Candice LandauLast Updated on December 14, 2024 by Candice Landau
Travel writing is about much more than simply traveling and writing, but some basic principles can help anyone get started or improve. You don’t need to be the most brilliant or prolific writer either, you just need to begin somewhere.
That said, you can learn a lot from someone who’s been there, done that, and made the mistakes you don’t have to. Drawing from my years spent on the road, in the air, and behind the desk—as both a writer and the editorial director of a magazine—here are some of my hard-earned tips.
1. Getting your start in travel writing
Start local
Most people think of travel writers as those lucky enough to get free trips to destinations in exchange for the written word, or a stint of social media influencing. And it’s true. Many writers and influencers do get to enjoy an occasional “free” trip.
I say “free” because they’re not technically ever free (we’re not movie stars) and they do sometimes come with some pretty hefty strings attached—a slew of content that needs to be created within a specific timeframe.
The thing most people don’t realize is that many of the best travel writers started locally in their home city or state. Consider Terry Ward, a travel writer based out of Tampa. Though Terry is probably rarely in Tampa these days—she travels that much—her love for her city was the impetus for her own content site, Florida Beyond. Over the years Terry has become a prolific and very diverse writer. Now she covers travel, news, lifestyle, current events, food and more. Though she still frequently writes about local and local-ish destinations, she also takes assignments in far-flung parts of the world like Palau and the Azores.
The same can be said for Helene Sula, better known by her web name, Helene Inbetween. Helene began as a local travel and lifestyle blogger. If you skip back through her blog to her early days of writing you’ll find plenty on her hometown and Texas in general. From Nashville to Germany and then back to the U.S.A. before her latest Europe jaunt, local travel writing (or blogging) has always been half if not 99% of her bread and butter.
So, stop making excuses. Get out the door and go write about the best places to eat in your city, the best things to do, funny things about your city’s culture, spotlights on events you love, etc. There’s a never-ending supply of content no matter where you live.
Some of our favorite writers on Scuba Diving magazine are local to the area they write about (Brandon Cole). They know it well and can speak to what’s happening there like no one else can, including having access to resources and sources we often don’t know, or insight into destinations non-locals wouldn’t have heard of.
I got my start in travel writing as a blogger focused on writing about diving the cold waters of the Pacific Northwest. It was this hyper-local content that got me noticed in the dive industry and allowed me to move into less-local travel writing.
2. Understanding the financial realities
Forget about the money
I’m going to be perfectly frank. You are unlikely to make your fortune travel writing. If you do, you’d better contact me and tell me how you do it. Yes, you might get your 15 minutes of fame online (and the occasional ego boost) but fortune… well that’s something that few do experience and many more don’t.
If you do come across well-to-do travel writers you’ll probably find they aren’t making their riches on travel articles, not even on articles National Geographic accepts. They’re making it on courses, books, the trips they’re running, or something else.
Once you’re known in the travel industry you can expect payment of anything between 25c per word to over $1 per word. Increasingly fewer outlets pay on that higher end, so once again, do not expect to begin there. You might every now and then get a gig for one of these outlets, but they’re unlikely to provide steady income. If this isn’t first and foremost a labor of love, you might find yourself very frustrated.
Many travel writers have full-time jobs, or other income streams like stock photography commissions, freelance gigs copywriting for the corporate world, and so on.
Everyone monetizes differently
Helene’s approach is also a little different from Terry’s. Where Terry is typically paid by external outlets for her travel writing (outlets like Nat Geo, Scuba Diving magazine, Travel and Leisure, etc), Helene has monetized her own blog and makes her money on courses she runs, sponsored content she posts, affiliate links, group trips and more recently, her first book deal.
Monetizing a blog and writing for external outlets are the primary means of making a living as a travel writer or blogger. The former is more lucrative in the short term and the latter stands to be more lucrative in the long term though it requires being a real generalist with a penchant for all things digital marketing as well as social media marketing. Both take a lot of hard work.
Advertisers play an outsized role
Until I worked for a magazine, I never knew the impact an advertiser could have on the editorial content in it. I know far more than I want to now and have a hard time reading any magazine (to be perfectly frank) without wondering which advertiser is influencing the recommendations in the content. Of course, this isn’t true of every magazine but you do have to ask, where is the money coming from? If it’s primarily advertisers, well… you fill in the blanks.
That being said, it is also useful to know the role advertisers play as it means you could be spending your time flipping through a magazine’s advertisers to learn who keeps the lights on. Could these be people you recommend in your article, or indeed pitch for assignment purposes? It all depends on your values here.
I know plenty of good travel writers who do take advertisers into account but plenty more who feel this means they’re “selling their soul to the devil.” The sweet spot is finding those advertisers you want to work with that you genuinely feel good about recommending.
When I go on Aggressor Adventure trips, though I’m definitely heading out on an advertiser-compensated trip, I’m also in alignment because the company does such a great job and because I love doing these trips. So far I’ve been out with them to BVI, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, and soon Palau. Could I turn these trips down or hand them to someone else, sure? Would I? No. I believe in the organization and I know I’ll always have a good time. Find those sweet spots and you’ll have an easier time getting your writing published.
Finding the perfect travel versus writing balance is hard
While you may want to accept every travel opportunity that comes your way, know that you will need the time to actually do the work too. Plus, there will be other opportunities. I promise.
I made the mistake of not scheduling in deep work time when I first started in this industry. I crammed in multiple back-to-back trips then found, to my horror, I wasn’t able to write the quality of article I’d initially envisioned due to lack of time, or the quantity of articles I had planned for. It also added a lot of stress and meant my recollections weren’t as good when I finally got to it—those vivid sensory details were no longer. By the end of the year, I felt I needed a six-month-long break to catch up, and in some cases, a repeat!
So, how do you manage a busy travel and writing schedule? It begins with knowing what content you want to create for a particular trip. List it out. From there work backwards. How long will it take you to create that content? Don’t plan another trip until you’ve done it! Trust me. You’ll forget it if it’s not still fresh, or it just won’t be as strong.
For example, for my trip to Palau I know I want:
- An in-depth blog post on diving in Palau, with photos. Probably 16 hours if it’s really long (2 days).
- An article on spending Christmas with strangers on a liveboard on the other side of the world for a magazine. Probably at least 24 hours for writing and editing (3 days).
- And that’s not to mention all of the other content creation I do, including processing my underwater photography and video, processing and cropping my drone shots and videos, and creating my social media reels.
In total this means that for a trip like my assignment to Palau, I need at least a week to do all of the work. Do this for every trip and you’ll have a much more enjoyable time!
While travel is fun it can also be exhausting, especially if you’re trying to maximize value and do everything you can when on assignment. Do yourself a favor and schedule in that writing time, ideally directly after a trip. If you’re as easily distracted as I am, try at least to keep a bullet list of all the things you did each day so that it will be easier to write when you get to it. Don’t forget those sensory and descriptive details. That’s bread and butter for a travel writer whose job it is to imbue a real sense of place and culture.
4. Essential tools and habits for travel writers
Carry a notebook
Yes, you have your phone but a phone has layers. It has a battery (that doesn’t always survive a full day in the field sans charger). It has a passcode you need to enter to get in. And it has multiple apps you have to sort through. It also has distractions deluxe!
My advice: carry a notebook with you everywhere you go so you can rapidly jot down thoughts, observations and ideas without getting distracted by an Instagram doom scroll or replying to your bestie about the amazing blue oat milk mermaid latte you just had. Save it for the blog and tell her to read about it there instead.
The best notebook is the one you’ll use. Personally, I like a journal as it give me space for prose. But if I’m only out and about with a small purse, or on a boat, I prefer instead to carry a small notebook. Here are my favorites.
Related Reading >> Keeping a Log Book: Your Essential Tool For Writing Compelling Travel Articles
Conduct thorough research
Research is a vital part of travel writing that adds depth and authenticity to your stories. Before visiting a destination, spend time learning about its history, culture, and current events. This preparation enables you to ask informed questions, engage more meaningfully with locals (and your sources), and uncover unique angles for your articles. Thorough research ensures that your writing is not only engaging but also accurate and insightful for your readers.
Once you’ve returned, don’t forget to use secondary sources like books and web searches to fact check yourself and to see what others have to say. Be aware, however, that there is a lot of factually incorrect information on the web so use reliable resources or multiple resources. Don’t use Chat GPT and think it’s factually correct. I’ve had it lie to me multiple times, or just make up sources. It’s wild so many people use it for writing (more on that another time).
Read travel writing
Of the many who desire to write or create travel content, few consume it. Yes, they consume social media but very few people actually read travel articles or blogs written by travel bloggers. This can teach you a lot about monetizing your content online, about what topics travel writers are covering, and about where they’re going for some of those “free” trips. It will also help you learn how to do it yourself.
I now make a habit of buying a travel magazine every time I enter an airport. There are usually a few to choose from. That said, you don’t need to buy one at all, just head to the magazine’s website instead.
What most people don’t realize is that everything you find in a print magazine can usually be found online too.
Some sites do have paywalls, but many more don’t and instead rely on advertising dollars to support their publication. There might be a delay in publishing time (print usually comes out first) but often it will be the same stuff.
Subscribe to a few newsletters or bookmark the sites you want to check regularly. Follow a few active bloggers to mix things up. Save the articles you like best and then try to emulate them, if it’s using a day out in your local area, I can guarantee you’ll learn something.
Start a database of ideas
This is basically an idea log. I built mine in Notion.com as it’s fully flexible and best of all, free. I have a huge table of writing ideas as well as a budget tab for trips, a content strategy tab for my overarching plan, and a list of people and outlets I want to reach out to for one reason or another. Though I’m not the best at keeping it active, it and Google Keep are my primary tools for recording all those disparate ideas. All my Keep notes to eventually end up in Notion too.
I also implemented Notion at Scuba Diving magazine when I was on the hunt for an affordable editorial calendar tool that did it all. Notion was the only one that did and we still use it today to great success. If you’d like to learn more about how to create an editorial calendar in Notion for a magazine (online or print), contact me.
The thing I love most about Notion is how infinitely flexible it is. It doesn’t funnel you into a layout that doesn’t work for your brain, but rather, allows you to set it up in the way that works best for you. I promise it’s good. I’ve tried everything under the sun, thanks largely to working in the digital marketing space for so long. To this day I prefer it to Trello, Evernote, Wrike, Asana, Basecamp, Google Spreadsheets and literally every other tool out there.
There’s also an app you can download for your phone making it easy to transfer ideas from your notebook to it at the end of the day. Of course, Notion is my preference for a database. If you have your own tool you prefer, use it. The goal is the path of least resistance, whatever that means to you.
Make itineraries for yourself
Whether you’re traveling locally or further afield, I highly recommend making yourself a travel itinerary for the day or the week. Once you’ve done this, get into the habit of reviewing it at the end of each day and making notes about what you’d change and what could have been better. This way if you ever have to recommend an itinerary—for example, “How to Spend 3 Days on Grand Cayman”—you know exactly what to say, even if you didn’t quite do it that way. Make someone else’s experience better!
5. Skill up to get an edge
Learn to edit
Take an editing course. Please. Do yourself and others a favor. I won’t lie and pretend my writing is without mistakes (it’s frequently in need to editing), but a good course can help you turn a good article into a great article.
I’m not just talking line-editing here, I’m also talking structural editing.
I’m lucky enough at Scuba Diving magazine to work with a Managing Editor who should frankly have been a book editor. He’s so very good at helping you see the bigger picture and at teasing out themes. He’s also incredibly tactful at criticism. These are skills most people lack.
I highly recommend the very affordable editing courses on Poynter ACES.
Learn to take photos and dabble with reels
Buy yourself a year pass to Skillshare or another platform like it that will give you access to courses that help you skill up. Take a course to improve your photography. Learn to make reels. Learn to use Notion. There are so many courses that could help you either improve your skills or learn new skills. Spend a few hours a week doing them. The best part is they’ll add interest to your life.
One short course I found very valuable on Skillshare was one on making viral reels. In the end, the result was a reel that got over half a million views and tens of thousands of engagements.
You can use the banner here to get 30% off a year membership to skillshare! 🙂
Learn the fundamentals of SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a useful skill to know if you’re planning on doing any writing online. It’s the difference between an article that gets listed on page one of Google for a specific term, and an article that never sees the light of day past the 24 hours it spent on the outlet’s homepage when first published.
If you can get access to an SEO tool, not only will you learn more about writing content that has the potential to rank well, but you’ll also get insight into what topics people are searching, including the volume of people searching as well as the relative difficulty to rank. Plus a dozen more things we won’t get into in this article.
In my opinion, there’s no better tool than Ahrefs for learning SEO. I say this for three reasons:
- There’s an affordable starter plan if you don’t have corporate money to spend.
- They have THE best SEO and content marketing blog hands down (and yes, I’m read a dozen of those blogs as I’ve been in the content marketing industry for 15 years). You’ll learn so much here, and not just about SEO but also about topics like becoming a thought leader, digital marketing, data, etc.
- They have a really good resource/learning library (Ahrefs Academy), including a 60-minute exam you can take that will result in a certificate and badge. Their courses are seriously good too. I promise. I’ve taken them.
Of course, the fourth reason I say this is I’ve implemented Ahrefs at about five companies that I’ve worked at. It’s good. So good, I keep doing it. Do yourself a favor and give them a try.
6. Crafting your unique voice
Don’t discount your unique perspective
A lot of bloggers who have worked as SEO writers in a past life make the mistake of going too hard down the SEO road (many magazines and corporate blogs do this too). What this often means is they churn out mediocre content that frankly is the same as everyone else’s.
Today the same is true for those writers who use applications like Chat GPT to write content for their sites. Whenever I’ve done my own experimenting with “AI” generated content, my own take on a topic mine is always 100x more interesting. Yes, my structure might not always be as logical, but it’s mine. It’s got my unique perspective appended to it and that’s what makes it engaging. If Ghat GPT churned this article out it would be clearer, more focused and provide generalized examples. Plus, you might get penalized for using it by the search engines. The jury is out on that one…
The point is, how you see the world has value to others. Your opinion or take on Universal Studio’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter might be entirely different from someone else’s.
I know if I asked Chat GPT to write me an article on how to spend a day exploring Orlando’s version of Hogwarts it wouldn’t hold a candle to my own. I do after all come at it from a different perspective having grown up on the British books, having lived in other countries and reading it as it came out (as an already avid YA fantasy reader) and having written and read my own share of fanfiction.
Chat GPT, for example, couldn’t tell you how deeply disappointing the candy shops were, that they weren’t a touch on the descriptions in the books, or that one of the less popular rides in the park is also the most fun, explaining the way your stomach will drop feel as you swoop around corners brushing dementor robes.
Be useful
Good travel writing is about providing value to others. Stopper that ego (save it for date night) and provide genuine value. A great way to gut-check your own work is to ask yourself: would I find this useful? Would I read it in this format? Am I recommending things I’d do again? If this one article defined me and my brand, would I be proud?
When I’m thinking about how to be useful, I like to think about how I experienced things as they happened. What did I feel and think? What do I wish I’d known? Often no one has prepared me for what I’m experiencing and thus it becomes my job to do so, to fill that gap with all that missing information.
For example, if you ask me if you should book a dive trip to dive the Galapagos Islands, I’d ask you how many dives you had, how often you dived and how comfortable you felt in rougher sea state conditions and thicker exposure protection.
Where previously I might only have read about experiencing current while diving in Galapagos, I was not prepared for the sometimes howling currents on Darwin and Wolf Islands. Though the shark aggregations here were unlike anything I’ve seen anywhere else in the world, I found it baffling we hadn’t been told to bring a reef hook—a cheap tool that would have made every incredible dive 10x more pleasant. Now, if divers ask me, I’d say: get comfortable with heavy current diving, learn how to use a reef hook, know how to inflate your SMB from depth, be comfortable in thicker exposure protection, and get used to taking your gear off and clambering up into a zodiac or panga boat.
In short: fill the gaps.
7. Enhancing your content with visuals
Take pictures
This might seem obvious but you’d be surprised by how many travel writers don’t take pictures, not even of the food they eat. This might seem like an annoying millennial and gen z habit but we live in a digital age. You need to adapt. A picture is a great way to add color to your words and some magazines or online outlets will even request them, if for no other reason than to include them in small “need to know” sidebars.
You don’t need a fancy camera either. Most phone cameras nowadays take phenomenal pictures and some can even take RAW pictures. Play with your phone settings to find out how to take higher-quality photos. Or consider purchasing a point-and-shoot camera that does the same.
This Sony camera won the 2024 New York Times’ “Top Pick” slot on their Wirecutter blog and though it isn’t cheap for a point-and-shoot, it’s compact and packed with killer features. Plus, a whole lot lighter and easier to use than a DSLR or mirrorless camera.
In terms of what pictures to take, here are my thoughts:
- Take pictures of food and drinks
- Take pictures of places
- Take pictures of cultural experiences
- Take pictures of yourself in places (get a small lightweight tripod)
- Take pictures of interesting architecture
- Take pictures of animals
- Take pictures of the experiences you partake in
- Take pictures of anything that resonates with you
- Take pictures of the people you’re with
- Take pictures of your room and any noteworthy amenities in it
If you love social media combine it with your travel experiences. It rarely detracts and more often than not makes people look forward to reading whatever you have to say about your latest adventure.
One of the things I love doing when I travel is sharing my travel as it happens via Instagram and Facebook stories (or a day later if I’m concerned about safety) on social media. The primary reason I do this is so that later I can go back and relive my experience, including the emotional part of it. This is a bit of a hidden gem in my opinion and can help with the writing process, especially if you’re writing about your experience months after the trip was completed because you didn’t manage your time well!
On that note…
8. Effective writing practices
Write it up ASAP
I’m not going to lie, I’m terrible at this. It has far more to do with having a full-time (and often more than full-time) job managing a magazine team than being too lazy to write. I literally don’t have time. Most of my writing happens after work hours, which is why I often tell people who envy my position “smoke and mirrors.” Yes, the travel perks are wonderful but the work-life balance is garbage. Seriously. I’ve put on weight and I’ve had many a tear-filled night, wondering how I’m going to cope with the immense workload, not just of creating but also of strategizing, budgeting, partaking in other corporate marketing activities, and all the unsexy things people don’t know about. So often I find myself wishing all leaders had read Paul Graham’s essay on the Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule so they understood the difficulty of attempting to be both maker and manager.
Now I’ve been far too honest for comfort (perhaps I’ll delete that later), I’ll share why I think it’s so important to write about your trip and your travels as soon as possible.
Firstly, your ideas are fresh and engaging. It’s so much easier to write when you still remember things well, when the feel of the place is still lingering in the back of your head, and when you can still taste and describe your food. No one takes notes that are good enough. With each passing day your memories will get a little dimmer and so too will your emotional collections.
Second, people will remember you and be more likely to help or respond quickly if you’re looking for quotes or more information. This matters a lot as we’re all incredibly busy. I get a lot of requests for underwater photos, for example, and rarely have the time to oblige these people. Taking the time to edit my photos for someone else (for free) just isn’t high on my priority list. At to that an element of time, and well, they’re likely not getting them. I’ve already moved on. Of course, we’re not talking about paying customers here…that’s a different story!
Finally, and most importantly, the information is likely to still be accurate. If you write your story 10 months after you last snorkeled with sting rays in Grand Cayman, what’s to say the site hasn’t changed or closed? Is your information still up-to-date? Are the sources you mention in it still working there? For travel writers, time is of the essence.
Don’t start with AI
It’s incredibly sad to see how many good writers are leaning heavily on this tool. Usually it’s the younger generation, but as use of tools like ChatGPT become more common, so too do the AI-driven stories I read. And, I hate to say it, but even with editing, I can still tell when something has been written by AI. If you read and write as much as I do, it becomes obvious.
The writing lacks a level of intimacy and includes phrases and ways of writing that are fairly obvious. It adheres to an overly logical structure. It’s often unimaginative. And, it plagiarizes like an SOB!
Don’t forget what travel writing is all about. Communicating YOUR experience, not the next best word that the algorithm thinks you should pop in.
Come one, don’t shortchange your readers and your editors that pay you for a quick buck. Do the work yourself.
9. Building professional relationships
Network! Network! Network!
This is such underrated advice. It’s what you hear in college and on the job. Bleh. I’m sure you don’t want to hear it from me. The thing is, it’s valuable. My best contacts have come about as a result of putting myself out there and just being open to talking to people I expect to get nothing from. Just making those initial connections.
So, network with other writers. They’ll give you insight into the industry and perhaps even referrals to editors you can pitch, especially if you’re not competing (and sometimes even then).
Network with travel companies and tourism boards. You’ll learn more about the industry and how it works as well as what their focus is on at any given time.
Network with people in the areas you’re interested in. Perhaps you’re interested in food writing. Network with foodies, with chefs, and with bartenders. You never know when you’ll need a source.
Attend travel shows and events and network with everyone there. You’ve no idea what other opportunities you’ll come across. Partnership potentials with photographers? A source for a future article? Something else?
The point is, don’t stay in your silo. Get out there and out of your comfort zone. If you don’t have access to things like tradeshows or writing groups in real life, do it online. There are tons of Facebook groups and closed organizations that have networking opportunities. Give them a go. Even virtual meetup groups exist for things like writing.
Have a unique perspective and offer
While you don’t need a fully fleshed-out personal brand to get into travel writing, it will be easier to succeed and be remembered if there’s something that sets you apart from all the other travel writers competing for the same eyeball space.
My unique offer is that I also scuba dive (and am an instructor to boot) and I carry all my own photography and drone equipment with me, including underwater housing for my mirrorless camera.
My unique perspective (not to be confused with unique offer) is that I adhere to a plant-based lifestyle (you can’t save the ocean and still eat the fish) and I am authentic.
I’m just as happy talking to the taxi driver as I am spending time with the CEO. Frankly, this “openness” to all people from all walks of life, means I see my experiences through a lens many others don’t.
I don’t just want to experience the luxury resort in Fiji, I want to spend time with the staff who work there to learn more about their culture, what working there is like, and so on.
I think this makes my life more colorful, the story more accurate, and what I have to say more interesting.
What’s your unique offer? What’s your unique perspective as a travel writer? I’m sure you have them. If you’re not sure, ask a friend.
Be a pleasure to work with
In terms of personality, I’m not high-maintenance. This might seem a strange thing to say but when you enter the travel writing industry—increasingly encroached on by social media influencers often targeting the same resorts and tourism boards—not being high-maintenance is a breath of fresh air.
Many of those influencers (though not all) can also make quite hefty demands related to what they want, where they want to stay, and what they want to experience. I’ve heard the demands on press trips and FAM trips that included both influencers and writers. You’d be surprised by the number of times I had PR reps or tourism boards tell me I was a breath of fresh air in comparison, and had organizers of these trips tell me they’d never again mix journalists and influencers as they approach things quite differently.
Be a pleasure to work with yourself. It’s not hard. Even if you do have 50,000 followers, you can still be human, kind and accommodating (I know influencers who are just this). Frankly some of the best travel writers I know either don’t have a social media presence or have 1,000 followers. Social influencing is not the same as travel writing. It’s also not the end all and be all.
10. Developing interviewing skills
Record what people say
This might be using a voice recorder or your phone, or it could be as simple as jotting down quotes using pen and paper. Either way, get permission to do this.
I tend to record most of my dive briefings so that when I circle back to write the article and have questions about a specific dive site, it’s all there, even the dive map.
I also tend to record people if they’re giving informative tours or lectures. Again, I ask. I’ve often recorded a local taxi driver or two who give me information about the country, the trees and plants I’m seeing, and the local culture. I get car sick so writing these ideas down is no bueno for me in a car.
Recording people also makes it easier to be an active listener. I find it very hard to listen and write at the same time as I’m not focused on what the person is saying but rather on getting it down onto paper.
My favorite voice recording devices include:
- My phone (the in-built recording app is perfect though if you choose)
- This recording pen (though I can never quite remember how to use it)
- This magnetic puck recorder I attach to the magnet on the back of my phone
- This normal voice recorder (easiest to use)
- Otter if I’m speaking to them online.
Get used to calling people, old-school style
This feels a bit like a dirty secret. I know a lot of us millennials or Gen Z’ers aren’t super excited about hopping on a call—we’d rather text—but the truth is the value you can get out of phone calls or Zoom calls is huge. Not to mention the direct quotes and quotes often write or frame the story for you. In fact, I’ve written whole stories as a result of interviews alone and I know many a writer who has done the same.
It’s easier to make calls if you’re prepared. First, know what format or structure you’d like your article to take. This will help you figure out what each section of the article needs to address. Now, make a list of questions you can ask your prospect or prospects that could help inform each section. Honestly, when you realize how easy it is, it’s a no-brainer.
Of course, there will also be those people who aren’t particularly loquacious. For them, it may help to send questions by email instead. You can always do this after the fact if you feel the spoken interview didn’t help much. Some people feel more at ease writing than speaking.
I usually ask the person I’m interviewing if I can record them. Once I’ve done that I use Otter.ai to transcribe what they said. This makes it much easier to find where in the conversation they mentioned something at which point I click that part of the transcript and Otter immediately begins playing the relevant section. It’s magic!
11. Establishing your platform
Start a blog
Seems a bit obvious to say (I mean you’re here reading this, aren’t you?) but again a lot of people who express a desire to become travel writers don’t yet have blogs or websites.
There are dozens of free blogging platforms nowadays. I suggest you start simple and not worry too much. The point of it all is value. Once you learn more and really get into it you can upgrade and easily migrate all your content to a more premium-looking website. I’ve done this multiple times over the years, including changing hosting companies and website platforms.
I still love WordPress most because it allows for so much customization but many others who don’t aspire to the level of technical geekiness I do, enjoy success with Squarespace, Wix and the free version of WordPress (I use self-hosted). I also use Envato (or Themeforest) to buy my favorite themes. I always ensure I pick SEO-optimized themes and themes that have good reviews or are updated frequently. A good technical SEO score is important and I know design/build is part of that. Even Canva has a web-building service now though I won’t pretend I’ve tried it.
Once you’ve got a blog or website in place, start writing. Even short posts in the order of 200 words are fine. They’ll get you started. Heck, some people build their entire brand around this. Entrepreneur and marketing guru Seth Godin, for example. To stay relevant and active, Seth writes regularly on his blog. To date, he says he has about 9,000 blog posts. Never mind that these posts are only about 150 words long on average. The point is to write, even if it’s short.
Build a portfolio and start pitching
Whether you start by writing for free or for payment, you’ll want to build a portfolio of writing. To do this you don’t even need official assignments. You just need to write on your own blog, or on another platform like Medium. Maybe give yourself an assignment and head out into the city or countryside to complete it.
Of course, assignments in magazines or news outlets are going to look a little more legit but you don’t have to let that hold you back. My own blog got me a foot in the door with magazines like Wild Hope and Scuba Diving. I also like to own my own content and so, spend more time writing on my blog and building my personal brand, than pitching outside sources who then own my content for themselves.
If you would like to pitch your ideas and travel stories, however, now is as good a time as any and even that blog portfolio is going to help given they’ll likely ask for a writing sample, or you’ll want to share one within the pitch.
On that note, let’s talk about what a pitch should include:
- It should mention who you are and possibly who referred you.
- It should state that you’ve done your research and noted the outlet has not covered the topic you’re pitching on their site—or if they have, how yours is different.
- It should include a link to your writing samples, or an attached writing sample.
- And it should include your pitch or pitches. These can be relatively short. Ideally, you’ll include a proposed headline and a short description of what the article will entail, just enough to pique curiosity. If you don’t hear back from the editor, follow up later. Given I’ve worked on both sides of the fence I can tell you a couple of follow-ups don’t bother me, though they should be spaced out—every couple of weeks.
Be sure you’ve read the outlet’s contributor guidelines or style and tone of voice guidelines if they publish them. It will also ensure you’re speaking to the correct target audience when you make your pitch which will give you a better chance of having it accepted.
Things not to do:
- Follow up daily or even every couple of days. That’s way too much.
- Find the editor on social channels and pitch them there if they didn’t answer your email. Inappropriate!
Don’t worry about a niche
For years I agonized over niching down. It’s what all marketers recommend. This of course is hard for a generalist like me, but was made easier because I had a deep all-consuming passion: scuba diving. The thing is, over time, I wanted to cover other things too—animal behavior, travel, microscopy, vegan food. I could either quash that part of my life or embrace it like other successful writers did and stop niching down.
It was only when I realized I could be both a dive industry writer and a travel writer that I began tentatively to start opening my brand to other things, like even just talking about travel writing.
You are after all your own brand and multiple things can encapsulate you rather than just the one. I’m a diver and a traveler. I’m also an ocean lover, an animal lover, a learner, a reader, a writer, a hobby microscopist, a gear junkie, a VR nerd, and a dozen other things to come…
12. Professional best practices
Under promise, over-deliver
This one is hard. But, I strongly recommend doing it. If you get a contract, underpromise what you can do and then over-deliver if you can do more.
I say this because travel is time-consuming and while you’re doing it you’re not doing something else. When you do finally “get back to work” you might find you don’t really have enough time to do all the things you promised, well-intentioned though you were.
Take it from my own failures: underpromise, overdelier.
Think template
What most people don’t realize is that many travel stories are templates hiding in plain sight. All you have to do to hack them is grab the content and run it through ChatGPT, or better yet, go through it section by section and “diagram it” to understand how it was structured.
The latter process is most useful as it will engage you fully and you’ll have a better chance of internalizing the structure.
Template stalking is just smart. Do it.
Travel Writing 101 Wrap Up
So you want to be a travel writer? Go somewhere, come home and write about it. Get started and keep chipping away, even if it’s just 150-word-long blog posts about the places in your own city that you’ve eaten at or the cultural observations you’ve made.
Start a blog and start pitching other outlets. You’ll get better at it. You’ll make mistakes to start with but you’ll learn a whole lot on the way. Don’t be a perfectionist. C+ work is good enough to start with. Just do it.
Got any tips to add? I’d love to hear them. Leave a comment or shoot me an email!
