Being Creative
You have several earning possibilities while travelling. As the information is mostly in digital form nowadays, you can easily send a bunch of valuable content to your home country through Internet. If you are a seasoned content producer, such as an editor or photographer, you can benefit of being abroad, as you can write about and take pictures of things and happenings that do not exist in your home country. And of course being in a foreign country is a source of a few articles itself.
Writing and posting an article to a newspaper or some other publication does not require any special gadgets, an Internet cafe with decent connection and cheap price can be enough. Or you can write articles with a laptop while waiting in an airport or in your hotel. You only need two things: writing skills and connections with the press.
Before leaving your home country, make sure that you and the editor have same understanding of your duties abroad. It is not very nice to write several very good articles and then get e-mail two weeks later saying basically ’sorry’. But if this happens, start offering the articles to somebody else. Maybe they pay you something.
If you have good relationships with editors, you can offer more articles and little by little broaden your repertoire. It is always good to have several contacts, as you can offer the same article with modest changes to magazines focusing on different audiences. A good article is sold a few times and then used as a door opener for the next magazines.
Apart from writing, you need some equipment to be able to produce content that sells. In photography, a good digital camera — preferably an SLR — is needed, of course. You can create also digital videos quite easily, but you need to invest heavily, if you want to achieve broadcast quality. Furthermore, you usually need more than one camera.
As the sizes of the digital images and videos can be quite large, you have to have your own laptop and a bunch of software for editing the content. In case of images, you may suffice with a modem or by visiting local Internet cafe, but you do not want to spend half a day sending a video clip. Instead, buy a portable CD-ROM or DVD writer and use postal services.
Remember also advertise your services. Build a website that shows your best works, contains your CV and have up-to-date contact information. It is always easier to direct people to a web site than trying to fax them an example article or sending them a couple of images via e-mail.
Note that content creation does not suit everybody. If you do not have skills, you will not get any deals. In that case, practice! Ask somebody to be your critic and start to produce content. If you or the critic does not see any improvement in a few months, start to think of having another career. But if you see improvements, continue knocking the magazine doors.