The Renegade Writer chats with travel writer Ellen Barone, which can yield some good tips for those of you who want to be just like her:

Here's a question I hear a lot: Should you sell an idea and then go on the trip, or go on the trip and then sell the idea?

Unless it's somewhere I just really want to go without an assignment hanging over my head, my goal is always to sell the idea - as many times as I can - and then go on the trip. But, that is a financially driven decision. I simply cannot afford to take the trip and hope that it will sell. I need to know I have something lined up ahead of time.

That said, I know plenty of travelers with day jobs, spouses with day jobs, or independent means, who take the trip, write it up, then sell it to top name publications, usually large circulation newspapers, which pay very little, but feed the ego and help make a name for the writer quite nicely.

More here.