As children, we learned to draw by joining dots. Landing your first byline as a travel writer can often be as simple—it’s just a matter of finding and connecting the correct dots.

The way I landed an article in the October/November edition of World Travel Magazine last year is a great illustration… The first dot for me was a website called TravMedia. Touting itself as “the travel industry’s social media network,” it’s a great place to publicize your work. But a lot of people don’t realize that editors also use it to find writers for specific articles.

Mark Andrews has written about everything from Japanese houses to heli hikes on New Zealand glaciers, test drives of Chinese cars to bar and restaurant reviews. He currently specialises in travel articles and reviews of Chinese cars plus articles about the Chinese auto industry.