Marketing May?
Quietly kicking off a month-long attempt to recapture the joy of freelancing.
Oh, recent happenings in freelancing.
Just as I was about to kick off "Marketing May" I received the announcement that Sonia's Opportunities of the Week newsletter is transitioning to being part of Study Hall, which itself recently revamped.
I'm sure it'll still be great, Study Hall is awesome, and I wish Sonia all the best! But it still definitely speaks to the crazy media ecosystem we are now all swimming in.
And, for me, it feels like the end of an era.
Some of my best writing has been for publications like CQ Researcher that I found via Sonia’s newsletter. She has tirelessly and consistently served the freelance community like no other. But I understand why Sonia feels like it’s time to move on.
On Twitter, she wrote:
“In 2018, the freelance journalism landscape showed promise and there was a hole in the market for financially accessible career resources for freelancers regardless of their experience level. But things have changed. There are significantly fewer publications, and with that, gigs to share…. I often question whether sharing opportunities to work for companies (and an industry at large) that show such little regard for their employees is further promoting a system that relies on the exploitation of our desperation to do something noble.”
Though this newsletter obvs has a much shorter reach, I’ve also felt conflicted about teaching people to pitch when a lot of publications either don’t value freelancers and/or can’t/won’t afford to pay them what they’re worth.
But I still got to make a living, and the only monetizeable thing I can really do is write.
In the same thread, Sonia wrote, “I vaguely remember a time when there was joy in this industry.”
I remember the thrill of pitching editors when I first started out more than a decade ago. I was once utterly ecstatic about a “no” from a Marie Claire editor — a one-sentence email sent from her phone — because it meant that my pitch was good enough to even be worthy of a response.
Years later, I’d still get a happy jolt in the shower when a great pitch coalesced in my brain while co-washing my hair. (If you know, you know.)
With Marketing May, I’m going to attempt to recapture that joy of connecting with potential editors and clients, while also being realistic about what opportunities are actually available for journalists. (My aspirations to become an editor are indefinite hold.)
I’ve rebranded as a social impact writer and hope to put both my nonprofit background and journalistic storytelling skills to work in new and exciting ways.
After having to take a year for health reasons, I really need to earn. But it is abundantly clear that I can’t do that the same way that I did even just a few years ago.
Not only is my well of pitchable ideas on the dry side, I’m unwilling to part with the ideas I do have for the low rates that publications are offering.
In one sense this speaks to my two-income-household privilege; in another, it’s me safeguarding my mental health from the inevitable burnout of trying to a decent living writing forty-five million $200-articles.
That means this newsletter will have to change, too. I’m planning to document some of my marketing efforts this month… but, meh, we’ll see.
If I do, there will likely be more about sending LOIs than about pitching glossy magazines, and more about content marketing than feature writing. Hopefully, I’ll have some useful insights. If not, well, I guess that’ll be that.