If you love to travel and you love to write, then why not combine these two passions into a career to become a travel writer? One of the most exciting and extraordinary careers to have, every day will be different for you – which is perhaps the main reason why so many people look to enter the industry every year.
However, that’s not to say that it will be an easy career to get into. Travel writing can be a tough job and it requires a lot of determination to get it right and become successful in it. If it’s a career that you’re seriously considering, however, then there’s no reason why you can’t also thrive.
To ensure that you start this venture off on the right path, here are 8 steps that you can take to become a travel writer:
Create An Extraordinary Website
One of the first things that you should do is to create your own website. This way, when you’re sending your details into magazines, guidebooks, etc. they have a website that they can reference with all of your work on it. A way of showcasing your professionalism and authority in your field, it needs to portray the type of writing that you do and who you are as a person.
This, along with the content within it, will help to differentiate you as a person to others within the industry. When creating your website, you want to ensure, however, that it looks aesthetically-pleasing, which is why it’s worth either using a building tool (such as wix.com) or hiring a digital designer to create one for you.
Book Plenty of Trips
Ok, so this might sound obvious. But in order to write engaging and interesting content, you need to be frequently traveling and booking trips. Although this might not be possible at first, as you might not have the capital upfront, over time as you become more successful, you can reinvest a portion of what you earn into traveling around the world.
Pick a Niche That You’ll Focus On
Once you have the website in place, you’ll need to decide what you’ll write about each day. To become profitable, this usually entails picking a niche that you will specialize in. This can either be luxury travel, city travel, budget travel, food and travel etc.
Although you can, of course, still be successful by writing a variety of different topics, if you’re focused on one subject, you’ll be seen as an expert within it. So consider what you’re going to write about and plan your writing schedule around that.
Grow Your Online Presence
When you’ve done the above three steps, it’s time to grow your online presence. As a travel writer, it’s all about drawing in new readers. Therefore, it’s a good idea to spend some time creating various social media channels that you can then post your content on each day.
Through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other similar channels, you can also connect with editors and fellow writers – ensuring that you’re within the travel community.
Write Every Single Day
As aforementioned, to become profitable and successful within the travel journalism industry, you need to be committed to the craft. And as part of this, you need to write fresh, engaging content every day.
Alongside regular content, when writing on your website and for publications, you must ensure that your spelling and punctuation is up to scratch – otherwise, you won’t be thought of as a quality travel writer.
Keep Up With Trends
To ensure that you’re writing fresh and interesting content, and that you’re competitive within the industry, you must keep up with trends within it. Without this in-depth knowledge and understanding of what’s happening, you’ll rapidly fall behind other writers within it.
To do this effectively, it’s not only important to regularly check social media/news channels for any updates everyday, but to sign up for an industry-related newsletter that will keep you in the know.
Network Offline
As well as networking and cultivating connections online, it’s vital that you network offline as well. Whether this is through travel conferences, workshops, meet-ups or a similar event, it will give you the chance to meet others within the industry – resulting in future work. It can also be key in learning invaluable information that helps to craft your future content.
When it comes time to networking, make sure that you sell yourself. You can do this by creating business cards/physical portfolios of your work that you can then hand out to clients. On said business cards, you can include not only your website address, but your contact details, including your phone number and a virtual business address (that you can get through a service such as https://www.physicaladdress.com) if you have one.
Register Your Details on Travel Writer Websites
As travel writing is such a popular and in demand career, there are several websites that you can register on that will help you on your quest to turn your passion into a reality. Offering an online community that you can connect with and showcasing writing projects that you can apply for, they can prove to be very useful in the long term.
Final Thoughts
So, there you go! Those are 8 simple steps that you can take to become a travel writer. Of course, these aren’t complete steps. For example, you might also want to gain some relevant work experience in the industry before starting your own self-employed business, to give you a better insight into what it takes.
Nevertheless, the above should guide you as to what actions you need to take in order to get started. A career that’s guaranteed to create unforgettable memories that last a lifetime, it’s unlike any other job in the world.
So what are you waiting for? Discover the incredible benefits that come with becoming a travel writer for yourself and see millions of people worldwide have taken the leap.
Photo by Breakingpic from Pexels
