Please note: this offer is quantity limited.

Today’s holiday trivia: Today’s holiday trivia: Every January in Benin, preparations begin for the celebration on the 10th of the Fête du Vodoun. Ouidah, a small village and former slave port, is the center of the largest celebration, which brings priests and revelries from all corners of the world, particularly France and other former colonies. The festival is not for the feint of heart—the throats of sacrificial animals are ripped out by priests with their teeth and some attendees in a frenzy cut themselves with knives and pour local gin on the wounds—but Zangbeto masquerades, live music, emotional dance performances, and free-flowing local gin are accessible to visitors.

We promised it was on its way, and here it finally is!

If there’s an event you’ve already go your eye on, scroll down and grab it before it fills up. We’ve also got two brand new events available for registration through this deal that haven’t yet opened to the public, the first chance to register for our fall TravelContentCon.

It’s been just over a year since we first started these events, and I’ve seen simply incredible results from our attendees, from landing national cover stories to racking up thousands of dollars of recurring travel content marketing work in just a couple months.

All of our weekend events include:

  • 6 to 9 lecture, workshop, and discussion modules
  • At least two private coaching sessions with Gabi during the weekend to polish your portfolio, pitches, and proposals and plan for your travel writing success after the retreat ($250 value)
  • A private room with writing desk and the opportunity to stay on at the retreat center the following week as many days as you’d like to continue working on your pitches in a focused writing space ($150 value)
  • The opportunity to stay at the retreat house for an as many day the week before or after the retreat as you’d like ($150 value)
  • Wholesome, organic meals, beverages and snacks throughout the retreat ($100 value)
  • A print copy of The Six-Figure Travel Writing Road Map…plus you’ll skip the shipping. We’ve already paid that for you ($25 value)

The retreat location is accessible via public transit from New York City’s Port Authority Bus Terminal or by car (1.5 hours from New York City).

Today is your chance to sign up for any of our upcoming weekend retreats at a price even lower than our early-bird specials: $349.

This is the absolute lowest we can run any of our retreats at, and we’re doing so by offering these retreats will out additional access to our coaching lite program following the retreat.

If you’re interested in joining the coaching program, you will have the chance to do so after the event you’ve attended at the normal coaching lite pricing, even if coaching isn’t open for public registration at the time.

Through this offer, you can grab a spot in the following events:

IdeaFest: Friday, March 16, to Sunday, March 18, 2018

Whether you’re brand new to freelance writing, have a blogging background, or are coming to travel writing from another type of freelance writing, this weekend workshop is designed to make sure that you never run out of the travel writers’ most important currency: article ideas that are laser focused and a perfect fit for the magazine you’re pitching.

As you learn how to become an idea machine and walk away with 100 ideas matched to magazines, we’ll discuss how to find and formulate ideas whether you’re on the road or cooped up at home with nothing to inspire you but the internet, and you’ll see how to take any one kernel of an idea and reshape and slant it for dozens of magazines.

Read more about what the event includes and the full schedule here.

Pitchapalooza: Friday, April 13, to Sunday, April 15, 2018

Pitching is the single best way to up your portfolio and income; get all of your questions answer and 25 ideas workshopped into polished pitches. If you know you can write and get good feedback from the editors you’re already working with but are having trouble moving up to bigger and better markets and stories, this event is for you.

Read more about what the event includes and the full schedule here.

NEW EVENT! Building a Blog Business: Friday, August 17, to Sunday, August 19, 2018

There has been a lot of talk in recent years in various online programs and industry conferences about exactly how to make money with a travel blog.

By an large, people are fed up with advice that doesn’t work and blogs that don’t provide them any return.

If you are serious about turning your blog into an actual business—a.k.a. something that creates money for you every day, without your needing to keep the wheels running with income from freelance writing and other paid-on-receipt services, this event will show you how.

I’ve been writing about how to create a business only for going on four years now, and in my own time as a freelancer have worked for so many blog businesses over the year run by people who bought blogs, started and built up blogs on their own and then tried to turn it into a money-making venture, or started a blog in advance of launching their product to build momentum.

I also know so many small business owners with blog based businesses from my own small-business-owner circles that I constantly compare notes with at the top conferences for blog-based businesses every year (which uniformly cost upwards of $1,000 to attend—and that’s not including accommodation!)

I have seen a lot of successes, but also a lot of failures.

So, like our exercise-heavy TravelContentCon, we’re launching a new event that will distill all of the steps that you need to follow to get your blog acting like a business and making you money while you sleep.

NEW EVENT! Travel Writing Business Mastermind Retreat: Friday, June 22, to Saturday, June 24, 2018

**Please note: this event is free for members of our coaching program as part of our summer retreat week for coaching program members, so if you are already a member of the coaching program, please do not sign up for this event through this offer! That also means that if you sign up for an event that precedes this and join the coaching program as a result, you’ll also eligible to attend for free.**

This very special event will take a deep dive on how you run the business portion of your freelance travel life in a higher-level approach to our programs like IdeaFest and Pitchapalooza, which focus singularly on an individual part of the marketing process, or TravelContentCon, which firmly divides the freelance pie between editorial and content marketing writing.

Expanding on the work that we go through in our afternoon Freelance Travel Writing Master Class events (you can check out the schedule and content of one of those here), we will dedicate this weekend to a deep planning and reflection process for your business, similar to our year-end review followed by a pen-to-paper planning process to sketch out exactly which steps you will take when to get your business where you want it to be, from:

  • negotiating raises or additional work from on-going clients
  • systematically pitching both editorial and content marketing work to create long-term relationships with the most minimal marketing involvement
  • leveling up from “plateau” markets you’ve gotten stuck writing for in which your skills are increasing but there’s no way for the pay and opportunities to follow suit

This event is specifically for freelance travel writers who:

  • are currently freelancing full-time (even if it’s not 100% travel)
  • are actively freelancing part-time and planning to transition to full-time this year

Don’t worry how much you are or aren’t making—the important thing to apply the work from this event is that freelance is or will soon be your primary income source.

TravelContentCon: Friday, August 24 – Sunday, August 26

Last year’s TravelContentCon attendees killed it pumping out pitches after this event last August. If you’ve been telling yourself it’s time to:

  • double down on your recurring income
  • transition from one-off or non-contract blogging work to more stable relationships
  • figure out what travel content marketing looks like for you and how to get a piece of the pie

…this event—built entirely on action and start-to-finish travel content marketing planning for what will work best for you personally—is for you.

Read more details here on the page for our January event. The August event will follow the same content plan and schedule as the one coming up this weekend.

Delivery: After paying here, send your receipt to questions@dreamoftravelwriting.com with the name of the retreat you would like to attend. Then you’re all set!

You don’t need to confirm your flight dates with us before booking; you’re welcome to arrive any time the week before the event and leave any time the week after.

We keep those weeks open for attendees who want to front-load work before the event and bang out some deadlines so their decks are clear for new endeavors and those who want to take advantage of the thousands of magazines in our physical library—the progenitor of the Travel Magazine Database.

A bit more than a week before the event, you’ll receive a questionnaire about your arrival time and food preferences , then another the week of the event with reminders on what to pack and the weekend schedule.

Please note: like all of our holiday offers, this offer is non-refundable and not combinable with another product. If you are unable to attend for unforeseen reasons, you can transfer your ticket to another individual, but we are unable to facilitate that connection for you.

This offer has ended. Thank you!

Please check the 12 Days of Christmas page for the new daily offer, or add your email address below to get the day’s offer in your inbox each day when it opens.