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MAKING MONEY As staff writer at music industry trade magazine Music Week and a successful freelance journalist, Rhian Jones knows quite a bit about how to make a living from words. Here she reveals exactly what it takes to go from pyjama-clad blogger to professional paid journalist (Clue: you don’t have to lose the pyjamas). Illustration Sam Taylor
I’ve worked for free a lot. And not out of the goodness of my own heart, either. As an 18 year-old aspiring journo with lots of ambition but zero experience, any offers of my services as a writer fell on deaf ears. All my emails to the editors of national newspapers and magazines were ignored. Not one reply. Zilch. They all hate me and the world is against me, I thought. My career has ended before it’s even started. That’s not true; of course, I just didn’t have any proof to back up my grandiose claims of talent and ability. So I spent the next few years blogging and writing for no pay. Many hours were spent in dirty basement bars reviewing unknown bands for an unknown website, before I graduated to yawn-inducing art galleries and political protests for a student newspaper. Aged 21, I got my first pay packet. After a six-week full-time work experience stint, I managed to negotiate a flat fee of £500. Progress… sort of. However, after writing an opinion piece for a national newspaper on the importance of interns asking for pay while not being paid a single penny for writing the article, I decided enough was enough. Dreams of being the best hack Fleet Street ever saw were never
going to be realised if I didn’t get properly paid for my work. Also, everyone’s gotta eat. I’d done tons of blogging, built up a portfolio of work and it was time someone took me seriously. So, I sent off pitches to the Guardian, Cosmopolitan magazine, heat magazine and The Independent. The idea for Cosmo was a particular stunner. My sister and I had written a painstakingly true account of our disastrous love lives and decided it was hilarious. I crafted an 800-word analysis of the article complete with excerpts and sent it off to the commissioning editor. And while I had a polite reply from a few of the titles, none of my ideas got commissioned. But thanks to lots of advice from my previous boss, three years later, my luck has changed. These days, I am paid to write for Company, The Sunday Telegraph and a fair few trade and education publications. So how do you go from no dollar to nuff dollars? When it comes to pitching, think outside the box. Well-known titles have a slew of established and experienced writers that they rely on and are unlikely to have any space for inexperienced and potentially
unreliable names. There are tons of websites, independent magazines and newspapers that as long as you’ve got a good idea, are pleased to hear from anyone. And the most important thing to remember when writing that email is – keep it brief. Sum up your idea in three or four sentences and draw the editor in with your first line. If your hook is buried under two paragraphs of chat, you’ll lose their attention. Also: read the title or blog that you’re pitching to and work out exactly where you see your article fitting in. Use Google to get the right contact details of the person who edits that section and you’re off. Always discuss payment terms straight after the editor has said yes and you’ve agreed the word count, date and content of the article, if they don’t bring it up first. Finally, fake it till you make it. You’re no longer an ‘aspiring’ writer/journalist, you are now officially a writer/journalist. Look like an amateur, and you’ll get treated like one (ignored). Make sure you have a professional looking website and easily viewable portfolio of your best and most recent work. It doesn’t matter if it’s blogs or unpublished, as long as it’s good. What are you waiting for? Get money making!
“However, after writing an opinion piece for a national newspaper on the importance of interns asking for pay while not being paid a single penny for writing the article, I decided enough was enough.”