The problem as I see it is twofold: First, we all acknowledge that the industry of travel writing is shifting away from traditional print media and to internet sites such as SimonSeeks primarily because more and more travelers are turning to the web to research destinations, period. If they weren't, there'd be plenty of assignments to go around still for all of us. And since these sites will accept (for free, paid, ad-revenue-sharing, whatever model they offer) content from just about anyone, that leaves established professional travel journalist competing for publication with any never-wrote-a-word-before beginner who's just been on a holiday. Sadly it's the future we are facing so we need to learn how to adapt to survive in our profession. And it can be done.....more on that after my second point....

The other part of the problem is that the internet has opened up a whole new niche of travel writing that is growing leaps and bounds, which is location-based (writing about your own town/city/state/region) - as Matthew Teller eloquently pointed out, there is a great deal of inaccuracy in content written by non-professionals, who may likely have only visited a destination once and not adequately researched it before regurgitating a "review" based on their memory. And as James Dunford notes, location-based travel content is gaining popularity because it is written by someone who knows the area well, being a resident, thus an "expert" and trusted source.

So am I recommending we all stay home and write about our surroundings? Maybe.....thankfully many PR Firms are still working primarily with professional journalists and have requirements for previous clips, a proven publication record, or documented site traffic levels, so finding one (or several) destination niche(s) in which you can be an expert author can - online anyway - boost your credibility and audience to the level that you can be attractive to PR firms looking to fill Press Trips.

Can you make money this way? Yes, but not in the traditional way. If you're the "go to guy (or gal)" for information about Malta, as James says above, then that opens up all sorts of partnership opportunities with merchants looking to promote Malta as a destination, or services on Malta, hotels, tour charters, etc.

The future will bring fewer paid travel content opportunities, but with well-written and expert content as the lure to bring visitors to your site, the opportunity to earn affiliate revenue from partnerships is how we'll be able to stay in the game and compete with Mom & Pop travelers who dream of being travel writers.

Agreed. I think a lot of traditional print travel writers are simply not getting what writing for the web is all about. If you want a showcase for your work then fine, stick up your traditional print-type articles and give people the URL. You'll have to give them the URL because no-one will otherwise find it by Googling.

But if you want to earn money, you have to go at it totally differently. It's a bit like writing an article and then sending it willy-nilly to any editor, whether it's suitable or not, and hoping someone will read it, compared to pitching ideas targetted at specific publications.

If the site is going to produce high quality content then the contributors won't last very long if the payments are not at least equal to other travel websites paying a per post rate. What I think will ultimately happen is that non-professional travel writers will start hashing up old list style articles which get higher page views than the real content (we have had this debate elsewhere). We already know that the quality destination and guide content struggles to compete against long-established content for key search engine terms and so therefore those same articles struggle for page views. If authors are just re-posting content they have previously produced then this is not going to help the search engine traffic either (duplicate content is in fact penalised).

Revenue sharing to those that produce the content is a great idea - but it is a bloody hard model to make work and keep everyone happy you could not get a better viewpoint than James Dunford Wood). And you certainly can't agree with Simonseeks PR that there is a lack of online content for travel planning - the Internet is literally swamped with it, from good to bad. I agree with you Jeremy the value is in providing high quality niche content.