How to Develop Magazine Pitch Ideas That Will Fly

Give editors what they actually want

Pitching article ideas to magazines and online outlets can feel an awful lot like screaming into an abyss.

I know that it felt (and often continues to feel) like that for me. But for years I went about it the same way and got frustrated and disheartened frequently. Often, before I even got to the emailing editors stage.

But I learnt a few things along the way and I’ve picked out one mistake I made over and over again. A mistake that cost me so much time and effort and almost exclusively resulted in either silence or a ‘no’.

This is what I used to do.

I’d think up a great idea for a magazine article, I’d flesh it out and think of all the great points I could make. God, sometimes I’d even write it.

Then I’d go online and find a place to pitch it to.

ERMMM.

Nope.

If this is how you’re creating ideas for articles to pitch to magazines, stop it now. You are wasting so much time it’d be more productive to watch back-to-back episodes of Love Island.

If this method ever works, it’s a fluke. And here’s why.

Generating themes and topics to write about before finding an outlet is fine. Discovering a news story that interests you and gives you ideas for potential articles around the subject is great.

But actually creating a full article or even a pitch before you choose a publication? Nope, not going to work.

Without knowing who you’re pitching the idea to, you can’t actually formulate a solid article. You have no idea who your audience is, what tone to write in and what angle would suit them. You cannot write a word before you know your audience.

Let’s take a travel example, because it’s really easy to see what I mean:

Perhaps you’d like to write an article about Berlin. But obviously you need to go more niche than just ‘Berlin’. So you decide on an overview of…

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