Scafidi_Travels

There are a few aspects of Tunisia that make it stand out compared to other places I have visited on the continent:

- I like the unique culture here. It really doesn't feel appropriate to lump Tunisia into the MENA category, as it does not feel much like the rest of the Middle East (or even nearby countries like Morocco). This applies to some more surface-level stuff like language, national dress (and to a lesser extent, food), but also to the less obvious elements like the political sphere, gender roles and attitudes towards outsiders.

- The incredible wealth of archaeological sites, often completely empty of visitors, is like nothing else I have ever seen. Having studied archaeology at university, this is a huge draw. It's also probably why so many of the videos on my channel back in 2020 focussed on these sites.

- The road infrastructure. I drive thousands of kilometers for work to explore the country, and it's refreshing to not be dodging potholes all the time!

- The overall security environment. I know that there are parts of the country that are not safe due to insurgency / porous borders, and others that are currently affected by rioting, but overall it is nice to not have to worry too much about being robbed at gunpoint when travelling around the country.

- I love that Tunisia is a cheap place to live, although I am aware that one of the reasons for this is the controlled currency, which makes life hard for many Tunisians.

- There's a great entrepreneurial spirit amongst young people that I have met, who are battling the bureaucracy and setting up some really interesting companies / initiatives. Lots of Tunisians have reached out via social media to help with my writing project, and I really appreciate that.

- The variety of landscapes within the country is also a big draw, both personally and professionally. It makes my job of selling Tunisia much easier if it can offer snowy pine forests, wind-swept dunes, rugged mountains, amazing Mediterranean beaches etc., as this draws a more diverse crowd of tourists.

Let me break it down into five top tips for you! You can watch all this advice as a video on my channel if you prefer! Covid-19 has made getting paid to write about travel much more difficult, but all of this advice is still valid:

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1. Be specialised
2. Be an expert
3. Watch your digital footprint
4. Be creative in your sources of funding & pitch widely
5. Keep your expenses low by getting free stuff!

Be specialised

Pick a niche that you are interested in and stick to it. That might be a specific region (which for me is Africa) or it could even be as specific as one country. You might decide that you are really keen on writing about international cuisine, or Middle Eastern culture or fashion in Japan or ultra-luxury travel. It doesn’t really matter. There are thousands of ways to view and write about the world. But if you pick an area that you are passionate about, that will show through in your work. If you are consistent in focussing on that area, then you will attract the kind of engaged following that you want, and it will make you easier to find for commissioning editors and other clients. Most importantly, if you carve out a niche, you will build up another really important attribute in your work, which is expertise.

Be an expert

Readers want to hear from experts, not people who parachuted in for a week, or did most of their research online. You have to be honest with your audience and expertise is difficult to fake. So do your research, speak the language, live in the place, engage with the other people in the same field as you. Becoming an expert doesn’t necessarily have to cost money, but it is going to cost you time. This is a process you can start in school: take the creative writing courses, pick up the languages you think will be useful, learn to take feedback and edit based on that feedback.

Expertise is what makes you stand out when applying for a job. Try to put yourself in the shoes of a commissioning editor: they must get thousands of emails every year from people wanting to get paid to go to Thailand or Paris or some other popular tourist destination. So why should they pick you? What makes you more qualified than the other applicants to talk on that subject? If you can answer that question clearly and confidently (without coming across as too abrasive) then you’re one step closer to getting paid to travel. I was recently asked by an Angolan Ministry to help them devise a tourism development plan for a river in their territory called the Kwanza River. Why did they ask me? Partly because I’ve written a guidebook to their country and partly because I’ve kayaked along that river. In their eyes at least, that makes me an expert!

Watch your digital footprint

One way a commissioning editor is going to gauge your expertise is by Googling you, and checking out your social media presence. The term for this is your “digital footprint”. A lot of employers look at this now. I can’t emphasise this enough: your digital footprint is your CV / resume.

So, if a commissioning editor Googled your name tomorrow, what would they find? What would they see on your Twitter account, or your public Facebook posts, or your Instagram or Snapchat stories? And what does this say about you?

What about your LinkedIn profile? BTW, I have received loads of work offers through people searching for “Equatorial Guinea” on LinkedIn, so if you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, please set one up immediately!

So how can you curate your digital footprint, and make sure potential future employers see what you want them to see, not some embarrassing post from years ago that might cost you a job?

The first thing you can do is be sure to post new content that is in line with your personal brand. If you’re claiming that you’re an expert on Thailand, then the first page of Google search results someone sees after typing your name should probably be your travel articles about Thailand!

My entire first page of Google search results is my professional profiles from my publisher and LinkedIn plus a load of stuff about my travel writing, my documentary film and links to my books. You can see that my footprint is pages and pages of content relevant to my job. Google even lets you edit your own Knowledge Panel over on the right there if you get verified with them (which is a pretty straightforward process).

The second thing you can do is delete stuff that doesn’t fit with your personal brand. Social media stuff is pretty easy: just delete the post / Tweet / story (if you are the author). If you are not the author then things get a little more complicated, especially if you’re not an EU citizen.

If you’re an EU citizen you’re in luck: you have the right to be forgotten, which means if you ask Google to take negative personal information about you off their search engine, they have to comply. Just search for their Personal Information Removal Request Form or EU Privacy Removal form, fill it out and they should de-link the offending page from your name in the search results.

If you’re not an EU citizen then it’s more complicated, but you can pay services such as DeleteMe to adjust or remove your digital footprint. There are plenty of good guides here on YouTube if you want to follow one.

Bottom line: Google yourself, and make sure you’re happy with what you find!

Be creative in your sources of funding & pitch widely

Research trips can be expensive and the pay doesn’t tend to be very high for travel writing gigs, so you need to be creative to stretch the funds that you do have and get the job done to a high standard.

At its simplest, you want to get paid as much as possible for each trip, while keeping your out of pocket expenses as low as possible.

Starting with the pay, you want multiple commissions on each trip (so stack up your jobs). If somebody is paying you $300 for a photostory about the architecture in a capital city, who else can you persuade to pay you for different bits of work while you are there? A few hundred dollars is not much, but if you can stack up five or six of these commissions while on assignment, then the trip begins to be profitable.

Also, pitch and sell your work widely. It’s not just magazines and travel websites that will pay for your writing and pictures. What about doing some copy writing or photography for a travel company that offers this destination to their clients? What about contacting companies that run travel advice websites or Apps? Maybe advertisers? What about the Ministry of Tourism in the host country themselves - could you do something for them while you are there? You’re going to get a lot of rejections, but the more relevant pitches you send out, the better your chance for success.

Keep your expenses low by getting free stuff!

Now onto the expenses: it’s rare to get a job as a freelancer where a client is willing to pay your travel expenses (amazing as this may sound). Bradt Travel Guides don’t give me a Gold expenses card to spend on 5* hotel rooms and lobster dinners. They’ll agree a flat fee with you. Whatever you don’t spend on expenses, you get to keep as pay. In this situation, the less you spend the better! So contact service providers and shamelessly ask them for free or discounted stuff. Hotel rooms, vehicle rentals, anything really, as long as you can articulate a clear benefit to them. In 2018 I got unlimited free internal flights across Angola with the national airline TAAG. What did I have to do? Write to the head of the company and ask. Why did they agree? Because the national airline realised that what I was doing (encouraging tourism in their country) was beneficial to their business model. So find people that can help to bring your expenses bill down and ask them for help!

Until you’re established it’s going to be very difficult to persuade a business to give you free products. So until then, air miles anc credit card points are your best friend. Now I’m going to do a whole separate video on collecting these (because I’m obsessed). But put very simply: there are plenty of ways to collect air miles that don’t involve flying and you can use air miles and credit card points to drastically reduce your travel and accommodation costs while on assignment, which means you get to keep more of the money the client gave you to get the story done.

There are hundreds of great websites out there that give you advice on collecting these points. As a former UK resident I like Head For Points. Other good resources include The Points Guy, God Save The Points and the FlyerTalk forums.

I've met lots of fascinating people on my travels:

Met Dave Conroy "Canadian Dave" who was on a crazy solo cycle tour around Africa back when I was in Namibe, southern Angola in 2013. His story of quitting the rat race and living on the road was so fascinating we invited him to speak to the students at Luanda International School!

Met the Angolan Vice President Bornito de Sousa back in 2019 on a book launch in Luanda, Angola. You might expect that he would have to be some kind of Frank Underwood-type political operator to get to the powerful position he has, but he was actually a really down-to-earth, welcoming man. We had a chat about my kayaking expedition while pretending that there weren't film cameras everywhere! He actually found about about me from his Twitter account and invited me to the presidential palace to say thanks for promoting Angola in my writing!

I'll finish with my friends in Somalia from 2011 (read the story to see why their names are left out). They were brothers trying to earn a living as fixers in one of the most hostile parts of Somalia (Galkayo and the Puntland coastline, which at the time was full of pirate gangs). Cannot imagine what it must be like to grow up in that environment, but they were making it work, and we are still in touch today!

Different:

- I imagine I travel around the country a lot more than your average Tunisian person. I have been to 21 of the 24 governorates so far, and will be ticking off the last three as well as re-visiting many of them again this year. By the time the book is done later in 2021, I hope to have been to every major city / town / tourist attraction in the country.

- Being self employed and without children or an extended family in Tunis, the structure of my work day and work week would likely seem a bit odd.

- I get the feeling Tunisian police treat foreign drivers differently to how they treat the average Tunisian driver.

- Up until covid-19 hit, I imagine I got on a plane out of the country more frequently than your average Tunisian person.

- I cannot speak Derja, so I have to get by with French or English or Italian!

Similar:

- I have just as much difficulty getting official permits and other bits of paper from various ministries as Tunisians do! Here's a good example from recently.

- I train at a local sports club, which seems to be a popular thing to do here.

- I spend a lot of time in shisha and coffee joints, which also seem very popular!

- I love the great outdoors, camping etc. and try to get out of town on free weekends. Randonnée seems to be a big thing here!