Data v. Wisdom: There’s Money in the Difference

Dear Reader,

I don’t normally send reports to you on Tuesdays, but I’m just back from a publishing meeting in France, and I picked up a few tips that apply directly to travel writing and photography — tips that can help you sell more articles and photos.

I wanted to get these to you sooner rather than later, so I thought I’d go ahead and send you this first one today. We’ll pick up tomorrow with your regular weekly photo tip from professional photographer, Shelly Perry. Thursday look for our weekly Featured Publication. And then Friday and Saturday I’ll pass along a couple more tips I picked up last week.

So here goes…

**TIP #1: It’s Making Sense of Things that Matters

These days, people don’t want to pay for information they can easily find online for free — stuff like which camera has the most megapixels or where an Italian restaurant is in downtown Philadelphia.

What people want (and what they’ll pay for) is someone to interpret that information for them… someone to tell them which camera is right FOR THEM or whether the Italian restaurant is good and if it is, what to order.

To make sense of the overload of content that’s available today with our 24-hour news cycle, newspapers, magazines, and millions of websites, people essentially assign a value to what they find. It falls into a hierarchy that looks like this:

Data

Information

Facts

News

Opinions

Recommendations

Wisdom

Data, at the top of this list, is worth very little. Information, facts, and news can all be found online. That’s not what you want to write.

What people will pay you for is your interpretation of data, facts, and information. Opinions, recommendations, and wisdom have more value.

My point: Put your ideas together in a way that gives them more worth, and people will pay you for them. Facts and figures are a necessary part of most travel articles. But it’s your opinion and your recommendations that matter. That’s what sells.

And the same is true in photography. A sunset shot is a sunset shot.

But add your own twist to it (with shadows and silhouettes, for instance, like we talked about here: http://www.thephotographerslife.com/saleable_sunsets) and you’ll find more success in selling it.

— Lori

Lori Allen
Director,Great Escape Publishing

[Editor’s Note: Learn more about opportunities to profit from your travels (and even from your own home) in our free online newsletter The Right Way to Travel.]