When I first started helping travel writers finally reach their goals and dramatically grow their income, I saw, straight away, that the single, simple, easy answer to how to get from where each writer was to where they wanted to be was simple: pitch.

So I worked up live and online programs, workshops, and webinars to combat this great “evil,” the fear of pitching.

But, of the course of that work with writers, I found that while they were telling me their pitches were the problem, the responses they were getting from editors were telling them (and me!) that their ideas were really the problem.

That’s why, based on our live IdeaFest retreat, our new four-week program is designed to provide a serious and lasting foundation to turn you into an idea machine, turning up dozens of article ideas every day. And I’ve already seen the transformation happening daily with the writers beta-testing the program this past month, who regularly share exclamations like:

“The tips were really useful! I managed to double my article ideas for the magazines I identified!”

“Done! Love this exercise. Makes it visually accessible to see all the ideas for one place, along with the magazines and the sections to pitch.”

“This was a super useful exercise!”

“This actually helped me discover sections of magazines I might not have looked at otherwise.”

“As I started this exercise I really didn’t like it too much, but did finally break past a little barrier and thought of some good stuff!”

“Woo-hoo! I managed to find ideas around all nine articles types from the one concept. “

“This was fun! Each trip has so many aspects to share!”

“This was a really great exercise for me, and it helped me realize that even small things from an experience can lead to an entire article.”

For the home program, we’ve spread the same material we cover in our live, weekend IdeaFest retreat out over four weeks with one email lesson each day (rather than me talking five lessons straight for an hour and a half for each!):

  • Week 1: Getting crystal clear on the three sides of the idea triangle–the conceptualizing approach that will insure you never have an idea that an editor doesn’t think fits her magazine again.
  • Week 2: The magazine-first approach to pitching in practice–learning how to let magazines give you dozens of ideas of what to pitch them, and getting comfortable enough with the magazine landscape that you never have to wonder what kind of magazine would be interested in a certain story again.
  • Week 3: Final checks and the spin cycle–the methods to not only ensure your ideas don’t bong with the magazines your pitching, but the see how those “outside the scope” concepts actually become dozens of new pitch ideas for other magazines.
  • Week 4: Pitching specialized articles–digging into the dreaded (or highly anticipated!) feature, essay, and long-form markets and learning to formulate ideas that cover thousands of words as well as thousands of miles or years while expressing everything in the succinct format of an idea that can be proven to sell.

Because I’ve seen such dramatic strides in the writers going through the beta, I wanted to make this program available to you whenever you need it, so we’re offering an on-demand version.

Here’s how it works:

  • sign up whenever you want (though there’s a big advantage if you sign up now, as the writers who have done the beta round are still hanging out in the forums and can chime in on your assignments!) and work through the lessons as they suit you
  • there’s a new lesson available each day–though you’re welcome to progress through more slowly if that pace doesn’t work with where you are right now–and you can turn off the daily email of the lesson whenever you want and still have access to all of the assignments in the online system
  • you’ve got examples from me and fellow participants, along with plentiful worksheets, to paint the way through how to work through all of the daily exercises
  • each lesson comes with an exercise guaranteed to cement the difficult skill-building going on in this course that will turn you into to one of those writers you always admired who seem to just “get it”

Sign up here.

Don’t forget, you can sign up at any time, but you won’t always have others going through at the same time as you, so now is a great time to get in a grab a support group.

And–you’ll also get access to the Travel Magazine Database throughout the four-week program.

Join here!