Three Ways to Earn Six Figures as a Travel Writer (With Full Income Breakdowns)
Over dinner the other day, a friend asked me how someone would make, say, $10,000 a month as a travel writer.
It didn’t even take me a minute to think of a comfortable income breakdown to meet that.
9 Resources for Pitching Freelance Articles that Will Change Your Writing Career Forever
When I started down this path many years ago, there were no blogs really wholly dedicated to the business side of travel writing, as in pitching, working with editors, the ins and outs of press trips, and so I turned to more general blogs on freelance writing to see how it should be done.
Travel Writing Books and Courses I Recommend (Believe Me, I’ve Tried Everything)
Before I actually made the leap—as in quitting my job to freelance full-time, not simply starting to publish some pieces—into travel writing full-time, I spent five years seriously studying up on the profession.
In that time, when I thankfully had a full-time job to foot the bill, I took every course I could get my hands on, loyally read every blog on the topic, and devoured over travel magazines and books on travel writing.
“Normal” Travel Writing Pay Rates
Post “Great Depression of Publishing,” it’s a little difficult to call any freelance rates normal.
I had one writing coach once tell me, when I said that I maintained an hourly rate of at least $100 with all of my work:
Even before I stopped pitching, my hourly rate magazine work was never less than $250 per hour.
A Quick Way to Find Out If a Magazine Pays (Well)
When you pitch a magazine that hasn’t been referred to you as a viable market by another freelancer or been verified in a magazine database like Mediabistro’s How to Pitch guides, Wooden Horse Publishing (now sadly deceased), or the Dream of Travel Writing Travel Magazine Database, you can run into a real problem.
You get an assignment. You write the article. And then you find out the magazine pays peanuts.
Do Travel Magazines and Newspaper Travel Sections Still Pay?
One of the biggest myths about travel writing that I’ve encountered is about the pay for travel content.
For years, people have been going around saying there is no pay for writers anymore. Yet somehow a lot of us still earn a living this way.
How 10 Travel Writers Parlay Micro Niches into Major Assignments
Earlier this week, we talked about:
- how having other interests besides travel can give you a leg up breaking into travel writing
- why it’s important to write about those interests in a travel-related context, not just for magazines in those fields
- how easy it is to look at your own life and see what interests you can already mine
Today, I want to widen your view of what these travel research interests can be. We are looking at 10 real, working travel writers who aren’t the Tim Cahills or the folks who have necessarily written books on how to be a travel writer. They are just regular people who work with their stable of editors, pay their mortgages, and make a solid living travel writing.
Can You Break into Travel Writing Faster Through Other Interests?
When I first started learning about how one goes about actually making a career as a travel writer, ten years ago, I quickly noticed something that both surprised and disheartened me:
All of the people who called themselves “travel writers” actually wrote about other things. In fact, many write about other things most of the time.
There was the woman who taught my 8-week Mediabistro bootcamp on how to be a travel writer. She primarily wrote about technology. You could actually call her more of an aspiring travel writer, honestly.
A Simple, Crazy Successful Way to Start Making $2k (Minimum) This Month as a Travel Writer
One aspect of the typical travel writer’s life is that not every bit of work is a web or magazine article (or something related to one).
I could give you dozens of examples of “every day” working travel writers’ additional income streams (the sample breakdowns of six-figure travel writing incomes are a good place to start), but let’s look at some huge folks who are basically the “giants” of travel writing:
- Don George
- Tim Leffel
- Jeff Greenwald
Don’t Have Travel Writing Work? Why Not?
A freelance business writer and writing coach that I have great respect for, Carol Tice, was appalled when she first started coaching freelance writers by one conversation that she kept having over and over again.