Our approach to pitching in this course will be three-pronged:

1. Attitude
2. Numbers
3. Strategy

Let's talk about how we'll achieve that.

On Day 2, we make The List. That is, the list of markets that you'll be pitching over the next month. I'll show you how to pick the right markets for your skill and interests and, most crucially, where to find them. In particular, we'll talk about the coveted $1-a-word markets and what you want to do if it's your goal to break into a few of those this month.

Complicated is an enemy of productivity. Which is why we’re going to keep it simple and try to avoid overwhelm wherever we can.

That starts with having a method for organizing your ideas, markets, and query letters. 

I call it The Production Line Approach to Querying.

Writers, as a side effect of being creative folk, are masters at the art of the excuse. We create all kinds of psychological barriers for ourselves when it comes time to pitch a story or an idea.

On Day 4, we'll learn a simple way of getting rid of them once and for all. 

I’m talking about editors, of course. And on Day 5, we'll talk about who they are, what they pay, what they like, and of course, the question on everyone’s minds—how the heck are we supposed to find them?

The pitching process changes tremendously from when you’re a beginner or new to a publication to when you’re familiar to an editor. Let's talk about the intricacies of pitching and, specifically, how to stand out with good ideas.

When you find an issue, a trend, a person, or a business that you want to write about, you make many decisions automatically and without much thought. Key among those is how you’ll package a story. On Day 7, we'll talk about the first 10 ways to do just that. 

When I was a new writer, every idea felt precious, as if I had to save it for some big publication and not waste it on a magazine that only paid $100. But I found that the ideas I thought were gems sometimes weren’t. And more importantly, every time I sent out a pitch, I learned something. I got better with practice. If I had waited until I got perfect, I’d still be waiting.

Even better? Once you've learned to package story ideas, you'll know how to use an idea now and later. On Day 8 we'll talk about 10 more ways.

We’ve been talking about ways to package your story ideas and until now, you’ve been taking an idea and finding the single best way to package it. That’s fine and I want you to continue doing that, but you’ll notice as you make your way down the list that there are certain ideas that could make good stories in many different types of packaging.

This is where it starts to get really interesting and really easy because you could, in theory, come up with one single story idea and then package it 15 different ways for 15 different markets. I say in theory because that’s overkill and no one does that, but I will routinely take a story and package it two or three different ways to create several stories out of it.

Let's talk about the last 10 ways.

When I say pitch a big idea, I don't mean stories that are going to take you months or years to report. I mean find stories that are interesting to their audience, but underreported. 

How do you find these ideas? That's what we talk about on Day 10.

On Day 10, we talked about finding ideas for newsier and people-focused stories. On Day 11, we’ll talk about techniques that work best for how-to or service articles.

The big difference between writers who create systems for idea generation and those who begin anew each time is how much time they spend on queries. Because idea generation is an aspect that I’ve pretty much put on autopilot in my business, I can send between 5 and 10 queries on a day when I have nothing else going on and keep up a steady stream of incoming work.

How? That's what we'll talk about on Day 12. 

The hardest part of pitching for most writers is the slicing and dicing required to make a generic story specific, interesting, and meaningful. When there’s news or a straightforward trend, the query all but writes itself, but what if you’re writing about something more general like productivity, health, or parenting? How do you make it interesting? That’s a challenge and a test of your creativity.

On Day 13, we'll work through some ways to take a generic story, give it a twist, and turn it into something more.

Day 14 is a favorite among my students. Because on Day 14, I talk about the parts of a query letter. Even better, I show you a little known technique that even widely published freelancers don't use, and that's to move around the parts of the pitch to highlight your strengths and minimize your weaknesses. This is key for two kinds of writers: those who are new and those who have already had exceptional success in another area. 

Want to take your pitch from average to stellar? From take-it-or-leave-it to must-buy-right-now? Then, you'll need to learn the six things we'll talk about on Day 15. 

A day when we hear from the community! On Day 16, I answer some commonly asked questions around pitching internationally, travel expenses, lining up sources, what "on-spec means and the limited conditions under which you should work on-spec, and story angles.

Another community day! As a new student, not only can you post your own questions below these lessons, but you're welcome to post on our Slack group, so I can personally help you through any questions or roadblocks. 

In the Day 17 Q&A, I talk about sending multiple pitches in one email, pitching before or after travel, simultaneous submissions, pitching the same story to publications in different countries, and when sending LOIs instead of pitches is a better idea. 

In the last part of our student Q&A, I answer questions about asking the publication for travel expenses, the amount of work you need to put into your pitches, when to send a "one-sentence" idea, how to break into the "big" newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, and what to do when editors sit on timely stories for too long. 

It’s Day 19 of our month-long climb, a time when the energy and inertia of the first two weeks have worn off and questions such as “Why am I doing this?” start to surface.

This is stupid, you begin to think. I have better things to do. Perhaps I’ll tackle this another time. Or maybe you still do want to tackle this, but everyone’s charging ahead with 15, 16, 17 queries, and you’ve only sent two. Maybe you’re stuck or feeling a lack of confidence. Quitting seems easier than querying. 

On Day 19, I'm going to show you how to move through these feelings. 

Sometimes—and this is usually after you’ve sent out the first dozen or so pitches and received a couple of acceptances—you won’t need to send out query after query to solicit assignments. You’ll still be proposing ideas and asking for work, of course, but the query letter itself changes with time and your level of experience. It graduates from being a formal well thought-out proposal to an informal what-do-you-think discussion. 

These are the types of queries we’ll discuss on Day 20.

We’ve all been there. You email an editor with a story that you think will be a quick and easy sell and hear… nothing. Crickets. The sound of your own voice singing in a whiny tune, told you so. I’m betting if I asked you today, 99 per cent of you would tell me that you’d rather hear back from editors, even if it’s a rejection, than get no response at all.

On Day 21, we'll talk about some ways to make editors respond quickly in an attempt to aid your marketing and your mental health.

Pitch don’t lead to assignments, they lead to relationships. Relationships lead to work.

When you change the way you think about queries, you enable yourself to consider them a long-term marketing tool instead of a short-term way to get a single assignment.

On Day 22, I'm going to teach you how to build relationships with editors you want to work with but don't (yet) know.

If an editor has limited time and is paying good money to hire someone, what kind of freelancer do you think she'll want to hire?

On Day 23, we talk about how you can become that freelancer.

Pitching is not creative writing. This is important to understand because we’re told—and this is true, of course—that the query letter is a showcase of our writing ability, of how capable we are of telling a story. And in trying so hard to write well, we forget that in essence, a query letter is as much about showing off your writing prowess as it is about making a sale.

Your pitches are sales tools. 

Are you applying all the methods, tools, and tricks of psychology of marketing in your pitches to get the best results?

On Day 24, I'll show you simple tricks that will help you get more assignments more easily.

How do you use social media strategically, in a way that gives you all the benefit without any of the time-wasting loss? That’s our focus for Day 25. 

Today's the day to read through several (50+) pitches that sold and learn from what they did in order to land the sale.

No one likes a rejection, but 30-dayers have learned, by now, to see a rejection as the start of a conversation. On Day 27, we'll talk about why your pitch might have been rejected, what to do when you've been rejected, and how to turn a no into a yes. 

As we near the end of the program, on Day 28, I put my pep talk skills to use and remind you that these 30 days are just the start of a long and prosperous career, and how to create dividends from all the hard work you've done this month. 

Marketing is a habit, and on Day 29, I'll show you how to turn pitching into a habit. (And what I teach works--many of our students have learned to love pitching by the end of this program, many telling me they now prefer pitching to writing the finished piece!) 

On this last day of the 30 Days, 30 Queries course, I give you a roadmap. A step-by-step program that you can use in the coming days and weeks and refer to frequently as you move forward in your career. 

Anyone who writes (or wants to write) for newspapers, magazines, websites, or publications of any kind.

Absolutely! While I created the course for writers who want to make a career out of freelance writing and journalism, we’ve had tons of authors take this course and use it to pitch publications. Hey, a New York Times byline is a New York Times byline, no matter the reason you chose to go after it.

You’re not expected to. In fact, *whispers* can I tell you a secret? We’ve had dozens of writers get so overwhelmed with the number of assignments that came their way just in the first two weeks that they had to give up querying in order to meet their deadlines!

But that aside, this is an entirely self-paced course. My goal is to get you everything you need so you can speed up the process and get set up and start earning within 30 days. But if you’d like to take it slower, that’s totally cool. I want you to set your own targets based on your commitments, desires, and life.

But, if like me, you don’t want to wait around for months to start making an income and an impact, then roll up your sleeves, and let’s do this.

That’s what I’m here for. While it would be great to have a general idea of what you’d like to write about and what kind of topics you’d most be interested in, don’t worry if you don’t have specific story ideas. I teach you how to find them, research them, and package them.

You’re on your own! (No, just kidding! Wanted to make sure you’re paying attention.) ;)

First of all, congratulations! Tell me all about it so I can do a happy dance with you.

Second, I’m always available to help anyone who has any questions, and I will never turn down a request for advice.

That said, this course will not be focusing on what happens after you get the assignment. My goal in this course is to get you the assignments (as many juicy ones as is humanly possible). While I have other programs that can help with that side of things, 30 Days, 30 Queries focuses (brilliantly, I might add), on one thing only: Pitching that gets results.

You can—and many established pro journalists who’ve come through this course have said they learned things here that they’d never heard anywhere before.

Here’s how I would make this decision:

Does it speak to you?

Are you happy with where you are in terms of pitching? Are you getting the responses you want? Are you working with the kind of publications you know you should be writing for? Are you close to breaking into your dream publications? Are you enjoying the kind of writing you’re doing, on the subject areas you’re writing about?

If the answer to all those questions is yes, high five! You’re doing great, and while more learning and growth is always good, you don’t need this course. Do it for fun or to reinforce what you already know, or to find some new tricks and strategies.

Now, if you answered no to any of those questions, then I’d recommend that you take it.

Because if you’re not doing the work that you want to be doing, and you think I could help you get there, then why the heck wouldn’t you?

No problem. Just email me at [email protected] and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.