S5 E59: Q&A Part 2: The Business

Get the show’s transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] YD: Welcome to the Travel Media Lab podcast. I’m your host, Yulia Densiyuk, an award-winning travel photographer and writer, entrepreneur, community builder and firm believer that every one of us can go after the stories we've always wanted to tell with the right support, encouragement and structure. I’m on a mission to help women's storytellers everywhere break into and thrive in the travel media space.

If you're ready to ditch your fears to the side, grow your knowledge and confidence, and publish your travel stories, you're in the right place. Let's go.

[EPISODE]

[00:00:36] YD: Over the years of being in this career, I've received so many questions about the various aspects of being a travel journalist, photographer, and writer. I decided to share some of these questions and my answers with you on the podcast in a two-part Q&A series. We covered the craft of being a travel journalist in the first part of the series in the previous episode, and today will discuss questions on the business aspect of being a travel journalist. These questions have come in from all sides of our growing community from the people who follow me or Travel Media Lab on Instagram, the attendees of my various workshops and events, and our very own travel media lab community members such as our past students and our current Circle members.

If you enjoyed today's episode, if you wondered about these questions yourself, then chances are you'll want to attend our info session for my upcoming travel journalism program. This program called, Intro Travel Journalism, is enrolling soon, and this year we're doing something different with it. We are turning it into a six-month program during which students will have access to our amazing support inside the Circle Membership Community. So for people who will be joining our program this year, they will get to experience the best of both, a foundation of travel journalism knowledge that I give in the program, plus the ongoing support inside our membership them so actually apply all of it and most importantly, stick to it. 

I will be holding a free info session about this program on Friday, May 6th at 10 a.m. Eastern. So if getting your travel stories published is something you dream about. Don't wait. Visit travelmedialab.com/infosession to register today and see if the six-month program is right for you. All right, now on to this episode. 

Welcome back to the second part in our two-part series episodes that I'm calling a Q&A on being a travel journalist being a travel photographer and writer. In the first part of this series last week, we looked at the craft aspects of being a travel journalist. Today we're going to answer questions on the business side of being a travel journalist. I'm really, really excited to get into this with you. By the way, thank you to everyone who has submitted their questions for this podcast episode. Specifically, I received a lot of questions which is really good. So hopefully this will be a helpful episode to you as well. 

Some of these questions are also things that people have been asking me over the years of being in this path and also during various workshops and events that I lead. It's an amalgamation of different questions and there are ten questions here, so let's just get into it.

[03:40] The first question I want to answer is this broad question on how to use social media. The specific questions I received for about LinkedIn, about YouTube, about Instagram, for example, somebody asked me if I use LinkedIn for networking and how is the YouTube channel relevant to getting noticed? What do I think of Instagram as a way to build the portfolio? Is that a good enough alternative to having a blog? I grouped all of them together into this broader question of how do we use social media to help us in this career? 

My answer to that is, yes, I think you do need to use social media, at least on some social media, not everything, because I don't think we can be on every channel. I think that's spreading ourselves too thin. I do think that it makes sense for you to choose one or two channels where you can be consistent, where you can start building a community around you and start sharing your work there. I do think it's important. 

Now, then the question of which channel? I'm going to bring it back to yourself. I'm going to bring it back to yourself, because I think it depends on what you like, right? Do you love sharing videos? Do you love recording videos with people? Well, maybe you should be on YouTube, right? Do you like a more professional feel of LinkedIn and sharing articles there? Well, you should be on LinkedIn. Do you like the tweet structure of Twitter? You should be on Twitter, right? 

I hope you get what I'm saying here. I don't necessarily think that there is one or two platforms that make it or break it. I think that or I know that editors are humans just like us who exist on all of these platforms, right? Think of your own behavior. You have a LinkedIn profile, you have a Twitter profile, perhaps you have Instagram, and the source are just like that, so you can connect with them on any of these platforms. So choose the ones that speak to you, because if you're going to do it consistently, if you're going to do it over and over again, you need to dedicate some time to it and hopefully this is something that you like yourself. So choose it based on that. What appeals to you? 

I would say that in general, I have heard that editors and PR companies say that they do use LinkedIn. They look at LinkedIn. LinkedIn might be a great way to connect with people. Twitter is a great platform to be on, because edits are as follows calls for pictures on Twitter all the time. If you're a photographer, I think you should be on Instagram, even though Instagram is such a challenging subject these days. Let's say, maybe we need to do a whole episode on Instagram, because it's really hard to stand out on the platform. It's hard to grow these days on the platform if you're not doing reels, let's say, but still, editors are on there and editors are looking for people to work with on Instagram as well.

I've got to work out of being on Instagram where people saw my work on Instagram, and then they reached out to me and asked if we wanted to work together. Again, it's not so much that there is one or two who make it or break it platforms out there. Instead, choose the platforms you already enjoy and invest into them, invest time and effort into them and when you do, and when you're genuine about connecting with people, researching people on the platform, and seeing who you want to follow, who you want to connect with, over time, you will get that you will get results from your efforts. I have no doubts, no doubt about it. 

Okay. Question number two. Thank you so much to our Circle member, Charlotte for submitting this question. Does your social media have to be all about travel? This is a very interesting question, because my answer to that is going to be like always it depends on what are you trying to do with your social media, right? What is your goal? What are you on social media for? Are you there to build a portfolio? Are you there to make connections? Are you there to let people know that you are a travel writer or a travel photographer and that you are available for work? Well, if that's your answer, then perhaps I would say, yes. It has to be all about travel, because travel is your niche, right? 

If you're writing about other subjects, if you're creating stories on other topics, then that's what you include in your social media. It's all about what you want to communicate about yourself, right? What do you want people to know about you and your work and what projects you can do together? If you want people to know that you are all about travel and this is what you do, then your social media is about that as well, but I wouldn't necessarily be so categorical to say that it has to be all about travel, right?

We are human beings with many multiple sides, right? We have multiple curiosities and passions. We have different things happen to us. I think social media is a platform where you can also be yourself and be human and show signs of you, that you wouldn't show in the resume, let's say, right? So of course, the main topic would be, again, if you're trying to use social media to build your portfolio and to build your work presence, then your main topic that that you're sharing on social media should be about whatever it is that you want to share with people, whether it's travel, writing, whether it's food whatever it is, but the same time, I think people follow us, because they want to see the humanity in us as well. If there's something else that's happening in your life, feel free to share that as well. I mean, again, I think it doesn't have to be this this categorical and I hope this answer makes sense. 

[09:31] Question number three, our other wonderful Circle member, Vanessa, has said this while I know this answer it now, the biggest “Aha!” moment I had since starting your class and your membership would be your answer to this question: “Do you need a large following on social media to be a travel writer?” Of course, my answer to that, and I've talked about this on the podcast before and in other settings is no, categorically no. You don't need a large following on social media to be a travel writer. You need a large following on social media to be a travel influencer, for sure, although even that is arguable nowadays, because micro influencing is absolutely a thing. 

A hundred dedicated and committed people who are interested in what you have to say is more important than 100,000 people who barely pay attention to you. That's my own approach to this. Editors are not looking at your social media following as a deciding factor in whether or not they want to take your pitch. This is really important. They are not looking at your following number, at your numbers, that’s your social media numbers to see if they want to work with you. They are looking at the idea itself, right? They’re evaluating if that idea would be a good fit for their publication, but they're not looking at your social media numbers.

Now, that's not to say that once you're already working together, let's say, and the article is coming out and you have a social media presence. There might be a conversation about, well, let's share it on your platform. Perhaps let's do something on social media. Let's do some collaboration on stories together. That could be part of the conversation, but absolutely negative on them evaluating your ideas based on your social media following.

Vanessa adds here that it's really made her feel it was something she could try and do. It's really boosted her confidence and helped her let go of this idea that she wasn't successful until she had thousands of followers, right? I wanted to bring this up here, because I think other people think about this as well. They feel like having thousands of followers on social media is some validation that they can be in this career, that they can try this, that they can pitch, that they can create stories. Again, I'm here to tell you that is categorical, no. You don't need any of that. You don't even need to be on Instagram or on Twitter to pitch somebody.

Again, it helps. Sure. It certainly helps when you're there on these platforms and you're making connections with people. It helps, but it doesn't have to be – it's not a requirement. The only requirements that you have is that you have to have an email. You have to have a good pitch, and you have to know who to pitch and where to send that pitch and that’s it. You can work with these publications. 

[12:31] All right, question number four. Do you need to have a blog to be a travel writer? Similar discussion to, do you need to be on this platform on social media or that platform? Do you need to have a large number of followers? My approach to this is that you don't need to have a blog to be a travel writer, but it's very helpful to have a blog, to have a travel writer. Just like with social media, by the way, when you have a blog and you have your work out there, and when you share your work on social media, you never know who is looking at that. You just never know. That's why I think it's helpful, when you share your work on social media, you never know who's checking those hashtags. When you put up a blog there and you dedicate time and effort into it and you share your writing there, you never know who can come across that writing. Then reach out to you and see if you want to work together, right?

It helps in the sense that the more ways we can show people what we do, the more opportunities we have for people to contact us and if we want to work together, right? You don't need to have a blog to be a travel writer, but I do think it's really helpful and in fact, one of our guests that came to the podcast, the interview will be out next season, but she was sharing a story that's her first assignment ever, she wasn't even published writer yet. Her first assignment ever came because of her blog. An editor was searching for a particular contributor who could do a particular story that they wanted to write in the magazine. She had written on the subject in her blog. The blog came up and the Google search results and the editor contacted her. The rest, so to speak, was history, because she became a published freelancing travel writer after that. 

Again, you just never know who is looking at the work that you share. So the more ways you can do it, I believe the better. Again, be strategic about it, right? Don't be on every single social media platform, because that's just extending yourself too thin. Don't have five different blogs, right? Have one blog, but publish there, consistently. Publish work that you're really proud of that showcases your writing, your storytelling, your ideas, because again you just never know who can come across your work. That's really the beauty of doing this in our day and age, right? Because we have the Internet and we have social media.

We don't have to send these printed queries to magazines anymore, right? People come across our work without us even doing anything, right? We don't have to send out thousands of emails for people to look at our work. If we have a blog, people can come across it via Google Search. That's the beauty of doing this and not in our day and age. This is a very long-winded answer to the question. Do you need to have a blog to be a travel writer? I don't think you need to, but I definitely think that it helps a lot. Okay. All right. 

[15:39] Question number five. I have been featured in a few social media posts by local tourism boards, so local tourism boards reshared my Instagram photo on their own profile. What is the fine line between getting free press from that Instagram accounts of the tourism board and asking for money for your photos? Well, this is an interesting way this question is positions, right? Because I don't think that when somebody well, let's say when a tourism board shares their photo on their Instagram account, I don't think that means that they have to pay for that photo. This is up for debate for sure, because people have different opinions on this. I believe that when you share your work on Instagram, which is a social media platform, it's inherently understood that it can be reshared just because you're sharing this on the platform. If you don't want your work to be shared, don't post it on Instagram, right? 

Again, that's my opinion. People can have different opinions. I know people who are very strict about, they don't want their works to be shared. That's totally fine as well. I think the etiquette is that at least when you share somebody's post, you have to ask for their permission to share it. I'm not sure in this example if the tourism board that's shared the post if the permission was asked. We're not going to get into that conversation, but let's say they saw a post under the hashtag of their tourism board destination, they reshared it. Does that mean then they have to pay? Does that mean that the person who posts they shared can ask for money? I think not. Not for that post that was just shared. 

However, when somebody when a tourism board just shared your photo on their account it is an invitation. In my opinion, it is an invitation to then either send them a DM or send them an email and say, “Hey, I noticed that you shared my photo graves. Thanks for checking it out. Thanks for sharing it. I have a whole portfolio of work for your destination. Would you be interested in working together on a photo bank? Let's say, for your destination, or would you be interested in purchasing images for your photo bank for this destination, right?” When a tourism board shares your photo on their Instagram account, I don't think you should ask money for that specific event and the currency. However, I do think that it's an invitation to then start a relationship with the tourism board and reach out to them and see how far you can take that single event of them sharing that post on their Instagram. I hope that was helpful. 

[18:25] All right. Question number six. Now, we are getting into the money conversation and the rest of these questions will be all about the money, right? Can you make money from travel writing? How much do you need to write? What are the rates, etc., etc. I know that these kinds of questions are on many people's minds and it's very understandable, right? We want to know if we can make money on this. Let's get into it.

Question number six. Can you make a living full time from travel writing and photography? The follow up question to that, how can you subsidize your travel writing? So to answer this question, I want to preface this by saying that the money conversation is always highly individual, right? What makes sense for me and my situation might not make sense for you and your situation. I would approach it with a caveat that everything that I'm going to talk about here, you have to apply to your own situation, because no one else can tell you, how much money you need? How much work-life balance you need? How much you want to put on your creativity versus, how much you want to put on stability? Because here's the thing, Liz Gilbert, who is an author and author of books like, Eat, Pray, Love, and many other books. 

She has this book out called Big Magic. I recommend this book to everyone. I've mentioned it on this podcast before, but it's a book about creativity and about living a creative life and what that means, right? Liz Gilbert in that book says something that really, really, really resonated with me. She said, “You can't ask your creativity to pay the bills.” You can't ask your creativity to pay the bills, your creativity that's not what your creativity came to this world to do. Your creativity came to this world to spread joy, to share stories, to lift people up.

Now, asking it to pay the bills is an entirely different role, right? Not to say that it's impossible, but you have to recognize that when you ask your creativity to pay the bills your creativity becomes something else, right? It becomes a job. When you're asking me these questions and again, most of these questions now are going to be about this. This is something that you have to decide for yourself, right? Do you want this avenue, this creative pursuits, do you want this to be a full time job? If you are, then you have to expect that you're going to have to write and pitch full time and you're going to do some work that is less inspiring, but it's going to pay the bills. Or do you only want to write stories that inspire you, in which case you might need to take other ways to support yourself, right. 

The thing here that I want you guys to understand is that there is no right or wrong answer to this. Both of these avenues are equally valid, and both of these don't make you any less or any more of a valid storyteller, a creator, artist, writer, photographer, okay. Liz Gilbert had this example that she, for many, many, many years as she was writing and as she was pitching her stories and getting published in magazines, she worked as a waiter as well, for many years, for decades, even if I remember correctly, because that was her position. You can't ask your creativity to pay the bills. She chose a different way to pay the bills as she was nurturing her creativity as well, right?

It's only until I think she got the – she wrote Eat, Pray, Love, that book took off so much that she wasn't doing waitressing anymore. Here you have to decide for yourself, right? Do you want this creativity to pay the bills? If you do, you will have to expect to do something that might be less than inspiring, right? You might have to pitch a lot. You might have to write a lot and some of the work that you might have to write would be less than inspiring, but it would be paying the bills. Again, this is a conversation that you have to have with yourself. No one can tell you what is the right approach for you.

I can tell you what I have decided for myself. I have decided ever since I quit this job, my job in corporate. I told myself that I will only do things that inspire me. I will only write stories that inspire me, because I've already been on this other side where I had the job, which wasn't inspiring to me and I did it to pay the bills and I don't want to go there with my creativity. I've been there. I don't want to go there with my creativity. If I do, I might as well just come back to corporate, because then I know I have a stable salary that comes in every month and I'm set. 

This is a decision I made for myself. I will only pursue stories that absolutely inspire me. Stories that I want to tell and that I can't wait to tell, but that means that I need to take other ways to support myself. I do that through group trips, right? I lead group trips to Jordan, I do workshops, I educate, I do conferences and other things. Can you make a – going back to the coming back to the question at hand, can you make a living full time from travel, writing and photography? Yes, you can. Again, you have to then make a decision for yourself, because when you're asking for your creativity, for your pursuits to do this full time, you are going to need to do a lot, right? You're going to need to do a lot. 

Now, I want to communicate to you that you can absolutely supplement your travel writing and photography with whatever other projects your heart desires. This is what I want to say and this is actually how I approach it, right? All of my projects, everything that I do, I absolutely love the work itself. It's all in some shape or form revolves around travel, right? I absolutely love every single one of them. That doesn't make me any less of a travel writer or travel photographer just because I have other projects that I'm doing, right? Because for me, again, it was important that I nurture this creativity side of me, but I don't put a strain on it and turn it into something that becomes a job, basically, right? I wanted to keep it as a creative pursuit. 

Nobody can stop you from doing whatever it is that you desire to do, right? I wanted to get into NFTs, for example, as I saw a potential of that path and I went into NFTs. Does it make me a less of a travel writer? I don't think so. I just pitched a huge publication with a story I'm really excited about. Let's see what they say. What I'm trying to say here is that all of these conversations and all of these decisions, they are up to you to make. No one can tell you that you are any less or any more of a travel writer or photographer just because you have other things happening, other things supplementing you are there other projects, right?

Again, the relationship between that is for you to decide, how do you want to structure? Do you want to go into travel writing and photography full time? Great, just expect that you're going to need to do a lot of that. When you suddenly put deadlines and pressure and salary expectations on this work, well, for some of us, it can become less joyful, maybe not for you, right? I don't know. Maybe you would be even more joyful when you have to do this full time, but I know that for a lot of people when we put that strain on our creativity, all of a sudden the creativity runs away, because it's not it’s role in the world, right? It's role is to bring joy to the world. A bit more philosophical answer perhaps than what you were expecting, but that's really how I see it. 

[26:24] All right. Question number seven, what is a good rate to charge for stories and for photos and what are related to that? What are average rates for an article? A good rate conversation is really interesting, because a lot of magazines and a lot of publications, they have established rates, right? They have rates that they work with. So it's not so much about what is a good rate. It's more about what is their rate that they're working with. In terms of the average rates, well, this really, really, really, really varies. It depends on whether it's a established publication or a new publication. It depends if it's a big brand or a small niche brands.

It depends on whether it's a print publication or an online publication. Print in general pays much higher, but it's harder to get into prints and they don't need as much content. Online usually pays less, but they need way more content, and it's easier to get into online publications. It really just varies, but on average, I would say the rates that I've seen and these are we're not talking about per word, because most publications pay per word for an article, right? If it's a $500, sorry, 500-word article and it pays a dollar a award, so you just made $500. Average rates that I've seen vary anywhere between $0.50 to $2 for a print publication and anywhere between $0.25 to $0.75 for an online publication. So you see that the range is quite high. Again, it depends on how big the publication is, how established they are, whether it's a print or online, etc, etc, but that's the average here.

[28:08] Okay, question number eight and this question comes from Kim, another one of our Circle members, how do you ask for a rate increase? I love it so much that you've asked this question, Kim, because you know how I feel about asking for a rate increase inside the circle. I encourage all of our members to start asking for a higher rate immediately, immediately. The first time you have a conversation about rates with an editor, whether or not you are published or not, whether or not you have a big portfolio. I am advising everyone to start asking for a rate immediately. Here is why, because in our industry, the rates have been declining for so long that it's up to all of us to reverse this trend.

The more of us can start asking for more, the quicker the rates will start going in the opposite direction, because the problem in the industry is that way too many people agree to do work either for free or for next to free. That's how the rates get depressed, right? Because if somebody can do this work for nearly for free, why would you pay someone else so much money, you wouldn't, right? Because there is an available pool of people who are willing to do this next to nothing. I advise everyone to start asking for a rate right away. 

Now, there is an art and science to it. It's not just about asking for more and there is a lot that goes into it. In fact, we have dedicated a whole episode to this exact subject. I'm going to link to it in the show notes, but you can also find it on our podcast it's called Five Insights on Asking for More Money. This episode was from season four. It was one of the bonus episodes that we shared in Season four. If you're interested in knowing how to ask for more money and why, I think that everybody should start doing that right away. Go check out that episode, it’s again called Five Insights on Asking For More Money from Season four, and it was a bonus episode. We'll link to it in the show notes, so please check it out because it's really, really important.

[30:26] All right. Question number nine. What is your balance? How much time and effort does your editorial work take between all the other projects that you have? I absolutely love this question, because it goes back to this conversation on you have to decide, right? You have to decide how you want your creativity to unfold. So for me, I know how my creativity works. That's actually another very important component here. You have to know yourself, because from knowing yourself and what you're capable of and what makes you feel good, you will be able to structure your day, your week, your month in a way that makes sense and allows you to accomplish things and make progress and pitch and also be successful and not burn out, okay?

The way I structure my work is that I think about all of these different projects that I have. I have pitching, right? I pitch magazines. I also get emails from magazines, who are asking me to share some ideas with them to share prior, for example, recently I got an email from a magazine saying, “Hey, we need some work on this destination. Do you have anything for us that you want to submit?” Right? So there is pitching, but there is also then managing these incoming queries. I also have my NOMAD and JULES business, which is the group travel to Jordan, right?

I also have Travel Media Lab, which is this project that I'm working on. So what I do is I divide, I try to divide my time equally between these projects, because I believe that, like with anything else, the more effort you put into it, the more it gives back, right? I want to put effort into each one of these projects that I do, because I believe in all of them. They all make me very excited and very happy to be working on all of them. So that's how I balance and structure my time. 

On top of that, I know that, for example, my pitching work relies on my creativity highly. I need to be very creative. I need to be very well rested to come up with ideas and write good pitches. I also know that a lot of my NOMAD and JULES group trip work is more, let's say, logistical and project management based in nature. That gives me hints on how do I structure and how do I balance them, because I know myself and I know that I'm most energized, most easily coming up with ideas at the beginning of the day, at the beginning of the week. That's how I structure my work, right? 

My pitching work tends to be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday mornings, let's say. My logistical/project management work tends to be afternoons, tends to be later in the week, let's say. That's how I structure it, because I know myself. Again, I know what makes sense for me and I know the times that I'm the most creative. So I use those times appropriately. Hopefully that makes sense. 

[33:34] Finally, question number ten comes from Anika, who is in our Travel Media Lab Free Facebook group. Thank you for submitting this question, Anika. I'm curious to know how much do you or travel writers in general write when it's in near full-time job? How many articles for a month are we talking for it to yield meaningful income? Of course, I know that it depends on how many pitches are accepted and so on. I know there are a lot of variables in here, but it's something I'm interested in, how much does a travel writer write and create? Excellent question, and I'm so glad that you asked that, Anika. There is a reason why I saved this question to the end.

We already talked a little bit about the rates, right? How much can you expect to make per article? What I've seen again in the industry is that it varies greatly between $250 an article to $500 an article to 800, $900 an article to $3,000 an article, right? If you're writing a big feature in a print magazine which pays $2 a word, then that's what you can get.

One thing to think about here is that it varies greatly. It varies greatly and it's going to depend on where you are in your career path. Are you just starting out? Are you just building your portfolio? Is your portfolio more established? Are you asking for a rate increase every time? Are you pitching more print magazines to get your overall pay per article OP? So that's one consideration. The second consideration is that we can do everything right with our pitches. We can submit, we can research the publication. We can make sure that the pitch, the idea that we have fits for the publication, we can send it to the right editor, we can do our homework, we can do everything that's I'm always talking about. I'm always teaching in all our programs. 

However, there is a randomness factor in the pitching process that we can't control, because of that, it makes it just so hard to predict what's going to happen with that pitch and are we going to get it back, right? That randomness factor can be something as simple as your email went to spam. For some reason, your email went to spam, so the editor never even got a chance to see it. It can also be something like you sent the pitch, the pitches is great, the idea fits, you did all the work, you made everything correctly, and the editor had a bad day and they missed the email and they missed your follow up. They missed the follow up to the follow up, right? So because there is this randomness factor with pitching, we can never completely predict how our efforts are going to turn out, because of that, it makes it difficult to predict what kind of income we can expect month in and month out. 

To make up for that randomness factor, we have to pitch a lot, right? Because then we have to pitch more in order for a lot of our articles to come back. Again, because of that randomness factor, I'm not saying that it's, because we didn't pitch properly or we didn't do our homework or our ideas don't make sense for this publication, right? Even assuming all of that, assuming we do everything correctly, there is still this randomness factor that we can't control. That's what makes it difficult, right? 

What I want to say here and what I want to close this conversation with is, again, you have to decide for yourself, how do you want your days and your weeks and your months to unfold? Do you want to ask your creativity to pay the bills? It's totally fine, but you have to be ready to for it to turn into a full time job that might perhaps also be stressful at times when you have to manage all of these factors that I was just talking about, right? Or do you want to only nurture it as a creative pursuit and don't make it stressful? Well, that's totally fine as well, but then that means you have to have other ways to support yourself. 

Now, we were talking in the membership in the Circle recently about, what are some of these viable paths? Well, maybe it’s copyrighting, right? If you can write, you can copyright. There are so many travel brands out there who need copywriting projects, copywriting pays quite well, so maybe that's an avenue that you can take. Maybe you can do a marketing project for travel brands, maybe you can be a consultant for a tourism board, maybe you can lead the trips to destinations like I'm doing to Jordan, right? It all depends on what is it that you want to do for yourself. That's why I always, always, always want to bring this conversation back to yourself. 

What do you want to do with your life? What do you want to do with your creativity? What do you want to do with your love for travel? I want to expand your definition of what's possible, what's valid, what's doable. All of these parts are absolutely valid, and all of these paths are absolutely doable, but you just have to decide for yourself what is it that you want to do and how do you want your day and your week and your month and ultimately your life to look like.

These are the conversations that we have inside the circle, too. I think that's a lot of people are thinking about this questions, because a lot of us have passion and creativity and drive for travel and for stories and for storytelling, but this is the balance that we have to think about, right? How do you want that balance to unfold for yourself?

All right, I hope that this conversation today was helpful to you. If you have any more questions about the business side of travel, writing and photography, feel free to ask me those questions, whether inside our Facebook group or on Instagram or elsewhere. We've only just skimmed the surface with these two, because there's a lot more details, and a lot more that goes into it all, but hopefully this was a good start for you to start thinking about what the business side or the business aspect of being a travel photographer and writer can look like. Thank you so much for listening.

[OUTRO]

[00:39:45] YD: Did you hear something that resonated with you in our episode today? If you did, then maybe our Reimagined Intro to Travel Journalism Program is right for you. If you're interested in learning more about the program and how we plan to support you for six months inside our membership, The Circle, join us for free in full session on Friday, May 6th at 10 a.m. eastern, where I'll take you behind the scenes of this program and show you the blueprint for getting your travel stories published and kickstarting your travel journalism career. 

Go to travelmedialab.com/infosession to register today. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next week. 

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