Finding Your Markets

Finding Your Markets Before you fork over a chunk of money to subscribe to a writers market database, try your hand at compiling your own market list At www.thesearchenginelist.com, you will find a list of search engines. Â  Its a fairly comprehensive list, which includes a brief description of the type of coverage you can expect from each search site. Of course, Google, Bing and Yahoo are the three most popular. Select the one you prefer, or that most closely defines the type of material you are seeking. Enter a plain language search string such as fiction markets or freelance writing markets or magazine editorial guidelines. If you are finding the horror genre markets included in the results and you wish to eliminate them, type this phrase: fiction markets not horror. Some search engines will give you different results if you type this: fiction markets –horror. For more targeted results, add your genre to the search string: romance fiction markets not paranormal or: fiction markets +romance. Always try the plain language version before you try the +/- option. When using the symbols, dont leave a space between the symbol and the word you are adding to or deleting from the search. Experiment with various keyword combinations to find what works best for you and for the search engine you are using. Discard any search strings that yield poor results, but make sure you write down each of your successful search strings so you can apply them later. Each search engine produces slightly different results. Dont be intimidated Finally, to find what method works best for you, try mega-search engines that pull results simultaneously from several search engines. Three of the top meta-search tools, Dogpile, WebCrawler and MetaCrawler, all compile results from a variety of major search sites such as Google, Bing and Yahoo as well as many others. As a finishing touch, you might check to see who is looking for a writer No more paying someone else a fee to do the searching for you. No more hours wasted sifting through dozens of generalized market lists. Soon you will have your own database of markets, every element of which you targeted specifically for your writing products.