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How a 30 Second Email Can Get You Writing Work

Amber Petty
3 min readApr 5, 2021

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It’s the easiest email you’ll ever write.

Photo by Agê Barros on Unsplash

For freelance writers, pitching is super important. It’s how you get new clients, place new stories, and basically, get work.

But the pitch is just the first step. It’s a big step, but if you simply send one email and hope for the best, you’re missing out on a lot of potential work. Before I get into a 30-second email trick, here’s a quick summary of what pitching even is.

Super Short Description of Pitching

A lot of writing for publications (especially online publications) comes from freelancers. Editors don’t run over to the freelance tree and shake down a writer for the day, they rely on pitches.

What is a pitch? It’s an email with a short description of your specific story idea, a little info on you (the writer), and samples of your work (if you have them).

Everyone from Harvard PhDs to seasoned journalists to people with a BA in theater from Hunter College (that was my illustrious writing background before I started writing articles professionally) pitch editors. And editors take pitches from people with a range of experience!

So, if you don’t have a New York Times byline, you can still sell a pitch and get paid to write an article.

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Amber Petty
Amber Petty

Written by Amber Petty

Writer for the New York Times, Bustle, Greatist, MTV, IFC, Snooki’s blog. Want to hear about open writing jobs? Sign up for my free newsletter at AmberPetty.com

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