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all right looks like we are alive hello everybody uh welcome to today's webinar uh very excited that you could take the time whether you're here with us live or watching the replay uh to uh sit down and learn uh some stuff about uh getting published and that's the theme for this webinar um you know we have a new year coming up or we're sorry we had we just had a new year coming up uh you know you can tell it's a it's been a long 2020 um but hopefully we want to help you start off 2021 in a in a good way and hopefully if you haven't been published yet this webinar will help you get your first paid publication and i'll talk about this more in the webinar but i think a common myth is that a lot of people that are starting out have to um you know work for free or get these really low paying jobs and that's just not the case you can start right away um you know getting really good high paying jobs and uh throughout this webinar i'll show you exactly how to do that um also if you are interested we are currently having a free month offer i'll talk about a little bit more at the end but i just want to make you aware of it if you are interested in that definitely stick around and we have some exciting stuff coming up in the near future so if that interests you too you'll definitely want to sign up and see what we have in the store so without further ado let me get into the the slides and start uh showing you how to get your first paid publication all right so like i said this is about how to get your first paid publication in 2021 and i'm gonna be breaking this down into very actionable steps and you don't need any you know experience you don't need anything particular uh to accomplish this you just need the the really the motivation to you know to self-start and to get the results that you want now the first thing that i want to mention is that the the what i'm going to be talking about today which is a writing for publications is something that you do not need a portfolio for you do not need any experience whatsoever i'm going in the webinar today i'm going to be sharing with you techniques that you can use that requires zero experience and i get this question so much because you know i think it's sort of a myth that in order to start you need experience and that's sort of you know a catch-22 because if you don't have experience how do you start and you know but with the techniques that i'll be sharing with you you do not need any experience you don't need any published work you don't need any portfolio of any sort you can just get started from scratch and i know that kind of sounds almost too good to be true but with what i'm about to show you i think it'll make a lot of sense now there are basically two options or sorry there's a two-step process which is number one finding publications in your niche and two pitching those article ideas to those publications and that's it that's really just a simple two-step process that anybody can do and you can see how this doesn't require any experience because all you're coming up with is you're just coming up with new ideas you're pitching this to publications and that's how you are getting paid published work and throughout the webinar i'll be sharing you know different tactics uh search techniques strategies to help you find publications and to come up with article ideas but this i just want to give you this overview to show you how easy it really is first i want to talk about how to find publications because this is a question that we get a lot and it's the obvious first step you know you want to find a publication before you come up with uh with article ideas because you need to to customize your article ideas for the publication and this is really easy this is the first step in the process and i promise it is extremely painless um so if you've been intimidated by this kind of stuff before i hope that this will um you know kind of it'll go easier on you so let's talk about how you how to know what to look for because i think that's one of the hardest parts right i remember when i was starting out looking for publications it was really tough because i just didn't know what i was looking for you know i i was like how can i find a good publication if i don't know what i'm looking for basically what you want to look for is what i call medium level blogs and these are publications and i'm using kind of blog and publication interchangeably here but these are publications that are kind of big enough to where they can pay riders but not so big to where they um you know will will kind of argue that they can just pay you an exposure and i'll talk about about that a little bit later on but these medium level blogs are just the sweet spot for what you want to be looking for now like i mentioned you know small blogs kind of have problems these smaller publications often just can't afford the pay writers and then the bigger ones often don't pay writers because they argue they provide exposure and both of these are really bad for writers especially if you're starting out right because you want to get paid for what you do and you know i i have seen this happen to where you know we'll advise people and they will get their first job and as it's paid and a lot of people that have had that happen they said i didn't think this was possible you know i didn't think that you could start out right out the gate you know and get paid for it but you really can but the the trick is to look for these publications that are in between so they're not so big to where they don't pay riders but they're also not so small to where they can't now how do you identify these medium level publications because it can be kind of tricky to know to identify them as medium level unless you know what you're looking for some of the signs are having lots of bylines authors and of course the byline for those of you who don't know is the little line that says buy ian chandler or buy jacob janzer you know buy whatever your name is and it gives you credit for that article and if you come across a publication that has many byline authors that's really good because that means that they generally hire freelancers to do the work and that also generally means that they'll pay an active comments section is also a good uh plus it's a good sign of a you know a healthy publication that's pretty active and the more active it is that means the more readers there are and that means uh the the higher the budget is for the publication which means of course they can obviously afford to pay writers an active social media presence and a comment section on social media is also a really good sign and positive press too you know if you see this publication being referenced online or being talked about that's a really really good sign so these are just a few quick bullet points to hit um you know i'll show you later in depth how to find out you know whether they pay and how much they pay and all that stuff but when you're just looking at things from you know a bird's-eye perspective this is the kind of stuff you want to look for and the most important thing is to look for a writer's guidelines page and and this is the page that has all of the information you need to pitch the publication and and this is going to tell you like you know how much they pay how they pay what kind of content they're looking for all that stuff and this this is such an important page because it's literally your gateway to being able to write for the publication and if you don't follow it then you will most likely get rejected but if you follow it um you're much more likely to be accepted and get paid for it and this like i said it has information about payment how to contact the editors basically everything you need to know about how to write for that publication and you need to learn to read this very carefully and i mean you know to to the letter if you don't meet all of those guidelines then your pitch is probably going to be rejected because most publications especially these medium level publications they have so many submissions and i cannot tell you how swamped some of these editors are and if you've pitched before and haven't gotten a response that's likely why um but it comes down to you know ultimately following the guidelines and editors will often you know they're so busy that they can't uh pursue any pitch that doesn't meet all their guidelines and they're there for a reason so learn to follow those to the to the letter and some basic searching also goes a long way when you're looking at just you know finding publications in a general sense when you're first starting out and saying okay where can i write where can i write for you know what publications might publish my work or which publications are suitable for my niche or for my interests or for my goals just basic google searching goes a long long way this is how i found a lot of the publications that i i did when i was doing this strategy and just simply searching whatever your niche is plus terms like submission guidelines can really help you find paying publications this sounds so simple but it's it's so funny because it's one of those things that you don't really think about unless you think about it you know it's it's sort of like if you know about it you do if you don't you're completely out in the on the cold about it and ultimately you're looking for a writer's guidelines page and sometimes the those will be called different things like the writer's guidelines write for us submission guidelines guest post page editorial guidelines sometimes these are all terms that you may want to search for when you're looking for publications that have these pages that mean that they accept freelance work and advanced search operators can also help these are search techniques that you can use to narrow your results and get just more specific uh results for your search term so for instance you can do an exact search which is putting quotes around a word or a phrase just to make sure that that exact phrase that that exact term shows up and you can also search a specific site so if you want to if you have maybe a certain site in mind or maybe you find one through searching and you're not entirely sure you know if they take a freelance work or not you can use this site colon command just in google to search a single site for different kind of results and i'll show some examples here um but these are i think two of the more common search operators you can look up advanced search techniques and operators uh just you know google that term and you'll find a lot of articles about it but in my experience of looking for these these are the the two one the two operators that i've used the most and the exact search is really good um i can't tell you how many times i've used that i mean i pretty much use that on a weekly if not daily basis it's such a useful uh search operator and this works in any search engine you know whether that's google or duckduckgo or you know whatever it works with all of them so here's some example searches for let's say the travel niche so if you're looking for travel publications you might search something like travel and then just submission guidelines in quotes and what this is telling google is to search for the term travel and then to only give you pages that have the specific phrase submission guidelines so this means that you're only going to get sites about travel that have a submission guidelines page and all you know of course that means that these are publications or websites that take uh material from freelance writers and this is where those other alternate terms like writer's guidelines and write for us come into play because different sites call their writer's guidelines page you know different terms so what you'll want to do is if you can't find any results for one term just substitute another in so instead of submission guidelines in between the quotation marks you would have writers guidelines for instance and if you wanted to search a specific site for a term so let's say you wanted to search the website travelerstails.com you would put site colon and then no spaces after that just the site uh url travelerstails.com and then whatever terms you want to search for and actually in this uh search example you could even put quotes around submission guidelines to make sure that you're only seeing if that site has a specific page like that but you can use this operator pretty much in any way you know with any other advanced operators and these are just i mean once you start using them they are so natural they're so useful i can't tell you how many times i've used these it's it's fantastic so this is just a little little bit of more advanced uh searching but that said most of the searching that i've done really is just very simple i mean you can just search like you know travel magazine and get results or whatever it really is just taking the time to learn you know the kind of searching that works for you the kind of process that works for you because you need to be diligent in your searching if you don't have a you know an approach to searching for publications then it can get really messy you can get really discouraged and distracted so it's very important that you have you know at least a uh a strategy in mind even if it's really rough on how you're going to go about this you know you know what's your niche what kind of uh steps you're gonna take you know how are you going to narrow down your search things like that now to help you find publications because we don't want to leave you out in the cold here and we know that searching for publications can be a hassle and you know i certainly have experienced that in my career when you sign up for a free month with with us you will get a one of our exclusive members only resources that is the paid publishers database and this is a database of 1891 publishers that pay writers and we regularly add to this list too so we're um pretty soon and i've included a screenshot here just so you can see how easy it is you can search you can select different publications as a favorite so you can save them for later you can search by category and when you information about how much they pay you know their writer's guidelines contact information all of that stuff all right there in front of you category it's in all the information that you need it's a direct link to you know these thousands of publications that pay writers and this is a fantastic resource if especially when you're starting out great way to you know basically have everything handed to you and i think it's one of our best resources easily so like i said when you sign up for a free month with us as i'll talk about a little later you'll get this for absolutely free this comes at no extra cost at all and if you want to find publications this is easily the way to go sucking around till the end to learn a little bit more about the free month offer and hopefully you'll be able to use this and find some publications that work for you now let's talk about the second part which is how to pitch publications because you know finding publications is half the battle but you could even say it's kind of less than half the battle because pitching is where things can get really scary and i've had so many writers you know talk to me and said they're afraid of pitching and that you know that it's a very overwhelming thing and i think it can be in many ways but with the techniques i'm going to share with you today it's going to really really make that a lot easier now the best way to pitch a publication is to know that publication so you should ideally be a reader and this is not necessary if you're not you should read at least five to ten articles from that publication because that would give you a thorough idea of the kind of content they post whether or not your content would be good for them you know whether your style is a line how they you know lay out the article all that's experience right and if you already read certain publications and they're in your niche and then to you uh then those are where you went ahead first but if you're not a reader that's familiarize yourself enough with the publications of what they publish and you know who their audience is and all that that good stuff and you want to analyze this read them you know casually you want them for content and style so in terms of content you know what are these detail is that work here how do they you know how do they lay out the approach that they take and then maybe style too in terms of writing voices used how are the articles structured you know um do they style is the style varied from article and article about when you're looking through and analyze and this is all going to give you a really topics they publish you know what they look for and the writer's guidelines page will usually tell you a lot of this information but there is some information experience um and you know this can take a little while to i don't try to sugarcoat things i like to you know tell them how to tell it how it is and unfortunately sometimes this can take a little bit especially when you're finding publication you're first just finding your feed and you might want to write finding the initial publication that you want to write for me if you persist and if you keep using these strategy analyzing articles like this it will happen a lot also learn a lot more and i think that is ultimate now once you have found the publication that you want to write for and this you know might happen really quickly it might take a while but either way you want to brainstorm some article ideas and i'll talk about this a little later on but i just want to plant the seed for now the article ideas that you come up with should be specific for each publication that you want to pitch for so you shouldn't you really should not be able to pitch the same article idea to multiple uh publications and i'll talk about that a little bit more in depth in a moment but i would say you want to brainstorm roughly 5 to 15 article ideas and you know you want to think about could you realistically see the blog publishing these articles could you could you see like cool on that website does it make sense does it fit their style you know think about stuff like that and you want to compare them to existing articles on the blog are they similar yet different and this is one of the keys to having a good experience and really optimizing your chances to for getting published because you want to make sure that you you're kind of the same general perspective but you want to make sure that they're you know not that publication has published before so you submit something to freedom with writing they have an existing article that's called seven magazines that pay writers 150 or more per article and great kind of formula and you can use that full you could pitch a potential are trade publications that paid 200 or more per same general idea but you know it's a completely different audience because magazines and trade publications have very different audiences and it's also a different you know pay range sort of article that they would publish it just hasn't been one that they have published yet so that's the kind of approach you want to take you want to make sure that they're so different enough to warrant publication on their own and ultimately you know when you when you're going through this ideation process you really want to think about what type of article is going to best satisfy the publication's readers and this is something that i feel is not really talked about a lot i feel like it's kind of you know a hidden secret almost um because in in pitching the publications what i've learned is that what editors want is not just a good article they want a good article that's going to satisfy their readers because that's ultimately who the publication is for you're not trying to impress or you're not trying to benefit the edited the readers that's what the editors want and they're the ones who are going to be saying yes or no to your pitch idea so when you have the audience of the publication in mind in in their shoes and think okay if i were a regular reader of this publication what content would i find valuable that's when you'll really unlock the good ideas i think and you'll be able to take a much more focused approach to coming up with article ideas and to communicating with editors about you know goals and things like that thing you can do here is to look at the comments on both the publication site and and sometimes you'll come across readers asking for uh specific topics or maybe talking about specific topics you can see which articles are popular which ones maybe are not use all of this information to fine-tune your approach and help you help yourself come up with more you know more tailored ideas more customized ideas when you're going through this process you know you're going to come up with a lot of ideas but you ultimately want to settle on just one idea to pitch and when you're ready you would you know just pitch like you would for a print publication with you know uh start your pitch off and you put your article in one to two cons three sentences each um if you're interested we have some videos on our youtube channel and past webinars that go over this topic so i would highly recommend checking those out but more importantly i'm gonna be able to i'm only gonna be able to briefly go um we have an entire course on pitching that you you'll get for free with the free month offer and we have an entire artichokes so when i'm talking about all of this you know i want to keep it in the back your mind but also if you want to learn more about it you know there's definitely better avenues in our courses look look out or look for a short intro a picture article and one to two concise paragraphs keep it really short that's the thing i see with pitches a lot and you know you want to keep these almost too short and this is one of my little tips that i um have kind of discovered over the years when you end with i can have this ready in a week does that sound good that really engages the editor when someone asks you a question you know you feel just obligated to respond and that's what's at work here it's a your response rate for pitches so if you haven't gotten response if you've maybe you know pitched before and have never gotten a response back try this uh this technique out of ending with a question and i think you'll be surprised at how many responses you get and this is the important i think maybe even more important than the pitch itself sometimes after a week or two if you haven't gotten a response follow up this is so critical following up can often mean the difference between publication and rejection um this is a but um when uh jacob is also the uh not only the co-founder of writing launch but of course the founder gets pitches all the time and uh he often tells a story about how two writers who both pitched him and they both just fell through the cracks because you know his email inbox got swamped and it was just one of those situations where uh you know they just got lost in the mix and one of those writers followed up and the other one didn't and the one that followed up got the job uh got the you know the gig because they were able to say hey you know i i pitched you you can you take a look at this and that that meant all the difference and that's the thing too is when you're pitching i you know writers who get discouraged because they don't get responses and like i said earlier you know edit uh if if they don't see something in their inbox if it's you know maybe lost in the shuffle if it's way on another page or something like that it's usually not going to be something so focused on all of the new submissions coming in so if you you know most editors will see that and be more than happy to read your pitch and often you'll get the job as a result of that you know if you have a good pitch that is going to be the follow-up can really seal the deal now i mentioned some members only resources earlier this is another one that i want to share with you when you sign up for a free month with us you'll get a course that's literally focused on getting your first publication think of it as this webinar but way more in depth and it's a seven day crash course so it's not a long course this is a really action heavy course it's very participatory and over the course of a week you you will be thrown right into finding a publication studying that crafting your pitch and then sending it off and then what to do after that and this is i think one of my favorite courses that we have because it's so short and you can repeat it so you know you can use this as a guideline to finally get your first publication and do it in a more regimented fashion so you have a guideline to adhere to it's very easy you know one little step every day over the course of a week helps you get published and we have other courses that kind of cover this but if you're just looking to jump in and you know finally bite the bullet this is the course for you um if you are enjoying this webinar so far i would highly recommend signing up for the free month with with us and taking this course it is so good it will give you the structure that you need to finally send out pitches and finally get your first paid publication so if this webinar has motivated you to really you know find um find that drive in you to get your first publication and start off 2021 by getting a byline then this course is definitely for you so i hope that you check that out and another resource i want to mention in addition to us having a pitching course an entire course on pitching and a pitch template that you can use to basically you know fill in the blanks customize it a little bit and send it off we also offer expert pitch feedback and i think this is something that maybe not a lot of people know about but we offer unlimited email coaching as part of a membership so even if you just sign up for a free month that means you can get a month of free email coaching and a lot of that is pitch feedback where you can learn directly from me i personally respond to all of these emails whenever i get a pitch sent i critique it in as much detail as i can you know and honestly a lot of the pitches i get are good they just need a little bit of tweaking and then i hear back and they say oh i've gotten published and i love having moments like that and i love being able to help people so directly like that so when you sign up you will get that other resource that i think a lot of people don't utilize which is getting feedback directly from me and you know at this point i've put five six years into my pitching strategy and i i have figured out what works for me and i can help you find out what works for you so i hope if you're interested in this uh and and finally getting published in 2021 i hope that you do take advantage of this because there is you know this is one of my favorite things to do at writing launch it's you know i love giving these webinars i love doing the courses but i really really have a special place in my heart for being able to help people one-on-one so i hope you take advantage of that if you decide to join up with us talk about something a little different which is how to cultivate relationships with editors and i think this is important because in previous webinars i didn't have this section and it was just kind of about you know how to how to find publications and how to pitch them and there was no there were no next steps but when you are developing a pitching process you really need to you know keep that momentum going and you need to have an idea of what you're going to do next so that's why i'm talking about this because at the end of the day hopefully when you're pitching you can cultivate positive relationships with editors that hopefully lead to more writing opportunities so let's talk about how to build good rapport with editors most of it is really just reading and following the publication's guidelines that's it it sounds really simple but it it works it's so effective because as i mentioned earlier you know editors are really busy and if you're not following the guidelines that means you know it comes off as if you don't care right and you know i've seen myself and i've heard jacob talk about so many bad pitches where people obviously have not read the guidelines and you don't want to be that person who just you know completely ignores all the guidelines so if you read and follow them that's already starting off on a good foot and often that will carry that will do the bulk of the work for you in establishing a relationship and of course you want to maintain a polite professional tone with the editor or if you're talking with multiple editors you know obviously stay nice you know stay respectful of their schedule and their time you know you want to keep all of your responses as short as you can you know keep your pets short keep it to the point you know you don't want to be rude or abrupt but you do just want to send shorter emails and messages so that you can you know give the editor the most chance the biggest chance to really read through everything and respond and the longer your messages are the harder that will be so you definitely want to keep your emails on the shorter side and just respect their time and after you've gotten published you already have an in with that editor and you can build off of this and i've actually used this to pitch more articles and develop a relationship with the publication and this is a fantastic way of getting more work because you can keep that momentum going because once you've gotten published that editor knows that you do good work right and that editor has experience with working with you and your writing and your style and all of that so when you pitch more articles that editor remembers you and over time this can create a good relationship with that editor with that publication and this is even a possible pathway to becoming a regular contributor to the publication or a staff writer and so you can see how quickly this can go from just finding a publication to um to becoming a regular paid contributor to the publication and this happens a lot more often than you would think now some publications do have jobs that you have to apply for but generally you know what i've done in the past is just to keep submitting articles and then eventually you know i either get to a point where i'm sort of a quasi staff writer or where i get that official position um but really the important thing here is just keeping that momentum going and and and taking action and really you know not easing up on the process because i think once you get published you know the hardest part is over and you can just keep writing that and using that to drive yourself forward now as part of this uh webinar and as part of our free month offer which i'll talk about in a moment you know with the new year comes a lot of new possibilities and and just a chance for renewal and um we want to help you accomplish your goals this year so what we want to do is offer you just you know the support that you need over the next month and i mean beyond that but specifically over the next month to finally get published um i know there are so many of you who have not gotten published yet and who are you know either afraid to or just discouraged to or maybe you just haven't had the time yet or maybe you're just starting right now no matter what which approach is is yours um we want to offer you all the support that we can and so as hopefully if you join us up for the free month uh if you do we have we have some general one month goals that we think are pretty useful to follow and if you do follow these and set these goals for yourself i think you'll be able to have a really good targeted approach um at this whole you know this whole goal of getting published and and of finally biting the bullet and you know getting to work so hopefully within the next month you'll be able to land your first paid publication and like i said hopefully you can do this with the help of our seven day crash course that is free with the free month and if you want to take our other pitching system course or our course on writing for publications you can do that as well but ultimately we want to make sure that you are landing your first paid publication within the next 30 days and also when you get your first publication you'll be able to start your portfolio even if you just have the one piece in your portfolio that's fine that's the kind of thing that you just want to start it you know you don't need to wait until you have five awesome pieces to start your portfolio just start with baby steps start with the first publication that's what's most important and hopefully you'll also have an actionable strategy for getting your next paid publication so you want to make sure that you have developed a system over the next month to where you understand you know the kind of publications you're looking for and the kind of process that works best for you and over the next month it will help you fine tune that and something else that i need to mention too is on these courses we have comments sections that are really active and i always respond to people on there too and of course we have the unlimited email coaching so there's no shortage of support from both myself jacob and our and your fellow writers in the writing launch community um but all that is to say that we we really want to help you drill down and come up with an actionable strategy for getting not only your first paid publication but successive ones so now let me talk a little bit about the free month offer because this is something that i'm really really excited about we've been doing this for a while because of the pandemic you know we don't think that there should be barriers financial barriers to receiving this kind of tuition and so we are offering a free month of tuition which is normally 47 to receive everything that we have there are no um there are no gates in place you you get access to literally all of our material and these are a few resources just a few that i thought i would point out to illustrate how they can maybe help you in your journey toward getting your first paid publication like i said we have the paid publishers database which is really i think probably our most valuable um resource because it's curating all of these different publications you know almost 2000 into one place that's easy to search easy to use and it's really this is i always say this is the resource that i wish i'd had when i was starting out and i you know i i still feel that way to this day so you'll get instant access to that and of course the the seven day crash course and getting your first publication that's another um like i just mentioned that that's a great course if you just want to get started and dive in immediately and take action and yeah i think it also kind of helps you hold yourself accountable um because you're giving yourself you know a deadline you're giving yourself a challenge i think that can really help when it comes to just finally finding the motivation to get started and you can also learn afterwards from our acclaimed no bs course which is basically our flagship beginner course and this takes you through everything you need to know about freelance writing and we have other courses too but this is sort of the one that we a lot of people start out on and it's just absolutely wonderful if you need to learn more about just the ins and outs of freelance writing that's definitely the course for you and of course like i mentioned you get that personalized feedback on pitches and again this is one resource that i think um everyone should should should take advantage of because you know uh i think we are one of the the few uh options in terms of uh writing education that provides such personalized feedback on such a regular basis from what i've seen a lot of other places you know will do maybe live streams or occasional feedback but you know we do this regularly throughout the week and like i said you know i've developed an approach of what works for me in terms of of pitching and i can help you find out what works for you we also have a lot of step-by-step training videos and a lot of those are on pitching so if you are you know kind of confused about pitching or you don't know how to improve your pitch or you don't know how to fine tune it all of our videos will help you in that regard and we have a lot more i mean that is just barely scratching the surface we have you know all the courses all these videos articles interviews master classes all of this stuff but i really wanted to just direct your attention toward these because i think these are the most important resources that that you can take advantage of as a newer member of writing launch um so that free month offer is in effect now so if you go to writinglaunch.com you can sign up right now and i really hope that you do um you'll get a free month and then if you uh want to cancel after that you can just email us and let us know or if you want to stay with us and become part of our community that would be fantastic and we would love to have you and you know if you have any questions about the membership or anything like that do let me know and in fact at this point since we're kind of done with the webinar itself i want to open things up to a q a so if you have any questions about anything that i've talked about here any questions about pitching about finding publications about um freelance writing about the the writing launch membership itself uh let me know in the comments i'll go through and we'll answer as many as we can um and yeah uh and if i don't answer your question in the webinar today you can always email me at support writinglaunch.com that's support writinglaunch.com and we will get to every question let me take a sip of water real quick to refresh my my voice and then i will get started with the q a all right let me transition back to camera and there we are okay so i hope you enjoyed the webinar everybody um this is always a great topic that i like talking about because you know i know what it's like to kind of start from scratch and yeah i just i really like taking the time and the opportunity to help people in that way so let me take a peek at some of these questions that you've added and uh like i said if i don't get around to them we do have quite a bit of time but um but hopefully i'll be able to get to as many as i can so let me let me check out these questions real quick let's see oh here's a good question um can you binge learn a course or is it meted out metered out daily and weekly uh most of our courses are completely self-paced uh the the no bs course which is our flagship beginner course that one is locked to where you get one lesson every day and that's just because that course is so important that we want to make sure um that you are you know not rushing through it and it's a lot of information at once so we we definitely want to make sure that um that is pretty easy to follow but other than that the courses are completely self-paced however i don't really recommend you know binging any certain course um i think this is sort of a misconception about courses uh as as well maybe i'll talk about this for a minute or two um because i think i think binging is sort of you know a byproduct of our culture and you know a lot of us are used to consuming lots of information at once especially with things like podcasts and you know online courses um but in my experience when people do that they tend to just rush through it and not really absorb that information and then when it comes time to use that information you know they kind of run dry so i don't really recommend binging a chorus you certainly can but we just want to recommend it for the fullest educational experience you know the more that you and the thing about our courses too is that they're very actionable so there's always you know exercises or homework to be doing and the more you focus on that the more you're going to get out of the courses so if you sign up for our free month i mean technically you could go through you know pretty much all of our material but i would recommend that you just focus on what is most directly relevant to you right now and i think you'll get a lot more out of the course that way um i have a question here i'm seeing this question that i actually addressed during the webinar but i want to make this uh just more um i want to you know specify about this um can i use the same pitch for all publications no you can't and like i said i actually addressed this during the webinar but um i often get this question about simultaneous submissions you know and people really want to do this and like i mentioned uh you know here's a way of thinking about it um think about all the publications that are in the world today and i mean there are you know probably millions i mean there are so many um if not hundreds and hundreds of thousands and there's publications for everything and so with all of that there are you know all these writers that are chomping at the bit to get published right there you're competing with so many people and uh there's just a sea of publications to choose from so as a result publications are being because there is such a large pool of you know of writers to to choose from and the publications kind of have to be selective because they don't just want any old content they want content that's good for their publication um and so if you let's say you were the editor for a specialty publication so let's say maybe um you wrote about marine biology okay um if someone came to you and was like hey could i give you this article about zoos or about like you know animals in general they would say well well no that's you know that's we need more specific stuff that's tailored for our publication and that's the way you want to think about it using the same pitch for multiple publications means that your idea is so vague that it can be applied to multiple publications and that means that it's sort of sort of like the old saying if you do something for everyone you do it for no one you know and that's one point that i really really want to hammer down because i think the more you understand that the the better of a chance you'll have it getting published because i think beginner writers kind of have this mentality and i mean i was there too where they feel like they have to pitch just a lot and they have to just go crazy and and you know just take anything that they can get but in reality what you want to do is be targeted be focused with your approach that will limit the amount of errors that you make and it will give you a better chance at it will give you a better chance of getting published in a smaller amount of publications so let's say for instance that you took this you know kind of shotgun approach right where you just took the same pitch and sent it out to 100 publications you might get one or two yeses out of that hundred but let's say you took 100 publications and and went one by one and came up with ideas specifically for each single one of those 100 publications so 100 different ideas for 100 different publications i in that case you would probably get i mean i would say probably at least 50 yes if not higher and that's the amount of difference it makes and i think i mean this is a good thing to be talking about because i think especially when you're starting out that's the approach that you want to take because it seems counter-intuitive but really the the less specific you are and the more you just try to go wide the less of a chance you have it actually getting published because like i said publications are you know selective they really want the best content for their publication because they want people to be coming to their site for a specific purpose you know for a specific type of content and it's up to you to provide that so that's what you want to be thinking about and i think as a beginner even if you're just starting out uh it doesn't hurt to be selective and i'm not saying that you should you know set this incredibly high bar that you can never reach because we have some you know i've i've had discussions with some people who like start out and they have no experience and they say oh i want to write for the new york times or something like that or smithsonian or you know the washington post or whatever and i always say you know okay well maybe go down a little bit but at the same time you don't want to take just anything you can get you want to take a targeted focused approach because that would give you the the highest return on your investment that you put in so i hope that that cleared things up about that question and we do go into that approach more in our courses as well especially the pitching course here's a good question too should you write the article first or just go ahead and send the pitch i always recommend just sending a pitch and this is actually something that i should have covered so i'm glad that you brought this up um because here's here's how you should think about this let's say that you were to write an article and then let's say it's maybe a thousand words and it takes you you know maybe a day or two to write this article and you submit it to this publication and they say no if you followed what i just said about coming up with ideas that are specific for that publication that means that you basically have an article that can't go anywhere right you've written it for one specific publication they said no now what do you do with it and that's why i always recommend working working for sites that only request pitches because some sites do request full articles some request just pitches and i always recommend going with the publications that just request pitches because then you're not out anything but an idea um and if that's always the way to go just so you don't you know potentially waste that time and i've made that mistake several times um and i think i i've seen many other writers make them a lot of writers come to me and they say you know i've written all these articles and they've all gotten no's and it's you know a combination of different things but it's always that approach of well you know if you had not written that entire article you wouldn't be out all these articles you wouldn't you know have them sitting around you can't use them you wouldn't have all these no's it's just it's one of the situations that gets messier the more you do it so it really really is important to only uh submit the sites that just ask for pitches so that's a great question from from mrs a i think if i'm pronouncing that correctly um so yeah that's a very good question um let me take a peek and if any of these are coming up with if you're getting you know questions about questions feel free to ask those too um i have a question here oh yeah this is a good one i get a lot how do you figure out what your niche is yeah this is a question we get all the time i think every single webinar that we do we get this question um the short answer is that we talk about this in our no bs course and i would address it here but it's kind of one of those things where it takes so long to talk about and it's also such a subjective thing right um so it's it's kind of hard to give a broad advice on this um you know i think generally what i always say is that you want to make sure that it's a balance of passion and profitability and you want to make sure that there's a market for what you're writing about but you want to make sure that that's something you're interested in but i don't mean to answer that with a non-answer but uh it really is that kind of thing where it just it would take so long to explain and it's also just so dependent on the person um and a follow-up question for that was can you have more than one absolutely i mean i think most writers tend to have one to three niches i rarely have seen professional writers with more than three niches because i think you know and this is something else that maybe you want to think about when selecting a niche or when pitching is that you want to specialize there's always the the debate of generalizing versus specializing and this is something we talk about in the course as well but you always always want to specialize if you are just a generalist writer and you can write about anything that means that you can't really write about anything in depth and you won't be able to really become an expert at what you're writing about so always specialize so if that means just doing one niche at first that's fine if that means doing you know two or three that's fine too i have about three niches i think that i um kind of one that i regularly write in and then like a couple others that kind of you know i write less and less about them but um it all depends on kind of your not only your interest but your capacity and your goals too you know if you want to become an expert in one niche then i would say stick to that niche but if you're fine with just you know kind of going in a couple different niches and getting published that way then i think by all means you should the only thing i want to warn against is to not take on too many niches i've come across many writers who email me and say ian i you know i want to write about everything you know what do i do and it's really hard because i think when you if there are so many things you want to write about it can get really tough to narrow that list but that said um you know i think if you can just pick one to start with you know and just trial and error see what works see what doesn't uh tweak your strategy and move on like that um but yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't start out with more than two i think when you're like if you're just starting out so if you have no uh previous publication if you have no experience i would start out with maybe just one or maybe two because at the start if you are not really focused you can end up spreading yourself too thin because um when you are so new to it and when you have so much to learn you know there is the more there's a higher margin of error because there is so much you don't know so the more focused focused you are the more you can remove the chance of you know making these mistakes and and getting distracted and all of that and again i think it's one of those things that sounds counterintuitive because usually um beginner writers uh kind of come to me and say you know i i think i need to do everything you know i need to pitch to every publication i can find and you know take any job i can get but it's really not like that um you know something i always like talking about is how as the freelance writer you know you are in charge of who you work with these publications aren't coming to you and you know dictating the terms you are choosing which publications to write for right so you are in charge you get to be the decider of who you write for and you know um and all of that and i think when you frame it in that way when you realize that you are the empowered one that really changes the dynamic and it really changes the way you look at how to find publications and and how to interact with them and of course you know you don't want to be acting like you're the boss of the publication obviously but my point is that you have a lot more agency than i think it at first seems um and yeah especially when you're starting out like i mentioned earlier in the webinar there's nothing wrong at all with being a little selective and i think to some extent you do have to be especially if you are taking a more targeted approach if you're being more focused in your strategy you definitely need to be a little more selective so i hope that answers the the question um i'll try to answer maybe two more questions and i think we'll call it a day um now here's an interesting question uh do publications own the rights of your piece are there opportunities to cross post to your own blog or link to publication this is a really interesting question because this is another thing that comes up a lot and strangely you know i've been writing for over six years now i think it's coming up on seven i've never had an instance where i needed to own the publication and i think a lot of writers especially newer writers get caught up in this idea of ownership and really that's not a concern because usually the publication will either own the article or at least own the first rights to it first publication writes but i mean i've never had a problem with that i've never had i've never republished anything that's not really a thing i haven't met many writers who do that and even if you do want to republish there are avenues for that but it just doesn't happen that often um but generally yeah the publication will own it or at least just own the first um you can link to it in your portfolio certainly as far as cross-posting to your own blog this is something that i talk about a lot but i really really if you're a new writer you should not have a blog the long story of that and i could talk about this for hours is that it's way too much time effort and money for a new writer to spend on that you want to be spending your time on finding pain writing jobs you know having a blog does not pay having a blog does not give you exposure it does not help you get clients or get jobs or get published and you really really really when you're starting out you want to be focusing on what matters because if you spread yourself too thin and if you focus on the wrong things when you're starting out that sets a bad foundation for the rest of your career and especially if you're thinking about doing this you know part-time or full-time this is stuff that you really really want to think critically about you want to make sure that you're starting off in the best way possible and sometimes that means making some sacrifices and like not having your own blog or not being able to own an article but ultimately i think you'll find that that stuff really doesn't matter i know it sounds counterintuitive i think a lot of the stuff that i've talked about today kind of sounds counterintuitive but strangely that's the way it is and i think over time you'll kind of find out that that's how it is so let me answer one more question because we have about two minutes left and um then we'll call it a day i see a couple questions about my other niches that i write it and then how did i choose them well i mainly write in i have two main dishes one is marketing and business and the other one is men's fashion and hair and grooming and uh you know it was kind of the thing where when i started out i didn't really know what to write about and i um i was gearing toward productivity at the start because i figured out you know okay that's something that i kind of know about even though i wasn't very productive um i knew you know strategies about it and i knew the general gist of that niche and i think i always kind of had a predilection toward marketing and just toward that idea and i saw that it was not only a booming niche but also it made a lot of sense to me it really clicked with me um and i just kind of found it by trying out a lot of different things that's really how i landed in the niches that i did you know just by trying out different things and then you know over time as i gained specific interest in things i started writing about those so for instance you know in terms of marketing um i really was interested in using the storytelling and marketing so i ended up writing a lot about that and then over the years as my interest developed and changed you know i got more into fashion and more into hair care and things like that and i just started writing about that because i figured okay that's something i'm interested in there's a market for that like i mentioned earlier it's a balance of passion and profitability and i was like that makes a lot of sense and i started writing about that and i'm still doing both of those to to this day um so i mean it's a mixture of i was writing about what i knew but i was also exploring i was also trying new things you know it took me a while i wrote about so many different things before i figured out what i wanted to do and i think that trial and error is just part of the process and that's a part that i can't it's going to be so specific to you but i hope that you do take the time to uh to allow yourself to go on that journey so we've reached an hour limit so i'll i think we'll call it a day but if you didn't get your question answered like i said feel free to email me at support writinglaunch.com and i really hope that you join us for the free month again you can just head to our site writinglodge.com and sign up for free for a month there and hopefully even stay with us afterward if you want we have unlimited email email coaching you know support on all these channels we really hope that you will stick around and and see what we have in store and i hope you've enjoyed the webinar titty too i hope it's helped you like like i said in the beginning you know we want to give you all the support that we can throughout the this next month to really help you you know light a fire under you to get published finally and you know get started on your writing career and hopefully this webinar has been the first step in that process so i hope you enjoyed it and if you need anything again email us and that's going to be it for today i hope you have a great weekend