How to Get Yourself and Your Work Featured in the News

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Step 1

**Pick a Strategy**

After you figure out a good story angle, there are two ways to go about getting it into the news. The way that worked for me this time around was to find the individual reporter with an interest in covering 'local entrepreneur' stories or 'cool new internet' stories, and contact them directly. The other strategy is to blast out a press release to thousands of possible reporters, hoping one of them will nibble. Both strategies have worked for getting some terrific attention and publicity, it's just a matter of choosing which one you want to run with. Read on for the details of how they work.
Step 2

**What's Your Headline**

In just a few brief words, write down the headline to your particular story. Something that grabs attention, and gets at the essence of what it is that's interesting about you, and what you're doing. It could be something like"

--Mom Finds Way to Turn eMail Into Cash

--Beyond eBay: Stay at Home Dad Discovers New Online Earning Opportunities

--Cashing in on eBooks: Writer Earning Big With a "How to Earn Big" Book

--Shut-In, But Not Shut-Out: Unable to Work Outside the House, Invalid Earns a Living Online

Note that you don't have to have an incredibly unique story. It's fine to represent a new breed of internet earners, as a way to personalize a growing trend. Writing the headline will help you crystallize what your particular angle on story looks like.
Step 3

**Try the Direct Contact Method**

Find a reporter who would have an interest in your story. The easiest way to do this is simply to open your local newspaper, listen to the radio, or watch the local news. Most news outlets cover stories of local businesses and entrepreneurs, and also have reporters who cover new trends in technology. Both of these are good possibilities as contacts for your particular story.

The news outlet's website usually has contact information. Try to find an email or phone for your specific reporter, but if that's not available, a general contact will do... just make sure you specify which reporter you would like to receive your information. Don't send them your headline (that was just a learning exercise). But do send them a SHORT introduction to your activities, and why you think it would make a good story. Here's the original note I wrote to the Washington Post, as an example:

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I wanted to let you know about some unusual work that I do that might be of interest to you.

I write.

More specifically, I write on the internet, and earn about $25,000 a year at it; my income is growing at a slow and steady pace.

What makes it particularly interesting, I think, is that it's the sort of writing almost anyone can do, and with patience, can earn a respectable supplemental income.

About half my income comes from eHow.com, a How-to site with thousands of user-contributed articles. eHow gets income from online advertising, which it shares with its writers. The more popular an article is, the more money it makes. (There are lots of sites offering make-money-at-home scams...eHow is not one of them....it's totally legit).

Pretty much anyone can write and earn at eHow.

I'm posting a few links below in case you want to see some examples of the work I've done. In these tough economic times, a reliable source of supplemental income is a good asset to have. I think you'd be doing your readers a service to let them know about earning money by writing on the internet.

Thanks.

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It's pretty straightforward!
Step 4

**Try a Press Release**

You can also send out an internet-based press release, and hit the inboxes of thousands of reporters at once. You only need one contact to respond to lead to a story, and like I've said, I've done this in the past, and it's worked out well for me.

A press release is more involved (hence, more work) than a simple email contact or a phone call. BUT... you do get to use the headline you thought up in the first Step! There are free press release services online (though they're not terribly professional looking in my opinion), and there are fee-based services that begin at about $75-100.

Check out mediasyndicate.com as the best of the free press release services, and prweb.com as a very good, reasonably priced fee-based service. Both sites have detailed guidelines and instructions for creating a good quality press release.
Step 5

See Resources, directly below. for links to more information about my Washington Post profile. Also be sure to check the 'Related Articles' and 'More Articles Like This' features elsewhere on this page, for more suggestions on getting some press coverage.