The Six-Figure Travel Writer

Today’s holiday trivia: In many European countries, the celebration of Christmas on December 25 pales in comparison with January 6’s Feast of the Epiphany–also know as the visit of the three wise men or magi. Presents for children arrive on the eve of the Epiphany rather than Christmas Eve, though they are not delivered by a jolly man. In Italy, gifts are ferried about by La Befana, a witch with a long nose and speedy broomstick who leaves garlic and onions, in addition to the usual coal, for bad children or parents who haven’t left her a glass of wine.

When we asked what you wanted in this year’s holiday specials, there was a ton of interest in our webinars, particularly around:

• journalistic detail
• setting up sponsored trips
• getting a book published

So, we’ve run discounts exclusive to our 12 days of holiday specials on all three. But…

Since all of you are in a different places with your travel writing, we know there are things that you might need that another might be past or not be ready for yet, so we didn’t want to make our specials entirely a popularity contest, and came up with a way for you to put together your own, person, customized webinar discount set.

We’ve also slashed 75% off the price you would normally pay to get all of these webinars in our library, where each comes in a set with:

• streamable high-def video
• smaller downloadable video
• streamable and downloadable audio file
• full transcript available to read on screen or as PDF download
• all webinar slides in PDF form
• any applicable worksheets

To take advantage of this offer and grab any 11 of your choosing webinars just $56–nearly 75 percent off the normal pricing–head to the webinar library, and load up your cart with the webinars listed above and enter the code chooseyourown.

Not sure what is right for you? Here are some suggestions based on what you want to focus on this year.

Need Recurring Income?

In our workshops on creating a six-figure income with your travel writing, I dedicate a significant chunk of time to recurring income, because it lies at the heart of so many crucial things for your freelance business:

• the ability to plan ahead (for both life and business)
• optimizing your client delivery time and work flows
• regular boosts of self-confidence that people want to work with you and that your work is worth paying for
• mental freedom from anxiety about where exactly money will be coming from this month

Last year, we offered a webinar set dedicated to covering the fundamentals of travel content marketing, from what the best opportunities are to how to identify the companies most likely to respond to a cold pitch to what exactly to say (or not say!) on that first phone call to close the deal. And that is a very common source of recurring income. But there are other ways to go about it as well. Learn about them all with this combination of 11 webinars and today’s 75% off special code chooseyourown:

• Writing for Travel Trade Magazines 101: These magazines work quite different than custom and consumer titles in many ways, notably editors pitch you ideas rather than the other way around, making your hourly rate go way up. Some trade editors will even provide you with interview sources! Trade magazines are the single best way to establish a clear pipeline of assignments and also maximize your hourly rate when writing for magazines, and we look at how, why, and how to get started writing for them in this week’s webinar.
• How to Write a Letter of Introduction—The Pitch Equivalent for Trade Magazines: Unlike consumer and custom magazines, trade magazine editors are approached by something called an LOI or letter or introduction, which has more in common with a cover letter on a job application than a magazine pitch. We look at when to use a letter of introduction, how to craft your own boilerplate one for each vertical within the travel trade world that you’re looking to pitch, and how to avoid information overload.
• How to Become Part of an Editor’s Stable: In this webinar on How to Become Part of an Editor’s Stable, we’ll look at how to build those relationships with editors with copious quotes right from the sources that I’ve drawn from editor panels at recent events with major newsstand titles represented.
  
• How To Earn Big With Travel Content Marketing: Here 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 where to start looking for these opportunities.
• How To Locate The People Who Need Your Travel Content Marketing: 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 Close The Deal: Proposals And Phone Calls That Get ResultsHow To Close The Deal: Proposals And Phone Calls That Get Results: In this webinar, we’ll cover, in detail: the exact questions to ask and path to follow in your call to ensure the best results for you and your prospect (it has to be a win-win to close a good deal!), what to listen for in your prospect’s responses to make sure your proposal speaks his or her language, the formula I use to put together proposals that wow prospects and close deals.
• Pricing, Negotiating, And Contracts (For Travel Content Marketing and Magazine Writing): In this webinar, in addition to covering the sections to make sure you include in your travel writing contracts, I cover general pricing and negotiation. Here you can find out what you “should” be charging in different situations…along with what you could be asking for when an editor names a price to you.
• How to Sell Blogging to Travel Companies and Tourism Boards: In this webinar, we discuss exactly what statistics, industry terms, and buttons to push you need to know to get yourself in the door with, fielding assignments from, and signing recurring contracts with tourism boards and travel companies.
• Best Practices When Writing on the Web for Travel Companies: Even if you’re had your own blog for years, tune in to learn the best practices in blogging technique and style when writing for companies and tourism boards, which are trying to provide information quick to readers who may have never visited their site before and may never come back again once they’ve gotten what they needed.
  
• Ghost(writ)ing on the Web as a Travel Writer: So many small travel businesses, whether tour companies or concierge travel bookers, are built around the judgment and expertise of the owner. A blog showcasing those unique advantages is a no-brainer for these companies to build trust with prospective customers, but the owner rarely has the time–or the writing chops. We unpack the process of creating ghostwritten content for your travel blogging clients.

Want to Perfect Your Pitches?

If finally breaking into the $1/word travel magazine markets is on your mind this year, you could put together a package of 11 webinars that covers everything you need to get pitches out to magazines now, from:

• why working with magazines is one of the best uses of your travel writing time in the first place
• exactly which magazines are right for you
• how to pull ideas from past trips and find them on upcoming trips
• sure-fire ways to know if your idea is on fire or a dud
• how to ensure the perfect match between idea and market

In that case, we suggest:

• How to Craft the Perfect Travel Article Pitch: You can take workshop after workshop on how to write the perfect travel article, but if your pitches aren’t landing assignments, it’s all for naught. In this webinar, we walk step-by-step through what you need to know to write the perfect pitch–and everything that you should leave out.
• The Magazine Landscape: Where All the Assignments Are Hiding: As we come up on a milestone of 300 magazines in the Travel Magazine Database, even I’m struck by how many fully-travel and travel adjacent magazines are out there looking for content. In this webinar, we look at five types of magazines looking for travel content that you may be missing out on, and three ways to find more magazines that you’ve never heard of to pitch.
• Don’t Create Ideas Out of Nowhere: How to Always Find Them When You Need Them: I’ve found the the process of coming up with the right ideas is much more of an issue than actually writing the pitch. Once you’ve got the idea right, the rest comes much more easily. In this webinar, we work in detail through three different ways to generate ideas from magazines and three ways to come up with ideas “from thin air”. Never be worried about *what* to pitch again.
• How to Hone Your Travel Article Ideas to Perfectly Fit Each Magazine: In this webinar we workshoped article concepts into ready-to-pitch, focused ideas with multiple angles matched to specific magazines. I pre-matched them with specific sections from multiple magazines and walked through the process of honing an article “idea” from your concept into something adapted to a magazine and ready to pitch.
• How to Generate Sure-Fire Saleable Ideas: Instead of generating article ideas and then trying to find a magazine that will take your idea, I find starting your brainstorming with the sections magazines include yields a much higher success rate. In this webinar, we cover techniques that you can also use with any magazine that you have a copy of and ensures that your pitches hit the mark and you get responses from editors.
• How to Break Your Trips into the Maximum Number of Article Ideas: Does one trip equate to just one story? Certainly not if you’re looking to make a living as a travel writer. In fact, it’s much more normal for full-time writers deriving their entire income from travel writing to place 10-12 articles from one trip–right when they first return. In this webinar, we discuss the basic tenets of free travel as a travel writer, from ethics to minimum barrier to entry to the different types of trips and their various pros and cons.
• How to Increase Your Success Rate By Analyzing Magazines: The process of pitching regularly will drastically improve your income and portfolio, and editors respond best to pitches that demonstrate a knowledge of their publication. The best way to demonstrate that knowledge is by only pitching specific sections of the magazine. In this webinar we show you exactly how to do just that.
• Mastering AP Style–The Grammar Style of Choice for Publications : Showing an editor (in both your pitch and your article submission) that you already understand what she’s looking for is one of the best ways to forge a long-term relationship with an editor. But that goes behind simply familiarizing yourself with the publication. Understanding and using AP style, the preferred grammar and style format for print and many online publications, can quickly broadcast to an editor that you have solid journalist experience (even if you actually don’t!).
• Mastering Style at a Sentence by Sentence Level : Continuing the groundwork we laid in the previous webinar on AP style, we move into writing essentials on a structural level, beginning with sentence structure. I unpack common issues I (and other editors) are increasingly seeing today and how to avoid them in your writing. If you’ve been primarily writing on your own blog or for clients that don’t have in-house editors, this will bring your writing to the next level so that when you pitch editors, rather than an eyebrow raise and delete, your pitches elicit a sense of professional camaraderie due to your polished prose.
  
• Answers to Your Most Common Pitching Questions: While there are some basic questions that come up again and again, there are also deeper, more “circumstance”-based questions that many are afraid to ask in a group setting because they think they’ve done something wrong in their pitch or editor-writer etiquette to get into the situation in the first place. In this webinar, I share from my huge store of these pitching questions for both the newer writers and people who have been doing this for a while.
• The Art of the Follow-up–The Simple Key to Dramatically More Assignments: In this webinar, we talk about timing, scripts, and mechanics of following up with editors on your pitches. I also share some more unusual or downright awkward editor responses from members of our community and discuss how to handle them.

Planning to Get Serious About Your Business This Year?

When I first started freelance travel writing, there were no websites dedicated to the business side of the travel writer’s life, and only a handful of solid sources on creating a stable income as a freelance writer. Most people simply thought it couldn’t be done, and the ones out there doing it were to busy working for their clients and living awesome freelance lives to tell the rest of us how to do it!

This dearth of actionable advice on business catered to the special circumstances of being a travel writer was a driving factor in creating Dream of Travel Writing, so one of our largest categories of webinars revolves around running the business (read: cha ching) side of travel writing so that you are maximizing your hours to make sure you get the most pay while also still having the most time for your travels, family, and friends.

• The Secrets of Six-Figure Travel Writers: As a travel writer earning six figures for several years, I used to get a lot of questions at industry conferences about just how exactly I did it, so I started coaching new, struggling and transitioning travel writers along the journey. Here we explore the misconceptions that keep people from achieving their income goals as a travel writer and you’ll leave with tools to increase your income right away.
• What Type of Articles Should You Be Writing?: In this webinar, we cover the the different major types of articles that you should be looking out for when you’re on the road: examples of these types of articles, how to pitch them, and how to write them.
  
• Triple Your Income Writing for Magazines: For years naysayers have claimed that there is no money to be made in the magazine industry, the fact is that magazines still pay significantly better than websites–and there’s many more opportunities to write about travel for print magazines than you realize. Sleek, well-paying, new travel magazines are actually popping up every week. You just need to know where to find them.
• Taking Control of Your Freelance Travel Writing Finances: Join us for a new series on getting the business side of your freelance travel writing business. This week we’ll dive into everything you need to know to get your taxes in gear this years. We are not licensed tax advisors, but unfortunately most accountants don’t know the nitty gritty of this profession, so we’ll steer you the right way.
• Taking Control of Your Freelance Travel Writing Time: In this webinar on Taking Control of Your Freelance Travel Writing Time–the single most important groundwork I lay with our coaching program members so that they can handle the work they want to do when it starts coming in–we’ll dive into the number one difference I see between the people who “do it” and those that don’t: how they spend their freelance time–you always have choices.
• Taking Control of How You Track and Reach Your Freelance Travel Writing Goals : In the third hour of our series on running the operations of your freelance travel writing business, we expand the the big picture and how to ensure your big dreams become tangible reality. To grow your travel writing income, you need a reliable, repeatable system for ensuring your have your eye on your benchmarks and pivot to meet them. We’ll explore how to adopt the systems big businesses use to great success for your solopreneaur writing business.
  
• Taking Control of Your Ideas, Pitches and Follow-ups: In the final chapter in our series on operating the business side of your freelance travel writing business, we explore how to capture ideas the second you have them, store them for later, and how to adapt best practices to what works for you.
  
• Story Structure to Take Your Features to the Next Level: Whether you’ve been scared of taking the leap into features because you’re “not that kind of writer” or have been wanting to move into features (or even starting to get those assignments) but spend an inordinate amount of time trying to research and structure those pieces so it feels like more work than it’s worth, this webinar is for you. We explore classic story structures that have been employed, literally, for millennia to guarantee an interesting story as well as travel feature-specific story structures that will have you turning out stories in an hour or two each.
• The Difference Between the Photos You’re Shooting Now and What Magazines Are Publishing: Learn how to get the shots that editors need so you can get more assignments and make more money with your pieces. We look at the shots that work online and those that most of us shoot most of the time and what the difference is in terms of the approach to shot format, variety, and composition to generate the types of photos magazines can use.
  
• Putting Together a Pitch Portfolio to Support a Big Trip: Here we walk through several press trip itineraries to show who and what to pitch to set up a varied portfolio of coverage for each trip. We discuss five techniques you can use to ensure an impressive pitch portfolio to accompany any press trip request, and how to handle this process whether you’ve never been published and have no connections or have editors that you work with already but perhaps want to branch out to a new subject or geographic area.
• How to Build Serious Business Partnerships at Travel Conferences: In How to Build Serious Business Partnerships at Travel Conferences , we’ll look at how to prepare for meetings at conferences, how to rock them, and how to follow up.
  

Delivery: To redeem this offer, head to our webinar library and load up your cart with the 11 webinars listed above, then use the coupon chooseyourown to take more than 75% off of your order and grab this package of pitching webinars for just $56 rather than the full price–$209.

Delivery details:

• In the webinar library, add all of the webinars listed above to your cart and enter the code chooseyourown.
• You need to have all 11 webinars of your choosing in your cart for the coupon code to take effect.
• If you have previously purchased one of the webinars in the set, that will preclude you from adding that specific webinar to your cart. We set up new test accounts attached to different email addresses to get around this issue, and recommend you do the same if you are running into this issue as it is the only work around.
• The webinars will be available immediately in your user profile on webinars.dreamoftravelwriting.com, and you will also receive an email for each webinar with the links to the downloadable audio, video, and transcript files.

Important general notes on our 12 Days of Holiday Specials:

• These offers are exclusively available during the time specified, with any exceptions or limited quantities noted in the individual offer affected.
• These offers cannot be exchanged, combined, or used in place or partial combination with a previously purchased offer of any time. All sales are final.
• Each offer includes complete instructions for the delivery of your purchase and answers to any logistical questions about taking advantage of the offer.
  
• Since many of these offers take place on weekend or holiday days, the person who handles our customer service emails will not always be available or not able to sign in twice a day to catch your queries, which is why we make the offers very detailed. These are deep discounts on things that cost us money to produce, so if you would like to take advantage of an offer, you are responsible for doing so during the time frame allotted.