email marketing

Find Emails (and See if Yours Got Read): 8 Tools for Writers

Find emails…when you’ve got the perfect story idea for a magazine or want to reach out to a marketing director, you need their email address.

That single piece of information is your lifeline to success if you want to pitch prospects, land assignments, and make a living writing.

Your first stop should always be the magazine masthead or the company website to find emails. But that doesn’t always pan out.

So do you throw in the towel, shake your fist at the sky, and spend the afternoon crying about how hard it is to find emails?

Stop. Right. There. Skip the pity party and follow Carol’s advice: “Take the attitude that you are an unstoppable force of nature, and you won’t give up…”

If you want to find emails for editors, marketing directors, or sources, you can. Wondering if your pitch email got read? There’s a way to find that out, too.

Check out these tools you can use as a freelance writer to dig up contact info and find emails:

Tagged with: email marketing, finding clients, LinkedIn, marketing

Cold Email Subject Lines That Get Writers Hired: 5 Proven Formulas

Posted by: Carol Tice — 6 Comments ↓

Have you been wanting to do some serious pitching — but haven’t gotten going, because you don’t know what to put in your cold email subject lines?

Many freelance writers have this question, I’ve learned. Fortunately, I’ve spent the past 8 years hanging out with about 12,000 writers inside my Freelance Writers Den (CURRENT SECRET DOOR LINK PLEASE?) community and reading our busy forums. At this point, I definitely have a strong sense of what email subject lines freelance writers use that grab attention and get their emails opened.

You’re right to care about what you put in your subject line, because let’s face it: If it isn’t amazing, your email will probably go unread.

Your pitch is going nowhere, no matter how stellar an article idea or content-marketing pitch you’ve got. It will never be opened and read.

To get better results, you’ll have to do one of two things — learn to write great cold email subject lines.

Fortunately, coming up with a headline that catches your target’s attention isn’t super-hard. There are proven formulas you can use here.

What are they? Here are my five basic cold email subject lines that get results:

Tagged with: email marketing, subject lines

Stop Hearing Crickets: These Pitch Changes Get You More Writing Jobs

Posted by: Carol Tice — 11 Comments ↓

Are you desperate to find more good-paying writing jobs?

I hear from a lot of writers who send out pitch after pitch…and hear absolutely nothing back. Crickets.

Recently, I met a writer who said they had sent 800 pitch letters out, and gotten zero responses!

That’s just wrong.

If you never get a response to your pitches — even just to say, “We don’t use freelancers” or “We already have this topic assigned” — you’ve got big trouble.

Stop what you’re doing. It’s time to re-assess.

Getting off the intermediary places like Upwork, content mills, and Craigslist ads, is key to earning better rates. To do that, you’ve got to be able to target better-caliber clients you want, pitch them, and get them to say ‘yes.’

If you’ve been hearing crickets from your pitches, and you’re confused about how to change things, good news: there are basically only three things you can do to make this better. The road to a better response rate isn’t complicated.

There are three big levers you can throw to improve your situation. Ready to start getting more responses, client meetings, and assignments?

Here are the only three things to focus on, if your pitches aren’t getting results:

Tagged with: email marketing, LOI, move up and earn more

Blog Marketing Crisis: 3 Ways to Survive the End of Email

Posted by: Carol Tice — 12 Comments ↓

Since the beginning of the Internet, there’s been one basic law of blog marketing: The money is in the list.

Email addresses are all that really matter in your blog-based business, not Facebook ‘likes’ or social shares. You don’t know who those people are. Build a big email list you can sell to, and you’ll be rich.

Also, help your freelance clients build a list for their blog, and they’ll be rich — and keep hiring you back.

Email worked great for bloggers, for so, so long. It’s always been the primary way we build an audience, offer products and services for sale, hold contests and giveaways, conduct surveys, and more.

It’s how we stay in touch, connect, grow relationships with readers, and build authority.

That is, email worked for a long time…until it didn’t.

Bloggers confront two big problems today: The rising difficulty of getting emails delivered, and the coming of a generation of young adults who don’t use email. Ever.

What can you do in your blog marketing, to keep your blog and your clients’ blogs thriving? Here are three basic strategies, and some in-depth explanation on how we’re implementing these here on Make a Living Writing:

Tagged with: blog marketing, blog-based business, email marketing

Follow This Persistent Path to $100-Per-Hour Freelance Work

Posted by: Evan Jensen — Comments Off

You’re sifting through LinkedIn one day looking for freelance work, and come across a solid prospect. What’s your next move?

If you’re the stereotypical sales type (extrovert, talkative, a good presenter, a won’t-take-no-for-an-answer closer), you pick up the phone and hustle with a lot of bravado and high-pressure tactics.

(I don’t know about you, but that’s diametrically opposed to my own personality traits.)

So if you’re looking for freelance work, how do you find prospects and turn them into clients?

When I started this journey, I headed down an unmarked path to find niche freelance work for clients with the budget to pay pro rates. Sound familiar?

I took a few wrong turns, got back on track, hiked deeper into the freelance forest looking for prospects, and then something happened. I landed a client that pays $100 per hour.

When I looked back at the route to get there, I discovered that I was following the Persistent Path to freelance work the entire time.

Looking for good freelance clients? Follow this path to find them.

Tagged with: email marketing, guest post, marketing, persistence

email marketing

Find Emails (and See if Yours Got Read): 8 Tools for Writers

Cold Email Subject Lines That Get Writers Hired: 5 Proven Formulas

Stop Hearing Crickets: These Pitch Changes Get You More Writing Jobs

Blog Marketing Crisis: 3 Ways to Survive the End of Email

Follow This Persistent Path to $100-Per-Hour Freelance Work

Content Marketing Magic: A Top Expert’s Tips for Freelance Writers

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