All Posts in Category: Marketing
Why Do We Avoid the Simple, Easy Steps that ACTUALLY Move Us Toward Our Goals?
I have had a reminder to myself for weeks to do the smallest, simplest thing: email one person I’ve met several times over several years to reconnect and ask for advice.
The reasons I kept thinking of it and not doing it immediately are myriad, even removing busy-ness from the equation.
A very small number of you that I’ve met in person may have heard me mention in passing a narrative travel book I have in the works, My 15 Big Fat Indian Weddings.
(I’ll share the story of how it immediately got 22 very well-respected agents hungering after it my first time out pitching it–and how you too can have the same experience in our next webinars series on How to Publish Non-Fiction Books Easily, available live starting mid-October to members of our Dream Buffet and coaching programs.)
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.
To Niche or Not to Niche: What’s the Best Way to Freelance Travel Writing Success?
A lot of the prevailing advice to the soon-to-be-self-employed is to pick a niche and brand yourself heavily in that area. Proponents say,
“Who’s going to hire a freelance travel writer with no experience besides her own personal travels? You have to do something and be known for something so incredibly specific that when people really need exactly that skill, they come to you.”
But what new freelance travel writers respond with, very validly, is:
“Okay, but who is going to hire me for that incredible specific thing right now? I need enough clients to earn an income now, not just later when I become famous for my super specific niche.”
How Can You Tell Which Editor to Pitch at a Travel Magazine?
When I talk to freelance travel writers about their biggest issues in pitching a lot of people talk about the difficulty in finding the right editor to pitch.
Writers fear that if they send a stellar pitch to the wrong editor it will get deleted, simply because of irrelevance, before they even get their chance to shine and sell their idea and their writing abilities.