So you’re ready to write comedy AND
make money at it? You’ve got your joke writing samples, some ideas for who to write comedy for, but where do you actually find people who will pay for jokes! Here’s some ideas.. .
First off. . the internet. OBVIOUSLY you need to have a
website. . .I get many, many hits on my www.Joke-Writer.com website. I’ve got my writing samples up there, a few quotes from happy clients (don’t forget to get those!), a little bit about me, resources – namely my humor writing book “Finding the Funny Fast – How to Create Quick Humor to Connect with Clients, Coworkers and Crowds,” and my joke writing “rules” if someone wants to hire me. I have all of this optimized for search engines and it seems to work. You can also do a blog, such as what I’m doing now, so you can show people that you actually write jokes. And of course Facebook and all the others social media things . .. do as much as you can. Most of my joke writing inquiries now come to me because of these activities. But it wasn’t always like that. Here’s other things I’ve done to get joke-writing clients.
comedy and travel go hand in hand
I mentioned that you should write for speakers. A few ways I’ve reached these people are:
1. the National Speakers Association (NSA). Many speakers, including up and coming speakers, join this association so they can get better at speaking. There are also have NSA state chapters. I once contacted each state chapter to find out if they sold their mailing list and/took ads in their local magazine. Many, not all, did one or both, so I spent a little $ and put ads in newsletters and got some great results. Check out the national group and the state chapter by googling them.
2. I’ve also watched speakers at conferences and then
contacted them later to introduce myself and ask if they’d like some jokes. Be careful that you don’t imply that their speech isn’t funny already. I had the luxury of already being booked at the conference, so I could just look on the agenda and see who else is speaking. . . you may have to google some conferences or associations and do a little research into who is the keynote speaker, and then google them and introduce yourself. If you start with a catchy subject line, and have a link to your website, then you’ll probably grab their attention.
