All Posts Tagged: marketing
Travel Writing Wake-up Call: Do You Want to Tell Stories or Get Published?
In the last three weeks, I’ve had a number of conversations with people that turned me onto a truth about travel writing than many people come across after a long period of working on their business (if at all) and often in uncomfortable ways.
There is an initial joyous moment I love to spot in the careers of many travel writers (freelance journalists generally). It happens when someone–for the first time ever–had an idea entirely on their own for an article, and an editor tells the writer she’ll pay for it.
Join Us This Week for Free Travel Writing Lessons on Marketing Your Non-Fiction Book and Successful Travel Writers’ Secrets
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.
How Exactly to Move from Trip Memories and Notes to Completed Travel Article Pitches
To be honest, I’m a bit scared to do this series.
For our next round of live travel writing classes, we will offer a (probably shocking to many of you) window on how pitching takes place for an established writer in the most minimal time with the least possible fuss as we walk from initial trip notes all the way to polished pitches leaving my inbox right before your eyes.
To make sure you can see and ask questions about my decision-making at every phase, I will walk through each step of the process completely live with no prep work outside of our calls (or cheating, as I would call it!) to pretty things up or do more digging into an idea.
Our On-Demand Coaching Concierge Now Has Answers to More than 300 of Your Top Travel Writing Questions!
Before there was Dream of Travel Writing or even The Six-Figure Travel Writing Road Map, there were questions.
I’ll never forget the time I was sitting in a room at the World Travel Market in London after one of the panels had finished up catching up on email, and a British gentleman came up and started chatting with my about what I did.
It was quite a few years ago, long before I ever even considered writing about freelancing, let alone coaching freelance business owners.
We were talking about what I did, and the conversation took a turn that it frequently did back then: a bit of puzzlement when I said that, yes, I was a blogger, but, no, I could not tell him what my blog was. I was a freelance blogger.
So I told him my mantra back then: “If I’m not getting paid, why would I write something?”
Are Freelancers Travel Writers Beginning to Lose Ground to Full-time Staff?
There’s a very interesting job listing making the rounds right now that some of you may have seen.
It clearly appears to be posted in error (at least the overly honest part), but I can’t say that it surprises me.
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 to Close the Deal with Your Phone Calls and Proposals
In the last three weeks of webinars on travel content marketing writing, we’re looked at:
- How to Earn Big with Travel Content Marketing Writing – We talk about the different opportunities for travel content marketing writing–from blog posts to content strategy to choosing and editing photos for Instagram–what kind of pay you can expect (and the low-paying types of work you should always avoid), and where to start looking for these opportunities.
- How to Locate the People Who Need Your Travel Content Marketing Writing – We continue looking at where the big money in travel writing is hiding this week in part two of our series on travel content marketing writing: how to identify the people you can approach for this type of work, whether companies or tourism boards.
- How to Craft a Travel Content Marketing Pitch that Gets Attention – In the third portion of our coverage on travel content marketing writing, I break down the steps of putting together your own pitch to send cold to companies and tourism boards you think would benefit from your services, including powerful statistics on content marketing ROI to include and just how much information to give away to keep your prospect interested without setting them up to go execute your plan without you.
Is That a Magazine Idea Cheat Sheet in Your Pocket or Are You Just Happy to See Me?
One of my favorite ways to ensure that every trip:
- results in assignments,
- results in assignments that I want to write, or, best of all
- results in assignments that I want to write that are achieved with minimal pitching effort
…is my pocket idea cheat sheet.
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.