Today there are several hundred thousand publications that buy articles. Many are looking for material. To break in or increase your article sales all you have to do is to write in a fairly logical manner on a subject they are looking for in a way to please their readers. Its a matter of mastering the technique.

This website will take you through the steps. Remember these steps are far different than just learning to write and you must master them all if you intend to join the ranks of the professional writer.

Start Laying the Groundwork

The first step in selling consistently is to know who will buy what and to have plenty of backup material so you can create good meaty articles. Because of this no matter whether you are a beginner or expert start laying the groundwork now.

First take a look at your files. Are you regularly accumulating material along the lines you are interested in? If not get started you are going to need it later.

One well-known writer doing a piece on recreational vehicles had all he needed about RVs and their use but he needed some additional material showing the sales volume and the annual use. Since He constantly wrote about RVs he had clipping files of RV articles. He also had web research sources. This will be covered in detail later but for starters heres a website to use. www.articlefind.com. It provides articles from many magazines on almost any subject--free.

Second You need to lay the groundwork to understand which magazines take what. That means you need to have the magazines and other publications to look at. There are several hundred thousand and thats the problem.

Take out a copy of Writers Market or get their CD look up the magazines you are interested in and write to five magazines requesting a sample copy. Heres how. 

Continue this throughout your writing career until youve built a substantial writing library to work with.  Since you must know which magazines take what and how they want it presented youre going to need to look over all possible markets.

Study the Magazines

At this point look over the articles and ask. Do I know anything or have I been doing anything in my field they might be interested in? Spend some time every day looking over the magazines coming in with an idea of what they take. There are more elaborate ways to study magazines but this will do right now.

Start Picking Up Basic Techniques

A sold article isnt just a good piece of writing it consists of two parts the writing itself and the magazines requirements. This means that a solid piece of writing my be turned down because it isnt handled in the manner the magazine wants it to be.

Here are the steps to follow.

1. Come up with an idea
2. Look up all possible markets
3. Query the editor
4. Wait for a reply
5. Try to determine which approach works best for the reader of a particular magazine- and how that magazine puts together similar pieces. Does the editor require lots of statistics quotes from authorities and examples? Does the magazine require their articles written in first second or third person?
6. Organize the article
7. Write it
8. Revise it
9. Check to make sure it reads like the others in the magazine and satisfies their readers needs.

There are a number of facets to each of the above points. I will cover these later in this website. However I would like to suggest that you also buy or borrow a basic book on article writing. I will offer several good ones on this website.

Start With Any Market--Then Keep Pushing