Written anything fascinating lately about blogging, marketing, writing, freelancing, productivity, or work-from-home issues?

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!

Ever wonder why your query letter to a magazine didn’t get a response?

It could be because the type of story you pitched is one the magazine doesn’t accept — or does, but expects to get for free.

If you’re in this to get great-paying article assignments, you need to understand the types of articles that make editors cough up the big bucks.

This is particularly hard, I think, for writers who’ve been mostly posting on their own blogs, or writing for content mills. The parameters of what’s desirable there are radically different from what magazines want.

Here’s a look at seven types of articles that make editors want to turn down your idea:

1. I’m the expert

Often, budding writers who are former lawyers, accountants, insurance brokers, or some other type of professional have a history of contributing articles to their organization newsletter as a volunteer. When you show those clips and pitch more articles based on your expertise and pitch similar advice pieces, you may be disappointed to find publications expect them to be free.

To get paid to write articles, you have to position yourself as the writer, not the expert. You’ll be expected to go out and interview experts and report their points of view. This is a big shift, but one that will take you away from freebie articles to promote your profession and into the world of good-paying articles.

2. I have an agenda

Many of the story ideas I see when we review ideas in 4-Week Journalism School stem from something the writer wants to advocate for — say, that parents should encourage their children to journal.

If you have a topic about which you have formed a strong opinion, it will be hard to report an unbiased story in which you quote experts on both sides of an issue. You won’t talk to that expert who thinks lack of exercise is the biggest problem with our youth today and they should stow the notebook and go shoot some hoops.

Your story will end up lopsided and biased. If an editor even suspects you can’t be evenhanded with a story, they’re not going to give it a green light.

3. I have a HIDDEN agenda

Sometimes a writer has something they’re hot to promote — but they don’t disclose how they might personally benefit from promoting it.

For instance, I recently saw a travel-magazine pitch from a writer whose day job is with his country’s travel bureau, all about the advantages of coming to visit…his country! Pitching a story like this without disclosing who he works for is a conflict of interest. Obviously, this writer would have earned kudos from his boss and possibly even gotten a raise if he could stimulate more tourism business through this article, so the pitch was completely self-interested.

Trying to slip a piece like this by your editor is a great way to find yourself banned from writing for that publication ever again, once your deception comes to light. And trust me, it will.

4. I want to do an investigative expose´

You’ve discovered a thorny issue or wrongdoing that the public needs to know about and you’re all fired up to get that story told. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to get a piece like this assigned as a freelancer, especially if it’s your first pitch to a publication. You’ll have more luck with publications where you already have an established track record.

The reason is that investigative work tends to be very time-consuming and require a deep understanding of journalism ethics. When you make accusations, you have to be very sure of your facts, or your publication risks getting sued out of existence. An editor is unlikely to trust an untried writer to dive into something that is potentially legally actionable and could take months to report.

This is why most investigative work is done by staff writers, where the publication has enough staff to spare someone for a big block of time. I once did an investigative piece as a staffer that I researched on and off for nearly a year. At the end, we concluded that while I had found an intriguing case of small-time charity fraud and facts were well-reported, the story didn’t reveal enough useful information to our publication’s readers to be worth the large amount of editorial space required to tell the story. The piece never ran.

Trust me, as a freelance writer, you don’t want to go down this kind of sinkhole and end up not earning after a ton of work. Also, quite often the expose a writer wants to do has to do with an issue they’ve got a personal point of view and agenda on…so see #2 again on that problem.

5. My story makes your advertisers look bad

You’re in double-trouble if the perceived wrong you are on a mission to right is something that is committed by the advertisers of your target publication.

For instance, I recently heard from a writer who wanted to do an investigative piece and prove that the major drug companies are conspiring to keep the public from knowing about and using natural remedies. Her idea was to pitch this to a lifestyle magazine full of ads for aspirin, Viagra and other big-pharma products. In going over that scenario with me, she suddenly realized why this story idea was a non-starter.

Yes, there is a division between editorial and advertising at most reputable publications, and the ad department can’t tell the editors what to write…but the publication also does have to stay in business. You probably need to find another venue if you’d like to take potshots at the people who pay their bills.

6. I want to vent

Something happened in your life that made you frustrated or angry, and you’d like to tell the world about it. These make great first-person essays…and the problem is those rarely pay well. Most see the light of day as free letters to the editor.

The reason these don’t pay well is vent articles rarely provide practical, useful information to readers. Helpful info is at the heart of the vast majority of well-paid articles, so your vent tends to get a “pass” from the editor. The way to sell these is to angle it away from being a vent and turn it into a useful case study others can benefit from, as I did when my blog was declared a malicious website by Facebook. By pitching the useful-lessons angle, I was able to get an editor’s OK to make it part of my paid blog for Forbes.

7. I’ve noticed a news peg, but don’t have an angle

Often, magazines will tie a story in with an upcoming event — the running of the bulls in Pamplona, or the 20th anniversary of a prominent local business. These create a “news peg,” or timeliness element that’s good to have in an article pitch…the problem is, you won’t be the only writer who’s thought of it. So if you pitch, “I’d like to write about the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech,” you’re only halfway there.

What will you say that hasn’t been said before about this event or institution? Without something fresh, this is more like a pitch to write a school paper (“What MLK’s ‘I have a dream’ speech means to me”) than a magazine article.

Will you do a roundup on how many streets in your town are named after MLK? Interview a surviving colleague? Cover an event being held in honor of the day? Catch us up on where MLK’s children are now, because you have exclusive access to them for interviews?

A strong story angle combined with a news peg can work great to get you the sale, but the fact that an anniversary is happening won’t do it alone. Without a defined approach, these articles could also ramble all over and lack focus, so the editor tends to shy away.

What article ideas have you had trouble selling? Leave a comment and I’ll try to help you refine your idea.

P.S. Congrats to Amanda @SkilfulScribe, who won the free ticket to 4-Week J-School! Early registration bonuses go away tomorrow night, so if you’re interested in that, check it out now:

A well-written query letter can work like a magic wand for freelance writers, opening the door to the great-paying article assignments you desire.

Unfortunately, most query letters don’t get a response, even ones to publications that pay $100 an article, much less the ones that pay $1,000.

And yes, there are still $1-a-word article markets. Loads of ‘em.

Lately, I’ve had a lot of comments here on the blog from writers who complain they’ve queried and queried and never had so much as a nibble.

That means something’s going wrong. Fortunately, most query errors are fairly simple to fix.

Here are the most common slip-ups I’ve seen reviewing query letters:

Your query has no headline

You’d think it would be a no-brainer to include a strong proposed headline for your story idea in a query letter, so the editor can quickly scan through and immediately grasp the gist of your story idea. But I’d say the majority of queries I’ve reviewed lack one.

Writing a headline for your story idea is also highly recommended because it will help you focus your idea. If you can’t put it into a concise headline — that’s written in the style of that publication — your idea probably needs more work before it’s ready for a query.

You didn’t study the publication

I see a lot of writers trying to shoehorn a topic they’re dying to write about into a publication that doesn’t accept articles on that topic, or in that format.

For instance, you query that you want to write about a single breakthrough medical procedure you learned about — but for a magazine that only runs medical roundup stories with five or more breakthroughs per story. Or you’re proposing a 3,000-word narrative feature for a publication that mostly runs short, list-driven “listicle” type pieces.

Trying to convince an editor to break the mold of their publication and make an exception because your idea is super-marvelous doesn’t usually work. Instead, analyze the magazine and see what types of articles they run…then, feed them an idea that fits right into one of their regular departments.

Your topic is too broad

Editors fear assigning topics that aren’t well-defined. It’s too risky. You might end up turning in a rambling mess.

Yet many writers feed this fear by pitching topics that are too general. They’re big enough that you could easily write a full-length book on the topic. If your idea could be a book, it’s not niched enough to be a good article pitch.

For instance, I recently heard from one writer who said an editor had liked her ideas enough to start up a conversation on email. But she didn’t assign her any right off — instead, the editor asked her to submit ideas that were “more thinly sliced.”

“What does she mean?” the writer asked me.

Translation: Your article idea needs to be narrow and clear enough that the editor can easily see you’ll be able to address that topic in the (usually short) word length you’re given.

Let’s slice a topic here just for practice. For instance, the writer who got the “thin-sliced” comment from her editor mentioned she had pitched writing an article about “dealing with divorce after 40.”

That, people, is a book topic.

An article topic in this neighborhood might be, “Dealing with divorce after 40 — when you have young kids.” Or you’re disabled. Or you live in a rural area. Or your kids are special needs. Or your ex is a stalker.

See the difference?

Serve up a thin slice of story and your editor sees your topic is doable in a short wordcount.

You don’t show your research

There are two kinds of research that are good to show in a pitch — your research into the publication, and your research into your story idea.

You should do both kinds before you query, especially if you’re a new writer.

Even if you don’t have any clips, if you write a really strong query, you could find yourself with an assignment from a great-paying market. It does happen.

But to make it happen, you have to show your stuff. Say which department your piece is for. Say what’s revealed by the interesting research you’ve about this issue. Throw in a quote from an expert you’ve already interviewed.

Writers hesitate to put this much work in for the query, because they fear it will be a waste of time. Then, you never get the gig because your query doesn’t give the editor confidence you can execute your piece.

It’s all about you

New writers often spend half their query letter talking about themselves. Worse yet, what they have to say is frequently negative. Here are a few gems I’ve seen:

“I just graduated college.”

“I’m a brand-new freelancer.”

“I couldn’t find a job, so I turned to freelancing out of desperation.”

This is not making the sale for you.

Remember, don’t tell an editor what you don’t know or can’t do.

A pro-sounding resume line goes like this:

“I am a Chicago-based writer specializing in healthcare topics. My work has appeared in ___ and ___ magazines.” (And omit that second line if you have no previous credits.)

That’s it. Give them a link to your writer website to solidify the idea that you’re a pro, and you’re done.

You never pitch good-paying publications

Sadly, this is probably the most common reason I see for not earning more.

Writers are trapped in fears they’re not good enough to earn that sort of money, and avoid approaching elite publications altogether…sometimes even if they’ve been getting published in lower-paying publications for years and years.

Remember, nobody will move your career up a notch except you.

The main thing to know is if you don’t pitch up to great publications, those juicy, fat $1,000 or $2,000 article checks are never going to come.

CONTEST: What’s keeping YOU from earning $1 a word? Tell us in the comments for a chance to win a FREE ticket to the 4-Week Journalism School class that’s starting May 8. Most fascinating insight whose author has the most RTs for this post will be declared the winner on Monday’s post, so leave us your Twitter handle with your comment. Good luck all!