Pitching best practices for freelancers

existed thus far, and why I would be able to pull it off. The most important pitch isn’t a polished one, it’s a casual one. Remember, you’re ideally not going through a deck. You’re setting up casual meet-and-greets with investors. At some point in the conversation, they’ll ask you what you do (that’s their job!). Here, you have to absolutely knock

Learn to be brief—in both your written and phone pitches. Brevity is cherished in the media.

Every client presentation, every personal essay, every cover letter, every fund-raising request—they’re all pitches. They’re stories with the endings chopped off. A good pitch is set up in three acts: The first act is the past, the second act is the present, and the third act is the future. The first act is where you’ve been—what you want, how you

Nothing infuriates reporters and editors more, I’m told, than to get a pitch from someone who clearly has no idea what their publication is about or who their audience is.

One article creates visibility, which in turn will put you in front of other journalists, creating the possibility of more articles and visibility. A journalist’s deadlines make magazine and newspaper work the art of the possible, not the perfect.