Be a Guest Blogger
Please read our Submission Guidelines before you submit. 
Page Contents
Where to Submit
The Purpose of Travel Writing
The Best Way to Write Something I’ll Want to Publish!
Example of an Excellent Guest Blogger Submission
Photos
Your Bio & Author Photo
Word Count
Editing Your Submission
Disclaimer
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Where to Submit
After you read this page, I would then love to hear from you with your proposed article idea. Please don’t submit until you’ve contacted me first with your idea.
Email address for Milli Thornton
When your article is ready, you can send a text or Word file as an attachment.
The Purpose of Travel Writing
Travel writing is about being persuasive.
Ponder the last movie you saw at the cinema. If the movie was fantastic, you probably tried to convince family or friends to go see it. You might have been telling them the “features and benefits” of that movie. And your passion might have convinced them to take action. Maybe not to rush out to the cinema this minute, but they might go straight to the computer to add it to their Netflix queue.
With travel writing, the challenge is to make your readers feel they’ll be missing out if they can’t go to destination X, do activity Y or eat at restaurant Z.
With that in mind, it’s a good idea to provide an easy way for your readers to take action. This will usually be a link to more information about your subject. Perhaps also a link to where you booked your trip (especially if it was a hot deal).
The Best Way to Write
Something I’ll Want to Publish!
Look around my blog and become familiar with my style. Read several of my articles. This doesn’t mean I’m asking you to write in the same style. But, for instance, if you have a penchant for writing articles containing lots of political, religious or historical detail, you would discover by reading my blog that your style won’t fit here.
The raison d’être for this blog is to have fun writing articles that will convince my readers to travel and have more fun.
Mandatory: Please read the disclaimer at the bottom of this article regarding rights and original works.
Example of an Excellent Guest Blogger Submission
Guest writer K.M. Weiland was so thorough with her submission, I did not have to do a single follow-up. Her attention to detail spoke of a writer who took the time to read the guidelines (any editor will tell you that’s a winner!).
Here’s the article (opens in a new window):
Picking Blueberries in Charleston, Tennessee
Photos
This is a rather visual blog, so it’s important to have photos to go with your article.
To create the feature photo in the right sidebar of your article, I must be able to resize one of your photos to 480 x 280. (Ideally, this will be the photo that delivers the main essence of your story.) Please send your feature photo in its original size. Don’t try to resize the feature photo yourself as I may need a different crop.
Before submitting photos, please first contact me by e-mail to propose your article.
IMPORTANT: They must all be photos you have permission to use. (Ideally, they’ll be photos you took yourself.) For instance, if you obtained permission from your friend John to use a photo from his blog, the credit would look like this:
Photo courtesy John T. Blogger of Johnsblog.com
Naturally, you’ll receive the same credit on your own photos.
Mandatory: Please read the photo disclaimer at the bottom of this article.
Your Bio and Author Photo
Every guest blog post features a photo of the writer (sized to approx. 100 x 140) plus approximately 50 words about your life and achievements. You can include 3-4 links to Websites, blogs, articles or profiles that you’d like readers to visit. If you have a book or an e-book to promote, you can also send me an image for that.
Here’s an example of one of the bios I use online:
MILLI THORNTON is the author of Fear of Writing: for writers & closet writers and still misses Australia, where she lived for 25 years. A bit of a gypsy, she currently lives in Ohio with her husband. Milli blogs at the Fear of Writing Blog, Screenwriting in the Boonies and Milliver’s Travels.
Word Count
I don’t have a set word count. The average for articles on this site is 525 – 630 words, but I don’t mind longer. Anything exceeding 1,000 words might start to mess with the average blog reader’s available time/attention span.
I suggest you write the raw article first and let it sit for a day or two. Then go back and look at it from two angles:
(a) Have you tried to cover too much in one article?
Your article will be too general if you try to capture what you love about an entire country. Instead of trying to bring us up to speed on everything about Egypt in one article, pick one thing to focus on. Write about that bent and withered street vendor who took you home to meet his family and allowed you to experience home-cooked local cuisine.
Here’s a good example of honing in on one thing from my trip to the Montreal Jazz Festival: Amarula: One Jazzy Beverage (opens in a new window). You’ll notice that it’s still possible to throw in plenty of interesting side notes.
(b) Have you used lots of superfluous words or sentences?
Go through your article looking for places where you can cut words or sentences (sometimes even a paragraph) to express yourself more succinctly.
Editing Your Submission
PLEASE PROOFREAD BEFORE YOU SEND!
Use proper punctuation and capitalization. Avoid long, long paragraphs. 60-80 words is a good length for a longish paragraph. Break up your writing into paragraphs of various lengths.
If editing gives you the willies, here’s a simple but effective book to help with that stage of your writing. The link will take you to a page where you can download a free 30-day trial copy:
I never publish guest bloggers until I’ve been through myself, correcting errors the writer didn’t catch. But I’m not the kind of editor who would change the meaning of what you wrote.
If anything’s unclear to me, or if I can see where you need to expand on your information—or rewrite it to sound more lively—that’s when I would ask you for rewrites.
Look forward to hearing from you.
Happy Travel Writing! ~ Milli
DISCLAIMER: All writing submitted must be your original work. If submitting a reprint, please state what rights you are operating under. All photos offered to this site must either be the property of the individual author or, if obtained elsewhere, must receive the proper credit. Any guest blogger who violates someone else’s copyright will have their article(s) and image(s) removed immediately.
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