Are you looking for article work this summer—a way to make a little extra money? Why not consider trade magazines. There are over 500 trade magazines listed in Writer’s Market and many others out there that aren’t listed. They represent every type of business and business aspect you can imagine and they pay anywhere from $25 per article to $3,000.
A really cool thing about writing for the trades is that you don’t actually have to know anything about construction, church administration, doing nails, aviation, selling or building furniture, public service programs, feed lot management or engineering. All you need to break into trade magazines is the ability to think outside the box, a talent for coming up with new ideas, a skill for conducting interviews, a bent for research and a sense of professionalism. You must also be able to write to an editor’s specifications and a specific magazine’s style.
Here are a few of the articles I’ve sold to trade magazines over the years—as you can see, they did not necessarily require knowledge of the trade.
I wrote many articles for a local technology magazine one year: I profiled people who ran technology businesses out of their garages, teens operating technology businesses, couples managing businesses related to technology, women in technology and one on computer dating, for example. I also interviewed a variety of artists for a couple of articles for a country business magazine. I sold pieces to a variety of business magazines on business management, how to get along with a female boss, using intuition in the workplace, office politics, how to give a better presentation, how to create more loyal customers and how to handle an irate customer. I sold Technology and Learning a piece on how to get the word out about your school technology programs and pieces on how to make the most of your vacation to a variety of business magazines. I wrote a couple of articles featuring various categories of pet products for a pet store magazine.
And then there are regional business magazines. I’ve sold some of them my articles on how to have more fun at work, bringing dogs to work, cats in the workplace.
I imagine that as you read through this post, a flurry of ideas for trade magazine articles occurred to you. Great! Now go flesh them out, locate the right trade magazine, start contacting possible interviewees and go for it. Let me know how it goes.
http://www.matilijapress.com
http://www.patriciafry.com
It’s not too late to sign up for my in progress Book Proposal Writing Course.
http://www.matilijapress.com/course_bookproposal.htm