All Posts in Category: Pitching Writing Clients
Are You Afraid to Pitch Because You Don’t Know What to Do Once a Travel Article Assignment?
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
We don’t actually talk about the writing part of travel writing much on this site.
And it’s not exactly because there are tons of other sites out there talking about to actually write publishable articles for travel magazines.
How Most People Get it Wrong with Cover Letters for Online Ads and Letters of Introduction for Travel Trade Magazines
Writing an LOI for a travel trade magazine bears a lit of resemblance to writing a cover letter for a job application (or, more accurately, the email you send when you respond to an ad for a writing gig).
But, there’s one unfortunate thing about how most people approach both of those forms of communication.
The “prevailing wisdom” is that this email is meant to be a sort of summary of your resume, highlighting relevant skills or experience so that the hiring manager can decide if they should even bother to read your resume.
And when it comes to applying for job-jobs, I often find perfectly, if not highly, qualified applicants don’t get past this step.
How to Break into Travel Trade Magazines for Recurring Work Opportunities
We talk a lot here at Dream of Travel Writing about how you need to set up solid streams of recurring income to make it in this profession.
Checks from big glossy magazines can take years (seriously) to come. And spending hours putting together a pitch, working out the details, and nailing a publication’s style for one single assignment from a magazine is simply not worth your time.
This Week’s Free Freelance Travel Writing Class: Answers to Your Most Common Pitch Questions
When I am reviewing the magazine breakdowns our writers put together for the Travel Magazine Database, I’m always blow away by just how many opportunities there are out there to get published.
How to Put Together a Pitch Portfolio to Support a Big Trip
Pitching is pitching is pitching.
If you know how to pitch, you can get magazine assignments, secure spots on press trips and land gigs writing blogs for company whether you’re battling the hordes flocking to respond to an online job ad or blazing a trail and cold emailing a tour company owner you’ve never met who isn’t technically in the market for a writer.
Right?
If you can nail one you can nail them all?
Have You Ever Tried to Pitch a Travel Article Idea in Person?
A few years back, I went to one of the major writing conferences in the U.S.—more for writing books that journalism or blogging—and it included the opportunity to share a table with dozens of literary agents for three minutes each and directly pitch them your book in hopes that they would like it and offer to represent you and help you get a book deal.
You only got 90 seconds to present your case though. The rest of them time was for them to respond or ask questions.
How Long Does it Take You to Write a Pitch? But How Fast Do You Type?
How long does it take you to write a pitch letter?
An article?
A blog post?
An email?
I bet that number has very little correlation to the number of words you can actually produce.
The Only Thing Worse Than Pitching a Travel Article and Never Hearing Back
I recently talked about how some of the incredibly talented writers in our At-Home Pitchapalooza Program are having trouble coming up with ideas for feature pitches, because they’re afraid of writing feature articles.
And I totally understand this.
But today, I want to let you in on a little secret.
There is something much, much worse than pitching an idea to a magazine and not hearing back.
How to Hone Your Article Ideas to Perfectly Fit Each Publication
Last week, we walked through trip itineraries and dissected the different article formats and audience slants that would work for each. But I’ve always found, especially with writers new to pitching magazines, that this process of thinking, on your own, what can fit into a magazine is potentially very destructive.
You run the risk of getting addicted to an article idea that simply doesn’t or wouldn’t fit into a magazine that will pay you for your words.
Announcing: At-Home Pitchapalooza Coming to Your Inbox This January
I want you to take your freelance travel writing to the next level next year. How can we do that?
I don’t know about you, but I suck at taking online courses.
Invariably, I sign up for them, I’m very excited, and then I just don’t make time to log in.
Or I do, and then I’m disappointed because the course is (without advance notice) only available in video that you have to watch live on the site one at a time with no transcripts or slides or worksheets to do offline, and that simply doesn’t work with my sporadic nomadic email access.