How to Find Freelance Writing Success Pitching to Magazine Families

Freelance writers spend so much uncompensated time reading and researching before they even begin putting fingers to keyboard. You’ve worn the pages of your Writer’s Market thin scouring for where to submit. 

(4 Key Places to Find Those First Freelance Clients.)

While there are a zillion markets out there, there isn’t one place to find them all, so it’s a matter of hunting and test-driving search guesses and reading a dozen different online newsletters (like FundsforWriters) to find them. Some markets don’t even post guidelines . . . anywhere.

The searches are time consuming. Not only do you pursue publications, but then you have to click around for their guidelines, and if the guidelines are not clear (or not even available), then comes the detailed study of past published articles for word count, voice, point of view, what is considered evergreen and what is extremely niche.

Freelance writing involves an insane amount of research just to figure out who you can pitch. If only you could break into a publication, you could strive to stick with them and write regularly for them, the dream of most freelancers, but what if that was only part of the trick? What if once you land that article you open up a way bigger door?

What Are Magazine Families?

Writers can find one magazine and turn it into two, or six, or even a dozen. Most magazines belong to families, or to say it another way, they belong to a media group that publishes multiple magazines.

For example, you can write for a landscaping magazine and quickly learn they are published by an umbrella company that produces five other magazines. Chances are, they are in some way a cousin in style, voice, and word count to the original landscaping magazine that published your one article. The topics may be turf management, gardening, or small farming. Or the themes may be construction, home improvement, or home décor.

If you stop and think, they usually reach markets that overlap in readership. Break in with one, and you have your foot in the door with better odds of being accepted by the others.

Writing for a media group means more than writing an article for one magazine. These editors know each other. Seeing the one credit with one of their sister publications makes them consider you twice. You are more of a known commodity, and there’s nothing an editor likes more than to do business with someone who has already been vetted to a certain degree. Some writers become regular contributors to these publishing families.

But you don’t stop there.

Moving Beyond Just Magazines

The door opens a little wider to write not only for these other magazines, but also their blogs, their newsletters, and their commercial publicity departments. Magazines are more than magazines these days. They practice in social media.

You have the advantage of pitching not only the print publications for these families but also their blogs, newsletters, and online communities. They maintain online libraries which gives your writing evergreen potential.

The Spruce, for instance, is a how-to publication for home and gardening. Per their website they are 20 years old with an online library of more than 14,000 pieces of content that “helps you spruce up your space, spruce up your yard, and spruce up your home.”

There’s potential for you to write about multiple areas of home life.

(The Basics of Jumping Into Freelance Writing.)

But they are more than one lone entity. They consist of a family of sites, including The Spruce Eats, The Spruce Pets, and The Spruce Crafts, covering home decor, home repair, recipes, cooking techniques, pets, and crafts. They utilize experts in these areas as regular contributors. One of these might be your niche, or maybe you are gifted in ferreting out said experts who aren’t keen into writing who might be willing to offer you an interview.

Great. Let’s say you broke into one and they published your work. Did you realize they are part of the DotDashMeredith family of publications consisting of over 40 iconic brands?

Not only do they produce The Spruce, but they publish Better Homes & Gardens, Verywell, Food & Wine, Allrecipes, Real Simple, Southern Living, Lifewire, and The Balance. These magazines, and their online blogs and communities, cover many of the topics used at The Spruce. You get almost giddy at the potential. Not only will you find guidelines at each magazine but also the parent company gives you direction about their preferred style and professional flavor of writer.

And all this came from researching just one magazine.

Media groups are everywhere. We just don’t pay attention to their logos and links at the bottom of each website.

They all aren’t as top shelf as DotDashMeredith, either, in case that intimidates you. Sure there are others just as big, like Conde Nast with its 23 magazines like ALLURE, GLAMOUR, Bon Appetit, GQ, epicurious, and House & Garden, and Hearst that represents Elle, Cosmopolitan, and Country Living.

Still More Magazine Families

But there are others that are more regional, more trade related, or more mid-level in terms of readership and advertising. To the entry to mid-level freelancer, these others might appear more approachable.

Palm Beach Media has over a dozen regional publications about south Florida from lifestyle to decorating as does Lifestyle Media Group, another Florida family. On the other side of the country you’ll find California Media Group.

Are those markets still too daunting for you?

AKC Magazine represents two publications, Family Dog and AKC Gazette. Redstone Media Group handles only animal magazines like Canadian Dogs, Animal Wellness, and Equine Wellness.

PMMI Media Group heads up titles like Packaging World, Automation World, Healthcare Packaging, and ProFood World about the latest solutions, trends, and innovations in packaging and processing. Recycling Today Media group produces five magazines on recycling.

Media groups exist in almost any niche, hobby, sport, or professional vocation.

Maybe you already have a niche or simply want to enter a niche. Then you learn who publishes the niche. You could wind up with a handful of media groups publishing several dozen publications at your fingertips. You not only see magazines in the area you wish to specialize in, but you also find out how they are published, and what others are published alongside them.

Look at your favorite magazines and study their origin. You’ll find yourself going down a rabbit hole, only you gather so much along the way you never want to stop. Your world opens up to freelance opportunity you never fathomed.