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.