WanderLabs Writing & Submission Guide

Zachary Kyra-Derksen

Published in

WanderLabs

4 min readFeb 6, 2019

Interested in writing for WanderLabs? Use this guide to get started. ✈

How We Support Our Writers

If you want to be a travel blogger, or just write travel articles for fun, then we want to support you! Here’s how:

Articles from writers who write for WanderLabs are featured on the WanderLabs Medium publication & will be featured on the upcoming WanderLabs website blog. On Medium, the article will also be automatically added to your profile.
Receive full credit as the author. On Medium your bio automatically appears at the bottom of the story. On our blog we will give you a two-sentence byline with an option to include any link (ex. website or Instagram profile).
We might turn your post into an Instagram highlight, and tag you!
Receive mentorship from WanderLabs founders Ricky, Tony, and Zach. Just let us know how we can help you and we’ll do our best to make it happen!

Content Guide

Our audience is primarily women between the ages of 18 & 35 who want to see the world. With this in mind, we want blog posts which fall into these three categories:

Trip Reports

A trip report should be story rich, while also providing valuable insights into the location. Aim for a mix of travel stories from a specific country, city, or area with advice on places to visit, things to do, and what to be aware of. Great trip reports include both first-hand accounts and research.

There are a few approaches to accomplish this. You can weave a narrative, write a list style post, or combine them! Aim to write the type of post you would like to read. Here are a few trip reports we love:

A Dust Over India (narrative style)
Iceland Travel Guide: Tips and Road Trip Itinerary (list style)
15 amazing experiences to have in Costa Rica before you die (list style)

Travel Hacks

We want to provide definitive guides to travelers on travel-related topics. These articles are normally quite research heavy (Google is your best friend here), but can also include relevant first-hand experience. Here are a few travel hack articles that we published to our Medium publication:

Journal

A journal post can combine elements of a trip report, as well as travel hacks. These posts tend to look at the bigger picture — whether that be presented in the form of an idea, a way of being, or even broad observations about a specific place. With these posts, it’s great to philosophize about past decisions and experiences. Here are a few examples:

Style Guide

Here’s a general guide of what we’re looking for. If you want to see an example of this style guide in action, check out the articles in the WanderLabs Medium publication.

Quality is paramount. Take your time to write something that you care about, and would be excited to share with your friends.
Content should be informative, fun, and quirky. We encourage you to add GIFs and images. Make sure you include the source in the image caption. Unsplash is a great place to source images.
Minimum length of 600 words. The ideal length is around 1,500 words (although no maximum).
Keep your piece organized with sections & headers.
Keep paragraphs to 4 or fewer sentences (increases readability).
Check your work. We highly recommend downloading Grammarly (it’s free). And if you want to take your writing to the next level, invest in Hemingway ($19.99).
Lastly, read this style guide for writing on Medium.