Make Money Writing: I=Interview

April is all about making money writing! Different magazines will often pay for interviews. Lots of bloggers have a background in interviewing authors, but this isn't usually what people pay for. I made $50 article for a while doing interviews for little league sports teams. Since I knew nothing about sports, I had to ask around to find out what kind of questions made for good sports writing. The other thing I've learned about writing solid interviews that keep you booked is that feature interviews are the most desirable, most interesting, and have the strongest readership. On a blog, you will often see a list of questions and answers. This is referred to as a q&a, and no one pays for it. (Or they might but I don't know about it.) Writing good open ended questions that allow the person being interviewed to go into a story is the first step to writing a feature. But the most important component of a feature--the reason people pay for it--is that it's a story. It will have quotes from the Q&A woven it but it should tell a story and explain something, complete with a message. This is a good skill to have.