Follow media ad dollars to make more money.
Follow media advertising dollars to make more money! By David
Geer Publications often pay freelance writers from advertising
dollars. I use the tools below to track advertising dollars to
see which markets can best afford to pay me as a writer.
Research Brief
http://www.mediapost.com/reg/index.cfm?displaymode=Research
The News Feed
http://www.mediabistro.com/memberscenter/register.asp
Just an online minute MediaDailyNews http://www.mediapost.com
In my research this summer, I learned by August that ad dollars
were coming back for all media but magazines. Magazine
advertising may not recover until 2005 (Research Brief/ Standard
& Poor's). Therefore, I invested more time in the rebounding
markets. This led to more work and more money. When one of the
above sources (see links) devotes an entire article to
advertising dollars going up or down, it's time for a change.
What kinds of changes? Here is a scenario. Say there is a
two-percent increase in ad spending in any one market. This
means it's a good time to increase pitches to that market. If it
is online advertising, start pitching to websites, e-zines and
e-newsletters. Though you may only want to shift some of your
efforts to online markets (in this scenario), time is of the
essence. Get those pitches for online markets done as soon as
you hear the news. If you pitch to many different markets, you
may want to align your work so that you pitch more or less to
each market based on the percentage increases or decreases in ad
spending for each market.
Here is what I did in current conditions with magazine
advertising not recovering. I decided to hold constant the
number of magazine queries I do. (Note that the magazine
market primarily affected is the consumer market. Therefore, I
adjusted my queries to include more business and trade
publications.)
As you read above, my information about depressed magazine
advertising dollars was in August. It is now October so we are
talking about how I benefited from this information in as little
time as the last two months. In that time, I garnered the
following projects beyond my regular work because of my shift in
marketing efforts.
Trade publication assignments - 1 Corporate writing projects - 1
Foreign business publications - 1 Domestic business publications
- 1
In this case, my knowledge of where advertising dollars are
diminishing (consumer magazines) helped me decide to increase my
pitches to other markets. Consequently, I attracted these four
additional assignments beyond the work I usually get, from
markets I might not otherwise have identified.
Note the financial impact of adding just these projects. Trade
publications, like the one that gave me this assignment, often
pay from $.50/word to over a dollar a word. Corporate writing,
like the project I mention here, generally bills at a standard
rate of $75/hour. Foreign business publications, at least this
particular one, pay rates at or above that of the trade
magazines. The fee from the domestic business publication was
modest but worthwhile.
These four assignments/projects amounted to a significant
increase in income, each of which have potential for steady
work. The queries I sent to other publications in these same
markets have also garnered initial interest that I am confident
will lead to good paying work. All these changes resulted from
gauging where advertising dollars are going, and then adjusting
my course accordingly to go after the markets that currently
have the disposable money to pay writers like you and me.