Travel writing job sounds so glamorous and making money as a travel writer in itself becomes fun. Think about travelling seven continents of the world and earn money by doing so. As travel writer you will be able to experience different places and you will be sharing your experience with the world. Everything is true but in reality it’s a difficult job to do. Not only would you have to be a good traveler, you would have to be a good writer in order to stand out in the competitive industry of travel writing.
Whatever may the reality but best thing about travel writer’s life is that he could able to travel to the different parts of the world. And travel writing is almost can be done as freelance writing because no magazine sends you to travel the world. You have to travel the world on your own expense. And you have to sell your experience in the form of writing. You to be mentally prepared for working while traveling because it seems to be like vacation but it is, not you are actually working for your living. You will have to think continuously about making your article sellable while experiencing your travel.
Let us look at what it takes to be a good travel writer:
Your Writing Skill
Before you look for being a travel writer, you must be a good writer. Writing is something which can be natural or you might have to work hard to get it right. Writing is of two types: fiction and non-fiction. But one thing is common; you need to have good command over the language you use to write in effective ways such that it influences the reader. First of all you must have strong command over words. Especially, use of strong words affects your reader or we can say it creates impact on them. Always try to use simple and direct sentence. Generally, there is a misconception about forming sentences. Writers try to form sentence in which they try to provide complete information. If you think you do this, then it’s time to check your writing skills. Effective sentence are always direct and very simple in conveying one single idea at a time. One thing you should keep practicing is to learn from other writers. Look for something that you might be missing in your writing skill set. Best thing is to read the daily newspaper, magazines, books etc. Mostly concentrate on the article on travel. By doing this you will familiarize yourself with different styles of writing. Once you are strong in writing in terms of technicality, you will be more confident as a writer. Not only that, you will also be developing your writing style. Knowingly or unknowingly you will develop a style which will be yours and it will be your comfort zone. As you grow, everything in writing will come naturally to you and your grasping power will increase.
Exploring and Notes
Once you have developed good skill in writing, it’s time to pack your bags and travel. Traveling and having fun is different thing than traveling and taking notes of experience. It is not always necessary to keep one eye on your soundings and one eye on your note pad. There is another way of taking note. This way includes your senses. You can remember every detail of your experience through senses and then whenever you have free time you can recollect everything at once. You can write everything then at once. This way you will be able to concentrate and enjoy your travelling. But it is important to keep detailed records of the whole travel experience to support your writing. Detailed records include not only notes but also photos. You must keep a good quality camera with you. This will help get pictures for your writing. Try to take pictures of scenery, buildings, statues, historic spot, architecture, people etc.
In case of hotel, you must try to keep note of your hotel experience. Not only make note on your hotel you are staying in but also of the nearby hotels. Try to make note on their services, food, transportation methods, guide etc. Another thing which will help your content look richer is by mingling with local people. Try to experience how local people relate, operation of local market, and local delicacies, you can also take part in cultural experience. An average travel writer will just take picture of this local environment and move on. As a travel writer if you experience everything, this will give you much broader view of the world you are travelling. So, you must have things like, good camera, notepad or voice recorder to record your experiences. More than that you must keep your senses open for different experiences.
Quality of Experience
As a travel writer it will be your responsibility to bring out the good and bad about the country or destination you are travelling to. As a travel writer you are acting as guide for the other people who will be coming to the destination in the near future. It will be your sole responsibility to put forward the truth. You must say the truth about the hotel you are staying in, whether you like it or not. You have to provide the details of the good features of the hotel and the negative aspect; you must provide the details readers must be aware of. How you assess your destination is also important. Some travelers only stick to places which are most famous. But there are people who will go out of normal way for good exposure of the destination. It is up to you how you travel to get good exposure. If you are one of those who like to take different paths, then there are number of ways you can try. You can ask your local guide to fix you up with a local resident and stay with that local resident. This will help understand the local tradition, culture, cuisine, their ways of life. You can also rent a vehicle and travel the whole length and breadth of the destination by road on your own. This is the best way to see the local country side. You can take part in local festival or ritual of the local people. This will give a good taste of their culture. All methods provide great idea for your writing.
Collecting Your Experience
After a day full of excitement and hard work traveling all places, it’s time to compile your experience in one platform. Before starting to write, go through the complete journey, go through the photographs you have taken, go through the conversation you had with the local people and then start writing from your first experience, after which you can provide some basic information on the destination. You must try to provide some geographical information before you go into your experience. Also you must provide what kind of population the destination holds. As you start putting down your experiences, your sole aim must be to inspire your readers to visit the destination. Try all the peppiness of the destination to create interest. You can start from when you landed at the destination. You can provide little information on how to reach this place and what kinds of transportation are available. Also try to provide what is the currency and fare tourist have to bear with. After that you can talk about the hotel you stayed in. Provide something about the hotel, provide where the hotel is situated. Try to provide good features of the hotel, write about their services, their rooms, their theme, their staff etc. Then you can go into what spots you visited and how you visited them. The stories related to the spots will always attract the visitors. Keep it simple and straight forward. Explain the spots which were best according to your experience and this should be a must to visit. Once you write on the spot experience, you will learn how to write your experience graphically.
Taking Review of Your Work
Once you finish writing your work. You must read it yourself. See how it feels. After that you must ask your family and friends to read your work. Take review from them, see if they feel inspired. Ask them to be truthful so that you can improve your work if needed. If they ask about some locations you have visited, that means you are required to improve that part and provide more details. Other thing you can do is to go through your work as an experience travel writer. Your professional eyes will help you get more insight on your work. Once you are fine with your work, you must share it with the world. For sharing your work, there are number of platforms available today. You can submit your work to a travel magazine, or you can start your blog on the internet, you can provide video guide on YouTube, you can sell your work too on travel website. These are few ways you can sell your work and earn money. There is a big market for travel content as tourism in itself is a big industry.
Getting Paid for Your Work
After you have got your publisher, you might wonder how much you will be paid. Your payment will depend on whether you are an experienced writer or armature. If you are an experienced writer you will get paid high or even you can get projects from travel magazines. But most of the armatures will get enough money to plan for the next travel destination. On your first venture, you should not expect to have high payment. You must concentrate on how to prove yourself as a writer. If you are an experienced travel writer you will get payment on your demand. You have to always work for the passion of the job because it is not the job where you will be paid millions. First reason you are doing this job is because you love to travel. Money is just small outcome of your passion. But if you are an experienced writer, you have to make sure you are paid what you deserve. Sometimes you will get publishers who take writers for granted and pay less than what they deserve. If you are not paid right then you should look for another publisher. Experienced writer has good chance of finding a publisher than a first timer.
Writing Business
Writing business is tough business. Some people get published very quickly and others might take time. The important thing is to have patient. Try to keep quality of the work you are doing. Writing business does go through up and down. You have to be strong to accept rejection. As a writer it will be important for you to maintain relation with your publisher. Once you have made a good relation with publisher you won’t have to find the publisher every time you have work to sell. As you grow with confidence, the publishers will start providing you the projects of travelling. Magazines will pay you to travel. If you want, you can self-publish the book. Most of the celebrity travel writer write their own books and publish. If you are known as a traveler, and your work has been appreciated in magazines, internet platforms, then you can write a book of your experience as a traveler. If you have enough capital you can try to self-publish a book. It will be your popularity that sells the book.
These are the few things that will help you to earn money as travel writer. But it is important to repeat again and again. This job should be done if you are a passionate traveler. Because only a passionate traveler will understand the importance of experience of exotic locations, beauty of a river, can feel the history of a location. If you can do these things, it is much easier to express in your writing. That is why you might have seen many of the people take voluntary retirement, just to travel around the world. Many of the chefs, businessmen who get to travel to different destinations for business tend to get addicted to travelling. After their retirement they make travel itself as their business. As travel writer you might not earn millions but you will experience something which would be worth millions. You will be able to experience the different people of different countries. These experiences you garnered can never be compared with money you earn as a travel writer.