Cutting Expenses
Yet another good way to increase your income is by cutting your expenses. It's a simple principle, really: If you spend less of the money you earn, then you keep more of it in your bank account over the long term. A lot of magazine writers look to cut expenses primarily in the areas of postage and copying. The amount of postage and photocopying required to send out query letters, resumes, and clips of previously published articles can add up quickly, sometimes to several thousand dollars a year.
Use the Web
One way to eliminate these expenses altogether is by posting your resume and clips online, at a Web site that serves as the online portal to your magazine-writing business. Instead of having to send paper copies of your work through snail mail, you can simply direct editors to your Web site and ask them to review your resume and clips online.
More and more writers are building Web sites not only to cut down on expenses, but also to enhance their image of professionalism. Think about it: If one writer has gone to the trouble to build a Web site while another has not, the first writer is likely to look more established in the eyes of editors — and thus land more work.
Writers' Web sites don't have to be the fanciest thing online. In fact, most writers' Web sites are built in basic formats that allow editors to quickly scan pages and learn the writer's style, other clients, and recent awards. These kinds of sites usually can be built by a professional designer for a onetime fee in the range of $1,000 to $2,000, which, when compared to spending $2,000 or $3,000 annually for postage and photocopying, is not a bad investment.
Do It Yourself
If you have some publishing experience or a bit of the creative designer inside you, then you can often build a perfectly professional-looking Web site on your own. You can buy software programs such as Microsoft Publisher at any office supply store and use the templates that come pre-loaded in the program to build a Web site on your own. Many writers — especially those who have worked at magazines in the past and know the basics of layout and design programs such as Quark — can use these do-it-yourself programs to build nice Web sites over the course of a week. When you think about all the money you'll save for that small investment of time, it's easy to see how building a Web site is a good way to increase your overall income.
