Article writing as we know it has become a great home-based business avenue for creating an additional stream of income or exposure. Creating mind tingling articles that will keep the attention of your audience occupied is of vital importance. The small town business idea of writing a news article on business ownership for your local newspaper publication is one that I believe is quite overlooked. This newspaper or magazine is relatively small in production, circulation and content. It will usually be locally owned and operated.
Do your research to find out what bi-weekly or monthly articles are published. Nine times out of ten, there will not be anything covering people who own their own business or how to start your own business, a popular niche that you can take advantage of. There will be a bit of leg-work involved, but the exposure, if not income too, will be totally worth your while. Call the editor of the newspaper you chose and set up an appointment to talk one on one with them about writing for their publication. There may not be any monetary incentive for it at first but let them know you are willing to freelance for the exposure. If the offer is accepted, you will now need to make a list of people in your town who are business owners. If you don’t know many, ask friends and relatives for help.
Some idea titles for your column could be: Being Your Own Boss 101, An Inside Focus to B.Y.O.B., All My Own: Business 101, or You Can Start Your Own Business, Too. You will then need to call those prospective business owners, tell them who you are, why you would like to interview them for your column and the name of the newspaper they will be featured in. Most will be flattered to be mentioned in a publication. No picture is necessary, unless you and the business owner agree on submitting one.
The following interview questions should get you on your way.
- 1. How they started their own business
- 2. Motivation for wanting to be in business
- 3. When they started and how long in the business
- 4. Some difficulties they faced and how they overcame it
- 5. Would they do it again and what would they do different
- 6. Tips for others who may want to have their own business
- 7. In what ways do they give back
- 8. Business happenings current and future
- 9. Future plans, if any
- 10. Family status, faith affiliation, if any, encouraging words or business motto
An important factor is always remember to check for spelling and grammatical errors within your articles. This can make or break your expertise as an article writer. These are just some general ideas for interview questions, you can always alter for your own satisfaction. And by no means should you limit yourself to just writing for your own home-town, contact other small towns after you’ve reached a certain level of comfortable expertise and then accelerate to larger ones. This will be a specialty niche exclusively built by you but geared towards helping others in their own business and those wanting their own business.
I hope this will help someone in their future article writing journey. One never knows, before long you may end up venturing out with your own business publication centered around this one little specialty niche. My sincere hope is that this creative business idea will free you into your own way of thinking and living.
