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Becoming a professional travel blogger has been a dream come true for me in so many ways. I’ve found a way to get paid for my favorite hobby, and do so while following my dream of traveling the world.
Sometimes I can’t believe this is my life. Six weeks ago, I was invited on a monthlong press trip to Australia — and had to turn it down, as I had prior commitments. Until recently, never in my life did I believe that I would be offered a free monthlong trip to Australia out of the blue, much less turn one down!
Not surprisingly, people ask me all the time how they can do what I do. The short answer I give them is that travel blogging requires a tremendous amount of work, as well as a tremendous investment of time and effort before you begin to see any benefits.
Ready to start a travel blog? Click here to get started!
There are a number of posts about travel blogging telling people that if they can dream it, they can do it! While encouragement is nice, many of these posts are short on reality.
The truth? Almost all of you who start travel blogging with the hopes of doing it full-time will have given up a year from now.
Having been a blogger for ten years, a travel blogger for two years, and a full-time, professional travel blogger for a year and a half now, I’ve put together a list about the reality of this career.
Note: The following list is about being a professional travel blogger — not necessarily someone who makes his or her income online and also happens to be a travel blogger, nor someone who uses travel blogs primarily as link farms.
The Reality of Being a Professional Travel Blogger
You will work harder than you ever have in your entire life.
If you dream of having a four-hour workweek, this is not the career for you. Look into passive income. Don’t become a professional travel blogger.
It might seem like I do little more than write posts. That’s just a small part of it. The rest is spent responding to potential advertisers, reaching out to would-be advertisers, editing photos, editing videos, assembling promotional materials, pitching travel and tourism contacts, writing for other sites, Facebook group networking, tweaking site design, tracking financials, link building, doing keyword research, reading other travel blogs, and maintaining a presence on social media. To start.
When you’re a travel blogger, the work is never done. There is always something else that you could be doing, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day.
Your travel blog is your life.
You will not succeed at travel blogging unless you produce content prolifically – at least at first. This means that you will need to work at least a few hours each day. Working this much means that you will be miserable unless you genuinely love it.
I don’t love everything I do as a blogger, and I’m not always in the mood to do the things I do enjoy – but as a whole, this is something that I love. I love the work. I love the people. I love the conferences and events, and I love the seminars that teach me more about this field. Travel blogging exhilarates me, and that’s what keeps me going.
This translates into a bit of workaholism, and it’s hard for other people to understand this, especially my family and friends. When your career and passion are the same thing, you need to point out — often with frequency — just how necessary it is for you to work all the time.
You won’t make money for a long time.
The general rule is that you shouldn’t expect money for the first year. Most advertisers, whether they be link agencies or travel companies, won’t work with a site less than one year old. Why not? You haven’t proven yourself as an investment yet.
While there are exceptions – I began making money about six months in – you should be prepared to not make anything for the first year. What’s nice is that it weeds out the people who aren’t serious.
The money ebbs and flows.
Entrepreneurs and freelancers of all kinds will be able to relate to this point – most of the time, it’s either feast or famine. I have some steady contracts with advertisers, but most of the money is not made regularly. Either I’m making far more than I need or I’m not making nearly enough.
Those lean times are scary. It’s important to have savings and diversify your income as much as possible, but even more important is asking yourself whether you’re prepared to handle the emotional roller-coaster that is entrepreneurship.
It’s nearly impossible to make a living from one site alone.
Yes, some people are able to make a full-time income from one site – but they are in a very small minority.
No matter how you make your money, chances are that you will be part of the 98% that needs multiple sites in order to make a living, rather than the 2% who can get by with one.
Living cheaply abroad may be necessary.
For most professional travel bloggers, it takes a long time to earn an income that would be enough to live on in North America or Western Europe. Many make the decision to live abroad in a cheap country for that reason.
One of the main reasons why so many travel bloggers live in Chiang Mai, Thailand, is that you can live very well there for very cheap. $800 a month could cover rent in a nice place, food, cable, internet, and most everything you would need for a month in Chiang Mai, plus a bit of travel within Thailand, too.
$800 a month, by contrast, is what I paid for half of a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Boston.
Being a great writer and a great blogger are two very different things.
Writing for the internet is different from any other kind of creative writing you’ve done before. You’re writing to engage people with a short attention span who are reading your blog while being bombarded by major distractions like Facebook.
You could write exquisite, intricate, heartbreakingly beautiful prose that would win you awards in a long-form memoir or a collection of essays. But when you use this kind of writing on a blog, you’ll likely end up with a few comments of, “Wow, you’re a great writer!” without the traffic to back it up. It’s simply not engaging to most readers.
Take my favorite author – Lionel Shriver, who wrote We Need to Talk About Kevin and The Post-Birthday World. I adore her exquisite writing, which makes me feel smarter just for having read it. But if she wrote a blog in the style of her books, very few people would read it.
This is not to say that good writing isn’t appreciated. There are quite a few travel bloggers who are talented storytellers — Wes Nations and Lauren Juliff and Mike Sowden come to mind. You need to write well, but in order to attract the masses, your writing needs to be digestible to casual readers.
You will never travel the same way again.
When you’re a professional travel blogger, you don’t get time off, which means you can never go completely off the grid. Sometimes you can plan ahead by scheduling posts, tweets, and Facebook shares, but when travel blogging is your main form of income, you can’t step away from your email for long.
In San Antonio, Texas, my mom and sister went out for margaritas on the Riverwalk every night while I stayed in and worked. In Hoi An, Vietnam, my friends had a blast at the My Son ruins, which I skipped because I needed to work. In Sayulita, Mexico, the girls in my group went to a cooking demonstration that I really wanted to experience – but I couldn’t, because I had work to do.
I’m not complaining. I think the trade-off is very fair. And since I travel solo most of the time, it’s easy for me to travel slowly and build in extra days to be spent working. It’s more difficult when I travel with others.
This spring, I’ll be taking my first vacation in more than two years. And I can only do it because I’m hiring someone to run my site in my absence.
Press trips don’t pay the bills.
Press trips can be amazing. I feel privileged to have worked with some fantastic tourism boards and travel companies that have chosen to invest in my site, and to have experienced some amazing destinations as a result.
But in nearly all instances, travel bloggers don’t make money for these trips. In fact, we lose money because we’re losing time that could be spent working.
That’s not to say that they won’t pay off in the future for smart, resourceful travel bloggers who parlay their relationships with these companies into creative new opportunities. But for the press trips themselves, you won’t earn money.
I actually believe that a few years from now, it will be standard practice to pay professional travel bloggers to attend press trips. But that’s not the case just yet.
Doing it alone is a challenge in itself.
Running a business entirely by yourself is extremely challenging. Everything, from the creative aspects to the business aspects, comes down to you, regardless of what your strengths and weaknesses may be. It doesn’t matter. You’re responsible for it all, and it’s a pile of never-ending work.
This is the double-edged sword of self-employment. It’s wonderful not to have a boss anymore and to be able to work for your own interests — but can you trust yourself to do the work when someone isn’t imploring you to do so?
This effect is somewhat mitigated for multiple people running a travel blog together. When you have two or more people working on one site, you’re able to get a lot more done – particularly if you play to each other’s strengths. Consequently, you’ll need to earn a higher income to support more than one person.
(For what it’s worth, I’ve been told that all the benefits of having two people go out the window if you have young children.)
The industry is evolving constantly.
While all industries are evolving, the travel blogging industry is zooming ahead at the speed of lightning. It’s still a very new industry, even compared to other blogging industries like mommy blogging, fashion blogging, even food blogging.
People are still figuring out what to make of us. Being a blogger doesn’t exactly sound like a potential career. Most people have no clue that we can make money, let alone be valuable entities that can reach tens of thousands of readers each month.
If you’re going to become a professional travel blogger, you need to commit to networking constantly with other travel bloggers and reading everything you can about the industry. If not, you’ll fall behind.
BUT – things are getting better all the time. One thing that many travel bloggers are doing these days, myself included, is partnering with companies to do paid work in additional to working in exchange for travel.
You need to be one arrogant motherf*cker.
At times, it seems like the travel blogging community is a bastion of helpful support and group hugs. And it is – I love that more experienced bloggers often pitch in to help newbie bloggers, or even each other when we’re stuck.
But we’re also competing with each other. We compete for spots on press trips. We compete for sponsorships and partnerships. We compete for speaking gigs. We compete for funding to be spent on us.
If you’re going to compete in this space, you need to be able to convince companies to invest in you. And wooing companies requires different skills than wooing readers.
You need to approach companies with confidence and, after they tell you they’re considering working with a blog with double the pageviews, you need to be ready to smile and explain what makes you a better choice. You need to do this with charm, and grace, and humor.
At the end of the day, people want to feel good about themselves. Travel companies are run by people. Your job is to make them think that working with you is the best damn decision they could make for themselves.
Can this be taught? To a degree. It’s a tough line to walk – being cocky but approachable, arrogant but polite, and supremely confident of the belief that no other blog can even approach yours when it comes to quality.
Modesty does you no favors here.
It’s for the love of blogging.
Your love of travel has very little to do with your ability to succeed as a travel blogger. Sure, cool travel experiences lead to good potential content, but being a compelling blogger depends on what you do with that content.
Most of the successful travel bloggers I know became travel bloggers because they loved the act of blogging, and also loved blogging about travel. The least successful ones are people who wanted to make money while traveling and thought blogging would be a way to do it. Most people fall somewhere in between.
You are nothing without your readers.
Your readers are the single greatest asset you have. Travel companies and tourism boards work with bloggers because they have devoted audiences who trust them.
The moment you take advantage of your audience, you are destroying your most precious asset. What’s considered taking advantage of your readers? It’s your call. For me, it’s publishing anything that I myself wouldn’t want to read.
You have friends around the world.
This piece has been a bit of a downer, so let me end it on a nice note: travel bloggers are wonderful. I’m very fortunate to count travel bloggers among my closest friends.
I love that I can travel almost anywhere in the world and have either a blogger or a reader say, “You want to meet up while you’re here?” That’s amazing. That’s a gift, and one that I hope I always treasure.
Hi Kate,
Just stumbled upon you from somewhere and can’t believe we haven’t crossed paths online before. We seem to be traveling the same journey so it’s great to connect with you:)
Love what you’ve written here but hope we travel bloggers don’t feel the need to compete with each other.
I believe it’s better to work together as a team. That most brands that advertise in print do so in several different publications and that those who want to advertise on blogs will too:)
If we work together we should be able to get the results, pay and treatment that we need and deserve.
As you say it’s all evolving and I’m looking forward to seeing where it all leads.
Hopefully our paths will cross sometime and not just online:) Until then, happy blogging!
Hi, Annabel — while we do a lot of work together, and it works out very well, there are points when we need to compete with each other. Not often. But you need to be prepared from time to time for it.
Thanks for this post Kate. It’s very insightful. I’ve been blogging for just a few months while working full time and I agree it’s tough. I often find myself still up at 2am with work the next day cursing the processing speed of my ancient laptop. And it’s difficult when you start out to even know if you’ll ever have enough readers to make all the effort worth while. But I do it because I love it and because the blogger community is so supportive. If it wasn’t for my blog, there are a lot of awesome people out there I’d never have met, so I guess it is worth the effort!
I’m doing some similar cursing — my new Mac is on its way to replace my super-slow netbook. Things will be speeding up shortly!
Kate, I appreciate and agree with a lot of what you’re saying here. However, I think the arrogant MF bit is not true at all. I think being confident and bold enough to promote yourself is important. It’s something that a lot of folks struggle with, myself included, as praising other people but being humble about oneself is a big part of that North American, Puritanical culture. But arrogant? Nah. There are undeniably some successful bloggers who are also arrogant, self-centered, and competitive, but it doesn’t have to be that way; it’s certainly not something to which many people aspire. Success, yes; being a competitive a-hole, no.
I think some of us see other bloggers employing this or that technique and think that, gosh, that must be The Way To Do It. But the thing that’s great about blogging is that it’s so unique and personal. I’ve recently discovered that blog trips are not my cup of tea; individual and slow travel are SO much better. If was to believe all the travel blogger community hype, however, I’d think that big time, high profile blogger trips were the only way to roll.
As for competition? There’s so much to choose from in this world. Focusing on competition tends to be very stressful. There is a great deal to share and experience, so holding onto the fear-and-lack attitude that drives competition really doesn’t do anyone any favors. The idea that someone has to lose out in order for me to “win” is in itself a losing proposition.
And if you’ll pardon me for saying so, I don’t think you really believe that, either. I was really surprised and flattered at how nice you were to me and Dario at WTM. You, Nellie Huang, and a couple of others really made us feel welcome and shared a lot. I think you’re really just a softie who plays a badass on TV. I am one of many who have sung the praises about your professionalism and preparedness at WTM. I think you really know how to slap on the business demeanor when called upon to do so, but I don’t think you really believe you’ve got to stomp someone else down to move forward. Also, modesty – or at least honesty and a true ability to connect – DOES end up doing you favors. Being full of oneself can be a huge turnoff. Being genuine and approachable, rather than a game player, is getting to be more and more valued in this day and age. That’s not just blogging, that’s every day life.
We were impressed with your preparedness, but if you’d been an ass I wouldn’t have given a crap how sparkly your iPad looked. It was how nice you were to us that mattered. I’m not a PR company or a tourism board, it’s true, but considering that they are, ultimately, just people, I’m sure their emotional reactions count when doing business.
Go ahead and tell folks about the numerous weird ways that blogging affects even the smallest of things we do in every day life, but please don’t perpetuate the belief that being arrogant is good or necessary. You’re too nice for that.
You know, I’ve received a lot of flak for that comment, as I expected, and I should probably edit it — more along the lines of a supremely confident person who feels like everyone in the world should jump at the honor to work with him or her. THAT is what works. I’ve seen a lot of people apologize through their pitches, and that really doesn’t work.
Thanks for your kind words about WTM. 🙂 It was really great meeting you there.
Hi Kate,
You have a great blog! Just stumbled across it today. This post was very pertinent to my current situation as I am a brand new baby blogger…way to keep it real and give us newbies a heads up.
Subscribed to your RSS & FB Like…Thank you for all your work.
Thank you, Jeremy! I appreciate that.
Thanks for your honesty. It does seem to me that many professional travel bloggers spend more time blogging than travelling, and if that’s what you have to do to keep yourself afloat, so be it, just it isn’t for me.
This post reinforced for me why I never want to make money from my blog. I made a decision a few months ago that my blog would stay as something eclectic that not only included my travel tales, but all my other personal journeys, that I wouldn’t buy into a niche market, that my blog would remain intimately mine.
If others want to visit and enjoy my stories and journey, good for them. I won’t monetize it, look for affiliates and all that hard work networking that for me totally destroys what I enjoy about travelling. Which is getting OFF the grid and ending up somewhere really remote for a while. Sure I’ll write about it when I get back, but having to worry about my business while I’m away having an awesome travel experience??? Not for me, sorry.
I’m glad you enjoy what you do, and that you are honest about how hard it is. To me, it sounds horrible.
Precisely!
Thanks for sharing, Naomi. It certainly isn’t for everybody — but I love it. 🙂
Great post Kate! I love the thoughts you shared on this and actually agree with pretty much all of it. Balance is tough and while I do this “full time” I also have a full time job. I think I get less sleep than anyone I know. However, I do it because I love it. I have to love it to be this insane to keep the hours and schedule that I do.
There are sacrifices to make. It’s hard work. And I’ve always said I never, ever want to figure out how much I make per hour. I would cry. However, I love doing what I do and want to continue to get better at it.
Love your blog and totally relate to this article! I now own two travel companies that both have travel blogs and I have been ramping the blogs up for over a year now–finally seeing some traction which is real exciting! Would love to network and cross promote if your interested in what we are all about…
Hi Kate! This was a great read. It’s so good to show the positives and negatives of this kind of thing, so I applaud you for being honest. I can’t tell you how many aspiring bloggers or writers I meet who come at travel blogging from a business perspective only — planning to make an income almost immediately, live off of sponsorships, direct one-time traffic through SEO/constant promotion, etc. I’m not sure where they go that impression, but it really is a labor of love.
It certainly is, Hillary. Glad you enjoyed.
Your site has been such a valuable resource for me recently. Especially this post. Thank you!
Thank YOU, Jessica!
Fantastic blog 🙂
The entry is a definite win. I am not a travel blogger, but, as a photographer I can see similarities in this post in regards to my own profession. This kind of work takes a long time in the oven to make and it is really awesome that you are doing what you love doing.
I sure do, Tim! 🙂 It’s crazy hard work, but I love it.
I truly love this post, Kate! I hope the readers and newbie bloggers will realize all the hard work and everything that it takes to be a professional travel blogger 🙂
Thanks, Alex! It’s something I like to drill home to the newbies. 🙂
I was just planning to start a travel blog and came across your post. It’s great. Thanks for the honest presentation.
Anytime, Nayan. Good luck!
Wow Kate…..I feel kind of sad now. I’ve been yearning for a journalism job ever since i was in eight grade. now im a senior in high school and i thought; hey! Travel Blogging? Thats something I love! It cant be too hard! Well….now i’m a little concerned. I’m disappointed at all the cons but the pros could make it up! 😀 Thanks for the information!
Kate, I am curious as to the business aspect – are you registered as a DBA or LLC anywhere?
Honestly, I thought I knew how hard it would be, but it is so much harder than I expected. With that said, so much of starting the blog is learning the technical side and writing about my travels and hopefully inspiring others to get out there and see the world is well worth it. My intention is to travel long term and I hope that my blog will someday support that but nonetheless traveling can be supported in other ways. There is an intrinsic value in traveling that more than compensates for all the hard work and little income.
Such a great post !!! Thanks for sharing the real life points. Me and many of the other users of various other streams/liking has similar job to go through life for better success
Fantastic post, Kate! I always love when people show the realistic side of things – lives in blogging often look shiny and perfect and almost always greener but everything has it’s downsides and challenges!
How do you typically fund your actual airfare? Do you book your own tickets?
How do you make a decision on when you pay cash for a ticket, or use miles for an award ticket?
An incredible post! I was looking for this kind of info for quite some time now! Thank you Kate for delivering such accurate, engaging, interesting, entertaining and useful writing!
I was just talking to some people last night about what it takes to be a travel blogger. A few people think you just need to start a blog and that’s it! I think it’s great that you didn’t paint a rosy picture about the reality of being a successful travel blogger.
I personally love the hard work because nothing in life that is worth having is easy. I’m continually amazed that I make enough money from my travel blog to live by the beach in one of the most beautiful places in North America and still travel all over the world.
As a new blogger at the 6 month mark, I can totally feel the overwhelming amount of work to stay on top of already. Especially when video is a big part of our blogs USP. Sometimes we wonder if we bit off more than we can chew, but after reading this and seeing how much work you do at your level and on your own. It has made it clear we’ve gotta suck it up and just completely immerse everything into this to make it work. Perhaps the work will feel less overwhelming when we actually start getting paid for it.
Great advice Kate. You’re an inspiration.
This post is exactly what I was looking for. I just started blogging myself, so I’m new to the blogging world. You give an honest and clear picture of what it’s like to be a professional. Thank you, Kate!
Kate,
Every time I visit your site I learn something! Plus I am inspired by your energy & insight. Thanks for a great, helpful post!
Harold
@haroldkingjr
Such an interesting article Kate. Although I have done some travel, I have done no where near as much as yourself, although I have been fortunate enough to have been to some interesting places. A couple of my friends mentioned the idea of myself becoming a travel writer after viewing some of my photos online so I read some articles of which yours was the cream of the crop.
It gave me a lot to think about.
A very well written piece. Well done for leading such an interesting life.
Ola
Thank you, Ola!
Hi Kate!
Thank you so much for this post!
I started my blog (above) in March of this year and everyone keeps on telling me “find your own voice”, and if cannot do that I will not get a lot of “hits” on my blog.
So I would REALLY REALLY REALLY appreciate it if you can go have a look at my blog and let me know what you think.
I would love to become a travel blogger!
xxx
thanks for the great tips!!! i want to know more about a traveler’s pros and cons. and other stuffs like that….please help me with this..
I strongly agree with you that my love for travel cannot guarantee my success in blogging. Both requires different kind of passion.
Nice Pictures & Content!
Indeed its great article. We enjoyed a lot and will keep browsing your blog.
Thanks,
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Hi Kate, thanks for this great post. I basically traveled most of the time for the past 4 years and just started blogging 1 month ago, because I simply never had the time to blog. When I was back in my home country for a few month in 2010, I was working again to save up money …and again, I had no time for blogging. I was traveling again for one year and last year finally, I decided to settle down and focus and build my blog. I live in Istanbul now for the next month, which is not only an amazing city, I also manage to live here on 400 US$ a month, all expenses paid. Food and rent is very cheap here. I’m willing to take the long journey of building and writing my blog, even if it takes a year or more to become successful. Until then, I’ll follow your blog. Cheers from Istanbul 🙂
Love this post, Kate! Very practical and informative. I’ve been a writer for a while and I have recently started a travel blog. I find everything about writing, working online, blogging, taking pictures, and traveling totally addicting. I’ve had 9-5 jobs that dragged by, but with the work I do now I sometimes end up working for 12 hours without even noticing. Technically its work, but it doesn’t really feel like it.
Great post Kate! The last point was a great one. I can imagine that having friends and contacts all over the globe is something really cool. I’ve just started my blog since I’ll be leaving for Spain in 6 months and plenty of travel bloggers have already befriended and encouraged me to travel and follow my dream.
Lots of bloggers in Spain, Mike. You’ll never be lonely!
A very honest post again Kate. It looks like you do a lot more work than I previously expected
Very interesting! The whole thing does seem very glamorous… but when you put it that way I’m not sure if I’m cut out for it! Stick to my boring old blog 😛
Don’t agree with you on “You could write exquisite, intricate, heartbreakingly beautiful prose that would win you awards in a long-form memoir or a collection of essays. But when you use this kind of writing on a blog, you’ll likely end up with a few comments of, “Wow, you’re a great writer!” without the traffic to back it up. It’s simply not engaging to most readers.”
the writing is the reason people comeback to my website.. every “travel blogger” writes in a structured “travel blogging way” … I’m glad I failed at being a “travel blogger” ))
being unique in your style of writing actually brings traffic to you…
this article of mine has over 600 comments and it’s not even about trivial travel rundown on how to be a “professional travel blogger and make money” …
http://mselenalevontraveling.com/2012/09/01/letter-to-my-father/
when you write from the heart, it touches people.
I’d rather change someones life for the better with my creative writing , than earn a contract …
wow! nice post .. I was always wondering how this people live .. http://allaboutsplit.blogspot.com/ 🙂
Thank you so much for your honest words!
I’m aware that it won’t be easy and I doubt that I’ll ever get where I want to be, but I also don’t want to give up.
I’m not sure if I would consider myself a travel blogger, to be honest.
I’m an expat. Originally I’m from Germany, but I’ve been living in Japan for over 5 years now – where I discovered my love for traveling within this beautiful country.
I just love to share my travel experience with others and tell them about destinations that even most Japanese people don’t know about. It’s often hard to find any information about those in English, so I try to be the first one to share that kind of information.
I also write about the daily life as a Western foreigner in Japan.
Total downer! lol
Thanks for not sugar-coating it though.
So, 6 months until you started making money…
but how long until you were making enough for it to be your primary source of income?
Amazing article! As a travel blogger starting out myself I can relate a lot to this post! I actually put an article up yesterday on life as a travel blogger and how I have been surprised at how time consuming it is – amazing fun – but time consuming! It really resonated with me about your comment re work and your passion is the same and not many other people will understand the apparent addiction to the blog!!
http://whereintheworldismeganclaire.tumblr.com/post/49720976611/a-blog-about-blogging-life-as-a-travel-blogger is the link to the article I put up yesterday 🙂
Amazing website – very inspiring 🙂
xx
Great and honest post about travel blogging! It sure aint easy but possible if that is a dream job for someone. I finance my travels by online freelancing which is not easy either but doable. Happy travels!
Love this. I work with bloggers all the time (I work in PR) but never have the courage to ask them about how they make blogging work for them as a career. You’ve just given me all of the answers 🙂 Really interesting x
Loved this post! absolutely awesome.
I realize I am still a rookie, but I love every aspect of blogging. I am worried about one thing though. Not being able to go off the grid. Although this is possible if were to hire someone to look after things while I am gone, but no one can do it like yourself right.
The next year or 2 are going to be hectically busy, but it excites me. Even reading this post motivates me to overcome the tough times ahead. It will be all worth it though to see where I am at in a few years, living the life of my dream career.
P.S Do you run more than one site for income or are you in the 2%
I have more than one site, Jaryd. 🙂 They’re not worth sharing, though.
Enjoy it!
Hahaha, great post Kate. Wish I had found it early. You say it say well that the work of a travel blogger is never finished. ugh…there is always something to do. Every time I work on one thing I realize there are three more things to do. But yes, we shouldn’t complain! keep it up and enjoy your RTW trip.
Thanks for putting all this out there Kate. I am new to blogging (15 months in total but seriously for 4 months) and I knew from day one it was going to take a lot of work. In my ‘past life’ (pre nomadic life) I ran a business for 13 years which also took a lot of work and an 80 hour week. So I am not unfamiliar with the long hours. However, this time I have found something I LOVE so I am happy to spend 80 hours a week doing it. Ive never felt so happy and it definitely comes down to I am now living the life Ive always dreamed of (perpetual travel) and I get to share it with the world. It was because of people like you who I found when I was researching long term travel 2+ years ago that helped me make it all happen. So thank you Kate. You helped me more than you could ever know.
I’m so happy to hear that, Nicole! Good luck to you.
HI Kate
Thanks for the publish,
I love to travel, but the money its allways a problem to do that.
Soo, have you ever been in Portugal?
WOW….this was some amazing advice. I have been a blogger for one year now and I could relate to everything you said. I am a workaholic – ha ha. My only problem is that I love all niches, I do travel blogging, beauty blogging, wellness blogging and even entrepreneurial blogging. At the moment I call my site a lifestyle site – until I work out which way to go – hopefully i work it out 🙂 But it was a true pleasure to read this post and truly connect with every word you said – Thank You
This was really helpful! I’m only a few weeks in but I’m certainly shooting for a full year and beyond.Thank you for this post.
Great post. I am glad I was able to read it. Very good for someone starting their own travel blog.
hey Kate,
Love the info. I just moved to Chiang Mai to focus on building my travel blogs and and came across this post. I spend more time doing this than I ever did in another job!
Good luck, Adam. It’s not easy, but Chiang Mai is just about the best place you can be to hunker down and work!
Dear Kate,
Thank you for your outstanding article–it was very helpful and enjoyable to me. I’ve been a magazine writer and copywriter for some time now, and am beginning the transition toward mainly travel-focused work, including starting a travel / coffee / life blog this week! As I gear up for the challenge, hearing from seasoned travel bloggers like you and Nomadic Samuel (who has a great article on the first year of travel blogging) makes a huge difference.
Best of luck, and thanks for sharing!
EWM