How to Make Your First $10,000 Writing For Large Publications

If you’re a part of any writer community, you’ve no doubt seen a lot of questions about how writers can make money. The answers tend to be the same methods:

Publish books.

Do freelance content writing.

Offer client services.

Get a writing job.

The good news is that the digital information age has created options for writers that want to make writing their full-time living. Writers are not limited to the “traditional” ways to make money.

Client work and freelancing are not the best options for every writer. I quit client work altogether last year because I was tired of being undervalued, lowballed, and giving away too much of my time on projects that didn’t fulfill me.

If you’re a writer that’s not in the position to publish books (yet), don’t want to work with clients, don’t want a job, or want to make more money as a writer, you should consider writing articles for large publications.

Many major publications such as Forbes, Inc. Magazine, Men’s and Women’s Health, Travel & Leisure, Parents, AARP, O Magazine, and hundreds of others pay writers for articles.

These large publications pay either a dollar-a-word, $500 to $1,500 per article, or for page views. There’s real money to be made writing for large publications.

I’ve had the privilege of my articles being published in the HuffPost, Entrepreneur Magazine, SUCCESS Magazine, AskMen, Mind Body Green, Fox News, The Good Men Project, Yahoo, NBC News, Time Magazine, Business Insider, Addicted 2 Success, CBS News, and over 60 other publications in my writing journey.

I’ve had one of my articles published in the print edition of Entrepreneur Magazine that was on newsstands worldwide. I’m also a senior editor at the Good Men Project.

I’ve made good money writing for large publications, pitched a ton of large publications, and have been pitched by hundreds of writers — I’m writing about this topic from personal experience.

Here’s how writers can make their first $10,000 writing for large publications. Use these steps and tips to make money in a way that pays you to write about the things you’re passionate about.

Have Your Foundational Elements in Order

I don’t want to give the impression that being accepted to write for large publications is an easy option for any writer that wants to monetize their writing. Large publication editors are looking for experts on topics.

The first thing an editor does is look through the website, published articles, and overall professionalism of the writer pitching them. Large publications take on an inherent risk when they publish writers; for that reason, they want to make sure there are no red flags.

An editor wants to see:

A website with at least a home, about, and blog page.

At least five published blog posts on your website.

Messaging on your website that shows what you write about — your topic(s), and why someone would be interested in learning about your topic.

Articles published on other websites besides your own. You can publish articles here on Medium, your LinkedIn profile (which now allows you to publish articles), and smaller publication such as The Good Men Project, She Owns It, Addicted2Success, and more.

Don’t be discouraged if you don’t have a website or have neglected your website. Website builders such as Squarespace make building a simple but professional website easier.

An editor is not looking for a masterpiece of a website — they just want to see clear messaging and a professional enough look.

Your social proof as a writer is your published articles, and as you can see, there are many places to get published quickly. These are the foundational elements that separate those who get accepted from those that get ignored.

Put Together a List of Large Publications That Make Sense for What You Write About

Not all large publications make sense for all writers. You need clarity on how you want to make money, which publications fit your topic, and the way you want to get paid.

For example, Forbes pays its contributors:

Five cents for every one-time visitor to any of your Forbes posts.

One cent for every repeat visitor (i.e., a one-time visitor who has visited more than one of your posts during the same month).

And the payment is for post(s) no greater than ninety (90) days old.

Forbes gets 132 million monthly unique visits according to their media kit. It’s not hard to rack up the page views with that massive of an audience.

Traffic information in Forbes’ media kit

According to their media kit, Inc. Magazine pays its contributors $8.50 for every one thousand page views and has 32.9 million monthly visitors. Men’s and Women’s Heath pays $1,000 per article (for example).

Spend some time researching publications that pay, and decide the pay model you’d like to pursue. The makeup of publications you choose determines whether or not you get to $10,000 one time or $10,000 a month.

For the large publications that pay monthly, you’ll have to contribute a certain number of articles each month — Forbes and Inc. Magazine require at least five submissions a month to get paid. These monthly pay publications give you access to a CMS contributor account to submit articles. In fact, Forbes lets its contributors instant-publish articles.

Forbes CMS platform

For large publications that pay per article, you’re generally going to have to pitch an editor each time. That may not feel good to you, and that is why it’s important to decide the best path.

Personally, I like the idea of one “core” or anchor large publication that pays monthly — either Forbes, Inc. Magazine, AskMen, Career Addict, etc — and then adding some one-off places to bolster your income to the $10,000 or more a month level.

There is a lot of information you can find through Google from freelancers that have been paid by large publications. There are lists of places that pay, what they pay, and the experience of writing there.

Large publications also have pages that tell writers how the publication wants to be pitched. Here are a few examples: BuzzFeed, HuffPost.

Create and Send a Pitch to the Section Editor Your Topic(s) Would Fit Within

You’ll need to understand the style format of articles being published and who to pitch if you want to use large publications to make some real money. A little research into each publication you want to be published and paid on goes a long way.

A lot of the reason writers get rejected when pitching large publication editors is that they’re pitching articles and ideas that are not aligned with what the publication looks for in pitches.

After you’ve studied your target publications, put together a pitch. You’re going to send this pitch to the section editor, which your topic would fit into, and the pitch happens through email.

You would Google “Forbes finance editor” if you want to write about financial topics (for example). It would work the same way with whatever topics you write about in each publication.

If a section editor does not come up for your topic, pitch the “digital” editor — this type of editor handles the articles being published on the online version of a publication.