Make more money by answering the following eight questions about
every article you write.
Make more money by answering the following eight questions about
every article you write!
By David Geer
1) Can I negotiate more from this publication on this article
before I sign?
I have had publications agree to pay up to 25% more than
originally offered before the contract was signed and continued
working for that amount on future articles. I stated my
qualifications, experience and specialization on the topic area
and asked if it wouldn't be possible for them to pay more.
I never had an offer pulled or made less by asking and sometimes
I made more. It really doesn't hurt to ask. In fact, they may
even respect you more!
2) Can I hold on to my reprint rights and sell the article again
and again?
Articles that sell many times while remaining with you each and
every time are like having an account principal that never
diminishes while allowing you to live off the interest! Learn to
write timeless articles that can be published many times for
many years into the future and they may pay more in the long run
than some articles that you sell all rights for the first time
out.
3) Can this article earn me a raise on the next article I write,
or the one after that or the one after that?
One publication gave me a raise the very next article I wrote
for them without my even having to ask. They were a publication
of a very large vendor organization and they could afford it.
Those who start out paying well usually provide more work with
fewer hassles and are easier to get raises from because they
have lots of dough to work with.
4) Will this article help me establish myself as a subject
matter expert on this topic?
If this topic is new to me or this article is another notch in
my belt toward expert status, how do I capitalize on it? Can I
get more work on this subject in this magazine, for other
publications, in corporate or ghost writing? Can I start
speaking publicly on this subject?
5) If I hold on to my rights, can I save this article and others
like it toward chapters for a book I'd like to write someday?
If you write on a subject regularly you may be able to use
outlines and research or the articles themselves as chapters in
a book you plan to write. Update the articles; write them in the
form you would for a book and go to town! Once you've collected
a hundred great, published articles on the subject you should
have the brunt of your work toward your first great book
completed.
6) Can I use my research over for other articles?
Just because you don't always hold on to your rights doesn't
mean you can't hold on to your research and reuse it again and
again in countless other articles. What if half the work for
many of your future articles is already done and you didn't even
know it? It could be laying right there, in past research and
sources that you could give a quick call to for topic updates.
7) Can I market myself as a writer of vendor contributed
articles to companies?
If you're writing about a company or business owner, do your
best work because you may find that you can use this published
sample to pitch yourself to write vendor contributed articles.
Vendors contribute articles about business or technology to
magazines for free to get their byline into the publication to
establish themselves as experts for marketing purposes. They
will often hire professional writers to ghost such articles and
pay you handsomely to do it too!
8) Can I take each subsection of the article, each major point,
and use it as a leaping point from which to start a whole new
article expanding on just that topic?
You may with each sub-point have the beginnings of a whole new
idea to query on to the same or another publication!
9) Can the article I'm about to write be pitched as the first in
a series?
Ah, fooled you, there are actually nine questions you can ask
about each article to make more money. Here is that ninth bonus
tip!
Even if you have already agreed to write this article alone, if
you have a good relationship with the editor and believe you
would be doing them a service, it can't hurt to pitch it to
them. If they agree you'll be viewed as a lifesaver who just
relieved the editor by filling two or three slots instead of
just one!