Starting out as a freelance writer isn’t easy. The competition is tough, especially for online freelance work. When you start at the bottom, you have little choice but to accept lower rates compared to more accomplished and veteran freelancers. That doesn’t mean you can’t rise up to the top. If you work hard and produce [...]

New writers and bloggers ask me all the time how I’ve used social media to advance my reach since the launch of Brendan’s Adventures last year. I constantly tell them that I treat social media use like any business would treat advertising. You have to decide if the cost of the advertising is worth the [...]

I am a traveler, and like many people on this site, I write about it. That is to say, I don’t blog about my trips, but instead have written a book, Time Zones, Containers and Three Square Meals a Day, about a few particular journeys I made while working on a container ship. Now that [...]

It seems like you can’t go anywhere these days without hearing the latest buzz words, “Personal Branding” Seriously, I’d be surprised if it wasn’t mentioned in at least one – if not more – of the freelance writing newsletters you subscribe to. In my email this week I learned that MediaBistro has an online course [...]

You’re at a Travel Writing Conference, and an editor or PR person wants to follow up with you. So you quickly whip out a business card…..or do you? I’m surprised by how few new media travel writers and bloggers take the time to create their own marketing tools such as business cards, post cards, etc…to [...]

Unless you’re a Stephen King or a Dan Brown, the chances are really high that you’ll do most, if not all, of the marketing for your books yourself if you want to sell them. This is especially so if you’ve self-published your own travel guides, such as I have. Self-publishing is, after all, a do-it-yourself [...]