Blog your Backyard & Win

Hey travel bloggers! Yes, you with the laptop and the half-packed suitcase. We’ve just launched a new campaign to feature you, our travel writing community… and your local knowledge. We invite you to take part in our Blog your Backyard program and share your expertise on your country or a country that you had spent a lot of time in and know well. Many times we are so focused on travel and writing about new destinations and adventures that we don’t step back and share our local knowledge for travelers planning to visit our home (or adopted) cities and countries.

For the next few weeks we will be posing a new prompt every week for you to write a blog post about. All you have to do is sign up to become a World Nomads member and start your free travel blog with us and submit your posts for each weekly deadline. Or, if you are already an avid World Nomads travel blogger, simply submit your story each week in your existing Journal. This campaign is open to anyone with a passion for travel who wants to share their expertise. While we do take your writing seriously, this is not a serious writing competition. We don’t care if you’ve written every guidebook on the shelf or if you’ve only ever recorded your travels on a series of well preserved napkins.

We just encourage you, as world nomads, to share your knowledge with other travellers. Entertain us, tell us your insider tips and make us want to hop a plane to your home country. Prompts Each week we will be calling for your submission to a new topic.

Here are the topics and the dates:

• Week of August 8: Do’s and Don’t’s in my Country (e.g. Do’s and Don’ts in Italy)
• Week of August 15: The Best and Worst of my Country (e.g. Best and Worst of Australia, Best and Worst of the USA)
• Week of August 22: In my Backyard – 5 Must Do Things in my City (e.g. 5 Things you Must Do in Auckland, New Zealand, 5 Things you Must do in Toronto, Canada)
• Week of August 29: What it means to be ________ (Nationality)
• Week of September 5: Best Ways to Work, Stay and Play in my Country (e.g. Best Ways to Work, Stay and Play in France)
• September 9: Entries close
• September 14: Winners announced

How to ensure your article is considered for judging Each post you want to submit to the competition needs to include the following: a relevant photo (can be your own or from Flickr Creative Commons) the hashtag #BlogYourBackyard (in the tags section of your article) a title that follows the format above with the country included (for example: Do’s and Don’ts in Norway).

Note: You can complete the prompts anytime during the campaign, you are not limited to a specific week to complete each prompt. However, all of your entries must be completed by the campaign end date. What’s in it for you? Well besides some good travel karma, a little notoriety and some warm and fuzzy social love, wait…you wanted more? Well, of course. The top 20 submissions, as chosen by our internal panel of judges at WorldNomads.com, will receive a AUD$50 voucher from Urban Adventures towards an adventure of your choice, whether it is in your backyard or on the road.

You only need to submit one post to enter, but the more posts you submit, the better chance you have at winning an adventure and being published in our Connect Locally eBook. For the winners of the Urban Adventures experiences, all that we ask is one final blog post sharing your excursion with Urban Adventures with our community! We are looking for quality, engaging and informative content that we can publish and share with our community through a downloadable ‘Connect Locally’ eBook on our site. We want this to become a local guide for travelers with real insight and tips from locals and other travelers.

Are you a professional travel blogger with your own site? Great! We do allow that you post your Blog your Backyard articles on your own site, but you must also post them to a Journal on WorldNomads.com (as outlined here) in order to enter to win. You must also attach the following promotional boilerplate to the bottom of the post: The ‘Blog your Backyard’ Project Share your local expertise and join the Blog your Backyard project! Become an ambassador for your country (home or adopted) by sharing your experiences and tips with other travelers. Submit your entries starting August 8th on WorldNomads.com for a chance to win one of 20 awesome excursions with Urban Adventures.

Plus, if you want to share more of your local expertise or get answers to all of your travel questions, download the FREE ‘Ask A Nomad’ iPad app. Judging Criteria We’re going back to basics with these ones:

1.) You made us want to visit your home country, and if we did you would definitely be our local guide.

2.) Your tips were useful and informative (who needs a guidebook now?!).

3.) We were able to gain a sense of your personality through your writing.

All decisions made by the judging panel at WorldNomads.com are final. Get Writing! Already a World Nomads member? Log in to your account. New to World Nomads? Sign up for your free travel blog. Want to check out the articles that have already been submitted? Click here!

Great Advice

My next door neighbor had moved back in with his mom while he started his first job after college. He was hired as a broker for a small brokerage firm in Atlanta. Although he was ten years older, he became a mentor to me. He showed me the magic of compound interest and suggested that I start investing $25 dollars a month in a mutual fund. I could open a money market account to get started. He told me that I could become a millionaire by the time I was thirty-five. (He did the math and everything).

It was 1981 and I was only 14. Where was I going to get $25 a month? He convinced me to go to the local pizza joint and get a job…any job. I was hired at $1.00 an hour to bus tables in the evenings Thursday, Friday, & Saturday. I was to also get a tip share.

Two weeks later, my neighbor asked if I wanted to go to Six-Flags over Georgia. I told him I didn’t have any money. He asked, “Didn’t you get paid?” “Yes,” I answered. Then he asked me the million dollar question: “What do you have to show for that money? Show me what you traded your time and labor for.” He said he’d wait while I ran home to show him the “stuff” I’d bought.

I could only produce some trash. I had spent my first paycheck on frozen pizza, Cokes, and junk food when a buddy came over to spend the night. I felt humiliated and ashamed. My neighbor then said, “Always have something to show for your money.”

I did open those accounts. I have always lived on 80%. (10% to God, 10% to savings). I funded those accounts until I needed the money for college. (This was in the days before state sponsored lottery funded education.) It was a great lesson and one I have passed on to countless employees over the years. (I used to own several restaurants.)
- Dan

What do you have to show for the money that you earn? It’s a really powerful question to ask yourself.