This past week I’ve been really stressing over the low quantity of comments on this post (the fewest ever) and worried that it was because I’d offended a lot of readers, even though I’ve encountered quite a number that do make fun of “reviewers” (their words) and felt that I was just being truthful.

And maybe I did offend a few writers, but a lot of beginning travel writers need to know that reviews are still a very powerful tool and still a good way to get published, so they should not let anyone make them feel like it’s beneath them.

I overheard a writer at a conference use these exact words in conversation with a couple of others, “it doesn’t take any talent to write service pieces” (aka reviews)….it bothered me since then that I didn’t speak up and correct that person, so I felt it was important to include my view in this post.

I’m sincerely glad it made you stop and think.

But I’ve been giving this a lot of thought since you came out with this post last week – and I’ve come to the realization that I was writing only for myself – or for those I imagined (assumed?) were reading what I wrote to be “transported”, and not for anyone who might stumble across my site looking for information.

I still would probably have not considered writing reviews again, except one line from your post has haunted me – “Travelers WANT to know as much as possible about destinations before they go there” – it’s what I’ve been thinking about most this week – who are travel writers writing for, if not for the travelers?

Thanks for opening my eyes, and I’m looking forward to reading some of the prior installments, as well as the next one.

Sorry about the anonymous thing, but I’m a little embarrassed by my prior snobbish attitude.

Articles can be published both on your blog AND elsewhere, you just need to be aware of any policies or guidelines of the publications (online or offline) that you want to submit it to – some require exclusivity, others just require it to be a certain % different to avoid duplicate content issues, still others don’t care, but you’ll want to know this before you post it to your site.

Some article marketing gurus will advise you to put a modified (”lite”) version out for syndication, with enough information to be helpful, but leaving the reader wanting to know more. This version should direct readers to a more expanded version at your site.

I know this method CAN work well, but it depends upon the article itself – the quality of the information in both the lite and expanded versions.

I hope this helps! Feel free to post this question in the forums where you may get some additional opinions.