Have a Question About the Travel Magazine Database?
Some of our newsletter subscribers, webinar attendees, and blog readers have had some great questions about the Travel Magazine Database and how to sign up that I thought other folks would have, so I wanted to share them with you.
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This Week’s Webinar: Tour the Travel Magazine Database Live
When I first started travel writing full-time, I spent a couple years doing the usual things:
- writing tons of travel articles for $20 a pop for large websites
(please don’t do that! here’s why) - pouring my heart into pitching epic travel stories to websites like GONOMAD (check out these much better sites to substitute for five major low-paying markets like these)
- writing “full-time” for a site that had me doing tons of articles a week in an area I was really interested in (Italy), but didn’t pay enough to live in a first-world country
At some point, I said enough, and threw myself into pitching print magazines. It wasn’t hard at all to get assignments (which is why I counsel you all to pitch first and skip the low-paid writing part!), but I still remember very distinctly when I got my first $2,000 assignment. A dollar a word for the text and $1,000 for the photos.
Announcing Dream of Travel Writing’s 12 Days of Christmas
When traveling for work or leisure, I’ve often found one of the most beautiful and revelatory parts of new cultures centers around their religions. Italy’s transcendent cathedral architecture and Renaissance paintings. Bali’s towering stone temples and daily flower-filled offerings lining the streets. India’s multi-day, technicolor wedding festivities.
How to Hone Your Article Ideas to Perfectly Fit Each Publication
Last week, we walked through trip itineraries and dissected the different article formats and audience slants that would work for each. But I’ve always found, especially with writers new to pitching magazines, that this process of thinking, on your own, what can fit into a magazine is potentially very destructive.
You run the risk of getting addicted to an article idea that simply doesn’t or wouldn’t fit into a magazine that will pay you for your words.
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.
What Travel Writers Need for the Holidays
My dad and best friend have both gotten me books as my Christmas present for years. From my best friend, it’s always her latest fiction love. From my dad, you never know.
How to Extract the Maximum Number of Articles from Each Trip
When we did our first couple travel writer focus groups, something really struck me about how many articles successful travel writers, as opposed to struggling (income-wise) travel writers, write from each trip.
I find that a lot of travel writers who aren’t happy with their income or still have a full-time job in another profession and haven’t broken out to make travel writing their full-time gig are essentially getting one paid article from each trip.
The Travel Magazine Database Went Looking for Writers: Here’s What it Found
We’re always on the lookout for talented people to add to our team here at Dream of Travel Writing (and we’re currently looking for an editor with WordPress experience and a 20-to-30-hour-a-week U.S.-based office manager, so reach out if you think you fit the bill!), and as a growing small business, there have naturally been growing pains in our hiring processes.
I’ve collected advice for years from friends who own other small businesses, from other writers and editors to web app company owners to digital agency heads. And one of the most frequent and resounding pieces of advice, frankly, feels a bit insulting.
They all agree that you have to relentlessly test people before you bring them on.
The Average Day in the Life of a Travel Writer
During a lovely interview for the Great Escape Publishing podcast (I’ll share it with you as soon as it’s out), the host asked me one of the most difficult questions for travel writers:
What is your average day like?