http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/ en-US Copyright 2008 Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:11:14 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/how_to_snag_the_best_hometown.php http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/how_to_snag_the_best_hometown.php The Write Way to Travel ad - nut ad - twr Jennifer Stevens Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:11:14 -0500 http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/featured_publication_up_magazi.php http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/featured_publication_up_magazi.php Where to Get Published ad - nut Bonnie Caton Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:55:09 -0500 http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/from_magazine_reader_to_prolif.php http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/from_magazine_reader_to_prolif.php The Write Way to Travel ad -san fran 08 Roy Stevenson Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:42:23 -0500 http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/how_to_buy_the_right_camera.php http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/how_to_buy_the_right_camera.php Photo Tips ad - eat ad - san fran 08 Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:35:01 -0500 http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/attendee_page.php http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/attendee_page.php The Write Way to Travel Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:00:23 -0500 http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/featured_publication_transitio.php http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/featured_publication_transitio.php Where to Get Published ad -san fran 08 Bonnie Caton Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:35:37 -0500 http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/no_poodles_no_false_teeth_no_t.php http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/no_poodles_no_false_teeth_no_t.php The Write Way to Travel ad - san fran 08 Steenie Harvey Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:34:06 -0500 http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/new_opportunities_for_travel_w.php http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/new_opportunities_for_travel_w.php Where to Get Published Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:37:24 -0500 http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/free_report_publication_expo.php http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/free_report_publication_expo.php Where to Get Published Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:23:01 -0500 http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/featured_publication_spirit_ma.php http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/featured_publication_spirit_ma.php Where to Get Published ad - nut Bonnie Caton Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:17:49 -0500 http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/how_to_fly_for_peanuts_staff_p.php http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/how_to_fly_for_peanuts_staff_p.php ad - nut ad -san fran 08 Fri, 06 Jun 2008 18:11:18 -0500 http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/how_to_fly_for_peanuts_chosing.php http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/how_to_fly_for_peanuts_chosing.php ad - nut ad - san fran 08 Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:48:31 -0500 I didn't think the mouse in the pink hat could catch me... but I often wondered what he would have done if he did. After all, what does a grown man in a mouse costume with a pink furry hat do when he catches you? After college (though before my 23rd birthday), my roommate and I planned spontaneous weekend trips to random cities across the U.S. via Air Tran's X-Fare Program. Flights were cheap if you were under 23 and willing to fly standby. So cheap, in fact, that one weekend, we decided to fly to New Orleans and back just for dinner. Long story short, we landed late due to weather. Missed dinner. Had a crazy time in New Orleans that started with a man in a mouse costume chasing us down Bourbon Street. And we didn't make it back until the next day. That was my idea of a last-minute cheap weekend trip. And it was fun. Today, things are different. You can't get X-fares anymore. And even if you could, I'm willing to bet most of our readers wouldn't qualify for them because of the age limit. But you can still get cheap flights. And you can still plan last-minute, spontaneous getaways and find incredible deals on your flights while you're at it. These days, I use Kayak.com's new Weekend Search option. And Farecast.com's Graph Fares. Flying for Peanuts Tips #2 and #3... KAYAK.COM If I know where I want to go, but I don't care which weekend, I use Kayak.com. At the top of their search page, there's a button you can select titled: "weekend." With that button selected, you can choose upcoming weekends or search weekends within specific months. A flight from Washington D.C. to Las Vegas, for instance, is cheapest the weekend of June 13. It's $145 cheaper than it would be this weekend and $121 cheaper than it would be the weekend after. (Look at the top left corner for a list of the cheapest weekends once you put in your preferences, and hit "Search"). FARECAST.COM If I know where I want to go but I don't care what day I leave, I use Farecast.com's Graph Fares. There's a box on their homepage at the bottom right corner titled "Travel Tools." Click on "Compare Airfares." Then click on the tab that says "Graph - when to travel." Then simply put in your closest airport and the airport you wish to travel to and Farecast will show you a chart of the cheapest days to fly over the next 30 days. If I put in D.C to Vegas again, for instance, I can see that my flight would actually be $50 cheaper if I can leave on July 4. Of course, I don't want to leave on July 4, because it's a holiday. So I won't book this flight. But it's cool to see that it's an option. And if my schedule is ever a little bit more flexible, I use Farecast's graph to help me choose the best departure day. You can't search for first-class fares on Farecast, but you can on Kayak. I don't really worry about that, though, since I can usually get free upgrades on Delta. Tomorrow, in Flying for Peanuts Tip #4, I'll tell you how I do that and explain which travel rewards credit card is the best for free upgrades and free travel. Meantime, here are more details about our Flying for Peanuts Sale... You get: 1. AWAI's exclusive online report, How to Get a First Class Seat - for Less - on Most Every Flight You Take. 2. Our report on using RTW fares to get reduced-rate airline tickets and travel discounts around the world -- Travel Around the World: How to Design, Book, and Enjoy the Ultimate Adventure... and Even Make it Pay for Itself. 3. And our most popular Breaking into Airline In-Flight Magazines: Secrets, Tips, and Tactics to Quickly and Easily Crack one of the Industry's Most Lucrative (and Glamorous) Markets. You'll gain everything you need to Fly for Peanuts and earn a paycheck from your travels. Imagine booking a flight to Iceland, France, Amsterdam, and Italy for only $799 and later selling a story about your trip for a couple thousand dollars. With this bundle, you'll get all the insider tips you'll need to take advantage of such opportunities. Click here for details: http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/nut/website -- Lori Lori Allen Director, AWAI Travel Division P.S. We usually get a rush of orders 30 days before the Ultimate Travel Writer's Workshop (when the Early Bird Discount expires). But because I've been writing about it so much in this e-letter, seats are filling up faster than ever. We're filling on average one to two seats per day right now -- which means we'll be sold out long before the Early-Bird expires. If you're interested in attending -- and you want tickets to the publications expo on Friday night -- don't wait. You can always schedule a payment plan so you don't have to pay everything at once. You'll find more details about the conference here: http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/sanfrancisco And if you're interested in the payment plan you can email Terry at: terry@thetravelwriterslife.com. ************************* The Right Way to Travel is a FREE newsletter from the American Writers & Artists Inc., available to AWAI members and friends. (c) 2008 American Writers & Artists Inc. 245 NE 4th Ave., Ste 102 Delray Beach, FL 33483 Phone (561) 278-5557 Fax (561) 278-5929 memberservices@awaionline.com To LEARN MORE, visit: http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com http://www.thephotographerslife.com http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/flying_for_peanuts_a_replaceme.php http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/flying_for_peanuts_a_replaceme.php ad - nut ad - san fran 08 Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:49:30 -0500 Yes, jet fuel prices are rising. And yes, airline ticket prices are following suit. Don't panic. Like you, we love to travel and we love to save money. So, in lieu of our regularly scheduled e-letters, this week we're going to show you how, through these price-hike times, you can still fly for peanuts. (Excuse the pun.) Over the next four days, we'll reveal our best secrets on how to fly for cheap... sometimes even for free... without sacrificing quality and comfort. Starting today, with... FLYING FOR PEANUTS SECRET #1: Make your flight cheaper by taking a Round-The-World, or RTW, ticket. I've told you about RTW fares before, and I still think it's one of the best ways to get a great travel deal. RTW tickets seem to defy logic. How could it be that adding destinations to your itinerary makes it cheaper? Amazing as it is, you can get unbelievable deals on flights to Australia, South Africa, South East Asia, Europe, and more on a Round-The-World ticket. HOW IT WORKS: RTW booking agencies, like Airtreks.com, work with almost every airline in the world to combine the cheapest flight segments they find into attractive, inexpensive itineraries. And they buy so many tickets, they can negotiate low-low fares. Say you want to go to Australia... With an RTW ticket, you could fly to the Cook Islands, Auckland, New Zealand, and Sydney, Australia from $1,499 plus tax. The cheapest round-trip ticket I found from Los Angeles to Sydney on Expedia.com is $1,639. So not only is the RTW ticket cheaper, you also get to fly to New Zealand and the Cook Islands for free. RTW tickets open up so many doors to travel that is otherwise out-of-this-world expensive. For example, if you want to go from New York to Bangkok, Thailand, you could pay around $1,780 for a round-trip ticket (from Expedia.com). But, if you take an RTW ticket, you could do New York - Singapore - Bangkok - Rome - London - New York starting at $1,749 plus tax. Again, it's like getting an extra continent into your itinerary for free. If continent-hopping isn't your thing, sometimes you can leave stops off of your itinerary, altogether. Check with your booking agent to find out for sure. ** Tip: Waiting until the last minute to book RTW tickets won't get you the best deal. Since the ticket agency has to figure out the cheapest tickets for your route, you'd do best to book as far ahead as you can. ** Tip: Pay attention to the high-season and low-season in your travel destination. Some RTW tickets charge a supplement for high-season. RTW fares aren't hard to book. But I do suggest you do your research before you dish out your credit card number. I could have saved $2,000 on my last RTW ticket if I'd have known then what I know now. So I wrote a book about it...to help you avoid the same mistakes. It's called Travel Around the World: How to Design, Book, and Enjoy the Ultimate Adventure... and Even Make it Pay for Itself and right now I'm working out the details to include it in a trio of resources to help you "fly for peanuts" even when the airlines raise their prices. In tomorrow's eletter, you'll find "Travel Around the World" bundled with two of our other most popular "flying for peanuts" guides, packaged conveniently together at a savings of over 20% when you order all three. I don't have the details today, but stay tuned... -- Lori Lori Allen Director, AWAI Travel Division P.S. Before you start planning your next Round-the-World vacation -- or even your next trip to Aunt Thelma's -- come to the Ultimate Travel Writer's Workshop this July 24-26 in San Francisco and learn how to turn every kind of vacation -- short or long -- into a paycheck. If you hurry, you can still get in before the Early Bird Discount ends! Sign up here: http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/sanfrancisco ************************* The Right Way to Travel is a FREE newsletter from the American Writers & Artists Inc., available to AWAI members and friends. (c) 2008 American Writers & Artists Inc. 245 NE 4th Ave., Ste 102 Delray Beach, FL 33483 Phone (561) 278-5557 Fax (561) 278-5929 memberservices@awaionline.com To LEARN MORE, visit: http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com http://www.thephotographerslife.com http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/how_to_fly_for_peanuts_secret.php http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/06/how_to_fly_for_peanuts_secret.php ad -san fran 08 Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:22:49 -0500 HOW ONE READER SCORED TWO PAID VACATIONS AND 41 PUBLISHED BYLINES: AN INTERVIEW WITH AWAI MEMBER SANDRA KENNEDY By Bonnie Caton in Arlington, Virginia BONNIE: Hi Sandra. I'm a new writer here at AWAI. I, too, attended one of AWAI's Travel Writing Workshops before I started working here in the Travel Division. After attending that first event, I did exactly as Jennifer Stevens instructed and my success was exactly as she said it'd be. I landed a few un-paid clips, which lead to paid clips, and now I can say that I'm a published writer. What I haven't done, and what I'd like to talk to you about today, is turn my skills into paid vacations. I understand you've done a lot of that. So can you tell us a little bit more about how you got started and how, specifically, you went from sitting in a chair at the workshop to sitting in an airplane seat on your way to an all-expenses-paid trip to Ecuador? SANDRA: Sure. I'm happy to tell you about it. It began, as you said, with the Ultimate Travel Writers Workshop in Buenos Aires, Argentina back in 2005. Initially, I didn't realize how much the workshop had affected me. But when I returned home, my mind started racing with possible ideas for articles. I arrived in Buenos Aires a week early and rented an apartment there. When the workshop started, I moved into the hotel where the workshop was held. I told Steenie Harvey, one of the instructors on that trip, about my experience in the apartment and she encouraged me to write about it. So I did. It helps so much to have that additional support when you're starting out. The article, "Live Like a Local," was a lengthy "how-to" on renting an apartment in BA, accompanied by photos. Escape Artist published it soon after I returned to Oregon. I was so thrilled to see my first article and photos in print. Everything after that took determination, curiosity, perseverance, and lots of reading and writing. You must be able to accept rejection and keep on "keeping on." BONNIE: Speaking of rejection... what about the fear of failure? Has it ever been a problem for you? SANDRA: Basically, I have always had to fight my fears every time I tackled something new. In fact, it was more like "terror" at times. But travel writing is one of my passions in life. So I work hard to put away those doubting thoughts and just go for it. This is an aside. Throughout my life, I have had an image of me on my deathbed. I never wanted to be saying to myself, "why didn't I risk following my dreams?" It seemed that I would feel such regret. Many times in life, such as when I first went to Europe at age 20, my life changed. There was an entirely fascinating world out there to explore. At that point, I decided that I would teach in Europe one day. That dream never left me. First, I went to Peru. After that I taught in Europe for seven years. It is the same with travel writing. It had been a dream through the years. BONNIE: So, after all those years of hesitation, how did you get started traveling and writing "on spec," landing free stays in resorts and destinations around the world? SANDRA: My first “comped” trip was to a hotel in Idaho for three nights. I think it was through Mediakitty.com. By then, I had the two clips from Argentina. I used those in my query... and they responded immediately. By the way, my first two “comped” trips were all set up but unforeseen circumstances prevented me from taking them. Hurricane Wilma kept me from one and I had to cancel the other for personal reasons. In March, I had a “comped” individual press trip to Guatemala for nine days. It was through a tour company. All my expenses were paid except airfare, lunches, and dinners. It was an absolutely amazing experience. That trip was not listed anywhere. BONNIE: How did you manage to find it, if it wasn't listed anywhere? SANDRA: I was inquiring about a possible "media rate" on a trip to Ecuador last year. Turns out the company remembered me and invited me on the trip to Guatemala. BONNIE: Do you have any press trips planned for the near future? SANDRA: Recently, I was invited to go on a circular tour of boutique hotels in Mexico! Travel writing can "snowball" on you. As you get published, you gain more confidence. I felt like such a fraud at my first press trip. I don't feel that now. I know that even if I am not writing for Travel & Leisure, I will provide good coverage for all these places. It does take a great deal of time and creativity. I work very hard to do my best. BONNIE: Do you have any last pieces of advice for newbie travel writers? SANDRA: Push for your dream. It is possible. Yes, there is a lot of competition, but you bring your own background, experiences, and skills to it. Ultimately, you must persevere in your querying and writing. ************************* Know a friend or two who'd enjoy the freedom and independence of a writer's or photographer's life? They, too, can sign up to receive this free e-letter here: http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/eletter ************************* The Right Way to Travel is a FREE newsletter from the American Writers & Artists Inc., available to AWAI members and friends. (c) 2008 American Writers & Artists Inc. 245 NE 4th Ave., Ste 102 Delray Beach, FL 33483 Phone (561) 278-5557 Fax (561) 278-5929 memberservices@awaionline.com To LEARN MORE, visit: http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com http://www.thephotographerslife.com ]]> http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/05/how_one_reader_scored_two_paid.php http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/2008/05/how_one_reader_scored_two_paid.php The Business of Writing Sat, 31 May 2008 10:15:17 -0500