I’m sitting on a fantastic story. I was told about a doctor who’s undertaken some very controversial (but successful) research, and is now using it to cure patients of disorders that were once considered untreatable.

This doctor’s story is amazing. The research is controversial. And I’ve managed to locate at least one patient who is willing to go on record and give me the documents of the treatment for third-party evaluation. I also have people who can do this third-party evaluation.

The problem? So far, the damn thing hasn’t sold.

I haven’t kicked in to high gear yet though. Today I’m going to sit down and figure out which markets might be willing to pay for the tons of research this story is going to require.

One idea, many target audiences. I’m a big believer in milking an idea for all it’s got and pitching it to non-competing publications. If I happened to come across new research that linked creativity to motivation, for instance, I wouldn’t just pitch the idea to a writer’s magazine and be done with it. I’d find a way to use it in stories for work-at-home moms, college students, even senior citizens.

This is something you should be doing for new articles, but can you do it with old ones as well?

Take out articles from your files that you still find interesting and find ways to reslant them for non-competing markets.

Also, since these are non-competing markets and you’re reslanting ideas, the research will be the same (with some additional information, of course), but the article itself will be new. Ask for full rates for these pieces instead of reprint rates.

Today, we’re going to try and sell reprints again, but this time with a twist. Instead of a bulk marketing effort, I want you to note down the name of each article in a spreadsheet if you haven’t already, and next to each one, write down three specialty markets for it. For instance, I once wrote a piece for a women’s magazine on the ladies’-only train in India. It’s a great women’s story, it’s also a very good general-interest piece. You know who else I sold it to? Trains magazine.

A piece on a unique project for breast cancer survivors, along with going to women’s interest magazines or newspapers, could also go to cancer research newsletters or magazines that deal exclusively with cancer topics. Similarly, that piece on taking one day at a time that you wrote for the parenting magazine could also be a great fit for a magazine for practicing Buddhists.