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.

K = Kagawa, Julie

The A-Z blogging challenge is being hosted by Tossing It Out. My A-Z selections are a Beth's Pick unless otherwise noted.

Seriously, Julie Kagawa is one of my all time favorite writers. Not just because of the work she did with the Iron Fey series(check out my I post for all the reviews) and releasing the free novellas, but she was also one of my first blog interviews. She gave thoughtful, insightful answers to my questions and took the time to interview on a blog that at that time only had 82 followers. (I realize when you're reading this it might seem I don't have many more now, but that's because google recently ate my followers). But I really appreciated her taking the time to do that, and she even wished me luck with my writing on another post.

So if you're published, even if you're selling well, remember sometimes if you just take the time to talk to someone, you can make a fan for life. You can find my  part interview with Julie Kagawa here.