All Posts in Category: Running Your Writing Business
Join Us This Week for Free Travel Writing Lessons on Managing Your Freelance Writing Finances and Mapping Out Your Travel Writing 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.
12 Days of Holiday Specials Day 10: Ten-Part Physical and Digital Jump-Start Kit to Get Your Travel Writing Business Off the Ground in 2019
Today’s holiday trivia: January 4 marks a major festival in the Ryukyuan religion, a formal of Shintoism practiced in the islands between Japan and Taiwan, particularly Okinawa. The hinukan, a hearth god that guards the sacred family fire, returns to the family after returning to its own home for several weeks and is welcomed with offerings of rice and local alcohol.
For today’s offer, we’re combining two holiday offers we’ve extended for Thanksgiving and the holiday season in the past with more goodies, including some brand new bonus digital content.
All told, we’ve got ten things for you (well, some have multiple parts, so it’s actually even more :)) today, including some that you’ll receive right away digitally, and some we will ship to you–including something special that we will hand-pick based on your writing interests.
12 Days of Holiday Specials Day 8: Eight Classes to Learn How to Get Your Name on a Published Book in the New Year
Today’s holiday trivia: Celebrated from January 2 to 7, the Blacks and Whites’ Carnival is the largest carnival celebration in South Colombia, attracting a considerable number of Colombian and foreign tourists. The modern carnival is based on the need to express imagination, play, friendship and sharing the joy that surrounds the Epiphany. January 2’s celebration includes Tribute to the Virgin of Mercy, the Colonies Parade, and Pastorock, an event for the development of alternative music.
Learn How to Track and Reach Your Freelance Travel Writing Goals for Just $5 This Week
At an event for business executives I attended earlier this year, the facilitator shared something that is a bit of a myth in the business world.
The short version is: in a room full of nearly 1,000 entrepreneurs, when asked how they track and check in daily with their goals, it turned out the that four wealthiest people in the room all carried a paper with their goals in their wallet on somewhere else on their person.
Let me say this again, because it bears repeating. In a room full of people who had successfully started their own businesses, the ones who made the most looked at their goals regularly.
The 37 Books I’ve Read This Year (Plus 13 I’m Still Working On)
One refrain that I’ve heard repeated over and over again in different industries (book publishing, magazine writing, business management) is the importance of “keeping your cup full” through reading.
The idea is that, if you feel like you are out of ideas or inspiration, or suffering from imposter syndrome or an actual knowledge gap between you and what you want to do, the answer is always reading.
Not the web, but actual books.
Warren Buffet famously keeps his entire schedule clear to read and think. Book editors and agents spend tons of their time outside of the office reading to keep their finger on the pulse of the industry. My friend Chris Guillebeau, a multiple New-York-Times-bestselling author himself, told me he usually reads about 50 books a year, primarily novels.
The One Place it Absolutely Makes Sense to Write for Free (Or Very Little)
Whenever the topic of writing for no or very little money comes up in conversation with a travel writer, the first thing I always do is ask why they want to do that.
You might be surprised.
I hear a startling number of people, even those who have already been writing for no compensation on their own websites for years, tell me that they don’t think that they are in a position to get paid more.
They aren’t saying that those rates aren’t out there–but rather that they don’t personally deserve them.
Our Newest Freelance Travel Writing Business Workshop Arrives in Portland This Week! – Join Us This Thursday Evening
Every spring and fall, when I travel around the work to attend conferences on travel writing, travel blogging, narrative non-fiction writing, freelance business, and the tourism industry, I make a point to bring our signature workshops to as many cities as I can fit in.
I attend about 40 conferences, summits, workshops, masterminds, and trade shows each year to ensure I’m bringing the best, most relevant tips and tactics to my coaching program members and small-group retreat attendees.
More than a Dozen New Travel Writing Videos Available to Power Up Your Business!
We’ve done a huge upload of our webinar library, and you can now grab packages with audio, video, slide, and transcript versions of:
- The Difference Between the Photos You’re Shooting Now and What Magazines are Publishing – The photos you’re shooting for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and your blog won’t cut it for magazines.
- Creating a Shot List to Organize Your Trips Around Saleable Photography – This one technique will keep you from coming home without the photos you need to land photo contracts with your pieces.
- Plating, Staging, and Food Photography: Bringing Still Lifes to Life – You could pay $1,200 for a weekend food photography workshop, but here’s what you need to know to get started.
- The Art of the Follow Up — The Simple Key to Dramatically More Assignments – Your guide to what might be the most valuable hour of your entire week.
- What Types of Articles Should You Be Writing? – Once you see each article idea in 10 different formats, you’ll never hurt for pitch ideas.
- Mastering Style at a Sentence by Sentence Level – Your pitches will be the only clip you need when the quality of your writing shines through.
- Story Structure to Take Your Feature Travel Articles to the Next Level – Narrative writing can be terrifying. Once you learn the underlying structure though, it’s smooth-sailing.
- Annual Review Part 1: What is Standing Between You and Your Travel Writing Goals – The most likely roadblocks between you and your travel writing goals–and how to tackle them.
- Annual Review Part 2: How to Clearly Catalog the Work and Opportunities You Have Now – To know where your travel writing business needs to go, you need to be honest about where it is now…in numbers.
- Annual Review Part 3: Taking Stock of the Past Year to SWOT Yourself Into Shape – Align your freelance business with the marketplace and the best place in it for you.
- Annual Review Part 4: Getting Crystal Clear on What You’ll Accomplish in the Next Year – Rather than goals–an all-or-nothing approach to what you’ll do next year–focus your year with this method.
- Annual Review Part 5: Mapping Out Your Step-by-Step Plan for 2018 Success – Follow along with your year-long work plan as we workshop three attendees’ live.
- Article Nuts and Bolts: Putting Together a News Brief – Learn the core of how all front-of-book magazine pieces are constructed.
- Article Nuts and Bolts: Putting Together a Front-of-Book Round-Up – Hone in on the easy-to-write (and pitch!) staple: the front-of-book round-up.
- Article Nuts and Bolts: Putting Together a Trend Piece – An in-depth look at the staple of magazines front-of-book and feature sections everywhere: the trend piece.
- Article Nuts and Bolts: Putting Together a Business Profile – An in-depth look the type of article that should be the bread and butter of your freelance travel writing toolkit.
Feeling Stressed? This Might Secretly Be the Answer
Uncertainty causes stress.
I didn’t pull data on this, because I think it’s something we can all agree on anecdotally. Viscerally in fact.
It’s Tax Season. Are Your Freelance Travel Writing Finances Ready?
Have you done your taxes yet? If so, bravo!
Every winter, in fact before the holidays, I tell myself that I’m going to get my taxes in early so that I can get my tax refund as soon as possible. I like to think of it as a freelancer end-of-year bonus.
If you work for yourself, that might sound a bit surprising, right? That I’m looking out for my refund (a.k.a. money back) rather than dreading how much I’m going to own.
And I hear that from freelance travel writers often.
In fact, I have been getting *a lot* of questions about tax preparation this year, both from my coaching clients and from folks that have come to the Catskills to join us for a writing retreat.