Most people have given the passing thought to how wonderful it would be to be paid to spend their life on vacation. Who wouldn\u2019t want to be paid for sitting on white sandy beaches sipping exotic drinks? The Freelance writer can make this dream a reality!<\/p>\n
What exactly IS travel writing? Most people think that you get a job at a travel magazine and they send you out to great locations and tell you to write about them. This rarely happens because it is cost prohibitive for most publications. The vast majority of travel writers are working freelance. This takes the financial burden off of the publisher and makes it possible for them to pay you more. It also drastically changes other factors such as where you go and what you do when you get there. This puts the freelance writer in complete charge of everything from booking the hotel and airline reservations to deciding what to do on an unexpectedly rainy afternoon.<\/p>\n
The current trend is to write up your article and pitch it to the interested markets. Done correctly you can end up with several articles out of one trip. While a general article is fine for many travel magazines, newspapers and general travel websites, niche markets are where you will find the best pay and audience. Traveling with children, places to dine, anything remotely different or unusual about the area. There are publications that specialize in virtually everything because there are millions of people interested in that particular niche. I have a friend that attends daily church services in Catholic churches. She visits as many different churches and cathedrals as she can when traveling. While that might seem like a really peculiar niche, it has been invaluable to traveling Catholics and Catholic magazines pay her top dollar for her articles that discuss both the history of that particular church as well as the times of services.<\/p>\n
The most popular niche markets are food, accommodations, shopping and scenery. The same people who couldn\u2019t tell you where to find a hiking trail near their home will avidly read about the hiking in the Black Forrest. It\u2019s important to pay attention to at least the basics: food, accommodation and weather no matter what else you write about. The most important aspect of your article will be the passion that you bring to it. You need to be lively, entertaining and fun. It\u2019s important to both make the reader feel like they are there and to make them want to plan a trip to see what you saw, eat what you ate and explore what you wrote about.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t get any easier to get started than this: Write an article. The cheapest and easiest way to get started as a travel writer is to write about where you live. I already know that you are thinking that no one wants to visit where you are currently living. How wrong you are. Let me tell you how I met one of my best friends.<\/p>\n
I was living in a small town in extreme Southern Illinois. I couldn\u2019t believe anyone would want to visit there but my friend saw it on the Internet, read one of the tourism articles I wrote about the place and moved to the town without ever having visited it.<\/p>\n
There is an old saying that goes \u201cfamiliarity breeds contempt\u201d and it can be very true. What you need to remember is that to someone else, perhaps a stranger in a foreign country, where you live is exotic. Try looking at your local area the way a tourist might. What hotels are close? Where is a great place to get a nice dinner? What would a tourist do if they only had a few days and wanted to explore? My tourism articles highlighted some of the best hiking, camping and fishing in Illinois; I\u2019d lived here so long that I had forgotten how really beautiful the area can be.<\/p>\n
If you have no idea how to write a travel article, pull up a few on the Internet. You will find that they are generally written in the first person, contain personal anecdotes and anything interesting that happened. They will always contain a brief review of the accommodations, the food and local attractions. Read three or four of these articles and then write one about your own area.
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After you have written everything down, it\u2019s time to separate it into niches. A good overview travel article should be no more than 2000 words unless the editor specifically asks for more. You should be familiar enough with the readership of your target to know what to include and what to omit.<\/p>\n
Locally, we have the \u2018trace\u2019 that\u2019s a roughly 40 mile stretch where you have some great hiking-fishing-camping, an 1800\u2019s living history homestead, a massive petting zoo, a herpetarium (reptile and amphibian zoo), shopping and dining. There are also golf courses and the national quilt museum. Mentioning all of this is fine in a general article. You would focus on the area as a whole and include these items as points of interest. If you find a parenting niche market, you might want to focus on the petting zoo, the living history homestead and maybe even the herpetarium. For a hiking magazine you would probably want to skip those things and focus on the hiking trails; for a fishing magazine focus on the fishing.<\/p>\n
Here is a little tip: collect those free brochures that every place has sitting out about their attraction. They can help jog your memory later for things like opening and closing times and can be fun to take notes in while you are on your excursion.<\/p>\n
Food merits a special mention because it\u2019s a bit more diverse than your accommodations. Most smartphones have a voice recorder on them and that makes taking a few quick notes about the menu much easier. You want to find the most expensive entr\u00e9e on the menu as well as the least expensive. You will use this as your price gauge: Dinner at \u201crestaurant\u201d is between $14.99 and $39.99 per person. You can detail what you had to eat as well as anyone you with whom you were dining. Make a note of things such as the service, hours of operation and of course how good the food tasted.<\/p>\n
I specify using a voice recorder because I have had interesting experiences taking notes. In several cases the service improved dramatically and there have been several times when the owner said that the meal was on the house. In some cultures attempting to decline is the height of rudeness. In another case I was accused of being a spy for a competing restaurant. Dinner was free there after they realized their mistake. The voice recorder is much quicker and doesn\u2019t have the same impact as someone taking notes so you can do so without drawing attention to yourself.<\/p>\n
As with the fashion industry and their bathing suits in January, you will want to have any summer articles ready for print publishers in winter and winter articles in summer. The publication dates for print media is usually set 6-8 months in advance.<\/p>\n
With Internet writing it\u2019s much faster. In most cases they will want your articles to be current and they generally publish within 2 weeks. The best-case scenario is to write about your trip immediately. If possible, write the article as you go. The more current the article, the better the chance that it\u2019s going to be accepted and published immediately.<\/p>\n
Because the Internet is so important to all freelance writers and because things within any given area can change quickly, it\u2019s important to write within a year of the trip and writing within 6 months is better. If you want to cull information from a previous trip, it\u2019s a good idea to visit again and compare the two visits. That is one market that is always in high demand because people like to see how things change over time. One group of travel writers I know have gone back to where they had their honeymoons. Their articles comparing not just how the place but how they had changed were hysterically funny and led to them collaborating on a book.<\/p>\n
Personally, I lived in a town for 20 years and then moved away years ago. In a small town that never had anything happen, the recession hit hard. If I were writing a travel article on that town based on what I knew years ago it would be horribly out of date; the town is now a virtual ghost town. The motels all closed, as did the restaurants. Most of the people moved away. I can write about how it was and how it is now but to write as though things are still the way that they were would be misleading. For your own sake and your own reputation, don\u2019t write an article that is based on old information. Double and triple check your facts.
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Every freelance writing niche has a few tricks of the trade and travel writing is no different.<\/p>\n
Once established, it\u2019s not unusual for a travel writer to move from place to place writing about it. Most of us though eventually want to go home for a while. For those that don\u2019t, it can be a very lucrative career. This is especially true once you find a particular niche and build up your reputation. Travelwriters.com is a great resource.<\/p>\n
When I first got started writing about my travels I just liked the money that the articles generated. Then in March my accountant hit me with my taxes. I joked that as much fun as I had on those trips I guessed it was time to pay the piper. He looked at me for a second and then asked the magical question that changed my life: \u201cDid you write articles about those trips?\u201d When I confirmed that I had, he asked if I had the receipts. I didn\u2019t but I had paid for everything via a debit card that made it possible to retrieve the receipts. The end result was that I was now owed money instead of owing it! Because I wrote so extensively about all of my trips they were legitimate business expenses. Keep this in mind when you travel and be sure to keep your receipts.<\/p>\n
While you are not going to be paid to do nothing more than sit on a beach and sip cocktails, you can be paid to discuss how nice the beach and cocktails were at your resort. You can be paid to write about the incredible temples of Japan, the street markets of Russia and the music in Munich. You can even get paid to write about how great it was to take your children on a mule ride down the Grand Canyon. Get started traveling and write about it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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