If I’m Elected President

My first ever paid blogging assignment, searching for elephants in Borneo.
My first ever paid blogging assignment, searching for elephants in Borneo.

Having served on the Professional Travel Bloggers Association for the past year, I knew elections were coming, but I didn’t think I’d be involved because I still had another year remaining in my term. Last week I received an email from Laurence Norah with a PDF attached to it title “PTBA Election List 2015”. I opened the PDF and my jaw dropped.

I was nominated for every single open position on the board.

It was extremely surprised and incredibly flattered.

I spent a few nights lying awake at night, thinking about whether or not I should run. I thought about it a lot. I also thought about how I whether I would benefit the PTBA as President. In the end, I decided I would, and I should.

Please excuse the length of this post, but I thought that this subject, and the PTBA members, deserved a very thorough and detailed explanation of exactly why I want to be President and why I’d do a good job.

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How To Quickly Convert TextEdit To HTML For WordPress

working on textedit to HTML

Not everyone uses Textedit on Mac, but I know a blog of bloggers that do. The problem is changing Textedit to HTML by pasting it into the WordPress visual editor doesn’t work very well. So, one day I sat down and figured out a super fast way to convert Textedit into clean HTML for WordPress, and, at the same time, to make some fast formatting changes, such as changing all links to open in a new window, and changing bold text into header (h2 or h3).  

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How To Write An Article Pitch That Sells

writing-a-query-letter

I got started travel blogging differently than most other bloggers I know. Most of the travel bloggers I know loved travel so much that they wanted to find a way to earn a living while traveling.

I arrived in this occupation from a completely different direction. I always wanted to be a writer (you can read more about my writing adventures in my Timeline of My Life As A Writer on this page) and I studied journalism in university.

I was teaching English in Taiwan then I first started pitching magazines, but I wasn’t getting assignments as consistently as I wanted to. I thought that choosing a niche to focus on would help. Since there were few people writing about Taiwan at the time, I decided to become a travel writer.

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5 Productivity Tools To Help You Blog Better Right Now

Hammock and laptop in Hawaii
Hard at work in Hawaii.

The longer I blog (I’ve been doing it for a while now) the more I feel the need to increase my daily productivity. I mean, who doesn’t? Fortunately, app developers have recognized this widespread need and have been creating efficiency apps to help people like us increase our productivity. I’ve already written a couple of tutorials about improving efficiency (How to Edit Photos at Lightspeed in Photoshop and How to Use Asana to Stay Organized).

Here are a few of the apps that I use to get more done in a day, and why I like them.

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