For the last couple of years, one of my goals is to make one marketing effort daily. This could be in the form of a query letter, a phone call, a meeting with the editor, or a letter of introduction. 365 marketing efforts is really not that much. Usually, I manage to do a bit more than that.

That’s because all these years, I’ve been cheating a little. You see, I’ve been counting LOIs sent to Craigslist ads as marketing efforts. And they’ve all been the same.

This year, however, I’m changing that strategy. Your mileage may vary, as they say, but those jobs on Craigslist? I haven’t really found that many. Not in relation to the LOIs I’ve sent out. My queries on the other hand, get responses. And acceptance.

This may be because I’m not a web writer, don’t promise ability in SEO, and will not even look at the pay-per-click websites. My queries and LOIs to magazines and newspapers, however, are well-targeted with neatly fleshed out ideas and expert commentaries. I know what I’m doing, and I know I’m good at it.

My goal for the year– and this has to be ambitious because of the number of publications going out of business– is to have one query out every day until either I’m so busy with work that I can’t breathe or it’s the end of the year. Though experience tells me that if I send out one query every day for the next thirty days, I’ll have more work than I can handle in the next two months.

So here’s my challenge to you. If you’re feeling like you don’t have enough work, aren’t writing for high enough pay or are simply up for a challenge, send out a query letter for the next 30 days and see where it leads you. And then come back here and tell me how you did.