I NEVER send a complete article to a magazine unless it is requested. I ALWAYS query first. And, back when I was doing a lot of magazine article writing, I often queried multiple magazines for the same article.

Yes, I know the “experts” tell you not to do simultaneous submissions — but that’s primarily because those “experts” almost invariably are stakeholders in the mag industry status quo. If you are lucky enough to have two editors ask for the same article, you have two choices: (1) tell one of them that you have had to withdraw the article and then suggest an alternative or (2) use your material to write two different articles on the same subject (but you will have the alter the thrust of the article in addition to the words).

However, I have been paid for many articles that required very little actual effort on my part. How? By excerpting material from my books, sometimes almost verbatim sometimes edited (for length or cohesiveness). You can get a lot of mileage from the material you’ve already written!