The Six-Figure Travel Writer

Today’s holiday trivia: Today begins the southern Colombian Blacks and Whites’ Carnival, which, unlike most carnival celebrations that mark the final day to indulge before the fasting period that precedes Easter, takes place from January 2 to 7 each year. This carnival was proclaimed a UNESCO of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity for its intricate traditions and interlacing of the private home into the street celebrations.

If you woke up today, the first workday of the new year, and thought to yourself or made yourself a promise somewhere along the lines of, “This year is going to be different. I am going to make sure that my travel writing takes off,” then this one is for you.

We talk a lot about how proactive pitching–cold, to editors you have no relationship with–is the way to make your travel writing career rise by leaps and bounds quickly.

And it’s never been more true.

Every time I visit magazine shops and bookstores that carry a substantial selection of magazines, I am shocked by how many new magazines I have never heard of…and I run a database of nearly 600 magazines looking for travel articles and regularly have 100+ more out with writers.

Ink Global, which publishes in-flight magazines for the majority of the world’s airlines, typically adds one or two new magazines to its client list each month–and pays freelance writers $1 per word.

Just before the holidays, one of the most well-known American regional lifestyle and travel magazines, Sunset, completely revamped its staff, which means brand new editors who have no allegiance per se to the magazine’s previous regular writers and openings for new writers to sneak in.

There are simply, numerically, and unequivocally more opportunities to get into print, and you are missing out if you are not getting out there and taking advantage of them.

Not with one pitch here or there once a month or less often. But with a serious pitch and follow up strategy that gives you the best return for your time spent.

So, today, we’ve put together a special package of 11 webinars that covers everything you need to get pitches out to magazines now, from:

• why working with magazines is one of the best uses of your travel writing time in the first place
• exactly which magazines are right for you
• how to pull ideas from past trips and find them on upcoming trips
• sure-fire ways to know if your idea is on fire or a dud
• how to ensure the perfect match between idea and market
• everything you need to know about trade magazines

We’ve also slashed 75% off the price you would normally pay to get all of these webinars in our library ($209 for all 11), where each comes in a set with:

• streamable high-def video
• smaller downloadable video
• streamable and downloadable audio file
• full transcript available to read on screen or as PDF download
• all webinar slides in PDF form
• any applicable worksheets

And, because we’re crazy (and we love you guys! and it’s the holidays), we’re also throwing in a free month of the Travel Magazine Database so you can really get pitching.

So today you can grab $229 worth of goodies for $54.

As part of this offer, you’ll receive:

1. Triple Your Income Writing for Magazines: For years naysayers have claimed that there is no money to be made in the magazine industry, the fact is that magazines still pay significantly better than websites–and there’s many more opportunities to write about travel for print magazines than you realize. Sleek, well-paying, new travel magazines are actually popping up every week. You just need to know where to find them.
   
2. The Magazine Landscape: Where All the Assignments Are Hiding: As we come up on a milestone of 300 magazines in the Travel Magazine Database, even I’m struck by how many fully-travel and travel-alleadjacent magazines are out there looking for content. In this webinar, we look at five types of magazines looking for travel content that you may be missing out on, and three ways to find more magazines that you’ve never heard of to pitch.
3. Don’t Create Ideas Out of Nowhere: How to Always Find Them When You Need Them: I’ve found the process of coming up with the right ideas is much more of an issue than actually writing the pitch. Once you’ve got the idea right, the rest comes much more easily. In this webinar, we work in detail through three different ways to generate ideas from magazines and three ways to come up with ideas “from thin air”. Never be worried about *what* to pitch again.
4. How to Hone Your Travel Article Ideas to Perfectly Fit Each Magazine: In this webinar we workshoped article concepts into ready-to-pitch, focused ideas with multiple angles matched to specific magazines. I pre-matched them with specific sections from multiple magazines and walked through the process of honing an article “idea” from your concept into something adapted to a magazine and ready to pitch.
5. How to Generate Sure-Fire Saleable Ideas: Instead of generating article ideas and then trying to find a magazine that will take your idea, I find starting your brainstorming with the sections magazines include yields a much higher success rate. In this webinar, we cover techniques that you can also use with any magazine that you have a copy of and ensures that your pitches hit the mark and you get responses from editors.
6. How to Break Your Trips into the Maximum Number of Article Ideas: Does one trip equate to just one story? Certainly not if you’re looking to make a living as a travel writer. In fact, it’s much more normal for full-time writers deriving their entire income from travel writing to place 10-12 articles from one trip–right when they first return. In this webinar, we discuss the basic tenets of free travel as a travel writer, from ethics to minimum barrier to entry to the different types of trips and their various pros and cons.
7. How to Increase Your Success Rate By Analyzing Magazines: The best way to demonstrate that knowledge is by only pitching specific sections of the magazine. In this webinar we show you exactly how to do just that.
8. How to Craft the Perfect Travel Article Pitch: You can take workshop after workshop on how to write the perfect travel article, but if your pitches aren’t landing assignments, it’s all for naught. In this webinar, we walk step-by-step through what you need to know to write the perfect pitch–and everything that you should leave out.
9. Writing for Travel Trade Magazines 101: These magazines work quite different than custom and consumer titles in many ways, notably editors pitch you ideas rather than the other way around, making your hourly rate go way up. Some trade editors will even provide you with interview sources! Trade magazines are the single best way to establish a clear pipeline of assignments and also maximize your hourly rate when writing for magazines, and we look at how, why, and how to get started writing for them in this week’s webinar.
10. How to Write a Letter of Introduction—The Pitch Equivalent for Trade Magazines: Unlike consumer and custom magazines, trade magazine editors are approached by something called an LOI or letter or introduction, which has more in common with a cover letter on a job application than a magazine pitch. We look at when to use a letter of introduction, how to craft your own boilerplate one for each vertical within the travel trade world that you’re looking to pitch, and how to avoid information overload.
11. Answers to Your Most Common Pitching Questions: While there are some basic questions that come up again and again, there are also deeper, more “circumstance”-based questions that many are afraid to ask in a group setting because they think they’ve done something wrong in their pitch or editor-writer etiquette to get into the situation in the first place. In this webinar, I share from my huge store of these pitching questions for both the newer writers and people who have been doing this for a while.

Please note: due to some subscribers experiencing technical difficulties with the coupon code, we have extended this offer until Wednesday, January 3rd. It has now been tested on multiple computers and browsers in different time zones and is functioning for all.

Delivery: To redeem this offer, head to our webinar library and load up your cart with the 11 webinars listed above, then use the coupon holiday11 to take more than 75% off of your order and grab this package of pitching webinars for just $54 rather than the full price–$209.

Your free month of Travel Magazine Database access needs to be manually configured, so you’ll receive the access information for that on January 3rd, as we will set everyone up with a personal discount code once the offer has ended.

 

Please note: You need to have all 11 webinars in your cart for the coupon code to take effect. If you have previously purchased one of the webinars in the set, that will preclude you from adding that specific webinar to your cart. We set up new test accounts attached to different email addresses to get around this issue, and recommend you do the same if you are running into this issue as it is the only work around.

This offer has ended. Thank you!

Please check the 12 Days of Christmas page for the new daily offer, or add your email address below to get the day’s offer in your inbox each day when it opens.