Wednesday, March 13, 2024

UPDATES to "The Mother of All Writing Market Books"


Last update created 3/13/24

Thanks for purchasing and downloading The Mother of All Writing Market Books. I'm working on getting it all updated and into the massive print version on Amazon. I created this post because the publishing industry changes QUICKLY. One day you're submitting an article to your favorite regional parenting publication, and the next day that magazine is printing its final issue. 

Or maybe you send a reprint as a simultaneous submission to 100 regional parenting magazines and a couple of the emails bounce back.

So bookmark this tab and come back periodically (maybe set a reminder on your Google Calendar). This is where you'll find updates to the 8th edition of my parenting, family, and women's writing markets book—for free. 

And be sure to join my Parenting Magazine Writers Facebook group for all the intel and conversation. We're almost 900 members strong, and we have a lot to say!


Saturday, March 2, 2024

600 Parenting and Family Magazines That Pay

I'm sure you've seen parenting and family magazines like this one all over your town and when you travel, as well as online. 

Did you know they are always looking for fresh content from parents, grandparents, and other experts just like you?

Did you know that once you sell an article to one of these magazines, you are free to sell it to others all over the country and even worldwide (as long as you don't sign something saying the magazine you're working with gets all rights, in which case you should be asking for a lot more money)?

Did you know you don't need a degree to be able to write for these magazines and earn a reliable and lucrative income?

I've been writing for these magazines for over 15 years (for over 180 of them!), and I compiled a resource that contains not only regional (local) parenting and family magazines but also national, international, and online-only resources as well.

How many writing markets are in my instant download? Over 600 of them! And you can get free updates right here on my website. This means when I find a new market or find out about an editor change or email change, I post it here for you for free. 

I'm still selling articles I wrote 15 years ago to these markets and I write and submit fresh content regularly. This means we're in this game together, and I'm here to help you!


P.S. I'd also love it if you'd join my Facebook group called Parenting Magazine Writers. We are over 800 strong and love to share info and ask/answer questions!




Wednesday, January 3, 2024

Keep Writing Despite Rejection


I'm watching my 10-year-old daughter draw in front of me at the dining room table while I'm writing on the laptop across from her. She is critical of her flowers, but to me they are beautiful. They are nothing like anything I could ever do. I am no artist for sure. But she has talent and is so hard on herself. And I tell her, "I could never do that. You are so amazing. Don't stop because you will only get better and better with practice."

Sometimes in my Facebook writing group, there will be someone who just isn't getting articles accepted. And I ask some questions like, "Are you sending to just a few at a time or doing a BLAST to like all 200 regional parenting magazines on the list? (it's a numbers game) Are you following the general submission guidelines? Don't stop because you will get better and you will get a piece accepted and then the snowball will start."

How to Stop Being Self-Critical

And I wondered ... how do you get someone to stop being self-critical? How do you convince them to keep going? Then I realized that the same things I say to my kids and to my writing group members to be encouraging, I should also be saying to myself.

I have 175 publishing credits to my name. I have clearly not given up, but I feel like I should have MORE publishing credits, and some of them should be national magazines. Then I attempt to go easy on myself. "Kerrie, you homeschool 5 kids and make that your priority. You are married. You have other family and friends you love spending time with. You have to keep up with This Is Us and blow through The Haunting of Hill House. Oh, and you proofread for income to help your family. Go easy on yourself. Slow and steady."

It's easy to get caught up in the things we ARE NOT DOING. I am not publishing a book a month. I am not writing an article a week. I am not writing features for Parents Magazine at $1,000 a pop.

Ah, but I am still making a small income from reprints that are over 10 years old. I am enjoying life and writing when I can and putting love and spirit into it.

Just Keep Swimming (Writing)

What one small thing can you do each day to keep your writing career moving forward? Can you write 100 words today? Then again tomorrow? You could have an article written by the end of the week and ready to submit. Then you can take a week off and do NOTHING. Or you can do another 100 words and keep up the momentum.

If magazines aren't picking up your work or paying what you think you are worth ... keep going anyway. You know in your heart that this is what you are supposed to be doing, so keep doing it no matter what.

originally published in 2018

How to Make an Extra $2,000 Per Month from Home with Words


I'm often asked how I can effortlessly earn an average of $2,000 per month working from home with words while also homeschooling and leading an active life. 

The answer is not sexy or intriguing, and I don't have any life hacks. 

The "secrets" to my productive lifestyle are waking up early, setting goals, getting a bit less sleep, and working when I want to be doing other things.

Things to do Instead of Making Money

Here are just a few fun tasks I'd prefer to be doing instead of painstakingly writing that article or perfecting that proofreading job or publishing that book. I bet you can relate:

Languishing in bed every morning, sleeping as late as I can.

Binge-watching fantastic shows, movies, and podcasts.

Devouring All. The. Books.

Socializing leisurely at a coffee shop.

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Write for Reader's Digest Magazine -- Submission Writers Guidelines


Check out this post on The Adventurous Writer/Writing Blossoms titled 10 Things You Need to Know About Writing for Reader's Digest. Then see the submission guidelines below. Good luck to you!

Don't send the completed manuscript of your article. The editors will not read it or mail it back. Instead, write a summary of no more than one page. If you will interview the hero of the story, be sure to mention it---it may help you sell your story. Email your proposal to articleproposals@readersdigest.com.
If writing an entire article is too daunting, try something shorter. Reader's Digest encourages its readers to send in funny true stories, jokes, and humorous quotations. Keep your submission within the 500-word limit. If you submit an anecdote originally published elsewhere, include the name of where and when it was published, including the page number.

Thursday, September 21, 2023

How to Find Out if Your Work Was Published without Your Knowledge


Keep Publishers Honest!
Issuu.com has changed everything about their site and now writers can't find their published work anymore.

Updates as of 2023:
One member of the Parenting Magazine Writers Facebook group shared: "I just checked Muckrack and it only shows 5-10% of publications at most of my articles. So it's a minimally helpful resource."

Another shared: "One thing that seems to be working is searching my name and the word 'magazine' and filtering by image. This shows a good amount of my stuff."

One member shared: "Given that my experience is that 20-25% of regional publications try to get away without paying writers (unless you spot your article and invoice them...and even then a few require months of begging), that's a lot of money we're losing out on..."


Below is the old information about Issuu.com. Back when they actually were amazing and helpful.

I stumbled across Issuu.com years ago when I was Googling myself. It's a publishing service like BlueToad, only you can put in your name (best to put it in quotes), and magazine covers will come up that most likely contain an article of yours because you may have simultaneously submitted a regional parenting magazine. You can then click on the cover and see your piece! Using Issuu.com I was able to find a piece of mine that was published that I wasn't aware was going to be used at that time. I usually find at least one piece per month that was used without my permission.

Just type your name in the search bar like this: "Kerrie McLoughlin" (in quotes)

If I find what I call “borrowed work,” I contact the magazine and send an invoice for $50 (unless I know from my own book of markets, guidelines, and pay information that they pay more than that).

I thank them for using my work and ask them to ask me next time just in case there are competitors in the area who might have also snapped at the same piece only they were considerate enough to let me know first.

Happy searching!

Thursday, August 24, 2023

How to Use HootSuite to Schedule Social Media for FREE!


It didn't take me long to figure out that social media was where a lot of my traffic was coming from for blogging and other writing. I used to write at Bubblews before they went defunct, where my pay was based on views, likes and comments, and I needed to get the word out about pieces I wrote or I didn't make much money. 

I knew I couldn't sit on Twitter or Facebook or other social media all day spamming my followers with message after message ... I don't want to alienate my readers!

Solution: HootSuite!

It's free! (unless you want the fancy version that gives you all the reports)

Here's what you do:

1. Go to HootSuite and sign up.

2. Add your FIVE social networks that you send info to the most. Options include Twitter, Facebook, G+, LinkedIn, FourSquare, WordPress. I have a little owl icon at the top of my toolbar in Chrome. I click on him and then choose up to five different places to send my post or message. I usually choose my Facebook fan page for The Kerrie Show for general items because I have that set up to also automatically tweet everything that hits there.

Sometimes I pick other places to send my message, like to my Homeschooling Mommybot Facebook fan page or to the fan page for THIS blog!

3. Find a post you want some love on.

4. Add an image if it doesn't already show up on the HootSuite box.

5. HootSuite shortens the link for you! Then you can tailor the message if you like.

6. Click on the calendar to schedule your message for whenever you want it to hit. I do love, however, the Auto Schedule option, which takes it out of your hands and spaces messages far enough apart so as to not spam your followers, plus it apparently sends messages at optimal times somehow.

Talk about making money while you sleep! You could schedule a bunch of tweets overnight for your worldwide fan base and wake up with a nice amount in your AdSense account or find that affiliate links have been clicked or, like used to happen for me, that your Bubblews amount increased incredibly!

If this post confounds you, just check on YouTube because there are HootSuite how-to videos that show you step-by-step ways to set this up and use it.

Make Money from Home on Fiverr

I stumbled on Fiverr.com in April of 2013 when I was looking for a way to make money from home online to pay off some mounting dental bills and other things. I needed a job that would allow me to continue homeschooling, a job that would travel well if I had to go out of town or work from another location.

I was not disappointed. 

I immediately had a full queue of jobs and found that I could easily customize my "gigs" (what I offer for $5). I could promise to deliver a proofreading job to a client within 24 hours. Or, if life was busy and I was not able to do that, I could change it to a longer delivery time to discourage new orders from coming in as quickly. It's very customizable!

Tuesday, August 15, 2023

My Love-Hate Relationship with Scrivener


I got Scrivener in 2020 when the lockdown was first in effect and was surprised/happy about the reasonable price. Many of my favorite writers raved about this program, so I had to try it.

While I love how I can organize and move chapters around easily without much scrolling, I hate a few things even more, which are huge time-wasters in my writing career:



  1. I can't make the screen bigger without making the font bigger like you can in, say, an Internet browser when you increase the screen print size.

  2. I can't do a search. At least I could never get it to work, so trying to find one magazine market in a sea of several hundred market names was not possible.

  3. When I compiled it into a Word document so I could do final proofreading, Scrivener randomly smooshed words together and randomly messed up the formatting, which wasted a lot of time. So my text might look like this:

Writer's guidelines canbe found on thewebsite.

I am also a proofreader on Fiverr and have been since 2013. I used to get so frustrated when book projects would come to me for proofreading as shown above quite often: a writer has put their trust in Scrivener and exported, then sent it straight to me. And when I receive it, it's a formatting nightmare with words smashed together and extra spaces inserted.

If you can overlook these things, give it a go. If you can't, just keep using Microsoft Word like I do. Shrug. I'd love to hear from Scrivener to find out what I'm doing wrong and if this happens to anyone else. 

Update December 2020: I went through the manual and tried many different ways to compile my book into a document that was how it should be (including hyperlinks). Doing "Custom" then choosing the "Times 12 pt" option from above and the "RTF" format from below worked the best, but there were still smooshed words, missing periods, and extra spaces in every single file I compiled, no matter how I compiled it. I went back to the original Scrivener document to see if the mistake originated with me, but nope. GLITCH.

Update: I got this in my email inbox recently so I'll definitely let them know what I like and don't like. I'm truly hoping these are easy fixes for a programmer and that I can go back to Scrivener with open arms and lots of writing ideas!



The Pomodoro Technique: Focus for ADHD Writers

I'm reading The Art and Business of Writing by Chris Jones on my Kindle and it's full of helpful advice. I'll review it in a later post. For now, please take this gem I got in there (then, interestingly enough, I also found the same gem the next day in a speed-reading ebook I was proofreading on Fiverr, which tells me the Universe wants me to try it).

Basically in the mornings, I put my butt in my seat after getting my coffee and something to eat. Focusing after that is hard. I want to check email, Facebook, my ebook sales, Fiverr, blog stats, do some blog social media, and more. Back and forth and then I've wasted an hour! That is no way to make your dreams come true of moving to the country, traveling the world with your family, and writing a bunch more books! 


So you start by hitting the app store with your smartphone (or you can just do it yourself with a timer, I suppose, but I am trying out this free app to see if it keeps track of stats and stuff ... there are also paid versions).
Then you handle your settings. I left mine on the default. So I proofread for 25 minutes and then take a break. I plan to also use this for writing so I can get articles and ebooks actually WORKED ON! After every 4 sets, you get a longer break. I'll have to use this to switch out the laundry, do some dishes, throw dinner in the slow cooker, brush my teeth, get dressed, etc. I am only doing this in the mornings so far when the kids are sleeping and I am not distracted or interrupted. Once the kids are up, all bets are off and it's homeschool and family time until I can get more work done at night, usually about another hour until my brain is too tired to think.


The timer goes quietly for 25 minutes and then buzzes or can go off with an alarm with noise and then switches to 4 minutes of break (yes, you can pause it if you need to). Sometimes I might grab my 5-pound weights I keep by my desk (a 1950s Formica table in the corner of the kitchen, my "office") or do some planks or squats. Or check email. But the point is when that time is up I have to get back to work. No more languishing in Facebook land for me!



I'd love to hear about your tips, tricks, and tools for getting things done! And be sure to come back to read my review of Chris Jones' book! You'll love it!

Friday, July 7, 2023

All About Making Money on #Fiverr as a #Proofreader, #Writer and More! #WAHM


I stumbled on Fiverr.com in April of 2013 when I was looking for a way to make money from home online to pay off some mounting dental bills and other things and my husband had FINALLY given in and suggested we get Internet at home.

I was not disappointed. I immediately had a full queue of jobs and found that I could customize my gigs, which means that if I had extra time to work, I could put my gig on a 1-day delivery time to get more orders. If I was full up with parenting and homeschooling, I could change it to a 29-day delivery time to discourage new customers who were in a hurry. 

Check out my information below to see if it might be for you and then give it a shot. It's a versatile way to make money online. It's free to sign up, and I'd love it if you'd use my referral code.

Wednesday, May 24, 2023

Write Timely Articles Parenting Magazine Editors Want to Purchase

As parenting magazine writers, we all need ideas for articles to write about all year long.

Do you feel like you have written everything you have to say on the topic of birthday parties or camp or holidays?

Need some inspiration because your brain has run dry?

Check out this site. Turns out there are not only those obvious and popular things we knew about like Valentine's Day in February, but also things that should be on our radar like Black History Month ... and did you know that February 20 is Love Your Pet Day? 

What a great time to whip out that piece about whether or not your kid should get a pet. Or maybe you sold it in December about getting a pet for Christmas and it just needs a little tweak and a re-send.

Thursday, May 18, 2023

Write for Highlights for Children Magazine -- Submission Writers Guidelines


We do not accept work through Submittable (or through e-mail) from writers younger than 16. Young writers and artists may send their work to: Highlights for Children, 803 Church Street, Honesdale, PA 18431. 
Highlights is a general-interest magazine for children ages 6-12. By publishing stories, puzzles, articles, and activities that are fun and engaging, we aim to inspire kids to be their best selves–creative, curious, caring, and confident. Highlights was founded in 1946 by Dr. Garry Cleveland Myers and Caroline Clark Myers, and is still owned and run by their family. The magazine accepts no outside advertising and has no religious or organizational affiliation. Highlights has a circulation of about a million and is published monthly.