Want to Hit the Ground Running with Travel Content Marketing? Check Out Our New Series on Perfecting Your Cold Pitches
Sales. Ugh, right?
I know. I know. Everyone hates it.
Especially writers.
The problem though with that situation though, is that sales, according to the Oxford Dictionary, means:
the exchange of a commodity for money; the action of selling something.
So, if we want to have a writing business, or any kind of freelance business (the practice of making one’s living by engaging in commerce–again via Oxford), we’ve got to exchange some things for money.
For most writers, the question then becomes:
How can I get money without having to do the icky sales exchange bit?!
How to Pitch Five Magazines Looking For Celebrity Interviews (Edition IV)
Welcome to the Friday Freebie Five, a new weekly feature on Dream of Travel Writing’s Six-Figure Travel Writer blog.
Each week, we comb our Travel Magazine Database to bring you five magazine sections open to freelancers around a theme–front-of-book trend pieces, long-form first-person features, short narrative postcards–to inspire your pitches.
Condé Nast Traveler
“The Globetrotter” is a celebrity profile written in a Q&A style. The piece runs from 750 to 1,000 words and focuses on the celebrity’s travels. There are about 15 questions which change with each issue but some are frequently seen including: “where you have just come back from?” “where in the world have you felt happiest?” and “name a place that lived up to the hype.” Actresses Chloë Sevigny and Rosamund Pike were recently profiled for this section.
Are Travel Writers Really Magicians?
As I’ve been designing our new Travel Writers Detox + Reset retreat, I’ve been thinking about the topic of burnout.
The other side of this Janus coin is often thought to be balance, and I’ve seen a number of newsletters from freelancers and other online business owners recently concerning their struggles with this topic. Maybe it’s September sneaking up on us and reminding us that we’re now one an accelerating train headed for the holidays.
I’ve often seen, whether in my own life, something I’ve read, or conversations with others, that the opposite of burnout is something more akin to revitalization–rekindling your love for either what you’re already doing or something else entirely that is what really lights you up.
“What is story selling and how can I use it to pitch clients?”
We’ve got a new book out, 101 Things You Need to Know to Make it as a Travel Writer, that answers 101 questions that we hear from travel writers all the time that are holding them back from achieving their Dream of Travel Writing. To celebrate the new book, we’ll be tackling a new sticky travel-writing situation each Monday here on The Six-Figure Travel Writer blog.
“What is story selling and how can I use it to pitch clients?”
Story selling is this really neat thing where you use some very age-old techniques of how to create a beginning, middle and end of a story around the issue that you see that an organization is facing but you paint yourself as an integral part of that story. With story selling, you show the prospect that the golden land on the other side isn’t possible without your help.
Join Us This Week For Free Travel Writing Lessons on Building Relationships with Editors and Charting a Course for Success
In the two years since we began running regular one-hour travel writing classes, we’ve covered more than 80 topics, including:
- how to land free trips
- how to get paid really, really well for your writing
- how to get on magazine editors’ good sides
- how to navigate every step of the process to land travel content marketing work, including phone calls and proposals
- how to keep your hourly rate down so your bank account goes up
- how to get work done on the road
- how to write, step-by-step, 15 different types of travel articles
- how to land guidebook and other traditional publishing deals
You can grab access to all of our past webinars (and a ton of other resources you can’t find anywhere else) with a subscription to our Dream Buffet or grab them one-by-one when you need them in our On-Demand Webinar Library for a set with the video, audio, transcript, and slides.
But we also air a free replay of one of our travel writing classes each and every weekday.
How to Pitch Five Magazines Looking for Profiles of Interesting People (Edition III)
Welcome to the Friday Freebie Five, a new weekly feature on Dream of Travel Writing’s Six Figure Travel Writer blog.
Each week, we comb our Travel Magazine Database to bring you five magazine sections open to freelancers around a theme–front-of-book trend pieces, long-form first-person features, short narrative postcards–to inspire your pitches.
Outside
“The Outsider” takes the form of a profile covering an adventurer, athlete, or someone related to the outdoors, wildlife, or the environment in some way. The piece runs from 800 to 1,200 words long and covers who the person is, their work, what their upcoming projects are, and any interesting or humorous anecdotes about their career and life. Articles are written in third person and include quotes throughout the piece. Sometimes, these are written in the style of a third-person introduction followed by a collection of quotes from the person being profiled and sometimes the quotes are interwoven throughout the article. Examples include “Why the World Needs Barry Lopez,” profiling the author and his new book Horizon, “The Warrior Mentality,” about special forces veteran David Goggins and his new memoir, and “The Human Experiment,” a profile of author and personal trainer, Ben Greenfield, on the extreme things he does in the name of fitness.
All the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) About Our Travel Writing Retreats
This frequently asked question (FAQ) page on our travel writing retreats is designed to address every question we receive from people looking to understand if one of our tour- or lesson-focused travel writing events is right for them.
Our writing retreats are a little bit out of the ordinary–we know!
We often field questions over email from folks looking to attend our events, and if there’s anything I’ve learned in the dozens of weekend- and week-long retreats we’ve run at our retreat house and the dozens and dozens more I’ve led around the globe since we started Dream of Travel Writing, it’s that when one person asks a question, there’s always other people who have the same question and haven’t voice it yet.
Why We Host Our Travel Writing Retreats in New York’s Catskill Mountains (And We Couldn’t Make Them the Same Anywhere Else!)
I spent this morning ripping apart rose-fleshed plums.
For the first few, I’d place them delicately, just so in the waiting glass jar—already studied with an intoxicating Saigon cinnamon stick. After ten minutes passed, and another ten, and then another, I realized I was going to run out of jars, so I started smooshing them in, the magenta juice bursting out to fill the crevices between plum halves.
On the stove, a syrup of local wildflower honey simmered. I added a little molasses-colored buckwheat honey for extra depth of flavor.
Announcing Our Fall and Winter Travel Writing Retreat Schedule!
Once again, I want to thank everyone who contributed their thoughts on our upcoming event schedule and designing our new Travel Writers’ Detox + Reset event.
We’ve opened up early-bird pricing for all of our retreats in next week’s newsletter, with limited $150-off spots in each event open on a first-registered, first-served basis.
Daily Free Travel Writing Webinars for September
You can now stream all of our past webinars–one each weekday–for free.
These webinars are only available at the times listed, live, but you can catch the replay in video, audio, and transcript form, along with the webinar slides, at any time in our on-demand webinar library.
Check out the full schedule of September’s webinars and register for your favorites below.