How to Make $10,000 a Month Writing Articles For Large Publications with Kimanzi Constable

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Billion Dollar Moves. Today, we'll be breaking down how to make$10 ,000 a month writing articles for large publications. To drop these value bombs, I brought Kim Anzi, Constable, and the EO Fire Studios. Kim Anzi is the author of four books and a writer whose articles have been published in Forbes, Business Insider, Success, NBC, CBS, Fox, and 80 other large publications. In today, we'll talk about why publishing articles in large publications should be a part of your content plan, which publications actually pay for articles, how to make$4 ,000 to$10 ,000 a month without needing to write 30 plus articles per month, and so much more.

0:45And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Kimanzi and our sponsors. Hustle and Flowchart, hosted by Joe Feer, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Join Joe as he discusses systems, mindset tweaks, reframes, and strategies to help you build a business that gives you freedom and fuel for your life. A recent episode on using AI for effortless content creation is a must listen. Listen to Hustle and Flowchart wherever you get your podcasts. Many EO Fire listeners have launched non-food franchises and Franbridge Consulting has guided them.

1:17Franbridge's founder and frequent EO Fire guest, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country and his service is free. Sign up for a consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising at FranbridgeConsulting.com. Come on, Z, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hey, what's up again, Fire Nation? It's been eight years. Crazy. This is the last time I talked to you. I'm excited to be here. And for me, one thing that I believe is around balance. We see a lot of things about work-life balance and things have to be balanced.

1:58But I believe that to be successful, sometimes things have to be unbalanced, like there are seasons in life. And some seasons are busier than others. And when you're building an empire, some of those seasons might not have the right balance. It might be you grinding and working and putting in 10, 12-hour days, but something that you can be unbalanced for for a season can set you up for the rest of your life. I love that, Fire Nation. That really just sets up our conversation today about how to make $10 ,000 a month writing articles for large publications. So you believe that publishing articles in large publications should actually be a part of every entrepreneur's content plan that actually does enjoy the writing process.

2:43So tell us more about that. I think it's critically important. It's the 20 % strategy that gets 80 % of the results, as Tim Ferriss always likes to say, because as an entrepreneur, you need credibility, and your credibility is only as good as it's understood by your consumers. When you get articles published in Forbes and Business Insider and Entrepreneur, there's no question about your credibility. These are the largest media outlets and publications in the world. You are also getting exposure to their audience, which is in anywhere in the range of 100 to 200 million readers every single month.

3:20And these tend to be people that are not educated on our ways. As entrepreneurs, we know a lot of things. We know how to do a lot of things. These are traditional business owners. These are people that have careers that are thinking about starting side hustles. So you're getting exposure to a brand new audience. You're showing up in search. These articles are indexed in Google search because of the domain authority of Forbes and Business Insider. So when somebody's interested about a topic, this could be a corporation looking for a trainer. This could be an individual entrepreneur looking for a service provider, but you're going to show up very high in search.

3:58And in fact, for a very long time, an article that I wrote for time was the number one article for top side hustles in search. And I can't tell you how much business came my way organically because of that. And then the practical benefit of they're going to pay you for the articles. So you get paid, you show up in search, you have brand credibility, and you are creating content, the thought leadership content for a brand new untapped audience. Fire Nation, I hope you're getting a little bit excited about this process. And we're gonna make it even easier for you because I wanna dive a little bit deeper into specific publications, ones that actually pay for articles.

4:39Let's talk about those directly. There's a lot of publications now. This is not like back in the day. I'll give you a very clear example. Everybody remembers back in the day, the Huffington Post had a contributor program. You could reach out to Arianna Huffington directly. Your friend had a link for you to sign up and you became a HuffPost contributor. Everybody remembers that until it went away. The HuffPost now is owned by BuzzFeed. And if you were a contributor at the HuffPost now, they would pay you anywhere from$800 to$1 ,500 per article. So you get paid for something that you probably already did years ago.

5:15But then there's large publications such as Forbes or Inc.com, where they'll pay you based off of the page views of your articles. So for every 1000 views your articles get on Inc., they're going to give you$8.50, kind of like a YouTube CRM, if you know what I'm talking about. So you're going to get paid for page views. Same thing at Forbes. They're going to pay you for first-time visitors and repeat visitors at Forbes. And with them paying you based off of page views, it's not hard at all to make your$8 ,000 to$12 ,000 a month just at Forbes or Inc. If you got into either one of those publications.

5:54And then you throw in the larger ones like Business Insider and Fast Company and Fortune and Oprah Daily, Men's Health, Women's Health. Any large media outlet that you can think of and name, those media outlets are going to pay you for articles. The only difference is if it's a column, like Forbes and Inc. are the ones that will give you columns where you can contribute as much as you want. or the difference between a contributor account, which would be everybody else, your business insiders, your fortune, they're going to pay you per article. And with the contributor accounts, that just means that you are going to pitch new articles, ideas each time, whereas Forbes and Inc.

6:35with the columns, they'll let you log in and publish. But even the per article pay ranges anywhere from$300 on the low end to$3 ,000 per article on the high end. And then John, what most people don't understand is it's not just written articles. You can submit audio and video articles as well. See, that's interesting to me. I never actually thought about audio articles. How have you seen that work specifically? Like who really is interested by that kind of content? Every single publication you can name, your business insider, your entrepreneur, your Forbes, they're all multimedia focused because they're trying to reach the new generation.

7:12so they will allow you to record a base level version of an audio or video about a topic like let's say we're talking about having a winning mindset and you recorded a 10 minute audio on a winning mindset they would then take it clean it up put their branding on it and they would publish it on their website and then they would pay you a thousand to three thousand dollars for that video same situation you do the base version they're going to clean it up they're going to put their branding on it they're going to publish it under your contributor account because they understand people don't just read, they also listen and they also watch videos.

7:47So they definitely pay for those articles as well. Now, most people stop before they make any progress because they think they need a website or other published articles in order to pitch these type of publications. Is this true? It is not true in today's day and age. So back in the day, you had to be a journalism major or have graduated from Columbia School of Journalism or something like that. It was very focused. Now, today, the situation that we're in, most of the content on a publication comes from outside contributors, so people like me and you. And the only thing that these editors are interested in is what are you going to give to our audience?

8:26What is the article, the audio, the video? What is it that they're going to be interested in reading? They're not interested in your website because that does nothing for the quality of the article. they're not interested in your writing samples because as my editors have told me, we don't know if you made that article great or the editor that you're working with made that article great. So for us, writing samples are a wash. We just don't know who made that article great. So the only thing we care about is what is the potential article you want to contribute for my publication and why do the readers want to read it?

9:04So when you're leading with the value for the publication's readers, and it's an interesting topic, that is going to get you into any publication. Even if you've never been published anywhere in your life, you don't have a website, you've never written anywhere in your life, I'm telling you, I've seen people do this the same day. They got an idea, they had an interesting story, interesting life experience, they went and pitched it to Business Insider, and within an hour, Business Insider said, yes, I'd like to publish that and pay you for it. Fire Nation, I really hope that you're taking down these barriers you may have put up about why you're not doing things along these lines, about why you're not even potentially testing these waters to see how it fits, to see how it feels.

9:46And we have a lot more detailed information to talk about around this when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Every entrepreneur knows that growing a business is hard. Trying to figure out which software to use, when, and for what purpose can be frustrating. you've got your email marketing system, your payment software, your CRM, your content tools, your email tools, your tools to retool your tools. It's chaos. Wouldn't it be nice if there is a single platform to handle all the tough work of growing a business? Great news, Fire Nation. There is HubSpot is the customer platform for marketing, sales, service, and most importantly, growth.

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12:34John has served as an Inc. 500 franchisor and is a multi-brand franchisee himself, and he does more placements than any other in the country. Sign up for a free consultation call with John today or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising at FranBridgeConsulting.com. That's FranBridgeConsulting.com. Come on, Z, we're back and I want to get detailed. I want to get specific. I want to talk dollars and cents and numbers. So is it possible to make$4 ,000, anywhere up to even maybe$10 ,000 a month without needing to write 30 articles a month? I mean, because the reality is, listen, I get that we could just grind our face off every second of every day and maybe we're going to be making a couple thousand dollars.

13:17But can we do it without that kind of mass production? Absolutely. There are a lot of publications that pay more for articles. So if you were to go right now to Twitter for your female audiences here, you would go to Twitter and you were to look up an editor named Nicole Pawlowski, you would see that she's one of the editors for Cosmopolitan. And right in her pinned post on Twitter, she says, I'm always looking for new people to write for Cosmopolitan. I will pay you between$1.50 to$2 a word. The articles I'm looking for typically start at 5 ,000 word, but there is no limit on how many words you can write.

14:07Meaning if you wrote a 10 ,000 word article, you're going to get paid between$1.50 to$2 a word. That's at least$10 ,500 for that one article. So there are a lot of publications that are like that. So that's one example. Or if you want it for the gentlemen that are listening to this, Men's Health is a publication you have seen. You have probably come across it in your newsfeed or you've seen it in the grocery stores or something. they're one of their editors right now his name is Evan Cook just posted on his Twitter and said we're looking for articles about anything and everything that are interesting to men we will pay you$2 ,500 per article right so anything that's interesting to men sports tech whatever it is that you would like to talk about your personal story changing your life building a business, whatever it is, they're going to pay you for that.

15:06So it's not just these little$200, $300. There are a lot of heavy hitter publications with really big names like Men's Health and Oprah Daily and Cosmopolitan that will pay you more for article. Now, the only thing to understand, and in the spirit of transparency is you're probably not going to be writing four articles, making$40 ,000 a month for Cosmopolitan. This is a situation where it'd be one article a month, two articles a month. But just with the ones that are bigger names and more heavy hitters, they're going to pay you more money. It's just going to be a little bit more in-depth articles.

15:40So if you're looking to do more without writing the 30 articles that John mentioned, you go after the bigger names. So we hear a lot about owning your own sandbox and growing your own audience. And of course, this is other people's audiences. So is there a way to actually utilize large publications to do things like build an email list, sell digital products, even maybe get paid speaking offers? Is any of that possible? Absolutely, John. I'm glad you asked that. A lot of these publications understand, especially if you're an entrepreneur, that there are things that you want to promote. So for example, if you Google my name and CNBC, you're going to see my articles on CNBC Make It.

16:23and I'm talking about my travels and I'm talking about building my business and right directly in those articles, you're going to see a direct link to my membership program right in the article. You're going to see a direct link to my website, to my email list right in the article. Because if you create a compelling story or a good piece of content and your whatever it is that you do, your email list or your business fits, editors are going to be willing to work with you. What they're not going to be willing to work with you is if it's egregious, right? You click on there and it goes to some funnel that's like over the top and there's just no value there.

17:02So if you're leading from a place of value, editors will let you put those links directly in the articles. You have the bio, of course, at each of these publications and you can put whatever you want in your bio, your speaking reel, your link to your website, your link to your opt-in, and you will get people sign up. In my bios, I was trying to build a YouTube channel for a while, so I had a link to my YouTube channel, people subscribe. I had other bios, I had a link to my books because I wanted to sell books, and I've sold a lot of books through publications. So you do have opportunities to link to the things that you want to link.

17:39And here's the beautiful part. It doesn't need to be the hugest publication in the world. We had somebody that wrote an article for a publication called CEO World Magazine. Most people have never heard of that, but it's specifically for CEOs and corporate executives. She wrote an article about leadership. One of the executives read that from a corporation, reached out to her and said, I love your perspective on leadership. We'd love to have you come speak in our corporation about leadership. And she was able to sign a$45 ,000 speaking contract to go speak in a corporation for three hours virtually on leadership.

18:13That's the power of these publications. Fire Nation, I hope you're starting to see the opportunities here. Kamanzi, what is one of your favorite personal stories in regards to getting paid for a publication? For me, my grandfather was an avid reader. He was the one that encouraged me to be a writer. He was an avid reader of the New York Times. He was an avid reader of CNET and Business Insider. So before he passed away, as he saw me as an adult and saw me as a writer, I wanted to write for the publications. He was always reading these magazines. And he was able to see my articles published in C-Dat and Business Insider before he died.

18:57And he would tell everybody in the nursing home and everybody that's around him, that's my grandson. He's a writer. And for me, that was like the highlight of my life to be able to fulfill that lifelong goal, especially because he was the one that encouraged me to go on this path. That's so cool. Now, what is the one thing that you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our conversation today? That you can be somebody who's never published anything anywhere. You don't think of yourself as a writer, but you do understand the power of thought, leadership and content. If you don't think you're a writer, pull out your phone, use the talk to text feature, talk out an article.

19:39It will come out more naturally anyways. Clean it up in some kind of grammar editor, and you could be submitting that article to a publication. For most of these publications, you don't even need to pitch a full article. You just need to pitch some potential articles that you could write. So a headline and then a paragraph, the two paragraphs describing what the article will be about. You could go to any publication and pitch that. Media editors, publication editors, don't make it hard to find their contact information. They don't ever want to miss a potentially big story. They make it very easy.

20:13That information is directly on their websites, on their staff page. The contact information, very easy to find them. You could find almost all of them on Twitter. That's where they love to hang out. Editors hang out. And if you just went right now, one practical thing you could do is go to Twitter and X and search the hashtag journal request, so J-O-U-R-N-O, journal request, you're going to see thousands of editors and publications that are like, I'm looking for an article on this, on that, for Business Insider, for Forbes, for Time. The largest publication in the world, the editors are there.

20:51And for those of you that are like, I'm not a writer and I'm never gonna pursue this, you also can see some opportunities for you to get featured in the media where they're going to be interviewed. But what I want you to understand is you can do this right after you listen to this interview. You can go on Twitter. You can go directly to a publication. You could pitch a interesting story, an interesting topic, and you could be accepted today, become a contributor in a publication that will pay you. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with KC and JLD today, so keep up that heat.

21:24For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type Kamanzi and that's K-I-M-A-N-Z-I in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. And where is the best place for Fire Nation to follow you, to connect with you, Kamanzi? Where do you want them to go? What is your call to action? Come to euboraadvisory.com. So that's U-B-O-R-A advisory.com. That's where you'll find more content. You'll find everything that I'm up to. if you have additional questions about like, hey, I really want to pursue this. I'm more than happy to hook up Fire Nation. No charge on pointing you in the right direction.

22:06But I just want to see Fire Nation take action because I know what it's done in my life in the last eight years since talking to John. Come, Hansi, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you, brother, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Comanze for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, are you ready to rock your very own podcast? Check out our free podcasting course where I will teach you how to create and launch your podcast for free. freepodcastcourse.com I will catch you there or I will catch you on the flippity flip side.

22:44Hustle and Flowchart, hosted by Joe Feer, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Join Joe as he discusses systems, mindset tweaks, reframes, and strategies to help you build a business that gives you freedom and fuel for your life. A recent episode on using AI for effortless content creation is a must listen. Listen to Hustle and Flowchart wherever you get your podcasts. Many EO Fire listeners have launched non-food franchises and Franbridge Consulting has guided them. Franbridge's founder and frequent EO Fire guest, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country and his service is free.

23:19Sign up for a consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, non-food franchising at franbridgeconsulting.com.