Making Money from Travel Writing?

Many travel writers are trying to figure out how to make money from their blogs.  Don't worry,  I don't plan to turn this blog commercial  - but like so many other industries, travel is having problems, and so are most newspapers, magazines and publishers. And consequently, life for travel writers is becoming harder too.

This was brought home to me when I contacted a European tourist board about an article I've been commissioned to do.   For this type of fairly short (1000 word) general-interest article, I'd expect to stay 3 or 4 days, and I would expect the local tourist board to take an interest. They supply information and (usually very valuable) local advice, and generally provide some free/cheap travel within the destination, and/or a museums card so I can whizz around and see far more than the ordinary visitor would in a brief time. They facilitate stays at hotels that want to show themselves off (and no, I don't guarantee coverage in return).  They suggest new attractions I might like to look into, tell me about seasonal things I might not know.  In short, a good travel press officer, like Linda Marcuzzi whom I had in Trieste last year, is worth their weight in gold.  And a press visit really isn't a holiday.

So I have a commission to write about this particular country (it's not one of the Eurozone debt disasters) but the press officer says she can't help because she's been told only to deal with papers of circulations of 20,000 and up. At the generally accepted rule of thumb of 3 or 4 readers per copy that means a readership of about 60,000- 80,000, plus website.

The paper that commissioned me has an accredited readership of nearly 70,000, but this includes visitors to the website.  So the circulation is lower than the board want, but personally I'd have thought 70,000 readers were worth bothering with, just a bit.  Anyway, the press officer didn't, or couldn't. 

I can't argue with their policy, and of course I'll still go there and write the story, but it will be harder to take in whatever attractions the locals are trying to promote, because I either won't know about them, and/or won't be able to afford them on my budget . And I may not be so keen to write about the place again, simply because I can't afford to.   

It shows the way the wind is blowing.  This time last year this very press officer was begging me to visit her country, and the paper's readership has actually risen since then.   But rates for writers have gone down.

In fact, many print publications are now not using outside writers at all, or paying them peanuts, or expecting them to work for free. So you can see why it's necessary to look at other options if we want to be able to keep writing about travel and making a bit of money.  

Two of the money-making travel blogs that I admire are Donna Dailey's Pacific Coast Highway and  Karen Bryan's Europe A La Carte      Donna focuses on just one region, which she knows really well, and she has said that she makes decent money from this blog, which has many ads.  Karen's European blog includes "tell it like it is" reviews and the kind of "Top this and that" features which form a staple of so many travel pages. She ropes in good guest bloggers like Amanda Kendle to cover some of the parts she can't reach.   Karen said on David Whitley's "The Grumpy Traveller" that 95 percent of her income comes from travel writing online.

Neither of those is for me.  I live in London but honestly who could do a better London site than Londonist?  And maintaining a multi-destination blog is difficult and expensive for an individual.  I don't have the time (and more importantly the money) to be constantly updating stuff I've written about in various far flung parts of Europe. 

Broadening Karen's idea into a bigger site involving more people, you  might get something like Simonseeks.com. I don't know if it is making money for its owners now (it wasn't the last time I heard, but it's had a revamp since then.)  But even if the owners make money, the writers don't seem to.  This link shows that Simonseeks relies heavily on people giving content for free. Even the "experts" who are expected to do a great deal of leg work, don't seem to get anything in exchange except the hope of "substantial rewards" - pay by click and cross your fingers, I suppose? I'm trying to find anyone who writes for them, so I can ask.   

I once tried making money on someone else's pay-by-click sites, and wrote about it in Writing for Suite 101 on my other blog:  (I hope you can get to the site - the server's having problems today.) You'll see I reckoned then that it wasn't worth doing, and readers' comments - temporarily removed because of a spam attack - agreed in no uncertain terms.

Another site has recently started which is aimed at people who aim to travel-blog professionally.  It's called http://www.travelllll.com/ and so far I haven't read the detail.  It is clearly a very business orientated thing, serious stuff.   

Ah, well, it's a sunny day today and I am not going anywhere, and glad of it.  A friend has just called and told me about a Welsh cliff hotel where he stayed with his family which he said was both beautifully located and cheap. One to try next time I'm in West Wales.  But now I'm going to the post office (un-favourite task) then I will tackle the nasturtiums which are absolutely swamping everything (that's a bit more fun than the post office), and finally I'll plant some Spring bulbs (which is definitely fun as I imagine how beautiful they'll be).

Here are flowers from some of last year's bulbs.   And how do any of you make money from online activity?