Great Escape Publishing

Posted August 9th, 2007 by twl_admin & filed under Travel Writing.

Exposure to 3 Million Readers Every Month — and a Hidden Perk, Too
By Roberta Beach Jacobson in Karpathos, Greece

Madelyn Miller is a food, wine, and travel writer. If you live in the Dallas area, you may know her as the TravelLady — a moniker she earned offering travel tips and advice on KDFW-TV, the Dallas Fox Station.

Today TravelLady.com is an online travel e-zine. Madelyn is the executive editor and she boasts a freelance editorial line up of more than 200 writers in seven countries. The site provides excellent travel content. You can scroll through the many departments such as Special Interests, Destinations, and Favorites all day long and not get bored. I challenge you to name a place on the planet not covered here.

I spent hours reading about all sorts of travel — from cooking schools to gardens to food and wine festivals and even trains. The amount of material is immense… but the magazine’s “search” button works well.

Freelance travel writers are welcome to submit a query to TravelLady.com. The exposure at this website is huge with up to three million hits every month. To get started send your proposed travel article as a Word attachment for consideration to Madelyn at madelyn@travellady.com. The title of your article should be in the subject line. If your article is approved, you’ll be sent a reference number.

You must send photos (jpegs) along with your article. Photographs should be sent to: pictures@travellady.com, and you can identify them by reference number and article title in the subject line too.

The Writer’s Guidelines are very specific, and you should review them in full before sending your query.

One item to note at this website is the editorial calendar. It isn’t your usual calendar –rather it’s all the approved stories waiting in the queue to go live. You should check this calendar before you query this publication — as you won’t be successful if the topic or destination you wish to cover is already covered by another contributor and in the queue to go live or if it’s been covered recently.

And of course, once you’re article has been accepted, this is where you can check on the status of your work. See: http://www.travellady.com/calendars.htm

TravelLady is not a paying market… but the extent of the exposure makes up for that. Here’s why — and a hidden benefit to getting published here:

Because this publication gets so much exposure — meaning lots of travelers looking for travel information and ideas go to TravelLady to find it — people sponsoring press trips see it as a very legitimate (read: desirable) place for a writer to have an article published.

A letter of assignment from TravelLady can secure you a spot on a sponsored press trip, in other words.

And so, while TravelLady doesn’t pay you for articles, if you’ve had five articles published on this site, then you’re eligible for a letter of assignment from the editors. And that can be a very valuable letter if it lands you, say, a spot on a trip that would otherwise cost you a several hundred or several thousand dollars.

[Editor’s Note: Learn more about opportunities to profit from your travels (and even from your own home) in our free online newsletter The Right Way to Travel.]