All Posts Tagged: Business Skills
Why Interviews Are Secretly the Answer to Everything You’re Struggling with in Your Travel Writing
No matter what the question is, there is a recurring refrain that I hear from freelance travel writers struggling to earn their desired income.
Whether the question is:
- how often are you sending pitches?
- why aren’t you sending more pitches?
- how long does it take you to write a pitch?
- what is keeping you income low if you already have a full load of clients they have?
- what is keeping you from writing for bigger and better outlets
It always comes back to time.
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 Build Serious Business Partnerships at Travel Conferences
I’m so excited to share this with you.
Since I heard it, I have woven it into every workshop I’ve done and conference talk I’ve given.
How to Get a Spot on a Group Fam or Press Trip
“Journalists with confirmed assignments are invited to a Montreal weekend media trip this July 1 supported by the Marriott Chateau Champlain and partners, including Media Kitty!
In 2017, Montréal will turn 375 years old. The city’s major milestone year offers everyone a one-of-a-kind opportunity to celebrate its wealth of history and culture as well as its rich heritage, its people, its iconic places and its neighbourhoods. This will be the trip theme.
A complete agenda is being built. Early expressions of interest appreciated. Given the volume of expected replies, we will be back to those short-listed. Merci!”
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.
Pricing, Negotiating and Contracts (for Travel Content Marketing and Magazine Writing)
I am so pleased to share that a lot of the folks that have been following the travel content marketing webinars are already getting responses to their pitches, setting up calls, and sending proposals:
“I just wanted to let you know that I have a phone call set up later this week with a tour company in Tokyo who have approached me about writing for their company blog. Thanks to your webinars over the last month, I feel like I have so much more knowledge going into the call. So I just wanted to say thank you for all your advice! Fingers crossed it all works out!”
“Listening to your webinars it has encouraged me to seek out social marketing jobs. I have landed 1, have a conference call with another and emails into 6 others.”
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 Locate the People Who Need Your Travel Content Marketing Writing
Last week, we looking at how very many opportunities there are for travel content marketing writing. Truly.
There are so many different types of travel content marketing writing you can pursue, and there’s space in the market for you to specialize in any one of them and build a sustainable six-figure income with just a handful of steady clients:
- Email newsletters
- Blog posts
- Social media posts
- Case studies
- White papers
- Sales copy
- Product descriptions
- Sales sheets
- Event books
- Custom magazines
- Brochures
- and more
But the more pressing issue is where to find those clients, and, more importantly, how to make sure you’re don’t spend a ton of time researching a prospective client only to find they could never afford you.
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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.
Annual Freelance Travel Writing Review Part 1: Getting Real About Facts and Figures
Before we can do the very important and difficult work of planning the steps you need to take to reach your big, beautiful, well-paid travel writing goals next year, we need to know where you are now and how you got there.