Work of Art Contest Winners and July Freelancers

Hello Trazzlers--
What a busy couple of months it has been!

We've been holding back on sending out our newsletter this month, because we have a big announcement to make about our next contest in mid-July... in the meantime, I wanted to announce our contest winners and July freelancers here.

Work of Art Contest Winners:

Kendra Hoover, Julie Hammonds, David Chachere, Kimberly Wadsworth, Anne-Sophie Redisch, Sami, Hrvoje Karalic, Gladys Glover, Yoshi Salaverry, and Beth Green.

Work of Art Contest Entries

This month, we are returning to some of our favorite writers to get another batch of trips, hiring contest contenders who caught our eye, commissioning sponsored trips for specific destinations, and digging back many months to hire writers who have been on our list of potential freelancers for quite a while.

July freelancers:

Nicholas Rowlands | Shara Johnson | Troy Nahumko | Robert Ellsworth | Clair Whitmer | Fayette Fox | Mollie Day | Summer Whitford | Yiannis Ifantides | Irina Vodonos | Galen Leeds | Billy Gonzalez | Rich Carriero | Donald Mammoser | Angela Allan | Christopher Johnston | Annie B Shapero | Daniel Djang | Muon Van | Greg Thomas | Paul Koning | Ashwin Sodhi | Christine Cantera |

Trazzler's user base is growing rapidly and our budget for freelancing will continue to increase in tandem with the site. We know that none of our growth would be possible without the contribution of our community team, freelance writers, and contributors. Trazzler is a lean--and decidedly uncorporate--operation. Although the last year has been a bit of a financial obstacle course, our commitment has always been to dedicate a high percentage of our budget (currently 26% compared to an average of 13% in traditional media) to hiring those writers who embrace the idea of Trazzler and have a one-of-a-kind contribution to make.

Writers: You can help us find the right assignment for you by updating your Trazzler bio (under settings) and adding your area of expertise and the countries, regions, states, or cities that you would like to write about. More and more, we hope to be able to offer contracts to write a block of trips about a specific regional or topical beat. We realize that many of you who submitted excellent samples might slip through the cracks if we don't know all of the places you can write about. We will be offering many more contracts over the coming months and are always going back through all of the writers who submitted trips to find the best ones for each assignment, so please stick with us!

Also coming very soon: writers will be able to see when a trip has been read by an editor. We will also be using this blog to post details about specific writing gigs as they become available, so you can have a chance to let us know that you are interested (Twitter @trazzler is a good way to get our attention). We have really been overwhelmed (in the best of all possible ways) by the quality of the writing that we have received and we are determined to improve our responsiveness and communication.

--Megan

P.S. Check back in on July 14 for our big summer contest announcement.