If you are new to travel writing, I bet there’s one thing that you feel would demarcate your successful entry into this world: scoring a spot on a free press trip.

If this is one of your goals right now, I’ve got great news for you:

Setting up free trips as a travel writer is dead simple.

That’s actually why we don’t write about it so much on our blog! Earning money from these trips is much harder–but don’t worry, we discuss that in-depth too throughout these webinars.

The fact of the matter is that most experienced travel writers either:

  • don’t take a lot of press trips or accept sponsored travel for ethical, legal (for certain publications its a contract violation), or simple logistical reasons (many just don’t have the time to devote that the organized press trips require because they’re too busy writing!)
  • prefer to work directly with tourism boards and venues to engage only in highly-individualized itineraries to ensure their travel time is used to the most advantage . . . leaving spots in regular, organized trips for you

Though the winter and early spring months don’t seem like the best time to travel, this is actually when you’ll find yourself with the most opportunities to snag and attend trips because:

  • destinations don’t have tons of visitors at this time, so it’s easier for venues to host you, because they aren’t taking away from paid bookings
  • in order for stories to hit in time for paying leisure travelers to plan their trips, you need to visit, write up, and publish your stories four to six months in advance of the main vacation season
  • the early months of the year are prime time for expos–from regional events like The New York Times Travel Show and the Seattle Golf and Travel Show to major international events like ITB Berlin–which are some of the easiest and best places to set up free trips for yourself (I’ve long planned my entire year just from the connections at ITB each spring)
  • press trips are readily available for all attendees (or, if not all, then those who ace an easy application process) through the many travel writing conferences that take place in the spring

How to spend your $100 coupon

After a long break, we are officially reopening Dream of Travel Writing with a very special Open House.

As a thank you for being part of our community, we’re offering a special coupon exclusively for our Flourishing Newsletter subscribers. You can take $100 off any personally-selected set of classes in our store.

If you’re not already a subscriber, simply add your name in the form below to receive your unique coupon code.

Your $100 off coupon can only be used for a limited time, so don’t miss out!

Here are some classes specifically about setting up sponsored and press trips that might get you traction with what you’re struggling with right now:

  1. Setting Up Sponsored Trips 101: Getting on a sponsored trip is the holy grail of travel writing, right? Living a life in which you effortlessly hop from one free trip to another, spending your days enjoying haute cuisine and your nights in the fluffy king bed of your complimentary suite? Here we discuss the basic tenets of free travel as a travel writer, from ethics to minimum barrier of entry to the different types of trips, and their various pros and cons.
  2. What to Expect on Press Trips: The first in our new series of webinars looking at the pre-, during, and post- aspects of press trips so you can get the most of any sponsored travel you have coming up this summer or are planning down the line, this webinar begins with the full gamut of with what you can realistically expect from your press trips–the good and the bad.
  3. How to Prepare for Your Press Trips: In this webinar, we look more about the story side of pre-trip preparation, including how to break your trip into stories, what is safe to pitch based on a limited itinerary or destination you’re not familiar with, and how to handle the catch-22 of pitching when you haven’t yet been accepted on a trip.
  4. How to Get the Most (On the Ground) Out of Your Press Trips: In the previous webinar in this series, we looked at the planning aspect of this process–figuring out what stories you can possibly get from the destination and itinerary site unseen–but this time we focus on how to do it in the ground, where the best, most specific story ideas are found.
  5. How To Set Up An Individual Trip From Scratch: In this section we’re going to dive head first into how exactly to plan your own individual sponsored trips that fits your interests, travel preferences, and schedule. Here we look at where to find these trips and best practices for applying. I pull real press trips, read between the lines, and break down exactly what you would do in each situation of your application.
  6. Getting A Spot On A Group Fam Or Press Trip: In this webinar on Getting a Spot on a Group Fam of Press Trip, in our series on getting free travel as a travel writer, we’ll look at where to find these trips and best practices for applying, and then I’ll pull real press trips, read between the lines, and break down exactly what you would do in each situation in your application.
  7. Putting Together A Pitch Portfolio To Support A Big Trip: Here we walk through several press trip itineraries to show who and what to pitch to set up a varied portfolio of coverage for each trip. We discuss five techniques you can use to ensure an impressive pitch portfolio to accompany any press trip request, and how to handle this process whether you’ve never been published and have no connections or have editors that you work with already but perhaps want to branch out to a new subject or geographic area.

What other cool free stuff can you get during out open house?

Our Open House is a special event where you’ll get an exclusive look at the exciting changes coming to Dream of Travel Writing.

In addition to taking $100 off in our store, you can join free classes to learn

You’ll also have a chance to peek into our VIP (Very Insightful Professionals) Group Coaching Program!
In these calls, you’ll experience a preview of our intimate group coaching sessions, where you’ll be coached specifically with our HOW method and feel what a difference it makes on a problem you’re facing right now. Learn more about how to join soon.

We can’t wait to share what we’ve been working on.

Delivery details:

  • In the webinar shop, add any of the classes to your cart and enter the code you received in your inbox
  • The classes will be available immediately in your user profile on webinar.dreamoftravelwriting.com, and you will also receive an email for each class with the links to the downloadable audio, video, and transcript files.

Important general notes on our Open House Specials:

  • The coupon expires September 30, so make sure you pick out your classes before then. And the coupon will only work for classes, not any of our live programs
  • if you have more items than the value of the coupon, you can just pay the difference on the site.