Here’s a new get-paid-to-travel gig that should attract a lot of attention and cheers from wanderlust writers. World66 will be awarding ten travel grants to the best trip proposals they get. It looks like each grant is worth $1,000, although the fine print explains that they have the right to award less than that.
Proposals will be selected based on writing skills, travel motivation and whether or not they need content for the places suggested in each proposal. You have until January 1, 2006 to get your proposals in. All decisions will be made by the end of January and those selected will have until January 1, 2007 to complete the travel and writing agreed upon.
Sounds like a good deal, huh? But wait, there’s more…
These grants come with a unique twist. They were announced in early August at Wikimania in Germany, as part of a poster about getting paid to work on open content projects. World66 is an open content travel guide, which means that anyone can contribute and/or edit content on the site. So, if your proposal is selected, whatever you get paid to write will be published under a Creative Commons license and will exist in the public domain. It can be edited/modified even after you have published it to the online travel guide.
In my opinion, as long as the content is accurate when you write it, and the money comes through, I think this is an excellent writing opportunity and a chance to be part of a unique collaborative effort that benefits all of us traveler types. I’ll be working on my proposal — will you?