Buying train tickets is the bane of my life at the moment. I travel to Sheffield once a week to teach at university and have lost many hours working out how to find the cheapest fares. All the apps in the world do not help. Only knowledge and trial and error can find you the best deal. Now I have cracked this, I am saving 64% on my peak time tickets. This gave me an idea. Surely other passengers are also trying to fathom the complexity of UK rail fares on a daily basis. Wouldn’t it be useful for me to share the tricks I have garnered over the year?
So I decided to pitch the idea to two publications, taking a different approach for both so I could get two commissions from one idea. The first was published in the money pages of Metro newspaper and the second was used on niche news site loveMONEY. In the newsletter today I share the pitches, and explain why they were picked up and how I could get two bites of the commission cherry without repeating or self-plagiarising myself.