All Posts Tagged: income
The Only Thing that Matters in Travel Writing Is Your Hourly Rate
At one point in my career when I was in desperate need of work, a writer and writing coach that I greatly admire made a case for writing for trade magazines that completely changed my career:
I’ve earned anywhere from $.10 per word writing for trade magazines at the beginning of my career up to $2.50 per word penning articles for national consumer magazines like Health. What’s important, though, isn’t the per-word rate—it’s your hourly rate, and I usually earn $250 per hour at this kind of work even at magazines that pay just $.50/word.
Why You Don’t Need To Start with $20 Articles and Work Your Way Up
People often ask me how I ended up writing The Six-Figure Travel Writing Road Map, and the answer actually relates to one of my favorite journalists and writing bloggers.
How to Get Yourself an Ongoing Travel Writing Gig This Week
Before we launch into how, exactly, to set yourself up with a steady stream of travel writing work, I want to look at some reasons why having a recurring travel writing job is so, so important. Especially for people who are either:
- just starting out as travel writers
- struggling to have a sustainable travel writing income even after many months or years at it (and with a healthy pile of clips to their names)
Find Your Next Gig on These Travel Writing Job Boards
If you are new to writing, travel writing, just the particular geographic area or type of travel you’d like to write about, or if you simply need to get money coming in as soon as possible, it can be faster and easier to start with jobs that already exist rather than creating your own.
How Much Can You Really Make as a Travel Writer?
In my post on three ways to earn six figures as a travel writer, I looked at three different paths for earning six figures as a travel writer based on your interests (workwise, not travel-wise) and the type of work that best fits your schedule, motivations and work talents.
But I know the idea of earning $100,000 a year from travel writing seems both far away and a bit preposterous to many folks who are just starting out and trying to figure out how to even earn their first $1 from something they’ve written.
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.
“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.
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