Travel Writing ♦ Grow Your Writing Career Series

1. Intro: Hello and welcome to class. This class Siri's teaches how to build and grow your writing career in the Serie Students will learn how to break into the magazine market, where to find profitable writing jobs, how to write ineffective pitch in email to editors, how to turn one idea into many income streams and so much more. Everyone has their own reason why they entered into a freelance writing career. My research revealed that top motivations our freedom to design a rewarding career and financial independence, flexibility to travel and try new activities. Such a skiing, scuba diving learned to play a musical instrument or learn a new language, helping others and making a positive change in the world. Often our reasons of motivations are topics we want to write about. Travel writers get paid to write about their adventures. Food, health and fitness writers inspire others. People passionate about photography, art designer fashion become experts in their field through writing the old adage. Write what you know is true, but I also believe you should write about what you love. I started my freelance writing career in the 19 nineties. Here's some of the magazines and blog's that published My work. My niche is parenting, education, Special Needs, Families and the art world. I've also been hired to do copyrighting for corporations, newspapers, television and the travel industry. Most of my copy writing jobs were results of clients finding me through my magazine articles, blog's or word of mouth. I've been a professional writer, artist and teacher for over 20 years. Today's class is about travel writing. There are a lot of places that'll publisher work without paying you. They offer to print articles for exposure while exposure is a benefit. This class focuses on teaching you where to get paid to be a freelance writer and less than one. We're gonna talk about the different travel market center out there. Lesson two, we're gonna talk about travel junkets that is highly discounted travel for people in the travel profession. Unless in three we're gonna talk about writing your first travel articles. My freelance writing career is proof that you can make money and fulfill your goals. In 2010 my husband and I bought our dream writing retreat and art studio in the woods. Please join me in class and this writing Siri's to build and grow your writing career for free creative news, Please sign up on airy north dot com. My online courses have close caption for the hearing impaired and to promote literacy. 2. Travel Writing Markets: Hello and welcome back to class Travel Writing is one of the most sought after nonfiction markets and magazines, guides and blog's. The ever changing socio economical climate of the world makes travel writing a fluid market . Therefore, publications are constantly looking for new writers with an interesting slant toe a story before entering any writing niche. It's best to do your homework, and here are three activities at all. Successful travel writers have at the top of their to do list, read, then read, then read some more of the travel publications and blog's you wish to write for Learn their style, Voice and their writers guidelines. Either take high quality digital photographs or collaborate with a professional photographer and submit the article together. Utilize the writers market Booker website Search for general travel or niches like family travel, business travel, yoga retreats, adventure, travel, etcetera, things like that. Okay, let's look at some examples now on the writers market website. I've selected consumer magazines from these choices, and then when I come to the bottom, I see the subjects and all of these subjects will have magazines that you can pitch a travel article, for instance, the obvious you've got travel, camping and trailers, will. You can write an article about newest activities and travel or new equipment and travel. Here's teen and young adult magazines. You could use a slant towards travel with the younger generation. All of these sports subjects here would be interested in a story about running retreats or skiing retreats or water sport activities and groups that meet toe hold a meeting. They would have to have some sort of travel plans where you can interview niche travel agents who specialize in sports travel. The women's market will have magazines where you can write unlimited articles on subjects like family travel, business travel aren't retreat, travel, yoga, retreats, spas, health and fitness. And even when I saw Animal, I thought, What a great idea to go to one of these animal magazines and pitch a story about animal friendly resorts or animal friendly destinations. Articles about traveling with your pet would be an excellent topic for animal magazines, business and finance. A lot of people travel for their business. You could write an article about corporate travel disability magazines. You could rate airlines on how accommodating they are to people with disabilities, food and drink. You can pick a city and write about travelling there and experiencing their culture through food and drink and just go through all of these subjects. And there's just unlimited markets to tap here so you don't have to just right for a travel magazine or a travel guide or even a travel blogger. Any market out there would welcome an article about travel related to their niche. In the next lesson will talk about travel junkets or fams familiars, as we call them today. Fams are highly discounted travel for people in the travel industry. I'll meet you in the next lesson. 3. Travel Junkets / FAMS: hello and welcome back to class. In this lesson, we're gonna talk about travel fams travel junkets are free travel and were a popular way to get people to a specific destination. In the 19 sixties and seventies, Las Vegas used to fly people in and put them up in resorts at no cost so that the travel guess would gamble in the Host Casino Resort, the term junk it has been retired and replaced with the word fams. Short for familiars. A fan is a highly discounted group travel venture for the travel industry agents and travel writers so that the travel professional can experience a destination and will recommend it to clients or write about it in magazines, travel guides and blocks. Here are are a few fam examples. Sunny Land tours dot com offers several fams, and if you just scroll down, you can click on any of those pictures. But here there's a nice chart that we can look at so you can go toe army near Costa Rica, Cuba, Dubai, this Cuba wanna Soldo, Egypt, Galapagos Islands, India, Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Peru, Russia, Suriname and Turkey. So this one going to Turkey is five days and it's only $399 US. You're allowed to invite up to six people to go with you, and they would pay an extra $150 on top of this 3 99 So let's take a look at what this offers. So here the prices for 39 which to me means that the 3 99 dates that they had are gone, and now they're offering Ah, 4 39 date. So they're telling you that you're going to explore Istanbul for five days, and they have full day city tours. The features list that it's four nights hotel accommodations, round trip airport transfers. You get four breakfasts, a lunch city tours and entrance fees and an English speaking guide. What it excludes is the airfare, your personal expenses, tips and drinks. You can look at the itinerary, the accommodations, conditions, your visa requirements and let's just take a peek at the dates with prices. So it looks like they just have the one week left, and they would help you with airfare as well, unless you wanted to do that on your own. So let's take a look at another fan now here's one going to Jordan that includes air. It's 10 99 from Chicago. Here's your date, the duration. And if you want to bring a companion, it would be an extra $450 just for that person. You would still pay the 10 99. Let's see what this includes, so it looks like they have the date preset. You get round trip airfare from Chicago, five nights accommodation. There's meals, include it. And then there's some tours here, and you get to go toe. Petra. There's Petra in the picture. They have all your entrance fees, your transportation. You'll have a guide as well. And insurance. They're not kidding when they say this one's gonna book up really fast. That's an excellent price, with airfare and tours and food and accommodations, and they'll treat you like V. I. P's because they want you to recommend this destination. Another website that you can check out is travel market report dot com, and it's very similar to Sunny Land and also travel agent central dot com. I recommend that you should speak to a few travel agents toe learn more about fams and current destinations that are popular travel agents are a great source of information that will help you build a great reputation in the travel writing industry. In the next lesson, we're gonna talk about writing your first travel articles. I will meet you in the next lesson. 4. Your first travel articles: hello and welcome back to class. In this lesson, we're gonna talk about your first articles. They're two approaches to writing your first travel articles. The first approach is that you can write a piece Taylor toe a magazine or a blogged that you wish to pitch your Article two or the second approach is to actually write the peace first and then look for the market later. A lot of new travel writers prefer to write the article first and then look for a market. In this lesson, I'll demonstrate both methods using one short travel piece about Walt Disney World Resorts . Let's go and visit the Writers market website in the Consumer magazine section of the website. I want to come down to subjects, and I found in searching that they have an in flight area and in flight magazines are the magazines that you find on airplanes off the three Here, I decided I want to look at Spirit magazine. Spirit magazine is the Southwest Airlines magazine. We have their website and their contact information. There's no email, but you can easily find this person's email by either calling or looking on the website details about our reader, their education, their age, their household income fiery to use the approach of looking for a market first that I want to write an article for as a new writer, I would come down to fillers. They do take 12 manuscripts a year. They only want 250 words. That's very doable for a new writer. They don't tell you how much they pay for their fillers right now, but based on their nonfiction rate, this would be pretty good you would get, I would think, very minimum of about $75 up to about $200 for fillers, the loser a great place for a new writer to start. Let's take a look at the article that I would write for this inflate mazing. So I want to write an article for this in flight magazine, and I want to call it by free. Will Disney World Resort activities that the whole family will love to fit into the 250 word count? I know I would have to change this 5 to 3 or four, probably three, because the word count that I have is 370 which is more than they want, and you don't want to give them something they don't want. So I would come and edit this. But in this case that I want to show you, it's finding the market first and then writing the article. So if I had this idea about free activities to do at Walt Disney World, I would only make this three to fit into their 250 word count. Now to look at it the other way. So you've written this article. It's got 370 words. Now let's go look at a market. So the first markets that come to mind when I think of who will read this type article would be Disney fans, parents that are planning on a Disney World vacation, people who are very budget conscious and are looking for free things to do on their vacation. So there's three really good categories toe Look for right now. So in the market search, I would type in Disney parenting, and there is a whole lot more here. If your magazine doesn't appear here. If a magazine like today's parent Apparent magazine or a General Interest magazine isn't here, search for it on Google. They will have the Raiders guidelines and word count and what they expect from the writers . In the next lesson, we're gonna wrap things up with a recap and final thoughts. I'll see you there. 5. Travel final thoughts: thank you for taking this class. It was a pleasure to teach recovered travel, writing markets, fans and tips on writing your first travel articles. One more tip and probably the most important one. Just keep going. Keep picturing yourself writing on exotic beaches around the world in the rain forests on Arctic adventures and sipping wine in France. If travel writing is your passion, you will succeed, read, then read. Then read some more and then write and write and write some more. Know your market and know your reader. Blow their mind with your creativity and passion for life.