Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to my channel. My name is Austin Tussaud. I'm a full time writer, editor and content creator here in New York City. And today's video is going to be all about how to pitch an editor. If you're wondering what experience I have with this already, I am a former magazine editor who used to work on staff at Nylon and Interview Magazine. So I used to get tons and tons of pitches in my inbox every week, and I know what makes a good one stand out. I've also spent the past year as a freelancer here in New York City writing stories for Bustle, Refinery29, Fashionista, Insider, The Zara Report and more, many of them coming from cold pitches or just trying to set up meetings and make connections with editors. So if you watch till the end of this video, you will learn my five best tips for freelance writers and I will also provide as many resources as I can outside of this video for how you can pitch people and yeah, let's get you paid for your ideas because that's all any of us wants anyway. Tip number one is do your research. I feel like if you start to talk to other freelancers, you can get a sense of which publications are even actively looking for freelance contributors and which ones aren't. I know for a fact that Bustle, Insider and PopSugar all have actual landing pages on their website all about how to contribute to those publications. So I'll leave links to all three of those down below in case any of those are on your dream list of publications that you want to be writing for. Generally what I like to do if I'm thinking about pitching a new publication is to go onto their website and start googling the bylines. So I'll look at who wrote the story and try to figure out if they are a freelance contributor, which is a good sign because that means they have freelance contributors and you could even potentially reach out to them and ask them for advice or if they're on staff there and then you know that that's an editor that you can bring an idea to and as long as you figure out the email format, which is super, super easy to do these days, you can send an idea straight to their inbox. Every publication is different, but generally most places have an email format. For example, I know Hearst Magazines is first initial last name at hearst.com. So that is kind of easy one to figure out if you're looking to pitch anyone at any of those publications. Once you figure out one, you can find them all. A quick Google search should bring you to anyone who you're looking to pitch within a matter of minutes. My second tip as far as getting your work actually seen by an editor and even considered is to make sure that you're sending it to the right person. I know that might sound dumb because you're thinking, well, anyone I pitch at the magazine should be able to look at this idea and get back to me. But honestly, things are getting more refined at magazines and most of the time editors have a specific beat or area that they cover. So for example, when I was at Nylon, the two main areas that I was in charge of were fashion news primarily for print, a little bit of digital. So I would still field digital pitches when I got them and then the art section for the magazine as well. And there was another editor there who was mostly in charge of music and entertainment. So if you were sending her a fashion pitch, she might think to forward it to me, but at the same time, like she might be super busy that day and not have time to send it to me. So I'm missing it in the first place and it could have been a genius idea that we could have included in the magazine. So do your research, figure out who writes what. A lot of these publications now have digital mastheads. If you're pitching to a print magazine, obviously you can look at a physical masthead as well and kind of determine which section editor you think might have the best chance of actually reading your pitch and thinking about it and having any authority to say yes or no to you. My third tip is to refine your pitch and make sure that it is really specific and also tailored to the publication you're pitching. So I know from a publicist's perspective, a lot of times we'll get like these mass emails sent out that just kind of give you an overview of the campaign and there'll be kind of little words here and there where you can see where they slotted out your name for someone else's name or the publication you write for for a different publication. And I think they can get away with sending mass emails like that because they have so many people to reach at once and they're just trying to get the information out about their clients. But I don't think that this holds true for you pitching a story to a publication. I actually have a blog post that talks a lot more about this and shares a little exercise that I did with one specific example of a kind of general idea and then how I would tailor it to three different publications. So I'll link that down below in the description box. The main point I want to make here is make sure you've done your research not just on the topic that you want to write about, but also on the publication so that you can explain to the editor there why it would be a good fit for them. Why does it match previous coverage they've done? Why would you be able to provide some kind of exclusive or unique angle on it? And why should they care to follow through and want to write and publish it? A lot of different websites have different series or recurring things that they like to do. So for example, if there's a website you love and every week they do a different kind of music profile, maybe you can pitch an artist to that music profile because you know that they're already going to have one running every week. And I don't know, but if it were me and I were the person in charge of that music profile, I would probably be like, every week like, Oh, who am I going to get for this? Oh, what am I going to do this time? So if you already come to them with an idea ready for that and present a solution to something that they're already looking for content for, it's kind of a slam dunk, you know. My fourth biggest tip is to use resources that will help you find freelance work because I wonder if you're sitting at home and you're new to freelancing and you're just thinking like, how do I even hear about freelance work? Or where am I supposed to find out about all of these writing jobs and things that are happening? So I have three kind of things that I think will help with this. The first is to engage with editors on social media and make sure you're following them, especially on Twitter. Journalists and editors love being on Twitter since it is a words first kind of platform. I follow a bunch of editors who often say like, hey, you know, I'm tweeting out like I'm looking for someone to write this type of story for this publication, please send me pitches and they'll literally give their email. So it's that easy. I try to retweet as many of these that I see on my own Twitter. So if you're not following me on there, you can go follow me on there. I might be a little bit helpful in terms of stuff like that as well. Primarily retweet assignments that I don't want to take on my own so as to lessen my competition. So if you don't write about fashion beauty, definitely follow me on Twitter, you might find something useful there. Another great resource is Facebook groups. I'm in a Facebook group called Binders of Full-Time Freelance Writers and then I'm in another subgroup of that called Binders of Full-Time Writing Jobs and there's always opportunities coming up in there. I'm also in the Freelancing Females Facebook group and I also do copywriting as well as my editorial writing. So that's been a place where I could also look for potential copywriting gigs or anything along those lines. So I would definitely take advantage of that. And the last resource is one that I have just recently taken advantage of myself. It's a newsletter called Opportunities of the Week. It's run by this awesome girl Sonia and if you don't want to comb through Twitter and try to find every single pitch callout that was posted this week, she does it for you. The newsletter I believe is like $3 a month or something but to me it's totally worth it. You can also pay for the year up front so that's what I've done and now I'll get that newsletter every week for the next year with literal opportunities listed and I can then control F and search keywords in there like fashion and beauty or like career, whatever I want to be writing about so that I don't even have to like sit and read through every single tweet because she usually finds a decent amount of them for editors who have calls out for work so I'll put a link to that down below in case you're interested in checking it out as well. My last and final tip is to make sure that you are writing the perfect email. Now I actually have three email templates available inside my e-book Write on Pitch which is a complete guide to pitching that I wrote based on my years of experience as both a pitcher and a pitch receiver. There is always a link to the e-book down below in the description box. I would love if you check it out and especially if you have any success stories from using it please let me know. I'm always posting testimonials and success stories from it on my website. So in that e-book you can see three templates of emails that I have used successfully that have worked from different kinds of pitches so whether it's pitching to a publication, pitching a brand to attend their fashion week show, or pitching a complimentary stay at a hotel in New York City. Those are all in there but my biggest piece of advice as far as emailing is to keep it short and sweet because editors get so many emails every day and it can be really hard for them to filter through everything so you want to make sure that you're not taking up too much of their time and that you have something that will grab their attention right away so that they won't overlook your email. Don't be afraid to introduce yourself with two or three sentences just so they can figure out who you are and definitely link any relevant samples of previous work. So for me I know that has been really helpful in terms of cold pitching editors just to show them that I have written other places before and I do have that experience. I honestly don't think that it has to be too intense so if you've never written for a national publication before send them something that was published in a local newspaper or send them something you self-published on your blog. People want to see these examples and the thing is if your writing is good it doesn't even necessarily matter where it was published. If you want to hear more about my previous experience at magazines and how to kind of get your foot in the door I do have a career Q&A video that I will link on the screen and down below for you to watch after you finish this video. So there you have it guys, five tips for pitching editors if you're a freelance writer. I really hope you found this video useful, if you learned something new let me know what it is in the comments down below, I would love to hear how this video helped you and if you found it really useful I would love if you could also give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. I put out new videos every Monday and Friday, I do lots of fashion and beauty content as well as career chats, travel guides and lots of other things too. Thank you again for watching, hope you have an amazing rest of your day and I will see you guys in my next video. Bye.