Travel Writing for Blogs and Web Sites

Travel Writers Have Many Options for Publishing on the Internet

Aug 5, 2008

Internet-based options for travel writers have grown in recent years, creating more opportunities to publish storytelling with a compelling edge to it.

Several travel Web logs (blogs) and Web sites offer good publishing exposure within the travelers’ – and travel writers’ – community, and with pay.

Not that writing need be the only reason to visit these sites. They provide entertaining, relatable accounts of independent travels, and offer information and advice for would-be travelers.

There are also self-driven Internet-based opportunities available to today’s travel writers unlike for any generation before. Personal blogs can be used for unfettered travel writing satisfaction dictated solely by the blogger’s whims and/or as sources of income.

WorldHum.com is a site that has focused, since 2001, on the independent traveler’s journey, foregoing the what-to-see and where-to-go sorts of writing common to travel guidebooks and magazines such as Conde Nast Traveler.

World Hum welcomes submissions from writers – book reviews, dispatches, interviews -- and pays at least $100 per exclusive piece. The Web site publishes details about how to submit stories and how to become a regular blog contributor.

BraveNewTraveler.com is another well-established site which accepts contributions and pays for them -- $25 per original piece. The site’s Contributor Guidelines describe the types of stories it seeks from writers:

“We want stuff that has an edge. We want to push the boundaries of travel, spirituality, and religion. After all, our magazine is called Brave New Traveler – which implies forging onward into the unknown territories of the mind.”

PerceptiveTravel.com is a Webzine guided by the ultra-experience hand of Tim Leffel, a renowned travel writer, blogger and book author, as previously cited in Suite101.com’s What Does Travel Writing Pay?

Perceptive Travel is open only to writers who’ve published a book that is currently in wide distribution. For those who have that acclaim, there are Writer’s Guidelines available for viewing on the site. Publishing with Perceptive Travel pays $75 per article.

Independent Travel Writing Online

The world of independent online publishing – read: blogs – has grown tremendously in recent years.

Technology has continued to bloom in ways that have enabled the modestly savvy blogger to enable advertising on an independent travel blog site and reap income for his writings. Advertising, however, is not required.

There are some travel writers who have spent years building personal sites upon solid narrative writing and photography based on the travels and experiences about which they are passionate – and earning income from it seems to be of lesser importance. Growing readerships and the occasional media attention seem to build over time for a number of these writers.

Here are a handful of established independent travel blogs: