-word gig that I quite enjoyed writing and whose editor was a joy to work with.

So, give up an additional 50 cents a word or the relationship I’d built over the years? Money or loyalty?

It seems like loyalty is the obvious answer here, but freelancers who feed their families with their income know it’s not so simple.

So I went to my 50-cents-a-word editor and laid out the situation. To his credit, while he admitted that he couldn’t raise my rate, he said he wanted to continue working with me and cut my monthly assignments by half.

I was able to take on the new work and still keep my first editor happy. Win-win!

5. It’s been over a year

Look, as a freelancer, there’s no boss giving you an appraisal and deciding that it’s time to beef up your paycheck. That’s up to you.

Most experienced freelancers I know will raise their rates every year or so (unless the economy is tanking).

If nothing else, raise your rate according to the rate of inflation. If you don’t, you’re effectively losing money.

How do you decide when it’s time to raise your rates? Leave a comment and give us your approach.

 Mridu Khullar Relph is an award-winning journalist. Get her free e-book “21 Query Letters That Sold,” with queries that landed her in The New York Times, Time, Ms., Writer’s Digest, The Writer, and many more publications, at MriduKhullar.com. 

Yeah, I figured.

There are a lot of shady businesses out there that take advantage of freelance writers, particularly Internet startups.

If you don’t watch out, you could put in a lot of work for a client and find yourself without a paycheck. Often, these lowballers turn out to be nightmare clients, too, who are annoying and never satisfied.

What are some of the typical b.s. lines you should watch out for (besides the classic “Your check is in the mail”)?

Here are seven of my favorite tall tales clients tell:

1. Do this project cheap and we’ll have more work for you

Ah, the lure of ongoing work. It’s been used to drive down prices for so many freelance projects!

If you hear this, ask for details. What sorts of work do they have coming down the pipeline, and what rates might they pay for those assignments?

If they can’t provide any specifics, this is likely just a line to get you to drop your rates.

Even if it isn’t, try to tie your low-priced project to a firm commitment for additional work. Otherwise, you may well be giving up income for no real gain.

2. If we like your early work, we’ll raise you later

When you get this one, see if you can make them define when that “later” will come.

A better scenario is for you to say, “I’m doing this project at a discount rate because I want to work with you and get in the door. But I expect to review my rates and raise them to my more normal levels after this project.”

If the client is vague on when exactly it might be possible to earn more with them, assume it’s an empty promise.

3. We’ll do a contract later

Stalling on signing a contract usually means none will be forthcoming.

The dodge here is to get you working and pregnant with the project, usually under the guise of the project’s being a big, urgent rush job: “No time for paperwork, we need you to start writing immediately!”

Once you start writing without a contract, they’ve got you where they want you.

You keep writing in hopes of getting paid, and they wiggle out of having to define important stuff like how long they have to cut you a check after you turn in your work.

4. We don’t need a contract — we’re friends

You never need a contract more than when you work for a friend!

Defining the terms of the working relationship will make sure you don’t end up losing a friend if there’s a problem down the line.

5. This sample will be paid if we use it

Requests for free samples are often a flat-out scam. Next of kin to that is the promise that if they decide to use it they’ll throw you a little cash. It’s not worth the risk unless you’re writing for a very well-respected publication or business.

Be sure to know or negotiate the rate at which it will be paid if used, too. I’ve had writers email me all excited because they heard their piece was accepted, and then ask, “How much should I bill them for?” If you don’t know the answer, it’s never going to turn out to be a good rate. You don’t have much negotiating leverage after the fact.

If the client tells you they decided to pass, set up a Google Alert to scan for key phrases in the story on their site — often, you’ll find the piece pops up as published anyway. In which case, send an invoice.

6. This will be a great opportunity for exposure

This is usually code for “there isn’t any pay” — and the vast majority of sites that make this pitch in fact don’t have a ton of traffic. Be sure to check on Alexa or similar Web-traffic ranking tools and find out.

There are plenty of websites that pay for blog posts. Concentrate on pitching those and getting exposure while you earn.

If you do an ‘exposure’ gig, be sure you’re clear on what exposure you’ll get — how many links are you allowed? Will they let you build an author page on their site? Could you do a series of posts, which would help build more recognition?

I once had a writer come to me all excited because she placed an article on Salon, which has a great reputation for quality, but pays little.

At the time, she had yet to put up a writer website! She had no other online presence where Salon readers could find out more about her and easily contact or hire her.

I’d submit that this means the Salon piece was not good exposure. It was a waste of time. First, put up a writer website — then, you’ve got somewhere to send those readers you get exposed to, and they can get in touch.

Also, ask yourself, “Exposure to what?” Does this site’s audience fit well with the people you would like to attract? If not, take a pass.

7. If it works for me, this will get you lots of great clients

This one isn’t exactly a lie, just a dodge used to pay you less.

“You’ll be getting a great clip from me, so I shouldn’t have to pay you!” is the rationale.

To sum up, treat what prospects tell you skeptically.

Does it sound like it might be bogus?

Trust your gut. It probably is.

What lies have clients told you? Leave a comment and add to my list.

By Paul McCormack

I wanted more clients, and more revenue.

My sales in 2012 were respectable, but nothing spectacular. Unfortunately, since launching my freelance writing business in 2005, I really hadn’t figured out how to market myself.

In order to grow my business, I needed a plan.

Would cold calling work? How about direct mail? Neither approach appealed to me.

If I was to do something on a daily basis, I needed to pick a cost-effective process that I could sustain, and didn’t make me nauseous (I hate cold calling).

After careful research, I selected just two marketing strategies that I felt comfortable using on a daily basis.

Here’s what I did…

Letters of introduction — they really work!

In October, I spent about two weeks in the Freelance Writers Den learning all I could about letters of introduction (LOIs).

The Den includes a forum where other writers post their LOIs for review. I’m not ashamed to say that I read all of them, and made notes on what I liked and didn’t like about each one.

Later that month, I started sending my own LOI to prospective clients.

Since October 2012, I’ve sent 120 LOIs. The response rate so far is around 45%.

That’s approximately 50 responses to a “cold” sales letter.

From those responses, I’ve landed ten new clients, with at least another ten prospective clients that will likely engage me in the next 6 months.

Sure, I made some mistakes along the way, but I learned from them!

If your emails don’t generate responses, revise and try again. I constantly refine my LOIs.

They’ll never be perfect, but it doesn’t hurt to focus on improving your approach.

Also, remember that LOIs arrive uninvited. Make it easy for prospective clients to read and take the next step.

Don’t sweat it if they don’t respond immediately, they’re likely buried under all the work they may end up sending you!

Existing clients like your work — ask for more!

In addition to sending LOIs, I revisited my existing client roster in order to pitch new writing projects.

For example, after reviewing an existing client’s website, I found out that they had launched a new blog two months prior (shame on me for not noticing sooner).

I sent a quick email asking if they would like me to write for their blog. They immediately responded asking me to write at least one, possibly two posts a month for the rest of the year.

Never overlook the chance to “up-sell” existing customers.

Since you’ve already written for them, you understand what they like and don’t like – use that information to your advantage.

By contacting my existing client with pitches for new services, I landed five new projects. What’s not to like?

That’s it!

No more complicated than picking just two approaches that didn’t give me hives, and I could commit to on a daily basis.

Since I joined Freelance Writers Den and began using these two strategies, I’ve landed 20 new projects, all of which paid at least $1 a word.

You can’t control if or when a prospective or existing client will respond to your marketing efforts.

However, if you take the time to learn and implement just two marketing strategies that you believe in, good things will happen.

Paul McCormack is a freelance writer based in Atlanta, Georgia, specializing in anti-money laundering, banking, cyber security, fraud, and intellectual property theft. Visit McCormack Writes to learn more.

I’ve been hearing from a lot of writers about this issue lately.

It seems like writers send a query letter or letter of introduction, don’t get a response, and then go into a depressive funk for six months.

That’s not a way to make a living as a writer. You’ve got to keep pitching.

Also, if you’re never hearing back… if you’re smart, you seek to learn how to do better marketing, improve your odds of getting a response.

My tips for improving your pitch

There is some basic advice I find myself offering repeatedly in these situations, and it goes roughly like this:

“You spend three paragraphs of this letter of introduction talking about yourself — places you’ve written, awards you’ve won, your writer website, your recent college graduation, and so on.

“Then, you ask if they might hire you. Basically, it’s all about you.

“You need to cut that down to a sentence or two, and replace it with more information about how you will solve the client’s problems.

“You seem to be using a template for these queries, where you say pretty much the same thing every time, with just a few minor changes. That’s often not a successful approach. Good pitches require studying your target and then talking to them in their own writing style, about their particular challenges and how you can solve them.

“If you research this prospect and find out what’s missing from their website, and pitch them that precise thing, you will up your odds of getting a response. For instance, read that magazine’s guidelines and see what topic in their mission statement hasn’t been covered much lately, and then develop an article idea about that exact thing.

“Use your research — whether it’s an abandoned blog you noticed, or lack of case studies — to show the prospect you ‘get’ their business or publication and really want to work with them.”

Then the writer redoes their pitch as a customized piece written in that market’s voice, about exactly what the customer needs, and presto!

Next thing I know, they’re writing to let me know they got a response.

The magic of caring

Until now, that was my usual, long-winded explanation of how to angle your marketing pitch to get a client interested enough to pick up the phone or email you.

Last week, at SOBCon in Chicago, I learned a much more concise way of thinking about your marketing that can really put booster rockets on your effort and up your response rate.

Copyblogger’s Sonia Simone summed up how to get marketing results this way:

“You’ve got to give your marketing some GAS. You know — Give A Shit.”

Well, that hits it on the head and takes up a lot less space, doesn’t it?

Most freelance writers’ marketing is all about them. It telegraphs that your main focus is you — you need a gig! Please, please hire me, because I need more income!

The thing is, prospects don’t care about that.

They care about their problems.

Instead, turn that around and present yourself as someone who identifies with their company culture, recognizes their pains, and approaches prepared to help solve them.

Spend most of your time talking about what you noticed about what they’re doing, and where you could help them do better.

And everything will change.

Does it take a little more effort to do that homework so you can show you give a rip about clients? Yes, it does.

But a bit more work to land the client is a better way to spend your time than sailing off queries into space that will never get a response.

Does your marketing show you care? Leave a comment and tell us how you give it GAS.

Unfortunately, that’s not how things always work out in the messy world of free enterprise.

There are a lot of shady doings online, and if you want to keep your reputation as a writer, you need to stay away from scammy situations.

Some scams arise out of deliberate greed on the part of the clients. Others come about due to utter ignorance of journalistic and scholarly ethics.

Here are three common writing assignments that are, shall we say, ethically challenged?

I recommend you stay away from these:

1. Essays for college students

Most writers know this is just not cool. But in case you don’t, as the mother of a college student, let me assure you that parents and university professors would really, really like students to write their own papers.

It’s dishonest to buy papers online and then pretend they are your own work. The student could be expelled for cheating if they use that school paper they buy online from that assignment-mill. These places are constantly out promoting and trying to recruit more writers to this shady side of the freelance street…for example, dig this guest-post pitch I got just a few days ago:

 I’m Alex, I work for <URL of essay mill website>, We can write a blog post “how custom essay writers earn money”. I’ll cover all the processes inside our organization to make your readers familiar with this particular type of work for writers. Please, tell me what you think about such topic for your blog.

As a kicker, this work doesn’t tend to pay very well, so hopefully it won’t be too hard to give it a pass.

2. Paid reviews of things you’ve never used

Has this happened to you? I’m finding this sleazy deal popping up more often lately. Startups and businesses of all stripes are desperate to rack up favorable reviews on popular portals such as Amazon, TripAdvisor, or Yelp.

In case you think nobody would be crazy enough to ask you to make up a review of something you know nothing about, here’s a screen shot of a recent LinkedIn query I got:

I hope it goes without saying that becoming a writer who posts made-up reviews around the Internet is not going to help you build a lucrative writing career. Just steer clear.

3. Pitching magazines your copywriting client

Many companies are unaware of journalistic ethics, and will ask to hire you to write for them. But what they’d like you to do is pitch a big magazine you’ve been writing for a great idea — that you’ve discovered a great business to profile…your new client’s business.

I got this one twice last week alone. Here’s a taste from one of the emails (names and details removed to protect the guilty):

“I came across an article you wrote for X Magazine. I wondered if the company for which I’m now working could pay your fees to write an article [for that magazine] that mentions them. The company is Y. The company has grown 20% each year. They need/deserve some publicity!”

Saying “yes” to this one is a great way to find yourself never writing for that magazine again, after they realize you failed to mention that the subject of your “great idea” for an article is in fact a paying client of yours.

In the world of journalism, this is called conflict of interest. It is lying by omission.

When a company hires you to write for them, then you are on their PR team. When you approach magazines, you must disclose that fact, or you are a liar.

You can decide to pitch an article as a reporter, about a company you find interesting. Or you can get paid by that business to write things for them — articles, web copy, white papers, you name it.

But you can’t do both at once.

You could pitch a magazine that another reporter should write about your client — that’s a PR activity. Or you could offer a magazine an article by your CEO that you’ve ghostwritten, for which you will be paid by the company. In this scenario, the magazine will usually not pay the company anything — it’s a free piece the CEO wants to get published to promote the company, and everybody’s clear on that.

Even after you’re done getting paid to write for that business client, if you want to mention or quote that former client in an article, you need to disclose it to your editor and get their OK.

It may seem tempting to try to get double-paid — by both a business and a magazine — for the same article. But trust me, it won’t be worth it when you’re found out and banned from the publication.

Got other writing ethics questions? Ask them in the comments below. Or consider attending 4-Week Journalism School – we spend a whole week on how to avoid getting fired or sued over what you write. Class begins Wednesday.

If so, please share it with the group!

Today’s our May First Friday link party. This is your chance to get some new blog readers and grab some attention for the great stuff you’re writing on your blog.

As it happens, I’m presenting at SOBCon today in Chicago and kinda crazed…so it’s a great day to hand the blog content over to my talented subscribers.

Links are limited to 100, so post early.

Good luck everybody!

By Linda Formichelli

Your article idea is stale. It’s a rambling vent. It has no news hook.

In fact, it’s a mess!

Guess what? You can still sell it.

With a little creative thinking on your part, that unsalable idea can be transformed into one that earns you $1 per word — or more.

Here’s how.

Unsalable Idea #1: It’s been done…and done, and done

You really, really want to pitch an article on alternative treatments for anxiety because it’s a topic you have personal experience with. But to health magazines, this is old news.

How to Sell It: Skip the obvious targets and think of markets where you idea WILL be fresh and new.

Take a look on the newsstand and online for magazines outside of your usual purview. Pet mags? Business publications? Trade magazines?

So, your idea might turn into alternative treatments for anxiety for your ferret…or to calm you down before a big presentation or confrontation at work…or for owners of businesses in a high-stress industry.

I guarantee there are markets out there that haven’t run your idea. Just take some risks and think creatively about the types of markets you’re pitching.

Unsalable Idea #2: It’s really more of an essay

That article about your experiences with infertility — it’s really more of an essay than an article. But you don’t want to turn it into a straight service piece because you’re so close to the issue that you want to share from the heart.

How to Sell It: Turn it into a reported essay.

While essays are hard to place, reported essays are much more common — and salable. A reported essay has elements of an essay, like first-person perspective, but also includes information from research and experts so the reader not only learns from your experiences, but comes away with tactics she can try right now.

For example, I wrote a reported essay for Women’s Health called “I Was a Self-Help Junkie,” and another called “Worried Sick.” If you check these out, you’ll see how I blended essay style with traditional reportage.

More good news is that while you typically don’t pitch an essay because editors want to see the entire manuscript, you do pitch a reported essay, which saves you time and hassle.

Unsalable Idea #3: Your idea has no news hook

You want to pitch an article on how to help your overweight cat slim down, but there’s really no reason a magazine needs to run this NOW. The epidemic of obesity in cats has been covered in the media already, and you can’t find any new studies or books on the topic.

How to Sell It: Figure out some way to make your idea surprising to editors.

Sometimes an idea that’s interesting enough can make it past the editor’s “news” filter. This can be as easy as using the word “surprising” into your title: “5 Surprising Reasons Your Cat Is Overweight — and Real Ways to Help Her Slim Down.”

Of course, if you do that, you have to deliver. You need to do research and talk to experts to figure out reasons and solutions that really are surprising.

In the overweight cat case, that means you’d need to look beyond overeating as a cause.

For example, could your pet have a thyroid problem? Is low-quality food causing your cat to eat more to get the nutrients she needs? Could your cat’s medication be causing her to pack on pounds? Is undiagnosed arthritis keeping your cat from exercising?

Unsalable Idea #4: A vent about the people who piss you off

Carol mentioned this in her post about article types editors hate, and she’s right — too many writers pitch what are essentially vents. “Here’s what you’re doing wrong that makes me mad, and why you should stop.”

Notice something missing? It’s information that readers can use to improve their own lives. After all, that’s why we read most publications.

How to Sell It: Dig out the service aspect of the idea and focus on that.

My mom, whose career was in retail, always wanted me to write an article about why store customers should be neat, put back items they were looking at, and not come into the store five minutes before closing time. But really — who wants to read that?

However, I could get better results — AND sell the article — by positioning it as a piece for a trade magazine for retail store owners and workers on how to “train” your customers to do what you want them to.

Or, another angle I could take is a piece for a women’s magazine on how to get the best treatment and deals at stores — and one of those tips would be to treat employees nicely.

This way, you get the results you want but still have a salable idea.

Ever sold an unsalable article idea? Let us know you did it in the comments.

P.S. If you need help creating salable article ideas, check out 4 Week Journalism School. Class begins next week!