What’s Going to Work in Travel Writing Going Forward

What's going to make you a successful travel writer or blogger in the 2020s? What's going to work in travel writing going forward?

What's going to work in travel writing going forward?

I'll answer that question in more detail when I put out an updated second edition of Travel Writing 2.0 this fall, but in the meantime here's a quick index card version based on what I'm seeing in interviews, in survey answers, and in conversations at conferences.

We have interviewed more than 50 writers and bloggers over the years and more than 200 responded to my travel writing income survey, so we have lots of data and experience to draw from. Conditions change over time, but there are a lot of patterns and themes that keep coming up. I encourage you to spend some time in the archives of this blog to really read and absorb. There's a lot of wisdom in those posts.

I've also spent time with a wide variety of freelance travel writers and bloggers the past two years at conferences from TBEX, NATJA, and SATW. I see who is successful, who is not, and the why of both.

I am especially encouraged by how much income has risen for this profession since I put out the second version of Travel Writing 2.0. The mythical "six-figure travel writer" is becoming far more common than it used to be, with 20% of my survey respondents hitting that level now.

If you're serious about becoming a six-figure writer, blogger, or web publisher yourself, there's no short cut to success. Here's the path though, with a few maxims to heed:

Travel Writing is a sales job

"I'm a writer, not a salesperson," says the poor travel writer who is always traveling but always broke. Sorry, but you can't be one without being the other---not if you ever hope to make more than a pittance.

sell is humanIf you're a freelancer, you need to be pitching new story ideas regularly, often to people you've never met. (In sales, this is dubbed a "cold call.")

If you're a blogger, you'll only find a few others of your type who can just paste in some code and hope for the best. You can get pretty far from ad networks and affiliate programs if you have huge traffic, but that will only pay the bills in most cases, not put a huge sum in your bank account.

Most bloggers who make the big bucks find that they need to strike deals, form alliances, convince partners to spend money with them. Those who launch courses or lead tours need customers. These all require pitches, landing pages, funnels, presentations, negotiations---in other words, sales. Also, even affiliate commissions are generated from selling. If you just place some code in here and there and don't talk up anything, you probably won't get many conversions.

If you're an author, you either need to sell to an agent/publisher or you need to sell to a tribe of followers. Either way, it's not going to happen by magic.

If we're not working for a corporation and getting a salary just for showing up, we're salespeople. Embrace that and you've got a shot at success. If you think that's odd or icky, go get this book: To Sell is Human. And go to conferences where successful people are talking about how they got there. Usually there are some tips on pitching or getting clients.

The hustlers get the spoils

Those who sit around waiting for things to fall in their laps generally don't do very well. Bloggers who completely rely on passive income methods are usually not going to make enough to pay a mortgage and put away money for retirement.

Don't get me wrong, Mediavine and Adthrive (now Raptive) had made some bloggers much richer than they were before, but you need 100,000 or more monthly unique visitors before that's going to do more than just cover your expenses, especially if you live somewhere like New York, London, or Sydney.

Hustlers send invoices. They ask for orders. They pitch deals. They create products that people pay for. They know that if it's a real job or business, that means exchanging a product or service for money.

Professionalism often trumps skill

Ask me which writers I like working with the best as editor of multiple websites and group blogs, and I'll tell you it's the ones I know I can depend on every time. They meet deadlines. They hand things in already formatted correctly. The links in their blog posts work because they've checked them. They don't give me excuses about why their photos are crappy. They don't make the same stupid mistakes a half dozen times after being corrected twice.

Sure, I love a brilliant bit of prose as much as the next guy and since Perceptive Travel is a narrative publication, I want great travel stories, not just so-so ones. If that brilliant writer is a pain in the ass who can't get the basics right, however, I'll gladly pass on the potential award winner and go with someone who is easier to work with. Ask 100 editors out there and probably 95 of them will tell you the same thing. Do what you said you'll do, in the manner the boss wants you to do it, and success will follow. It's not really that complicated.

If you're a blogger, it's a given these days that you can string sentences together and avoid typos. Heck, an AI bot can pull that off for free. It's also assumed that you can take good photos. It's also a given that you will deliver what you promise to PR people, your readers, and people who buy what you sell. That's the starting point, not some lofty goal.

When it comes to winning the Search Engine Optimization game, it's important to remember that Google can't read. Its bots don't care how well you can turn a phrase or make a metaphor sing. They're analyzing depth, keywords, and authority, which leads us to...

Being unique is required, not optional

successful travel bloggers find the right niche

Your angle and your ideas are your main currencies in the freelance writing world. Increasingly they're the secret sauce in what makes one travel blogger stand out over another too. This is a very crowded field with no real barriers to entry. Each TBEX conference has anywhere from 300 to 500 travel bloggers attending, times 3 on different continents. Remember that those are just the bloggers willing to invest the time and money to come!

If you're a freelancer pitching the same ho-hum stories we've already seen a hundred times, you'll get a lot of ignored or rejected queries. If you're yet another blogger writing about the experiences of you traveling around the world, yaawwwwnnnn. Give us a unique angle, a niche that you can own, a point of view we haven't seen before. Be different and be memorable.

The days of succeeding as a generalist are mostly behind us. It's way too competitive now to just be a pen for hire who writes about anything or a blogger trying to cover every place and every type of travel. Pick a focus and make it your own. If you want to write about three different aspects of travel, then launch two more blogs instead of muddying up the first one with your solo trip to India, your group tour in Germany, and your Alaskan cruise.

Multiple income streams make you strong

You'll hear a lot of entrepreneurs and success coaches pound home the word "focus," that you should concentrate on one thing and do it really well. OK, fine if your goal is to launch a new product or put out an app that's going to go viral. If you're a writer though, throw that advice out the window because focus is overrated, at least in relation to where the money is going to come from.

As a freelancer, blogger, author, or (preferably) all three, you can't rely on one thing to pay the bills and get ahead. You need to be constantly tweaking, trying, testing, and pitching to cobble together enough streams to add up to a nice income. Unless you go get a cubicle job with a salary---which comes with its own set of problems---you need a portfolio or collection of joblets that are going to keep the cash flow going. multiple income streams

In the Nassim Taleb book Antifragile, in one chapter the author celebrates the life of a freelancer and the self-employed. Corporate jobs are fragile, but these are the opposite. They can actually benefit from upheaval and chaos. Sure, you might have a terrible month now and then, but you'll have others that make up for it. When the corporate person loses that editor's job, which happens every week, their income drops to zero. (And opportunities open up there for freelancers/contractors.)

If you're Antifragile though, when you lose one gig, you just go get another gig. It's a roller coaster, but your income doesn't drop to zero unless you've made a very bad career choice. Your future is in your own hands, not someone else's.

Investing in your business (and your sanity) is essential

I put this slide below in one of my speaking presentations on productivity for bloggers. Over and over again, I see that the writers who struggle the most are the ones that are the cheapest when it comes to their own business. They don't pay for that premium theme, that software service, that graphic artist, or that web design expert. They try to be a superhero and do everything themselves, even though that brings their hourly income from where it could be down to barely above minimum wage.

outsourcing for bloggers

If your time is worth $20 or more an hour, which is the minimum if you're living in a developed country with high expenses, then you shouldn't spend your time on things you could farm out for less. There are experts around the globe who are more than willing to take on those tasks for a fraction of what you should be earning as a content creator. Part with some of your hard-earned money to invest in your business and you'll almost surely earn more this year as a result.

If you want a jaw-dropping look at why you shouldn't be spending time figuring out how to change hosts, install a new blog theme, convert your e-book for Kindle, or design a logo, surf around Fiverr.com for ten minutes. Follow this link and see how many hours of work you could save.

When I tally up my taxes, the business expenses are no small sum. There are lots of great tools for bloggers that save me loads of time and make me more money. Plus I go to conferences, which always pays off, and I don't hesitate to pay for good hosting instead of using the cheapest option. (Most of my sites are on LyricalHost and PeoplesHost.)

You don't know everything: keep learning

How many books did you buy and read last year? How many self-improvement/knowledge-gaining articles or reports did you read? How many conferences or courses did you attend?

Now, compare that to how much time you spent farting around on virtual water cooler platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Are you really spending your time learning and getting better, or are you just coasting along hoping your luck will turn? Here's a clue: having 5,000 more social media followers is not going to double your income. Getting advice from people who are already earning six figures will.

So start here for free: sign up for the free Travel Writing Success Newsletter

When you're ready to really step it up though, join me at Travel Writing Overdrive.

See what I did there? It's referred to as a "Call to Action," or CTA. It's a sales term...

 

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