Articles

Market Focus: Add to your income with advertorials

These assignments look like feature articles but promote a publication’s advertisers

By Tricia Despres
Published: April 7, 2010
As publications continue to fight for ever-dwindling advertising dollars in this economy, more magazines and newspapers have been turning to advertorials—ads that imitate editorial format —to generate money. Companies that have grown weary of sending out often-ignored press releases see advertorials as a way to pay for publicity and reach their audience. And for writers, this has opened up a wonderful opportunity to make some extra dollars.

Often called the “infomercials” of the print world, advertorials make up a fast-growing segment of the freelance-writing industry. Specifically, an advertorial is “an advertisement written in the form of an objective opinion editorial, and presented in a printed publication—usually designed to look like a legitimate and independent news story,” according to Wikipedia. In fact, if done well, an advertorial looks eerily similar to a news or feature story.

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