Unless you can get yourself on an all-expenses-paid press trip, you are unlikely to be able to save on transportation. So, one workaround is to write a lot of articles based on your locality.

I’m based in Shanghai, China, and so local for me is anywhere within an easy train or bus ride. I saw an alert one day on TravMedia from the editor of Tiger Tales, the inflight of Tigerair, looking for someone to do an article on Ningbo, and I jumped at the chance to explore a city I hadn’t visited before. Less than a two-hour journey and $30 bullet train ride away, it was easy to cover the expense.

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