Cash in on Your Travels: Steenie's Insider Secrets

Monday, March 24, 2008

Learn more about making money while living your dream life overseas in International Living Postcards—your daily escape

At IL events, I'm often asked this: "Can I really make a living from travel writing? Air fares are costly—then there's hotels, food, and everything else. It's all right for you, Steenie. IL pays you to visit exotic places."

So they do, but I'm still a freelancer (which leaves me free to flaunt my wares elsewhere). I've just written a 450-word piece on Malta for a European magazine. Payment is €150 ($225). I can't reveal the name here—I don't want to spoil this regular gig.

You see, it's like getting money for nothing…$225 might not sound stellar, but I'm talking two hours of work. When you know the tricks, it's easy to churn out two or three short pieces a day. The magazine wanted a few paragraphs on the essence of the island plus details about accommodation, where to eat, etc.

I've visited Malta three times, so returning to the island to update my original research wasn't necessary. Real estate articles are different—for one thing, they're time sensitive—but travel writing focuses more on the “vacation experience.” Providing a destination hasn't been hit by a natural disaster or anything else that could ruin a vacation, there's nothing dishonest about writing about a place you visited a year or so ago. A click of the mouse and it's easy to discover your favorite hotel's current rates, if telephone numbers have changed, and so on. What really irritates me is that some unscrupulous travel writers get paid for gushing about places they've never seen!

Each week, say you write a Postcard-sized piece for three magazines paying similar rates. (Some pay over $1 a word.) And say you work only a three-day week. That's $2,700 per month. In much of the world, that stretches a long way.

Still enjoying your three-day week, you could increase your output to two short pieces a day. Now you're netting $5,400 monthly.

As a writer, you can live or spend time almost anywhere. One freelance friend currently beach-bumming around Thailand e-mails his articles from there. For most expats, expenses in Thailand are minimal. Same goes for Latin America.

Brief “info” pieces are only one way to make money for no outlay. Another is getting other people to fund your travels. Professional freelancers receive lots of invites for press trips.

This arrived for me today: "EXPERIENCE NATURAL CLEARWATER OUTDOORS!" Florida isn't foreign, but it shows how freeloading writers operate.

Those invited on the four-day trip get a lengthy kayak excursion throughout Caladesi Island State Park, a three-hour sailing experience, a guided hike along Honeymoon Island's Osprey Trail, a “Marine Life Adventure,” and a “Sunset and Stargazing Beach Walk” with a local naturalist.

That's all free. So is a round-trip flight from a North American airport to Tampa or St. Petersburg/Clearwater, ground transportation, meals, and accommodations at the luxury Sandpearl Resort. Kayaking and sailing experience isn't required, as instruction is provided.

(Florida's great outdoors and four hours in a kayak sounds like purgatory for me, not pleasure. I definitely won't be signing up.)

But if you want to bag similar free trips, book your place at IL's Ultimate Event in Mexico this May. I'll spill lots more secrets, and there will also be a “Travel Writing 101” workshop. You'll learn exactly how easy it is to get published.

I hadn't been freelancing very long before getting invited on a 10-day expenses-paid jaunt to Borneo. If I'd known about the jungles and orangutans, I might have turned it down...

Steenie Harvey
Roving Travel Writer, International Living

P.S. You don't need a journalistic background to be a travel writer. I don't have one. Fact is, I left school when I was 15 to live in a hippie squat house in London. I've tended bar in a strip joint...inspected bolts at a factory...waitressed in a Chinese restaurant...clerked at a print shop where I typed invoices and lied to customers about why their orders weren't ready. But today I get paid to visit white-sand Caribbean beaches...Indian Ocean hideaways...Rome...Paris...and more. Here’s the full story of how I did it...and how you can do it, too.

Read related articles:

- Warts and All: Earn a Living as a Travel Writer

- Turn Your Vacation Snapshots Into Cash

- Buy in China…sell in the U.S.