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By Tiffany Jansen

Have you seen the Seinfeld episode where George accompanies his girlfriend to a funeral?

It’s post-wake and everyone’s at her parent’s place noshing on hors d’oeuvres and sipping punch. George finds himself in front of the potato chips, so he takes one, sinks it in the dip, takes a bite, and dips the chip again; much to the annoyance of his distraught girlfriend’s brother.

A knock-down, drag-out fight ensues before the very upset girlfriend kicks George out.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a double-dipper.

And why not? It’s the only way to really enjoy that French onion dip and get the most mileage out of your chip.

Freelancers should be double-dipping too. Not their chips (unless they’re into that sort of thing), but their writing.

Double-dipping is a golden opportunity not enough freelance writers take advantage of.

So how does double-dipping work in the freelance writing world? Here are five easy ways.

1. Sell reprints.

It’s been published once, why can’t it be published again?

How to do it: The first thing you want to do is make a list of publications that cover the topic of your article. Then, check out their website and writer guidelines to see if they accept reprints. If you’re not sure, ask. Send the editor a friendly email telling them about your article and why you think their readers would be interested. Ask if they’d like to purchase it as a reprint.

Keep in mind: It’ll pay a fraction of what they pay for original works and they may want you to tweak it a bit to fit their market. But it sure beats having to come up with a new idea, pitch it, research and talk to sources, and write a new piece.

2. Repurpose old content to fit new markets.

Not all publications accept reprints…but that doesn’t mean you can’t reuse old content.

How to do it: First, find a market that covers your topic. Go back to your research notes and interview transcripts, and write a pitch that covers a different angle of the story with publication #2’s audience in mind. If you quoted someone in the first article, paraphrase in the new one. Where you paraphrased, use quotes. Include information that didn’t make it into the original article.

Keep in mind: You may want to consider doing some additional research in case things have changed, or find one or two additional sources. But the work load is going to be a lot less than what it was the first go-around. Only this time you stand to earn the same amount of money… maybe even more!

3. Send pitches in batches.

When you come up with a brilliant idea, don’t save it for just one publication – share the love! There are tons of publications with audiences that would love to know more about the topic you’re pitching. It’s just a matter of re-framing each pitch to fit a variety of publications.

How to do it: Let’s say you’ve got a great story idea about traveling with babies. Of course parenting magazines would be interested, but so would travel publications, women’s glossies, maybe even custom publications for baby product companies. As you’re doing your initial research and collecting sources, think about what these various audiences would want to know and how/why they could use this information. Tweak each pitch to suit each market.

Keep in mind: Unlike the tactics above, here you’ll be writing completely different queries and completely different articles for each publication. While parents would want this information to help them in their travels, a pediatrician might want this information to help her advise parents who wish to travel with their little ‘uns. A women’s magazine might want to provide tips on how to have a smooth flight for travelers finding themselves on a plane with a baby. The difference is, you do the research once and get multiple articles out of it.

4. Send simultaneous queries.

The idea here is to send the same query for the same idea to editors at multiple publications. When you send out a query, you could wait months — or even a year — only to have the editor respond with a resounding “no.” Sometimes editors take a really long time to respond to queries…if they reply at all. Rather than wait around for them to get back to you and risk having your idea become stale or already-been-done, cast your net wide and find that article a home ASAP.

How to do it: This one’s easy — find a bunch of publications that fit your topic, write one query, and send it out to editors at all of those publications.

Keep in mind: You may have more than one publication show interest in the article. However, you cannot sell the same article to more than one publication. In this case, it’s a first come, first served thing. But don’t let those other publications go home empty-handed. Offer them the same story, but from a different angle. Or pitch them a few similar ideas instead.

5. Once you’ve got ‘em, keep ‘em.

The thing about queries is they can get a “yes” or a “no” or be met with silence. There’s not much you can do about the third instance, but you can turn a “no” into a “yes.”

How to do it: An editor might turn you down for a number of reasons: the timing’s off, someone else has already covered it, they’re not interested in the topic, they’re having a bad day… But just because they say “no” to one idea doesn’t mean they’ll say “no” to another. If they’ve emailed you back, you’ve got their ear. So take advantage by replying with a “Thank you for getting back to me. I completely understand. Perhaps [insert new idea here] would be a better fit?”

Keep in mind: That you suck as a writer or the editor hates your guts is rarely if ever a reason for a rejection. Odds are the rejection is based on factors you have absolutely no control over. If you get a response, thank them, tell them you get it, and offer up a new idea. This shows that you’re persistent and not just a one-idea dude. Then send the rejected query somewhere else.

When you have a chip — er, idea — get the most mileage you can out of it by double dipping, and you’ll get more assignments (and more money) with less work.

Tiffany Jansen is an American freelance writer and translator in the Netherlands. She is also the author of an award-winning children’s historical fiction series. You can find out more about her at www.tiffanyrjansen.com.

P.S. Carol Tice’s and my next Article Writing Masterclass starts in January, and we have THREE editors on board to critique your homework assignments and answer your questions: Current editors from Redbook and FSR (Full Service Restaurant) Magazine, and a former Entrepreneur editor. In this 10-week class, you’ll gain the skills and confidence to land lucrative article-writing gigs. Learn more and read raves from students on the Article Writing Masterclass website.

I don't know about you, but I can take a while to write an article, usually an hour and then some. Even if I have an idea, I still try to add extra value into the article by doing a bit of research and getting 'social proof' to back up what I'm saying. For this article I decided to time it, so I can see just how long it takes me to create a top-notch, error-free (relatively) piece of content.

By Tania Dakka.

After staring at a blank screen for the last 20 minutes, trying to write your next viral post (next, right?), you give in and give up. It pains you to let the blankness win, but you concede.

Next stop. Shower. No sooner does the steaming hot liquid permeates your pore than an idea flits into your head.

Dang.

No paper. No pen. No help.

And there she goes. Too bad because it was a good one, too!

It Never Fails

Don’t you hate that? You stress and worry over ideas. You waste precious time searching through Facebook and flipping through your lists on Twitter (pretending that you’re going to actually come up with an idea). Then, you look up and the 15 minutes you intended to spend has turned into an hour.

Productivity averted – again.

Trying to generate ideas online is an occupational no-no. You know that.

So you leave your post to “relax” doing something else. And it never fails that as soon as you’re occupied, that great idea pops into your head. But you’re busy so you let it flit on through because you’re – well – busy.

You’re Out of Focus

You’re geared to work when you’re at your laptop. And you spend so much time at it that you just want a break when you’re away from it.

Don’t get me wrong.

We all love freelancing (as much as a piping hot pizza on a Friday night with our favorite beverage of choice). But, the fact remains, as workaholics, we sabotage ourselves by forcing productivity instead of enabling creativity.

That forced focus time creates the habit of letting go precisely when you should be holding on, but we’re too tired to focus when we’re not supposed to be “focusing.”

Learn To Focus Even When You Let Go

Letting go of the plug is the one thing that your brain needs to release all the greatness packed between your ears.

That’s why your shower is your number one idea generator. Not sitting in front your creativity’s arch-nemesis and standing under a stream of bliss loosens the hold that fear and anxiety have on your psyche.

And by forcing yourself away from your desk or laptop and forgetting what you need to do, you’ll release your Inner Creative Beast.

But beware. Releasing the Beast means you have to be ready to capture whatever ideas flow.

I said capture. Not capture and edit – did you catch that?

You’ll be tempted to critique and edit said greatness. Resist. Resist with all you have. Because your perfectionism is going to let that awesomeness fly right past your ears.

Trap your ideas as they happen. Yes, even in the shower.

Create The Habit Of Capturing Creativity Wherever You Are

With the right tools, you can take hold of your most creative and powerful ideas and keep them for when you need them.

Where You Are: In the Shower

If you’re a technology lover, this won’t be the place that you want to use Evernote. Nor is paper and pen going to help you.

But this handy Scuba Slate is just what you need. And at less than $10, it’s a powerful little investment. Hang it on the wall in the shower. And start writing as soon as any idea hits you. Hang up your editor until you towel off.

Another way not to lose any shower gold is recording your shower. Okay, yeah, it’s not for everybody. But it works. I simply turn on the recorder before stepping in and I start talking as soon as the ideas hit. (Warning: let others k

This is a guest post by Diana Bocco.

You’ve probably heard the command before: Diversify.

In most cases, what they’re telling you to do is to try out different streams of income: magazine writing, book publishing, coaching or editing. But there’s another way you can diversify as a magazine writer: By looking at new and unexplored markets beyond your comfort zone.

Here’s how:

Target small specialty magazines.

Trade magazines are not as strong as they once were. Years ago, you could find publications for almost every trade, from cement pouring to oil & energy to insurance. The recession took a big toll on trade mags and as a result many folded or stopped taking freelance submissions.

Many, but not all. Trade magazines are still out there and they pay well. For example, last year I sold an article to a wine making magazine for $650 and one to a paper industry magazine for almost $1,000. Do I know a lot about wine making or paper production? No, but I’m good at research and I found great experts to quote in the articles, so the editors were happy.

You won’t find trade magazines at your local bookstore – they’re mostly sold by subscription or given away for free to members of a certain union or organization. Still, most have websites where you can get an idea of the topics they cover and you can use your local bookstore to browse books on the same topic for story ideas.

Look at your niche with new eyes.

Whatever your niche is, there might be more to it than you think. Let’s take, for example, the fitness niche. The obvious market is fitness magazines such as Shape and Men’s Fitness.

But if you write targeted articles, you can sell a fitness story to a woman’s magazine (“Exercise for the busy career woman”), a college magazine (“How exercise can help you deal with the stress of college”) or a health magazine (“How exercise can decrease your risk of depression”). How about a children’s magazine? Sports Illustrated Kids magazine publishes stories on kids excelling at sports and fitness and Youth Fitness magazine recently published an article on common summer injuries in active kids and teens.

If you find a specific topic, you can spin it forever into different angles. A “how to avoid injury” article can be targeted to fit a running, skiing or cycling magazine. I once wrote an article on budget travel in Japan and then realized I could write similar articles about other destinations. That resulted in multiple articles and over $2,000 in assignments from travel publications, in-flight magazines and an expat magazine.

And don’t forget trade publications. You could target magazines aimed at fitness professionals, gym owners and sports management. These would require a very different type of article and approach, but it could be an interesting challenge to try.

Cross frontiers.

Up until a couple of years ago, it had never crossed my mind to target international magazines. It seems like such an obvious thing to do, right? The UK, Canada and Australia have plenty of magazines covering the same fields you find in American publications. So why are you ignoring them?

Once I discovered international markets, my reach expanded a lot. I’m a frequent contributor to The Genteel, a Canadian fashion and design publication and I’ve sold stories to The Writer, Marie Claire Australia and UK’s Six magazine. My work has also appear

People often say to me, “Linda, you’re so prolific that I bow down before you and kiss your hem. Where do you come up with so many wonderful ideas?”

To them I reply, “Why, I steal them!”

Now, I don’t mean that I break into other writers’ homes and rifle through their filing cabinets and hard drives. What I mean is that I find published ideas and think of ways to reslant them for my target magazines; after all, ideas aren’t copyrightable. Here’s how you, too, can benefit from a life of crime.

Nick Ideas from Newspapers

Who would have thought that your local paper — a haven to such stories as “Lotta Mums Takes First in Church Flower Show” — would give you ideas that you can pitch to the nationals? But these publications are chock full of the kind of small-town news that national magazine editors want to run but can’t find on their own.

For example, many women’s magazines run profiles of women who contribute to their communities by volunteering, creating non-profit organizations, and so on — a staple for local papers. Some true crime stories get their starts in local rags; can you pitch that compelling local murder mystery to GQ or Vanity Fair? And the business section runs pieces on local companies doing fascinating things; maybe your town diner’s hilarious new marketing plan will spur an article on marketing for a restaurant trade magazine.

Even Lotta Mums and her prizewinning roses might be worth an article: You can pitch “Secrets of Prizewinning Gardeners” to a gardening magazine.

Mooch from Magazines

You wouldn’t want to take an article idea in its entirety and pitch it to the magazine’s competitor — that’s just bad form. But no one says you can’t slant an idea you found in one magazine for a magazine in a different market.

For instance, I recently read a short in Rhode Island Monthly magazine about a gourmet hot dog stand in Providence. What a great idea for a food magazine: “Hot Dogs Go Highbrow.” My husband, an idea thief from way back, saw a short piece about the International Wife Carrying Competition in Reader’s Digest and sold an article on the event to GAMES magazine.

Here’s how to do it: Go to the bookstore and make a beeline for the parts of the newsstand you rarely browse — the pet section, say, or the sports section. Gather up a big armload of magazines and head to the café. Buy a cappuccino, then start flipping through the magazines, looking for ideas that you can slant for your target markets. Try turning a profile into a roundup where you’d interview a bunch of people, taking a national idea and giving it a local spin, or playing the contrarian with an idea by pitching the exact opposite (such as “Why Fat Is Good” or “How to Be Lazy”).

Pilfer from Press Releases

The press release’s entire raison d’etre (that’s French for “why publicists churn them out, spam them into your in-box, and follow-up mercilessly”) is to persuade writers to write about the product or service advertised therein — so feel free to steal, swipe, and snatch with abandon. For example, I found a release about new ways to deal with waste on space shuttles and sold the idea to Wired News. A release about a computer model developed by NASA that can predict the weather better than other techniques turned into another article for the same magazine.

Find organizations that deal in the subjects you like to write about and ask to be put on their press lists. If you’re

In my Write for Magazines e-course, I once had a student who was in a wheelchair, and one of the ideas she generated was about how people should treat the disabled: the common mistakes people make, why they shouldn’t make them, and what to do instead.

Her second idea was about the subway commuter who saved an epileptic man a few years ago by hauling him off a subway track in front of an oncoming train. Her premise was that this man shouldn’t be treated as a hero because he didn’t know how to help someone with epilepsy and stuck his wallet in the man’s mouth to keep him from swallowing his tongue, which everyone should know you’re not supposed to do. In fact, she said, the real hero is the person who lives with epilepsy every day.

Another writer, who worked in retail, wanted to pitch an article on how people can be better customers…for example, they should put the items they’re looking at back neatly on the shelves, and not enter the store when it’s about to close.

I had to tell these writers that their ideas would not fly.

Why? Well, would you want to read an article that was basically telling you “Hey, you’re annoying me, and here’s how not to?”

No one wants to be lectured to. When people pick up a magazine, they want to read information that will help them improve heir lives, that they can put into action right away. These two ideas don’t meet those requirements.

In fact, they’re more vents than articles.

We all have things that piss us off, and the temptation is to turn them into articles. But a common mistake is to think you can make people change their evil ways and make your life easier through your writing.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to turn a vent into an article idea. The wrong way is to take your vent wholesale and plop it onto paper. The right way is to consider how your idea will improve people’s lives. This opens up all different types of markets you may not have thought of.

For example, my student who was in a wheelchair could pitch a parenting magazine with an article about how to handle difficult social situations with your kid. One of those situations could be that your child points at someone in a wheelchair and loudly asks why the person can’t walk. You could also include, say, how to react when your child announces he doesn’t like a gift someone gave him, what to do when you’re having dinner at someone’s house and your kid refuses to eat the food, and so on.

See what I mean? Now you’re still informing people how to treat the disabled, but without the lecture.

As for the idea about how to be a better customer: How about an article for a retail trade magazine on how to “train” your customers to pick up after themselves, leave when the store is closing, etc.? Or on how to handle 10 common types of difficult customers? Now, you’re pursuing your own agenda while helping others. Win-win!

Thinking about your problems can help you generate article ideas, because chances are if you have a problem, other people have it too. But you need to make sure the idea you pitch offers helpful service to your readers, and is not just a rant about how much they suck.

How about you…have you ever taken what could have been a vent and turned it into an article idea that sold? How did you do it? [lf]

The free teleclass Five Reasons Why Editors Won’t Buy Your Great Ideas, taught by Diana Burrell, turned out great! Diana didn’t insult attendees’ intelligence with reasons like “You didn’t spell the editor’s name right” or “Your idea was no good” — she came up with five reasons for rejection that many writers don’t already know about. Not only that, but the 40 writers on the line asked some wonderful questions during the Q&A portion of the talk.

My favorite part was when a writer asked about why her idea was rejected by American Girl — and a former American Girl editor, who just happened to be on the line, jumped in to answer her question.

Missed the teleclass? Don’t worry — we recorded it and you can download the recording here. (The link to the sound file wasn’t working on the teleconference site, so I uploaded the file to a service called SendSpace.)

Be sure you don’t miss future classes by signing up for the e-mail list, which is where I announce new teleclasses. As a bonus, when you sign up you’ll receive a free packet of 10 query letters that worked.

I hope you enjoy the teleclass! [lf]

Just a quick reminder that the free teleclass Five Reasons Why Editors Won’t Buy Your Great Ideas, taught by Diana Burrell, is tonight at 8:30 – 9:30 pm ET. For more details and to learn how to sign up, please visit the teleclass page. We hope to see you there!

I offer to answer freelance writers’ burning questions on the blog. (By the way, if you have a question you’d like me to answer, you can send it to [email protected].) Have a lot of questions? I’m offering a 10% discount off my phone mentoring services through August 20.

Here’s Mark’s question: Here’s what happened. I called an editor at an adventure magazine to follow up on a query I had sent a month ago. He read it and said that my idea took something that has been here forever and made a story out of it. “If you want to break into this magazine,” he said, “you would need to do the opposite. You would need to know someone noteworthy or know of something that has never been done before. You would need access to the person or thing… and you would need to know it three months in advance.” Really? Nothing about good writing? An original perspective or angle? Where am I — little old me — going to find the person, event, or happening that the guy is talking about? What’s an outdoors writer to do?

I have to agree with the editor: Good writing is expected. It’s a given. And without a good idea with a unique angle, sharp writing is nothing.

That said, here are a few ways you can get the scoop on news before it’s news:

Go local. Read your local newspaper with an eye to turning small ideas into national ones. Get involved in your local community. That’s how my husband Eric found out about a New England pétanque league, and he ended up selling an article about it to Yankee magazine.

Ask your friends. I’m guessing you have a lot of friends who are into the same things you’re into. Send them a mass e-mail asking if they know of anything new or exciting going on in adventuring, and ask them to pass your question on to others they know who have the same interest.

Get on press lists. Find out which companies and organizations serve adventurers and ask the press contact to be put on their press lists. You’ll probably get mostly announcements of new products — not so exciting — but you never know what you’ll turn up.

Go to Amazon. People who author books often make great sources, and there’s a way to find out about books even before they’re released: Go to Amazon, enter the search term “adventuring” (or whatever), and sort the results by date using the drop-down menu in the upper right. The top listings will usually be books that are yet to be released — some as far as a year in the future! Now you have a news scoop.

Cast a wide net. Want to reach out to a wider audience than your friends and family members? Send out a source request to Help a Reporter Out. Let them know you’re pitching adventuring magazines and are looking for up-and-coming trends and people. Be as specific as you can, because I have to say that many HARO subscribers don’t read the requests very carefully. And be prepared to sift through lots of dreck, which is natural because you’re casting a very wide net. But you may find gold!

If anyone else has ideas on how to find news before it’s news, please do comment! [lf]