From the Editor’s Mouth: Stuart McDonald of TravelFish

Stuart McDonald’s mission is to help travelers in Southeast Asia get the most out of their experience—and to inspire them to discover something unexpected and off-the-beaten path. Launched in 2004, Stuart’s site, Travelfish.org, (which he co-owns and runs with his partner Samantha) has become the Southeast Asia go-to guide for travelers both experienced and novice.  A former hard-copy guidebook writer, Stuart believes in honest, intelligent information and stories dedicated to exploring the best of what Asia has to offer. Check out Travelfish.org here!

What path led you to the position you have now? What’s your background?

I’m a reformed backpacker – I arrived in Southeast Asia in 1993 with a backpack. The majority of work I’ve ever done has been working for myself in one way or another, be it self-publishing travel guides, writing freelance, or running Travelfish. I have no formal writing training. My partner is a journalist and her editorial guidance over the years has helped me enormously in getting my writing to a reasonable standard. Today I’d say my skill set is a combination of web programming, travel writing and a deep-seated desire to stay away from a cubicle! I’m currently broadening my skills by learning to surf.

What qualities do you look for and admire in someone you hire to write material for your publication?

Four things: Obviously writing skill is important, but also an ability to meet deadlines, a love of real travel, and to not be a time waster. When you’re running your own business and relying on freelancers, you don’t (or shouldn’t) have the spare time to indulge people who don’t have the above qualities.

What mistakes do freelancers make in how they approach you and what do the good ones do right?

They tell lies. They forget, or don’t know, that I’ve been a freelancer myself and so I know many of the tricks in the book. If a person can’t follow clear instructions – for instance, don’t send attachments – what is the chance of them being able to follow more complex editorial instructions? We don’t give writers a style guide for the sake of it; they’re expected to read and follow it.

The good ones deliver what we want, on deadline, and generally require very little (if any) editing. Trust is paramount.

Based on what you know in your position, what honest and unvarnished advice would you give to an aspiring freelancer who wanted to become a successful travel writer? (Besides, “Don’t do it.”)

Don’t write for free for “exposure”. If you’re writing to make money, then the only material you should be writing for free is material for yourself.

Do write it and stick it on your blog.

Don’t put ads on your blog.

Do link to other quality writers. Network with these people and ask for advice. Listen and learn. If you’re good — or just as importantly — show the potential of becoming good, you’ll develop a following.

Don’t get caught up in “top ten writing” (the ten best beaches/backpacks/bars). This type of writing is asinine and totally forgettable – even if it may pay a few of your bills.

Do write good quality, long form, engaging material.

Don’t quit your day job. Expect the above to take a long time. We ran Travelfish for three years before it started to make any real money. For the first 18 months or so it earned nothing.

Don’t ever say in an application letter that you can write “good SEO copy”. Really. I’m looking for writers who can tell stories people will remember and pass on – not ones that Google will remember and pass on.

Tell us about how you started Travelfish and what what led to the leap of becoming a publisher.
I self published a couple of guidebooks in the mid 1990s and then got distracted doing other stuff that better paid the bills while living in Bangkok. One of the jobs I had had a website building portion to it, so I taught myself how to build websites and went from one job to another doing that. Eventually my last job became more of a consultancy that required little time and so I started building Travelfish.org in my spare time.

We “launched” the site in mid 2004 and at the time it just listed a few places we liked in Thailand. Over the years it has grown and today it lists around 4,500 places to stay in seven countries in the region. Every single place has been reviewed in person either by myself (I’ve done about 2,500) or one of our paid researchers.

I guess we fell into being a publisher when it became too much work for me to update in person. At that time we started employing researchers to update destinations and also accepting some freelance submissions. The number of researchers has varied over the years, but this year we’re adding to that by starting 13 destination-based blogs within the Travelfish site. Each blog is written by a resident of that destination. The first four are already up and running (Bali, Hanoi, Singapore and Phnom Penh) and I think once we’ve got all 13 up and going I’ll really be able to say we’re a true publisher!

I love your site and am constantly recommending it to travelers heading to Southeast Asia. How have you managed to cover so much ground so thoroughly, especially all the obscure places in a country like Cambodia?

Thank you!

We’ve had the site running for over six years and you can fit a fair bit of travel into that long a spell! That said there are gaps in our coverage I’d like to fix (we’re weak especially in Malaysia and Northeast Thailand) and some of the coverage hasn’t been updated for years.

However, as revenue has increased, we’ve been able to raise what we pay and take on more people (such as through the blogging platform mentioned above) so we’ll be really adding to the depth of our coverage through 2011. We’ve got a very busy 2011 planned.

As far as obscure places go, that’s partly my personal preference. I prefer to go to places that are a little off the beaten track, which is one of the reasons we’re so excited about expanding our Indonesia coverage this year. The problem with covering obscure places is that they need to be revisited!

Is there anything else you would like to add about what has changed and where things are headed?

The whole “writing for search engines” and “writing for Adsense” is killing good writing on the web. To be honest I couldn’t name five quality travel blogs that I read, for the pleasure of reading, on a regular basis and much of what is trotted out as quality travel narrative simply isn’t.

At the end of the day, Adsense (the most common and easiest monestisation path) rewards advertorial blather not engaging prose. At the moment some of the highest profile travel bloggers come from a business background rather than a journalism/professional writing background and while they may not be the best writers on the block, they’ve got the business end all squared away. If you’re from a journalism background you are going to need to develop and or hone your business/self-promotional skills to make am impression – many don’t feel comfortable doing that.

Don’t forget to travel – do interesting things, go to fascinating places and write about them.

Be patient.

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Stuart McDonald is the co-founder of Travelfish.org. A destination guide website for Southeast Asia. Washington Post travel editor, KC Summers described it as “one of the most knowledgeable independent sites I’ve found on travel to Asia” and the site has been recommended by most major travel publishers. He and his partner Samantha have been running the website for over six years.

Interview conducted in January, 2011 by Travel Writing 2.0 author Tim Leffel and edited by Kristin Mock.