Are you interested in writing about theme parks, and being paid for it? Are you a talented writer capable of producing original, fascinating content that theme park fans will love to read? Then you sound like a great candidate to join Theme Park Tourist’s writing team!
We’re one of very few theme park websites that are willing (and able) to pay contributors – and we also offer you the opportunity to share your talent with a huge audience. We receive hundreds of thousands of visitors each month, and tens of thousands of pageviews every day – making us one of the most popular theme park sites on the web.
The basics
- We’ll pay you $50 for a short form article consisting of between 750-1000 words.
- You’ll be eligible for bonuses of between $10 and $20 for articles that attract a lot of traffic.
- You’ll generally be asked to contribute at least two articles per month.
- We’re looking for writers that want to make a long-term commitment to write for Theme Park Tourist. If you’re looking to contribute articles on an irregular basis, this isn’t the role for you.
- We’ll pay you at the end of each month.
Content guidelines
There are hundreds of theme park sites on the web. Some of them are excellent, but the vast majority of them simply report the same news stories that you can find on dozens of other sites. To be completely honest, Theme Park Tourist fell into this category for much of its first few years.
These days, we don’t see the point of churning out identikit news stories or top 10 lists that you’ve already seen elsewhere. Instead, we have four key criteria for every article that we publish:
- It must be informative (the reader should learn something new).
- It must be entertaining (it doesn’t need to be laugh-out-loud funny, but theme parks are in the entertainment business, and so are we).
- It must be unique (a simple rule is that if you’ve already seen an article with a similar title on another website, we’re not interested. The article can be on a familiar topic, but it needs to be approached from a new angle).
- It must have a compelling title that clearly gets across what it is about and tempts theme park fans to read it (this is absolutely vital when sharing content on Facebook and other social media sites).
The majority of our feature articles are in list format. We don’t know the psychology behind why this is the case, but we have consistently found that list articles massively outperform other articles, even when their content is essentially the same. However, we do also post a number of long-form articles each month, which generally don’t use the list format and dive into a subject in more depth.
Audience
Our readers are primarily interested in Disney and Universal theme parks. They lean heavily towards Disney, and towards Florida rather than California parks. Having said that, we aim to cover the broader world of theme parks, rather than simply being just another Disney fan site. And some of our most popular articles have nothing to do with Disney, Universal or Florida.
The role
We’re looking for writers to produce articles around the following topic areas, which we know play well with our audience. Having said that, we’re very willing to take risks on new topics and types of content – with our Facebook audience, it’s easy and fast to find out what works and what doesn’t.
You can either choose to focus on one (or a subset) of these topics, or you can pitch articles related to any of them. Or, indeed, you can pitch something completely unrelated – we’re always open to new ideas and aren’t afraid to test out things that might seem crazy but could somehow work (one of our most successful articles ever was about mosquito control at Walt Disney World!).
As a rough guide, about 50 percent of feature articles relate to Disney, and we try to publish one Disney article and one non-Disney article per day. This keeps the many, many Disney fans on our Facebook page happy, without leading to the site going stale.
Disney, Universal and theme park history
Our audience typically loves articles about the history of Disney and Universal parks. Articles about other parks can do well if they are pitched at a broad audience, rather than just fans of Knott’s Berry Farm, for example. A few past successes:
- 5 Tragic Reasons Why the World’s Largest Theme Park Stands Abandoned in Ohio
- From Barren Swampland to Walt Disney World in 60 Incredible Photos
- Abandoned: The Rise, Fall and Decay of Disney’s River Country
- Jaws: How Universal’s Shark Ride Turned into a Real-Life Disaster
Walt Disney World / Universal Orlando “alternative” guides
As most of our audience are very interested in Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando, we’re keen to publish guide-style articles for both resorts. However, we’re not looking for your average “10 Fun Things to do at Walt Disney World” articles, which are a yawn-fest. Instead, we’d like to try and cover the lesser-known, more unusual things to see and do at both resorts.
A few examples that have worked well so far:
- The Hidden Secrets of Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando (this is an ongoing series)
- The 14 Best Disney Spoofs in Universal Theme Park Attractions
- 20 Unusual and Amazing Things to do at Walt Disney World
- 10 Absurdly Intricate Details at Walt Disney World That Most People Never Notice
The unusual side of Disney, Universal and theme parks in general
Articles about the lesser-known sides of theme parks play really well on Facebook. They are also generally really fun to put together. A few examples:
- The 5 Weirdest Hidden Cast Members at Disney Theme Parks
- 5 Very Strange Things That Happen to Your Body on Theme Park Rides
- The 10 Strangest Lawsuits Brought Against Disney Theme Parks
“Behind the Scenes” at Walt Disney World (and other theme parks)
Articles about how theme parks are run and what the staff get up to are really, really popular. Examples:
- 9 Strange Things Disney Cast Members Learn To Do
- 8 Ingenious Ways That Disney Theme Parks Shield You From the Real World
- 15 Things That Are Hidden Underground at Disney’s Magic Kingdom
New attraction watch
Obviously, a major aspect of our site is keeping our readers up-to-date with the latest news on new rides, shows, etc. However, we’re not keen on just re-posting content from press releases or from other sites – we’d rather take a unique angle on things. A few examples:
- 10 Fun Facts About Disney’s Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
- Revealed: 10 New Details About the Hogwarts Express at Universal Orlando
- The 20 New Rides, Shops and Restaurants Coming to Walt Disney World by 2017
Your responsibilities
You’ll be asked to write the article, proof-read and fact-check it and upload it to our Content Management System (we’ll provide simple instructions for how to do this). Once your article is published on Theme Park Tourist you will need to post it into the relevant Facebook group and monitor and respond to readers comments. At least to begin with, we’ll ask that you run article topics past us before writing them (we have a pretty good feel for what our fans like to read, and no doubt you’ll develop that pretty quickly, too).
Our responsibilities
We’ll pay you on time (at the end of every month) and ensure that your fantastic articles are shared with a huge audience. We’ll also review pitches for new articles and provide timely feedback.
Are you interested?
If you’re interested in sharing your love of theme parks with the world by writing for Theme Park Tourist, then contact us now. Please provide at least 3 example titles for articles that you think our readers would enjoy.
Please note that we currently have a full roster of writers. However, you are still welcome to submit an application and we will consider it when a vacancy opens up.
Thanks!