This Could Be Good - A New Disability Insurance Provider from Freelancers Union Founder

Happy Money Monday!

For the creative, or the self-employed, a sick day often means no pay. Disability insurance is usually too expensive to consider. Perhaps until now...

One of the best known advocates for freelancers and self-employed people is Sara Horowitz. She is an attorney, a MacArthur Award Winner, the founder of Working Today, and the founder of the Freelancers Union which is a way for self-employed people to get health insurance before Obamacare.

Sara is now the founder of Trupo, a disability insurance provider for self-employed people.

If you break your hand, and you're a writer, you're in a pickle. If you hurt your back and you're on bed-rest and you're a wedding videographer, you're not going out on jobs.

These are real life fears that most small business owners live with and hope they never happen. Disability insurance can be hundreds of dollars a month, and you've got a payroll to make and inventory to buy.

Trupo, which is funded by venture capital firms and partially owned by the Freelancers Union (Sara says that part of the earnings from Trupo will go back to the Freelancers Union to continue their advocacy work), is setting out to pay its insured for up to 8 weeks of work at 50% the rate that would be your normal intake if you were working.

Trupo is rolling out first in Atlanta, GA. So if you're down there, sounds like you can go Beta with them. Everyone else can sign up for their newsletter here to be kept in the loop, and you can keep an eye on their progress on Instagram.

Goings Ons in Tin Shingle's Community Right Now

In Tin Shingle's Private Facebook Group, we are talking about things that can help or support you right now. Join us in the conversation!

PR Tip:
Switch the Pitch! Getting no response from a magazine? Find a tip on what to do!

PR Portfolio Additions!
Congratulations to Tin Shingle Member Kryzia Kreations - Jewelry design by Christina Paluszek-McClure for the feature in HelloGiggles for "25 Non Traditional Engagement Rings That Won't Break The Bank" Well deserved media hit that she got from doing her own PR using Tin Shingle advanced Membership Program! Tin Shinglers are able to celebrate their PR hits by featuring them on Tin Shingle's website in the Press Portfolio section.

Article Published! A Tin Shingle Member, Christine Agro, Spiritual Teacher & Clairvoyant, Author and Speaker, wrote a piece for Thrive Global on Negative Self Talk, and it went viral!

Member Update: Media Contacts Updated + Member-To-Member Conversations

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Easy-Access List of Editors + Writers at Magazines

When you're doing your own PR and getting the word out, you need to think big. Of course you can get featured in a big magazine! You just need to pitch the right person. How do you find that right person?

Skim Through Tin Shingle's Media Contacts Database

Tin Shingle's Media Contact Database makes your research a little easier. Do you want to be featured in the pages of Wired Magazine? Allure Magazine? Or more of a spiritual magazine?  You can do that with our easy-to-use list that includes ways to search by subject or media outlet.

We have recently updated media contacts at O, the Oprah Magazine, Ebony, Shape, Elle Decor, and others. Now, you can see exactly when each name in our database has been updated because we added a time-stamp to each name with the date of which it was updated.

Upgrade To Media Contacts Level 3 - Get 'Em - Then Downgrade to Community or Directories Level 1 or 2!

You won't always need access to the full collection of Media Contacts, but you'll still want to stay hooked in to Tin Shingle's Community for support - and showcase your website and offerings on Tin Shingle!

You can do that! You can change your level of membership at any time from your Account Dashboard.

DailyWorth Online Magazine Change of Ownership - Acquired By Jean Chatzky

Happy Money Monday!

In honor of today's Money Monday, we're updating you about the exciting news over at the online magazine, DailyWorth. Founded 10 years ago by Amanda Steinberg, it has long been the go-to source of information for women's financial needs and questions, delivered in an honest way that Normal People can understand.

We've watched the online magazine itself go through many changes, including major newsletter design changes (we watch them closely for what is working or not working, as newsletter-based websites are very effective), and changes in editors and contributing writers. They even had a paid membership of experts at one point.

The New Owner of DailyWorth, Jean Chatzky

Jean Chatzky is the new owner, and she was an early investor in DailyWorth. Jean is the Financial Editor of NBC's TODAY Show, as well as the host of her own podcast, HerMoney, and the creator of the community HerMoney private Facebook Group.

How You Can Pitch DailyWorth

Our Super Sleuther Ashley Cox 🕵 is on the case to update Tin Shingle's Super Easy Media Contacts Database (available to All Access Pass Members at Level 4), verifying new or current Media Contacts at DailyWorth who would make a great fit for your feature idea.

You'll want DailyWorth if you want to gain exposure from a wide audience of women who are looking to improve their financial lives and make smart life and business decisions.

Ideas for Why You'd Pitch DailyWorth

This is a great source for service-industry experts who are looking to gain exposure for their brands, and want to be quoted as an expert - even if you're not a financial expert. If you know how to guide someone in the right direction of making a financially smart decision, this is an outlet to pitch.

Service Industry Ideas:

• How you have mastered writing and/or designing proposals that get accepted.
• How to get paid - and not ignored on an invoice.
• How you've mastered being awarded grant money.
• How to feed your family as a self-employed person.
• How to work from home with kids (either big kids, or little kids...pick a focus).
• How to employ your kids and pay them through your business (usually an accountant's trick).

Ideas for People Who Sell Products

Pitch perhaps less for the actual product, and more for the financially smart side of you and decisions you've made and learned from.

• Did you finance your business using a creative solution?
• What was your experience working with a bank?
• Products that have to do with managing or saving money are of course great candidates to pitch!
• Do you advise people on how to work with non-profits, or best ones to donate to?

So many ideas. These suggestions will get you started.

How to Hook In with DailyWorth and HerMoney

You want Jean on your side! She wants to know about the great money things you are doing. And you want her advice, and that of her community of experts. Start listening and reading. This will make your pitching easier, so that we can watch or read what you have to say!

• DailyWorth Newsletter Signup
• HerMoney podcast
• HerMoney Newsletter
• Community: HerMoney private Facebook Group.

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How To Be A Known Entrepreneur and Expert In Your Industry

So you want to be a go-to expert in your industry? Are you hoping to reach more people and get your message out there, building buzz for your business and your brand, but perhaps you're not sure where to begin? This Training TuneUps webinar will give you a jumpstart in the right direction.

Love This Hashtag - #magazining!

Just discovered the best hashtag for people who love magazines - #magazining! Hello to everyone in there already! Adding it to Tin Shingle’s Hashtag Cheat Sheet for members of Tin Shingle.

i was inspired by our recent TuneUp with the painter Anna West who spends a lot of her time finding smaller groups of people in very relevant hashtags, and prefers “fun” ones. Her definition of Little is 20,000 posts in a hashtag. Even though #magazining has 200, the people who are in it seem just our type here at Tin Shingle - those who love thumbing through a print magazine, some of whom were quoted in the issue.

hopefully more people will use the hashtag! And, maybe I just finally found the name for Tin Shingle’s Blog. Even though we deal with TV press also. But maybe everyone would get the drift. A love of media. 

Find our Hashtag Cheat Sheet in the Community Boards of our PR Center on the website! 

To use our Hashtag Cheat Sheet, join Tin Shingle at the Community Level 1: www.tinshingle.com/membership

New Class Available to Stream: Tin Shingle's Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide Pitching Guide

Training TuneUp Available Now:
Tin Shingle's Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide Pitching Guide Online Class

There are 3 submission deadlines of the year when your business has as chance to be featured in one of the most coveted magazine issues of the year: The Holiday Gift Guide Issue that hits newsstands in November and December.

Those deadlines are:

• July (right now!) for national print magazines like O, The Oprah Magazine and Real Simple.
• September for regional print magazines.
• October/November for last minute blog submissions and TV shows.

What Businesses Are Good for Holiday Gift Guides?

Yours, most likely. You just need to think of the right angle.

• Products: Obviously!
• Books: Magazines will be recommending must-reads on those holiday reading lists.
• Gift Cards: Got a boutique fitness studio? Yarn shop?
• Experts: In the same magazine issue as the Holiday Gift Guide, the magazine still fills other pages with holiday advice. This is the time for New Years Resolution stuff.

 
Magazines Are Collecting Holiday Gift Ideas Now for December Issues

So here's the thing...if you want your business featured in the December issue, you must email the magazines of your dreams now. Yes, think big. But how will you do it? Here are the answers!

Watch This TuneUp Webinar - We Tell You How!

In this Training TuneUp that just released into Tin Shingle's Training TuneUp Collection, we partnered up with our dear friend Sabina Hitchen of Press for Success. Tin Shingle's owner Katie interviews Sabina for the inside scoop on how Holiday Gift Guides work, and the best ways you can email an editor with the suggestion that they consider your business in their recommendations. Tin Shingle does have a list of magazine editors in our Media Contacts Database to make this job a little easier on you.

Hot Tip: Go Niche

There are SO many gift guides possibilities:

• "Gifts for Moms"
• "Gifts For Nerds"
• "Gifts For Guys Who Love Gear"
• "Gifts For Yarnbombers"
• "Gifts For Self-Help Addicts"

The sky is the limit! Part of your job when pitching your brand to be considered for a Gift Guide is to suggest a great theme, or reason. Liberate yourself here. Identify the magazines you want to be featured in, and go for it.

The best way to liberate yourself to pitch your brand into a magazine is to watch or listen to our Training TuneUp: The Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide Pitching Guide as Katie and Sabina explore the ways you will accomplish this mission. If you are a member of Tin Shingle at Level 3 (Online Classes) or 4 (Media Lists), you can stream this TuneUp for free any time. Otherwise, you can just purchase it!

Covered In This TuneUp:

• The Big Picture – Inside a Magazine
• What Makes a Holiday Gift Guide
• 1st Chance for Holiday Gift Guides (Magazines)
• 2nd Chance for Holiday Gift Guides (Local)
• 3rd Chance for Holiday Gift Guides (Websites)
• The Pitch - What It Should Look Like
• The Photos - How Important Are They?
• Packaging - Worth It?

Tin Shingle Member Price for Levels 3 & 4: FREE
Non-Member Price: $65.00

TuneUp Interview with Christina Fagan, Founder Sh*t That I Knit on How She Rocked a Successful Kickstarter Campaign

Join me this week when I interview Christina Fagan, founder of Shit That I Knit, on how she pulled off such a successful Kickstarter campaign when launching her business, raising over $25,000 from 260 backers in 30 days. It's not easy starting a Kickstarter, and requires all of the muscles in your marketing body. It's all of what we preach at Tin Shingle - the outreach, the PR, the social, the emailing, the presentation. The gumption! The enthusiasm.

Tune in Thursday, July 12th at 1pm EST for the free live broadcast. We use GoToWebinar so you can watch from computer or phone, or call-in old fashion-style. Replays are added to Tin Shingle's private collection for Members to stream anytime.

Membership not required to listen to live broadcast of webinar.
Register now!

Media Contacts Updated for Cosmopolitan

Wishing your business could be featured in Cosmopolitan Magazine? Cosmo was just updated at Tin Shingle’s website in our Media Contacts Database. Many media outlets are in the database, and they are updated in a rotation.

Best ways t get featured in Cosmopolitan:

STEP 1. Read the magazine in print - as it should be read - to get real familiar with what they cover and how businesses, artists and makers are featured or mentioned in their regular roundups or dedicated theme pages that repeat in each issue. 

STEP 2. Dive into Tin Shingle’s Media Contact Database to get a good idea for who to pitch there. Get a list of names at your fingertips to help you in your research and relationship building. Always double check a contact with what they are currently writing about, or what they have written about recently by visiting their Twitter or author profiles on their own professional websites.

Available to Tin Shingle Members Level 4 All Access Pass!

www.tinshingle.com/membership

The Live Training TuneUp Webinar is at Summer Camp This Week!

Writing from the moment of Summer Camp With The Kids! This week the live broadcast of the Training TuneUp is on break while we catch up on spring cleaning and article writing. Meanwhile, we are pre-recording a must-watch for you...a fresh Holiday Gift Guide How-To with your favorite PR Star...Sabina Hitchen of Sabina Knows! Subscribe to our email to be alerted as to when it drops into our TuneUp library.  

Allure Magazine Makes A Point To Feature Asian Women On Their Covers

We're going to start sharing with you our #MediaMonitoring research. It's really fun homework - you just read magazines. But it makes pitching the big magazines so much easier because you already know how they think. Continue the conversation with us in our Private Community Groups to bounce ideas off each other, but here's what we got from Allure:

Allure Magazine is stepping it up with Asian women appearing on their covers. Only 2 Asian women have held the spot: Lucy Liu in 2000, and Olivia Munn in 2014. Editor in Chief Michelle Lee  is changing that with this year’s "The Hair Guide" which dropped this May/June 2018 by featuring 3 “game-changing Asian models,” which has special meaning to her. “My preteen self couldn’t even fathom seeing an Asian face on the cover of a mainstream magazine or landing a TV show or headlining a movie,” she said in her letter from the editor. As for future coverage for Asian women, Michelle says: “Let’s not wait for Lucy Lui’s next movie.” Bravo! 👏

What else was featured?

A Local Hair Parlor - In Chicago! 

Usually when brick and mortars are featured in print magazines, they are in New York, since that’s where most of the magazines are based. Here, Chicago’s North Side is featured when the salon Logan Parlor took the spotlight. Founded by LGBTQ activists Jamie DiGrazia and Tricia Serpe, this parlor is unusual in that it was designed to look like your grandma’s house to promote familiarity, be snug, offer coffee and free beer while you’re getting cut, and “act as a safe community space first,” according to the article. Published during LGBTQ month, this gave the parlor even more relevancy against competing salons may have also been pitching into the magazine.

Products of Course

The Tangle Teaser, an invention of a brush by a London based hairdresser, Shaun Pulfrey. It got only two paragraphs of content, but it's a spot in a regular page of the magazine that features entrepreneurs. An entire page was dedicated to it. Shaun recounted how he mortgaged his flat, spent $130,000 to develop the brush, got on to Dragon’s Den (London’s equivalent of Shark Tank), and was sent home, rejected. They called it a hair-brained idea. That night, however, 1,300 orders came in and Shaun considered it a score. A global commercial for his brand. This type of story could have easily been pitched in to the magazine just by knowing the magazine’s theme alone. Which is what’s Tin Shingle’s Editorial Calendars are for.

PS: Want to pitch Shark Tank? Listen to this Tin Shingle's Training TuneUp where we interviewed two contestants on the show who went home with a win.

The Experts Weigh In

There are the roundups of course. Maybe you would have seen this come across a HARO lead, maybe you would have missed it or maybe it never ended up in that slush pile at all. An expert or product owner could have certainly cold-pitched this in with an idea of when best to use this product. The editor may have forwarded it to the writer for consideration. If you’re an expert or service provider, you could off-the-cuff recommend your preferred products. If you’re a business who created the products, well...you know what to do.

A Singer-Songwriter

Kelissa McDonald is a 29 year old singer-songwriter who was included in Allure’s feature story on how hair is represented in culture and religion. Kelissa was featured for her hair worn in Rastafarian tradition. Three women in total were featured in the article: a Sikh woman named Jessie Kaur Lehail who co-founded the Kaur Project, a storytelling site about the varied experiences of modern Sikh women like her, and Melissa Oaks, a Native American Mohawk who grew up on the Akwesasne Mohawk Territory and is an activist and organizer, as well as a teacher of Native American art and design.

Are Your Wheels Turning?

This is what happens when you subscribe to magazines and study them for their style, vibe and content choices. The more you read them, the more you'll know how your brand might fit into a story. Thumbing through the magazine is a great way to think outside of the box, and think of clever angles or reasons to feature you or your business, that you normally wouldn't have thought of.

This is what we love about looking through Tin Shingle's Editorial Calendars. It forces us to think outside of the box, and form an idea around a theme. It means you are "cold-pitching" an idea, and not waiting around to hear something more specific that already has a line of pitches in for it. Tin Shingle helps you do this each month during our "PR Planning for This Month" Training TuneUp webinar. Subscribe to our newsletter to get alerts of when these are, and turn on a Level 3 Online Classes Membership to stream any of the webinars you missed or want to hear again.

What's Next At Allure?

Here's a sneak peek of Allure's Editorial Calendar in Tin Shingle's Members-Only Database. When you're a Level 4 Member of Tin Shingle, you can see our entire collection. Knowing the general theme of a magazine will help your wheels turn about the type of pitch you could send in to the right editor.

Speaking of such contacts, Tin Shingle keeps an exclusive list of editors, writers and producers in our members-only Media Contact database. We also knew they were working on this Hair Guide because we have their Editorial Calendar in our members-only database as well. We focused on it during our webinar TuneUp, “PR Planning: January” where we highlight ideas 💡 that the print media is working on, since their editorial cycle is 3-6 months in advance.

Media Contacts & Editorial Calendars Through Membership With Tin Shingle

Become an All Access Level 4 Member today for access! And improve your chances for getting featured in magazines! Tin Shingle is your DIY PR BFF.