Be a Guest Blogger
THOSE WHO SHOULD NOT BOTHER
If you’re trying to sneak some PR links onto my site by posing as a “guest blogger,” don’t waste your time. I know what to look for and your email will be deleted. If you’d like to advertise on Milliver’s Travels, please be direct with me about your motives.
THOSE WHO CAN PROCEED 
I welcome queries from real people, including those who have not written a travel article before but would like to. When you email me, please say things that will let me know you’ve done your homework (everything you need can be found on this page). Use your personality to warm me up to your query. It’s not hard to impress me if you’re genuine. Tip: A long list of your credentials is not what impresses me.
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Page Contents
The Aim of Travel Writing
Rights and Permissions
The Best Way to Write Something I’ll Want
to Publish (aka Travel Writer Crash Course)
Become a Staff Writer
Word Count
Photos
MT’s Policies on Links Within Articles
Editing and Revisions
Your Bio & Author Photo
Ready to Query? Here’s how.
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SUCCESS TIP #1: I’m not interested in content you’ve merely researched. Milliver’s Travels is about real people doing real travel and writing about it with passion from a personal perspective. Check out the tagline for the site (found in the header under the name of the site) to understand the spirit in which we write.
SUCCESS TIP #2: Take an interest in some of the articles that have already been published on this site. If you don’t know what we publish (and how we present the stories) you won’t have a feel for the spirit of the site—and that’s critical to a good query. I get a lot of queries from people who say “I’ve been enjoying reading the site,” but I’ve never seen them leave a single comment and they try to pitch me canned content. If you have a genuine interest in the site, leave some comments for my writers.
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The Aim of Travel Writing
I don’t aspire to encompass all of the aims of travel writing on this site, but to write for my intended audience these are the feelings I like to inspire. . . .
Ponder the last movie you saw at the cinema. If the movie was wonderful, your eloquence might have swayed family or friends to want to go see it. Your passion might have even convinced them to take action—maybe not to rush to the cinema today, but perhaps to pull out their iPhone to add it to their Netflix queue.
The challenge is to leave your readers with dreams of going to destination X, doing activity Y or eating at restaurant Z. “You’ve made me want to go there!” is the desired response. Here’s how one reader expressed it in her blog comment:
A vacation is not in my immediate future, so I especially enjoy reading about such lovely places that I can dream of one day visiting!
The raison d’être for this blog is to have fun writing articles that will convince my readers to want to travel and have more fun.
IMPORTANT NOTICE ABOUT RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS:
All writing submitted must be your original work. By allowing Milliver’s Travels to publish your work, you are giving this site First Worldwide Internet Rights and Perpetual Rights (see User Content in our Site Policies for more details). All photos you offer to this site must either be the property of the guest blogger or, if obtained elsewhere, must come with express permission and receive the proper credit. (I do not accept stock photos for submissions from guest bloggers.) Any guest blogger who violates someone else’s copyright will have their article(s) and image(s) removed immediately.
The Best Way to Write Something I’ll Want
to Publish (aka Travel Writer Crash Course)
Below is a link to your genie’s lamp for coming up with story ideas that I’ll love to publish. I wrote this article for my other blog (the Fear of Writing blog) and it contains all kinds of hints for travel story ideas, plus links to good examples.
If you study this blog post and follow as many of the links as possible, you can’t go wrong. All you’ll need then is a good query letter (you’ll see tips for that in the section on how to query).
Become a Staff Writer
Qualifying to become a staff writer at Milliver’s is not difficult . . . and making a good submission as a guest blogger is the first step. A good submission means you appreciate the editor’s time enough to read our guidelines thoroughly and provide everything we ask for all in one email, so Milli can format your post without a bunch of follow-ups.
Here’s how to qualify: Become a Staff Writer at Milliver’s
Word Count
I don’t have a set limit. A good story can be anything from 525 to 1,000 words. If yours exceeds 1,000 words, that might still be OK. I welcome the occasional hefty article as long as your topic warrants the length. The tip in the next paragraph will help you sort ‘good long’ from ‘unnecessarily long.’
If you suspect you have an undue length issue, let your article sit for a day or two. Then go back and give it this simple test:
Have I tried to cover too many aspects 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, say, Egypt, pick one aspect. Write about that bent and withered street vendor who took you home to meet his family, where you experienced home-prepared local cuisine.
Here’s a good example of honing in on one aspect from my trip to the Montreal Jazz Festival (opens in a new browser tab):
Photos
This is a visual blog, so it’s important to have photos to go with your article.
Please send your photos in their original size. (Don’t try to resize the photos yourself as I may need a different crop.) If you have a lot of photos to send, I prefer that you use Picasa Web. It’s drag and drop and very easy to use.
Picasa Web has an easy way to caption each photo, so please use captions to describe your photos to me: where they were taken and what the subject is. Even if it seems very obvious what the photo is, it’s my job as editor to be accurate. So describe every photo because it really helps at my end when you do.
TIP #1: I never use stock photos. (If you don’t know what a stock photo is, ask me.) Milliver’s Travels is about the personalized travel experience, not about sending me free photos that you found by Googling (and especially if you don’t know how to interpret the rights that come with each image).
TIP #2: 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 credit on your own photos.
MT’s Policies on Links Within Articles
Stories on Milliver’s Travels usually do contain links, and the criteria for links is
additional helpful info for the reader. As a good example, here’s a story that contains helpful links:
If they don’t lend themselves to being placed within the article, you can also have a few links listed at the end of your story (for that I create an area called Related Topics). Or you can provide a summary of the what/where/when details relevant to the place/activity discussed in your story, including a link to the place/activity’s own website. Look at the end of this article for a good example of the latter:
I may also add affiliate text links or visual ads to your story. I do this tastefully, being careful not to jar the reader from your story. (See Site Policies for more detail.) For an example of how that can look, see this story:
Confessions of a Disneyophile: Resort Stays, Codes, and Other Useful Park Tips
Editing/Revising Your Submission
Please proofread your article before you submit.
Avoid long paragraphs. Long paragraphs tend to look extra long when presented on the screen. 60-80 words is a good length for a longish paragraph on a blog.
I never publish guest bloggers until I’ve been through myself, correcting errors and making sure your text really flows. 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 revisions.
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
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 and coaches writers at Writer’s Muse Coaching.
Ready to Query? Here’s how.
After you’ve read these guidelines, I would then love to hear from you with your proposed article idea. Please don’t submit your article/photos until you’ve queried me first with your story idea.
You’ll find site owner and editor Milli Thornton’s email address on the Contact Us page.
GOLDEN TIP FOR SUCCESS: Want to know the simple secrets for how to get it right? Read my article: Etiquette 101: How to Contact a Writing Website.
Happy Travel Writing! ~ Milli
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RELATED TOPICS
Etiquette 101: How to Contact a Writing Website
