TopDawg Travel

Archive for the ‘Freelance Writing’ Category

Since the travel business has slowed down a lot for me this year, I revived a part of my business I had put on hold when I started TopDawg Travel in 2006.  I am fortunate to have a few steady clients who are still traveling occasionally, but I needed to find new marketing techniques and opportunities outside booking travel. 

I was writing for Associated Content in 2006.  Once I dedicated myself to building TopDawg Travel,  I just did not have the time to dedicate to the writing.  However, this year I picked up two columns with Examiner.com and am enjoying the writing immensely.  One column is as National Romance Travel Examiner and the other is as Seattle Travel Industry Examiner. (Please check them out)

From 2001 to 2006 I had also revived and honed my photographic interests.  Through those years I purchased several cameras and took thousands of pictures.  The freelance writing is allowing for the opportunity to again polish those skills, as well as use a lot of the pictures I have taken through the years.  In the early years, I was interested in becoming a professional photographer.  Then it became abundantly cleat I was much happier being a really good, if not excellent, amateur photographer.  Selling my photos was not going to become a career for me, nor would I be likely to earn a living at it.  I do have a lot of photographs framed and hanging on my walls now though.

Freelance writing of any sort is incredibly demanding. I do find that it is perceived as, well, for want of a better word, easy by those who do not write for a living.  Trust me, it is not easy.  There are a lot of people writing blogs, writing columns for online zines like Examiner, eHow, Demand Studios, Associated Content and so forth.  But that does not mean they know how to write a quality article.  I knew how to write well grammatically.   I knew how to write for print.  It has been a learning experience to write for the web.  It is demanding, requires excellent copy editing and an eye for detail.  No one is perfect but since I have come back to writing, I notice the imperfections in the articles put out on the web.  They are glaring and offensive.  That is the downside to writing professionally. I would have overlooked them before.

Today’s marketplace requires I not only write and photograph, I must market.  Marketing has a whole new meaning on the web.  I have spent the last couple of years learning about and using social networking in conjunction with personal networking.  I have learned about analytics, cross-listing, cross-posting, (n)etiquette, Twittering, Facebook and more.  Marketing on the web is a talent in and of itself.  It may come naturally to the Millennial generation, but I have had to learn about it from scratch.

My overriding goal is that people appreciate, perhaps even learn from, what I write.  I hope to entertain, educate and garner a “following” of readers.