Sites That Pay for Your Travel Writing

This is an update of a previous post on publishing travel articles in print and online. 

So, you think you're a writer, huh? Well, now, isn't that cute. Let me give you some advice.

Stop.

You're wasting your time: travel writing is dead.

Publish Your Travel Articles

You can find more places to publish travel writing in an updated post here. 

If you've ever considered publishing your travel writing but never knew how, here are some guidelines for magazines who want to publish your articles in print or online.

It's divided into three sections: General Travel, Asia Travel, and Korea.

Check back for updates.

General Travel

Matador Network
"The world's largest independent travel magazine" consists of 12 blogs, each with a different focus such as sports, traveling for change, and destination guides.

To contribute, read the full submission guidelines and upload an article on their contributors' page.

Draft guidelines:

1. Write an original draft that does not exceed 2,000 words.

Do not send an article that has already been published somewhere else, including any work that has been published as a blog.

2. Check your spelling, punctuation, grammar, and — important — facts. Submissions sent with numerous errors are unprofessional and will not be considered for publication.

3. Submissions received without all the accompanying information requested on the submission form will not be considered.

4. Do not include photos in your submission. If you have photos you’d like the editors to consider, please include a link to an online photo album in your draft. The same applies for photographers interested in submitting materials for a photo essay.

Matador Network pays $25 (Paypal) for published articles.

BootsnAll
A "one-stop indie travel guide," BootsnAll.com publishes 

• Feature Articles ($50)
• Expert Travel Articles ($30)
• Travel Essays ($20-40)

(Click on the links for guidelines specific to each.)


BootsnAll is looking for feature articles related to travel, which appeal to a wide audience (rather than an audience specific to people researching one destination). Articles can certainly be about one specific destination, as long as the theme or topic might interest a broad group of people. Large and famous cities and places do have some potential if your angle is really unique and attention-getting, but lesser-known places just don’t have a large enough audience on our site.

Feature Article Requirements & Rights Information

• Word Count: 1200-1600 words is preferred, though the word count will actually relate more to the topic of the article and to the number of points covered within it. We will generally accept anything from 1200-2800.
• Pay: $50 upon publication.
• Photos: One big, beautiful, eye-catching photo (that tells the same story as the text) is required for each item on your list. The photos don’t have to be yours - they just need to be Creative Commons licensed.
• Publication Rights: We are only interested in articles that aren’t yet published, and BootsnAll owns all future rights to the paid pieces you publish through us. If you prefer to maintain future rights, please submit your article through our unpaid articles program.

Asia Travel

Action Asia
"At the forefront of adventure travel since its inception in 1992, Action Asia is a 'must read' for outdoors types who want to do more with their time off than simply hang out on a crowded beach."

Action Asia does accept unsolicited submissions but please note the following points on the content:

• It should be based in Asia (though we stretch the definition to take in Australia, NZ, Siberia, Central Asia and even parts of the Middle East).
• It should be adventure-based - bikes and hikes not buses and trains; boarding in the surf not boarding a cruise.
• Great pictures are crucial. They need to be available as large files too. At 300dpi, a typical double-page spread pic is tens of Mb and even small spot pics are 1-2Mb minimum.
• It should be as edgy and off-the-beaten-track as possible eg. no general travelogues on the 'adventure' of discovering Thailand please. It has been discovered. Tell me how you biked the entire coastline or helped open up some new climbing routes. As a further pointer, places such as much of China and India, Central Asia, Papua New Guinea and the more remote Indonesian and Philipine islands would all make good subjects.

If you have a story that fits these requirements, send the text and some sample low res pics to Steve White (Editor-in-Chief) at aa@bluincmedia.com.


Action Asia typically pays $100 per page for a package of words & photographs.

Korea

10 Magazine

From their submissions page:

If you would like to become a contributor for 10 Magazine’s blog or website, just send an email to contribute@10magazine.asia, and tell us how you would like to contribute. Some ideas:

Article photography

Writing Articles

Blog entries

Website management

Vlogging

Video editing

Here are some additional guidelines from Assistant Editor David Carruth:

1) We prefer receiving a query first to establish the possibility of an article but will consider completed article submissions. However, interested writers should know that they may have to edit their article considerably to meet our standards and formatting requirements.

2) We're looking for anyone who is passionate about living in Korea and sharing their experiences and expertise with others.

3) Most of our feature articles are written by volunteers and freelancers. Other content is usually written by the staff.

4) As most of our writers and photographers are not legally able to be compensated for their submissions, 10 Magazine does not generally pay its contributors, though we do sometimes offer gift certificates of various kinds.

Article length depends on the content and its location in the magazine, but they generally accept pieces between 500 and 1500 words.

Overboard

Royal Caribbean recently introduced a new cruise ship to their arsenal; the largest in the world. The environmental impact of cruises is often reviled, sometimes unnecessarily (cruise-goers would produce waste if they stayed home as well); but there are other potentially damaging effects. I wrote about them for MatadorChange.

Overboard? The Environmental & Cultural Impact of Cruises

Writing

I had a couple of articles published on Matador Network, an online travel magazine that I've written for before. I'm also an "Expert on Kenya" to provide travel advice for people to the country.

While I don't really like some of the edits they made to my original pieces, that's the price of getting writing published I suppose. I doubt anyone likes seeing their words cut from a page.

The articles are here:

Running Wild with Kenya's Safaricom Marathon
I ran a half marathon in Lewa Conservancy while I was in Kenya with the Peace Corps, and came face-to-face with a zebra in the process. It was one of the coolest races I'm sure I will ever compete in.


What Can Scuba Teach Us About Travel?
Lisa and I were recently SCUBA certified in the Philippines, and I thought the course had some good parallels for travel as well.

Matador Network is very accessible - they publish a lot of reader articles, and make submission guidelines very clear. They also have a "bounty board" of articles waiting to be written. The user community is quite active and diverse, and very supportive of each other. I hate how comments on any other site inevitably devolve into a mass of hate messages. Matador Network seems to be largely free of petty anger incitement, and not because they moderate the messages but because whenever someone posts something derisive, other commenters gently chastise them until they feel bad and apologize. It's quite nice, and funny.

Guide to Kenya's National Parks

Matador Travel, an online travel blog, published an article I wrote about Kenya's 6 best national parks!  You can read it here. If it weren't for the word limit I would have kept going - each park has its own draws, and it's tough to say one is better than the other. But I did, because I could.