Everybody Nomad

Finally I thought I'd found myself a niche. Time to become rich, time to become famous, time to become a travel writer! I would travel the world, write funny stories about it and people would pay loads of money for my books and articles, because come on, how many travel writers can you name?
A couple of five?

Bill Bryson
Paul Theroux
Peter Moore
Michael Palin
Bryan Thacker

And that's about it right?
So what what's the competition then? Everybody who's a bit interested in traveling did already read all the books of those writers, they're longing for something new, and here I am!

Couldn't sound nicer.

Next to finding out Santa doesn't exist and Pam Anderson is old enough to be my mother, this was another one of those fantasy bubbles that popped right in front of my face. Someone had stolen my idea and told it to thousands of others who now form communities of travel writers.

The world seems to be literally full of nomads, all trying to live from the tales they tell on their blogs. There are even Paid programs who encourage travellers to become writers.

Come on! What did I ever do to you, MatadorU, that you needed to take my livelihood?

What caused this boom of travel writers during the last years?
Probably the same thing that encouraged me to start with it: it's easy, it's free and it gives you some kind of perspective of being able to get your train tickets and hotel rooms paid by companies that want their name on your website.

Unfortunately, I must say, that's probably not how it goes.
I'm getting more and more convinced that there's isn't really a market for those thousands of travel bloggers but that they're just looking into a bubble created by genius marketing techniques.

A couple of years ago there has been a mania of books and courses of how to become successful by changing your way of thinking. One of the most famous ones was probably The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. I did not read it, but I saw similar books popping up in neighbourhood bookstores and on friend's bookshelves. The plot line of all of them is the same: The key to success, Money, Relationships and happiness is in your own hands. Or actually, in your own head.
Time past by and so did this mania and non of my friends became very rich or very successful - sorry guys, someone had to tell you the truth - so I figured this was all passé.

But in the meantime a similar movement could be noticed on the Internet. Some great marketeers started websites about how they changed their lives and became totally independent from others. They provided their stories for free on the Internet, but if you wanted to read the real explanation of their secret, you needed to spend a couple of tens of dollars for buying their book. One of the most famous of these marketeers is Chris Guillebeau with his Art of Non-conformity.
If it actually works or not, is something I leave in the middle. I don't believe in it but I also don't think it's a scam. But that website should be mandatory material for every marketing student all over the world.

If there's one industry where the idea of total freedom sells better than condoms in Rio it's the travel industry. Terms like vagabonds, nomads and independent travellers exist from way before the digital age but now they seem to reappear on every travel blog. And they do not point to a select number of hippies and best-selling authors anymore but to people like you and me who quitted their job, took everything that fits in a 40 liter backpack and became a writer on the road. A couple of times a week you could read their latest stories on their blog, together with some photos and all-round tips and tricks.

To get minimal income they provide some banners of hiking shoes and and water proof pyjamas on their front page, but those who are after the real money write a book about how to become like them. The art of quitting your jobs, wishing friends and family the best in their crappy jobs and take off to places where words like sun, sea an bikinis exist in every description.

This is all yesterday's news, the real money is not anymore in creating the idea or writing the book because everybody has gotten that far. Now it's time to convince the people that your book is better than every other's.
It's like high school, it's all about popularity. The more visitors you get to your site, the more chance someone will buy something and of course high stats must mean high reliability. if someone has five thousand daily readers and five hundred subscribers to their feed, they must have something to say.

Right?
Not totally.

If you start following a couple of traveller's blogs, you'll notice that most of the famous bloggers know each other from a travel writing course. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where the money of today is. Not in selling the idea, nor in selling the book but in selling the possibility of the book - the bubble, as I like to call it.
The main purpose of these courses are not to teach you how to write, because let's be honest, if you can teach someone good writing skills in a ten weeks e-mail course, you'll probably also able to teach a monkey how to speak and that would make you rich!
No, the main purpose is to create a community. A group of fellow travel writers who read each other's blog posts - and create traffic - and actually comment to these blog posts. Because comments are important, especially the first one, which opens the way for others to respond.

Next to reading your posts, your companions will also tweet them, digg them, stumbleUpon them or post them of facebook, myspace or delicious. Your senior colleagues will make a guest post on your blog and if you're very lucky and your writing is good, they might even ask you to write a guest post for theirs.
Travel writing programs don't teach you how to write, it's exactly what the slogan of MatadorU says: "Accelerating your travel writing career".

Now what's the catch? Well, in my opinion, 95 percent of your visitors are totally useless when it comes to earning money because their purpose is not to learn but to promote their own 'shop'. Picture a fruit market without customers, every vendor is telling the others about how good everybody else's fruit is. They have banners in their stall to promote their neighbours because they know th neighbours will promote them too. But when everybody is selling the same, who will buy?

Did I say that the world of travel writing is going to collapse? No I did not. I'm just saying that the world of at least some will do.

If you want my advice on becoming rich on an easy way, don't become a travel writer, don't even become a writing school. Search for the next step of the ladder and maybe be the first person with a school for beginning travel schools.

Recommended reading:

The Art of Non-Conformity: http://www.chrisguillebeau.com
NomadicMatt: http://www.nomadicmatt.com
Almost Fearless: http://almostfearless.com
Vagabond Roots: http://www.vagabondroots.com
Get In The Hot Spot: http://www.getinthehotspot.com