I’ve met hundreds of travel bloggers during my freelance travel writing career.
Almost without exception they tell me they hadn’t realized how much work would be involved in creating and maintaining a blog. And, most of them tell me they’ve made little or no money from their travel blog, even after two or three years.
If you’re looking to make some quick ca$h for all the time and effort you’ve put into your travel blog, you should consider pitching your most exciting travel blog posts to travel magazines. This could reap you considerable rewards!
If you’re a travel blogger with dozens—or hundreds—of stories lying dormant on your blog, you could be sitting on a gold mine!
Your raw, unrefined travel blog posts could easily form the genesis of travel stories that you can pitch to paying print media. You have a head start on print travel writers because dreaming up and researching travel stories are the first two steps to getting your articles published in paying print media—and you already have those tasks completed!
You can pluck out your juiciest travel blog posts and pitch them to print magazines and newspapers without doing much more research. And, you’ll see a financial return on your work within a few months because print magazines pay upon publication.
Plus, you won’t have to create a query letter from scratch. Your travel blogs contain practically all the necessary elements for your query letter, saving you much valuable time.
Travel bloggers already have several other built-in advantages over novice travel writers too. You have . . .
- Travel writing experience
- An eye for a good travel destination and story
- A travel blog portfolio to refer magazine editors to
- Social media skills and presence
- A built-in audience to mention in your query letters
- A blog to advertise your published article
Getting your stories published in print magazines—and being paid for them—is still not going to be easy. You may need to adjust your writing style to print media standards. But, if you’re a reasonable writer, this won’t be much of a stretch anyway.
And, of course, you’ll still have to create magazine distribution “pitch” lists to send your query letters to. This task does take some time, but you’ll always have these lists to use for other pitches in the future.
For print magazine editors to take your queries seriously, you’ll need to make sure your travel blog looks professional. If it’s riddled with misspellings, poor grammar and syntax, poor writing voice, and overused travel writing clichés, editors will not take your queries seriously. They’ll just hit the “delete” button and move on to the next query in their inbox.
Travel bloggers wanting to see their stories in paying print media will still be on a learning curve, but it won’t be nearly as steep as novice travel writers starting from scratch. You already know several steps in the travel writing process, so you have a huge advantage.
~Roy
Have you had success pitching blog posts to print media? Share your experience!