Today’s show was inspired from Maria, who asked the following: “I wanted to ask your opinion on [NAME REDACTED] travel writer's program. As a travel writer, do you think this program is a good investment?”

Without any personal experience with the travel program in question, we decided to reinterpret her question as: “Should I pay good money to take travel-writing specific online course that promises to make me a travel writer rich beyond my wildest dreams?”

In a word: No.

In more than one word -- an entire podcast episode, in fact -- we’ll break down the cash-flow realities of being a for-profit travel writer/travel influencer. We’re sharing *all* the times we got paid to create travel content over the last three years, so you can decide if this is the life for you or not. (Granted, you’re only getting our perspective.)

Here’s what we’re talking about:

• How we established and how much we were paid during our more-than-a-year working relationship with TravelSmith that ended when the company sold
• How much I was paid to write a nifty article for a nifty travel app, Findery
• A paid podcast episode for Ricola, Thailand
• Evo’s paid gig as the keynote speaker at Nordic Bloggers Experience in 2017.
• A week-long free and luxurious trip to Chengdu, China thanks to our friends at With Husband In Tow and Nicolo Chengdu
• Three great days at the Khao Lak Marriott
• All the great reasons to attend TBEX, including lots of free trips and experiences thanks to the various tourism boards and vendors at the destination
• Free experiences in Bangkok from Expique and Taste of Thailand
• Free beer (because we’re clever) from