BootsnAll Travel Community

Does anyone know anything about these "marketplaces," where you post your writing and publishers come and browse, looking for things they'd like to use? It seems that generally you post for free, then if anything is purchased, the marketplace takes a chunk of the fee.

Somehow this sounds fishy to me, but I can't quite put my finger on why. Do you know if anyone actually uses these things? Have any of you tried them?

I think that Leif, God of Thunder may have used them in the past. CT or Tim, any background?

I used iTravelSyndicate for a year. There's a $39 annual fee and they take a 40% chunk from all sales. I got only one job while I was with them, but that one job paid for the annual fee and then quite a bit more through follow-up pitches that I did directly with the purchasing editor after that. I probably uploaded 30 articles and only sold one. It wasn't all Grade A material, but it was OK. The site claims more than 1,000 editors worldwide use their service. I don't know. If I hadn't gotten that one job, I'd have been pretty disappointed.

I can't speak for any other service.

I've posted a range of things on there and have yet to get a bite after several months. And it's not like they weren't professional pieces--some had already run in reputable publications. Others I've talked to have shared similar experiences. Like Leif, the best people seem to do is barely beat the expense. Sounds too good to be true for a reason I think...