Today:
*** Why You Don’t Have to Buy Our Programs or Attend Our Workshops
*** Success Story Contest: Win a Trip to Florida this Winter
*** Practical Writing Prompt of the Week: Hands-On Adventures
*** Reader Feedback: Thank You for Providing Us with the Tools to Help Our Dreams Come True
Dear Reader,
One of your fellow readers wrote me this week with an offer, he said:
“Lori,
“I am constantly on the lookout for your words of wisdom resting in my inbox. It would be fantastic to take advantage of the offers and to attend some of the workshops. However there is one barrier. Money.
“May I take the bold and possibly unprecedented step of issuing you with a challenge as follows…
“Give me access to all your teachings, the full membership to The Write Way to Travel and open opportunities to make a success of this business and I will pay you back in kind in the future from percentage payments from assignments until the fee and ten percent more has been paid in full. This may seem like a rude, abrasive and quite frankly damn cheeky request (and indeed it is). However you are not risking anything as a) you will get your return b) you will enjoy the challenge c) I can write… – Peter”
My response?
Dear Peter,
You don’t have to give us a commission for helping you get published.
We help folks for free. In addition to the Featured Publication we send out every Thursday, at no charge (in each, we profile a print or on-line publication willing to work with first-time writers) we also publish the Travel Post Monthly — a free wire service for our readers.
The Travel Post Monthly essentially markets your articles for you (see www.itwpa.com for details). You don’t have to give us a commission. We don’t take a cut of your earnings.
Plus, we offer an abundance of tips, techniques, and secrets for getting your career started in the hundreds of articles that are archived on our website. There we’ve answered just about every question you could possibly have. And all those articles are available to you at no charge (see www.thetravelwriterslife.com).
So why bother investing in one of our programs? Well, if you’ve been reading this newsletter for weeks, or months, or years… and you still haven’t landed a by-line or a photo credit… then you might want to consider it.
You see, it’s not that you CAN’T find everything you need on our website. It’s just that people DON’T take the time to look for it. They want everything in front of them, on printed paper (or in a recording), laid out in step-by-step fashion.
And that’s what our programs provide. That, and personal feedback from our experts.
Plus one of the other big advantages to buying our programs instead of finding the material for free at our website is that in our written programs we take 10-20 pages to explain each secret (rather than the page or two we might devote to a subject in our online newsletters).
So we can go into more detail and spend lots of time “showing” instead of “telling. (And so for all that added value, there’s a reasonable charge.)
For example, rather than simply give you an outline of everything you need to write a good query letter, we take it a step further in our Ultimate Travel Writer’s Program and provide templates for successful query letters and examples of models that have worked well.
The same holds true when it comes to full-length travel articles. In this e-letter we have the space to tell you which travel articles are selling best right now and give you tips from the pros on writing such pieces. But in the Ultimate Travel Writer’s Program we can take that a step further and give you step-by-step advice on what to write first, what to say second, and so-on.
And with our workshops — it’s simply a different type of learning.
When you pay for a workshop, you get on-the-ground experience and time spent with professionals who can lean over your shoulder and show you exactly how to avoid that mistake you were about to make… before you make it.
If your camera is set to the wrong exposure, your instructor can help you fix it before you ruin a week’s worth of photos. And if you’re consistently taking photos that won’t sell, your instructor can tell you why and point you down a better path (sometimes it’s just a matter of moving two steps to the right or left to add balance and interest to a photo – something you might not notice when you’re taking pictures at home, alone).
Because of that targeted attention, our workshop attendees, as a whole, are the most successful people in our readership. But, that success comes at a price. You pay for the professional advice delivered at our workshops, and you pay for your travel expenses to get there. (That said, it proves a good investment for our most motivated workshop attendees. They typically sell their articles and/or photos within a few weeks of returning home, thus defraying their costs ).
Maybe you think that’s worth it. Maybe you don’t. I can tell you that a vast number of our past workshop attendees think it’s a good deal. In great numbers, they return to attend additional live events. And our workshops and conferences sell out.
So you see, you don’t really NEED to buy our programs or take our workshops. You can find much of the same great information on our website for free. If you’re motivated enough to get started and really make a go at this (and it sounds like you are) then my advice is to go back through our e-letter archives and start with the free material.
If you find that a few weeks go by and you’re still not landing by-lines, then do consider investing in one of our programs to help speed things up. If you really are serious about getting paid to travel, and you follow the step-by-step instructions our programs deliver, you won’t fail to earn back your investment… and then some.
And if you find success by reading through our free material – Great!
We put it up on our website so you will. And we get emails from successful writers and photographers all the time who have made smart use of it. I’d love for you to make enough to treat yourself to one of our workshops. They really are fun and our attendees learn so much.
I hope that helps. Please keep me up-to-speed on your travel-writing or photography success. If you have a story to share, send me a quick note at lori@thetravelwriterslife.com.
— Lori
Lori Appling
Director, Great Escape Publishing
[Editor’s Note: Learn more about opportunities to profit from your travels (and even from your own home) in our free online newsletter The Right Way to Travel.]
PRACTICAL WRITING PROMPT OF THE WEEK
Last week we talked about hands-on adventures. If you missed that note, you’ll find it here: Make Your Own Honey and Other Hands-On Adventures
This week, poke around your own town or county and find an activity or two that constitutes a “hands-on adventure,” like one of these,
perhaps:
** Some factories run tours where people can visit and even help make the product. (The Hershey chocolate factory in PA. runs tours as does the Limoge porcelain factory in France, for instance.)
** Are there any farms near you where people can visit (and maybe even stay) to learn about and help out with the animals? (You could take your kids or grandkids there and write a first-person account of your experience.)
** What about a local radio or TV station? Sometimes they let people come in to see how a show is put together. If you schedule time in advance you could even watch one live or make a mock show and then take home the recording. (This might work well as a field-trip idea for children, and you could write it up for a teacher’s magazine.)
** Are there any fields of flowers or rose gardens within a reasonable distance of your home — places where you might pick your own bouquet? (A story about something like this could work well for the home and garden section of your newspaper or a local magazine.)
** Gold or silver mines often offer organized tours. Perhaps there’s a place where children can sift through rock and other debris to look for gold. Along these same lines, where can you go to look for pearls or rare stones and keep what you find? Or maybe you’ll find a place where children can dig for fossils and take them home as well.
READER FEEDBACK: Thank you for providing us with the tools to help our dreams come true
“Lori,
“Last November, I discovered a book on travel writing. The idea of being able to share my travel experiences with others fascinated me — and, of course, the idea that I could get paid for all of my traveling certainly didn’t hurt.
“Since then, I have read other books, perused dozens of websites, and explored the idea of actually becoming a travel writer myself. After fourteen months of dreaming and playing with the idea, I am proud to say that I have made significant steps in realizing my dream and becoming a travel writer. I have developed a website, sent out numerous queries, and even been paid for an article. I plan on doing much more in 2007.
“Thank you for all that you do to help all of us dreamers. I enjoy the newsletter, I am on Lesson 14 of The Ultimate Travel Writer’s Program, and hope to attend one of the workshops sometime soon. Thank you for believing in us and providing us with the tools to help our dreams come true.
“You and your colleagues have helped me accomplish amazing things.”
— Jennifer L. Price