Travel Writing: Improve Your Writing Skills, Gain Exposure and Have Fun

Do you travel much? Take a yearly vacation or even live in a town that has some pretty cool places?

Have you considered adding travel writing to your portfolio?

Travel writing can be a fun and exciting career, but you don't have to do it full time. You can write travel articles about places you've been on vacation, hot spots in your local area, etc. It can also be a great way to improve your writing skills, get out of the norm of your usual writing style.

There are a number of things you can do to help establish yourself as a travel writer. You can start your own travel blog, you can write guest posts on other travel blogs or you can submit the work to free article directories. All of these things can help gain exposure to you as a writer and to your writing.

Here are just a few benefits of travel writing:

Fun: Having fun is always a good thing. Sharing our fun experiences from vacation is almost as much fun as the actual event. I've never met a person that wasn't excited to tell you about their vacation. You can share yours by writing about it. Just make sure you've taken some awesome pictures to go along with it.

Exposure: Gaining exposure is an important part of your life as a writer. Sharing travel articles with other travel blogs is a great way to get noticed and get traffic to your own website.

Networking: Do you network with writers outside of your genre'? If you're not, you're missing out on a great learning experience and good business practice. Consider subscribing to a few travel blogs, follow travel writers on Twitter and learn from people who already make a career from their experiences.

Tax deduction: Travel writing can be used as a tax deduction or a business expense. Wouldn't it be great to get a tax break for taking a trip or a vacation? That seems like a double bonus to me.

Maybe you don't travel much, but you live in a city that is hopping with fun and excitement: local coffee houses, bistros, this is stuff people want to read about. People love finding little out-of-the-way places to try. Writing about these places in your city is a great way to help tourist discover them. The owners of the business' will also appreciate a great write-up and the added traffic to their establishment. You might even get a free latte or other treat out of the deal.

Adding travel writing to your portfolio or just doing it for fun is a great way to change gears from your usual writing, improve your writing skills and gain exposure. What's stopping you?