All Posts in Category: Income
Now Open On-Demand, Whenever You Need It: Our Revolutionary At-Home IdeaFest Program
When I first started helping travel writers finally reach their goals and dramatically grow their income, I saw, straight away, that the single, simple, easy answer to how to get from where each writer was to where they wanted to be was simple: pitch.
So I worked up live and online programs, workshops, and webinars to combat this great “evil,” the fear of pitching.
But, of the course of that work with writers, I found that while they were telling me their pitches were the problem, the responses they were getting from editors were telling them (and me!) that their ideas were really the problem.
That’s why, based on our live IdeaFest retreat, our new four-week program is designed to provide a serious and lasting foundation to turn you into an idea machine, turning up dozens of article ideas every day. And I’ve already seen the transformation happening daily with the writers beta-testing the program this past month, who regularly share exclamations like:
“The tips were really useful! I managed to double my article ideas for the magazines I identified!”
“Done! Love this exercise. Makes it visually accessible to see all the ideas for one place, along with the magazines and the sections to pitch.”
“This was a super useful exercise!”
“This actually helped me discover sections of magazines I might not have looked at otherwise.”
“As I started this exercise I really didn’t like it too much, but did finally break past a little barrier and thought of some good stuff!”
“Woo-hoo! I managed to find ideas around all nine articles types from the one concept. “
“This was fun! Each trip has so many aspects to share!”
“This was a really great exercise for me, and it helped me realize that even small things from an experience can lead to an entire article.”
Had Your Eye on One of Our Retreats? They’re Now on Sale in Our Holiday Specials!
Please note: this offer is quantity limited.
Today’s holiday trivia: Today’s holiday trivia: Every January in Benin, preparations begin for the celebration on the 10th of the Fête du Vodoun. Ouidah, a small village and former slave port, is the center of the largest celebration, which brings priests and revelries from all corners of the world, particularly France and other former colonies. The festival is not for the feint of heart—the throats of sacrificial animals are ripped out by priests with their teeth and some attendees in a frenzy cut themselves with knives and pour local gin on the wounds—but Zangbeto masquerades, live music, emotional dance performances, and free-flowing local gin are accessible to visitors.
We promised it was on its way, and here it finally is!
If there’s an event you’ve already go your eye on, scroll down and grab it before it fills up. We’ve also got two brand new events available for registration through this deal that haven’t yet opened to the public, the first chance to register for our fall TravelContentCon.
If You’ve Been Waiting to Make the Leap into Travel Writing, The Job Market is Clear: Now is the Time
When I started to put down the list of travel writing jobs this week, I was absolutely shocked.
While everyone has been getting back into the swing of things during rentrée (the charming French term for reintegrating after a vacation), companies all of the world and in all portions of the travel industry have been starting in on their plans for 2018, and they require hiring a lot of travel writers.
Don’t believe me?
This week, we found 46 new travel writing jobs between Monday, January 1, and Monday, January 8, 2018. (Most weeks we have between five and 15.)
We typically only share our list of travel writing jobs, while we pull together from all corners of the internet, out network, and various whispers, with out newsletter. But we were so impressed by the overwhelming leap in the listings this week that we wanted to share it more widely.
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Pick Up Your Print Copy of The Six-Figure Travel Writing Road Map for Just $13–With Shipping!
Today’s holiday trivia: While Christmas is typically associated with December 25, Orthodox eastern denominations celebrate the holiday in January. But Armenians take it to an entirely different level. Today begins Nakhatsenendyan Toner , a three-day-long Christmas Eve celebration that includes climbing on the roof of your home to sing Christmas carols.
We’re admittedly stretching the ten number a bit here and counting the introduction and the (very full!) appendix as chapters, but today we want to give you the opportunity to get The Six-Figure Travel Writing Road Map at cost to us–including shipping!
It costs us a bit more than $5 each to get each book printed, a dollar or so per book for shipping from the printer, then another $6 to send it to you by trackable mail.
So, today, if you don’t already have a copy of The Six-Figure Travel Writing Road Map, you can grab your copy for just $13.
Want to Make 2018 Your Best Year of Freelance Travel Writing Yet?
I’ve been so delighted to hear by email and in the chat rooms of our webinars from many of you how our annual review webinars are making you see where and how you can improve your business in the year ahead.
If you haven’t yet joined the series, here’s what we’ve covered so far:
- What is Standing Between You and Your Travel Writing Goals: As the beginning of our series on working through a comprehensive inventory of your business, where it’s going wrong, and a clear tactical plan that fits with your life to move you through the next year, we devoted a full hour to discussing the most common issues that keep travel writers spinning their weeks and how we will chart a course through them in the coming weeks.
- How to Clearly Catalogue the Work and Opportunities You Have Now to See When Your Need to Go: We dove head first into an honest look at exactly what each of you has in your income, relationship, and opportunity inventory as we continue our series on annual reviews as a travel writer. We not only walked through exactly what data on your business to collect for your review, but also how to draw conclusions from it as to what you need to do differently or more of in the year ahead. *BONUS* This work will also give you a huge leg up on your taxes, in addition to positioning you to be just the helper your favorite editors need this time of year.
Applications for Our New TravelContentCon At-Home Program Now Open
There are so, so many opportunities out there for travel content marketing.
How many hotels can you think of off the top or your head? How many destinations around the world? How many cities where visitors take tours during their stay?
In just the tour and activities market alone, in just the U.S., there are 68,000 companies valued at 20 billion. That’s not even the size of fish you’re probably going after. There are many, many more that are smaller and don’t have in-house staff devoted to their content marketing.
Every year when I attend the ITB Berlin travel trade show, more than 10,000 destinations, hotels, travel tech companies, and tour operators cram, often sharing several to a table, into a space the size of 30 football fields and pay anywhere from $4,575 to $38,200 to be there for just 2 days in front of around 160,000 German consumers and trade visitors (i.e. less than the monthly visitors of the vast majority of these organization’s websites every month).
Tourism boards in cities as small as Ontario, California (population 173,212), and Columbia, Missouri (population 120,612) are spending $1.9 million and $1.2 million, respectively, per year on tourism marketing and promotion. Destinations like Florida (population 20.61 million) and Philadelphia (population 1.6 million) spend more like $76 and $19.5 million respectively.
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.
How to Earn Big with Travel Content Marketing
Aside from breaking into $1/word magazines (though those are honestly so much work they’re often not worth the time!) and setting up relationships with editors so they pitch me article ideas to write for them instead of visa versa, one of the most important ways I grew my income as a new travel writer was by setting up my own travel content marketing clients.
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.
Tour the Travel Magazine Database
For our official launch of the Travel Magazine Database, we’ve created a tour video to walk visitors through the site.
Check it out: