All Posts in Category: Freelance Psychology
Get Your Travel Writing MBA with Our New 16-Part Series
I don’t know about you, but when I was in my 9-to-5 job imagining and dreaming and finally planning my escape to be a full-time freelance travel writer, I never once considered getting an MBA in travel writing.
Before I made the leap, I did spend every commute and probably many idle hours in the office reading up on the hows of making it work as a freelance writer. And I spent more than a year building up clips and gigs before leaving my job.
But I never thought there would be any reason to study how big corporate businesses make things work. Isn’t that what we gleefully give up having to care about when we go rogue freelance?
“I’m nervous about speaking on the phone with a potential travel content writing client, what can I do?”
We’ve got a new book out, 101 Things You Need to Know to Make it as a Travel Writer, that answers 101 questions that we hear from travel writers all the time that are holding them back from achieving their Dream of Travel Writing. To celebrate the new book, we’ll be tackling a new sticky travel-writing situation each Monday here on The Six-Figure Travel Writer blog.
“I’m nervous about speaking on the phone with a potential travel content writing client, what can I do?”
Before the call, get some talking points noted down such as why you’re on the call, how you found them, and how you can help.
An Important Public Service Announcement About Following Up on Your Freelance Pitches
This week, I wanted to take a minute for an important travel-writing public service announcement on following up with editors.
We’ve got a ton of things going on here at Dream of Travel Writing this week that you can read about on our blog, including the launch of 101 Things You Need to Know to Make it as a Travel Writing with a special offer for grabbing the book through us in advance of its listing on Amazon AND a way to grab a coupon for $100 off one of our retreats.
But this follow-up topic is not only near and dear to my heart because it is a such a big deal for writers, but as it seems like we are reaching a certain tipping point here that doesn’t have a good solution.
Do You Thrive on Riding the Waves in Style? (Danny Meyer-style)
Quick note: We’re having a 36-hour flash sale on a special 20-part celebration package for our launch (it’s more than $500 of resources for just $99)! Learn more about what it includes and how to grab yours here.
For what I do, helping writers understand, come to terms with, and make the most of, the marketplace for travel writing today, it’s very important that I not only spend time with a diverse company of writers, to understand the issues in the industry today from many different viewpoints in terms of both background and experience, but also that I spend time with those on the other side of the desk—the editors and companies that hire writers.
How to Take Ownership of Your Freelance Travel Writing Success
When I was first asked to coach other travel writers on how to meet their business goals and finally get their dreams off the ground, I spent a long time thinking about it, observing writers I knew, and taking stock of the marketplace.
The 18 months of research that led to The Six-Figure Travel Writing Road Map actually centered very specifically on one question:
What is the difference between the writers who have normal careers as if they were in any other field, earning a great amount of money, buying houses, etc., and those that never seem to be able to crack making this into a viable, stable, long-term career?
The Real Reason Why We Travel Even When It’s Hard–And How to Bring That into the Rest of Your Freelance Work
There is an important part of doing something new that we always seem to forget in the excitement of novelty.
Our need for novelty has been well documented in pretty much anything you read today about the technology addiction pandemic.
Whenever that little ding of a notification or flash of a new email appears on our screens, we get a hit of the chemical dopamine, the same chemical associated with eating your favorite food, having sex, and getting high on cocaine.
And when the extent of the new thing in your life is equally as momentary–scanning the latest shutdown headline, trying a new flavor of ice cream, or checking an editor’s tweet calling for pitches–the let down if it doesn’t turn out as planned is short-lived and typically doesn’t cause you to ask bigger questions about why you are doing what you’re doing and if it’s really a good idea and whether you should just chuck it all and stop right now.
But when the new thing is bigger, like, say, trying to become a freelance travel writer, and what you’ve invested in that new thing is on a scale of months or years, when you hit a snag, the reaction can be very different.
What Is Your *One* Thing Right Now?
When I speak with my coaching clients, I’m always struck by how much more impact we achieve when we focus on things that seem small or narrow or insignificant as “issues” in terms of “becoming a travel writer.”
I’ll never forget one unexpected conversation I had with someone who has what others would no doubt consider a very cool and interesting life. She lives in Europe (she’s not from there). In the mountains, where there are opportunities for her to indulge in day-long climbing adventures with partner (that’s what brought them together). And her partner typically works in a different country, where he guides tours, so she gets built-in regular travel to popular travel destinations automatically.
This might sound way more interesting than whatever the circumstances of your life are right now, but she actually had an issue gunking up her enjoyment of this situation in a big way.
What I Learned About How to Approach Freelancing Setbacks from Failing at Vacation
Over the holidays, I seriously failed at vacation.
Not in the way that many of us feel that we do, when we discover something with an amazing story and our unsuspecting friends and relatives get stuck listening to a half-hour lecture on the lives of potters in ancient Greece from a local we’ve decided is an excellent source.
Nor in the way that many of us also struggle with—cutting the laptop/phone umbilical cord.
Well, to be fair, I certainly am guilty of that on this trip as well, but since I’ve been doing that since long before I met my husband, back Thanksgiving meant my friends and roommates would endure six weeks before the actual event of fiendishly testing, photographing and blogging recipes every moment I wasn’t at my day job.
This year, I failed at vacation in a way that feels worse precisely because it isn’t as “simple” as deciding whether to or to not be on one’s laptop.
12 Days of Holiday Specials Day 2: Two Private One-on-One Coaching Sessions
Today’s holiday trivia: Continuing our look at holiday traditions around the world, we travel east for a very different type of holiday. As a secular, communist country, North Korea has a different take on holidays than many societies. Its 71 official holidays include Sundays, for instance, and many holidays are based on birthdays of the party leaders and founders. Today North Korea celebrates its Constitution Day, for which the state provides rations explicitly for the holiday feasts.
When we surveyed you guys to see what you’d most like to see in our holiday specials, one of the things that came up again and again was opportunities for one-on-one coaching!
Since I’ve finished my coaching certification this year–which was a very eye-opening experience that I wish more people who offer business “coaching” would do–I’m even more excited than ever to work with you one-on-one to move your career forward.
Join Us This Week for Free Travel Writing Lessons on Creating Salable Photography and Writing for Travel Trade Magazines
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.