Guest Posting: Pitch Like It’s the Glossiest Glossy Mag Out There

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Earlier today, my first guest post ever went live at Darren Rowse’s Twitip, on taking Twitter-based networking from online to in-the-flesh. (Welcome tweeple!)

I’ve already mentioned in the past why guest posting is a good idea, so we won’t go into that again. What I would like to touch upon is how guest posting at someone else’s blog should be treated as seriously as if you were writing an article for New York (or, um, Marie Claire). More specifically, I’d like to focus on how to approach pitching a blog editor.

You already know that I worry about the deterioration of professional decorum due to Web 2.0 practices. I find that bad business practices run especially rampant when it comes to online correspondence.

Show that blog editor your pitching the same respect you would any major magazine or newspaper editor. After the jump, how to go about pitching your guest post:

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Flip That Pitch

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While I’m always going on and on about this one class I took at New School, there’s another one I took before that — From Pitch to Publish, taught by Cris Beam — at which I learned a very important lesson: You must keep the momentum going.

So as I started receiving my very first rejection letters, I didn’t sulk. Instead, I became a master at not taking it personally, and quickly flipped the pitch.

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Product Placement: Magazine Filing

[$21.95, Crate & Barrel]

On December 31, I posted a New Year’s resolution over at Modern Materialist, wherein I vowed to start pitching again. At the moment, my goal is to have 10 pitches out at any given moment (setting a specific goal is so helpful; Rachel Rose over at Notes on a Whim is doing the same thing).

I’m already up to five, so I’m feeling good about things. But I have to admit, my collection of magazine back issues has dwindled considerably, mostly because my filing system for them was crap, so I had to recycle, recycle, recycle.

I’d like to set up a new system for keeping the back issues I so often refer to when pitching. After the jump, some pretty-as-heck magazine files:

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