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A few years ago nobody had ever even heard of travel blogging. Very few people were getting paid to travel. But now, it’s becomming more common. When Dave and I started our travel blog in 2008, we didn’t know where the industry was heading. All we knew was that the Internet was the future and we wanted to be a part of it. Becoming a travel blogger was a road we never expected to take when we took our first trip to Thailand in 2000. All we knew was that we loved to travel and that one day, we wanted to travel indefinitely.
“Being a Travel Blogger is the best career – ever”
Passion
We went into travel blogging because we had a passion for travel. Before we started blogging we worked in the film and TV business. Dave was a gaffer and I was a makeup artist. We worked long hours for about 8 months a year and then we took the rest of the year off to travel. We did this for a nearly a decade. Our lives were spent in limbo. We’d work hard for half a year only to save up for the time we could get out and travel. While we were home in Canada, we dreamed of leaving and exploring new places. Our contracts in films and TV couldn’t end fast enough for us to book a flight to our next destination. The more we travelled, the more unsettled we felt at home. I remember saying to Dave “If only I knew what I wanted to do with my life, I know I will be a success.”
I remember being in tears during a bus ride in Laos in 2004. “I can’t go back to my job in film, I love travelling too much!” But all I could see in my future was working at a job that I didn’t love and saving for retirement so that one day I could travel the world. Things were looking bleak.
Check out: Get Paid to Travel
After that trip, Dave and I searched for ways to make travel a full time part of our lives. We brainstormed ideas and came up with several ways to make a living abroad. We pursued our Dive Masters thinking that we’d lead diving excursions around the world, we took up mountain biking thinking that we’d take people on cycling trips and we even contemplated opening a bar in a place like Belize. With each thought, we realized that we were chasing ideas that didn’t spark our passion. What we truly loved was travel.
Do you love travel so much you can’t live without it?
Travel had such a strong hold on us, we couldn’t think of anything else. It consumed us. For years we explored new places and discovered our passion for adventure. Little did we know, we were honing our skills as travel bloggers. We had become travel experts and didn’t know it. We had been stock piling stories just waiting to be told. Before we started our blog, we had already travelled to 40 countries and taken part in countless adventures. Starting a travel blog finally gave us a voice to share our experiences with everyone. There were so many times in our years of travel that we sat at the top of a mountain or watched wildlife play in front of our eyes and we said to each other “If only people at home could see what we are seeing now” We finally got our wish. Because we had such a strong passion for travel and a strong identity of what we loved about travel, we created a blog that had a strong niche and message straight out of the gate.
You need a strong niche
It was easy for us to create a niche for ThePlanetD. All we had to do was continue to do what we had already been doing. We knew we loved adventures, we loved pushing our limits, and we loved being together. We loved having fun, laughing about life and not taking things too seriously. We let our personalities shine through our words and photos and we kept our message clear that couples could enjoy spending time together on the road. When you find out what you love about travel, it’s easy to create your niche and write about it.
“If you don’t know what you love about travel, you will not succeed as a travel blogger.”
When starting your travel blog, we feel that it is important to know why you are traveling. Think about what you love about travel and why you feel the need to do it again and again. An escape gets old fast. Sitting on a beach gets old fast. Going to the pub gets old fast. What compels you to discover new places and meet new people? Once you zero in on your reasons, you’ll be able to continue to write about it for years to come.
Travel Blogging is hard work.
“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. ~ Confucius
There is no doubt that being a travel blogger is hard work. You have to document everything. You need to take photographs of everything from the toilet in your bathroom to the food on your table. Sometimes you may simply want to enjoy a beautiful sunset. But when you are a travel blogger, you need to capture that sunset and share it on social media or take a time-lapse video of it going down. You are constantly thinking about the story and constantly creating images, graphs and videos to help you tell that story.
When the day is done, the work begins
After your day of fun in the sun, are you willing to go back to your hotel room and work? As I write this post, we are on a tour of Ireland. Everyone else has gone to bed after enjoying a pint or two of beer, but Dave and I are up working at our computers. (we wouldn’t have it any other way)
Dave and Kristin of Kristin Gill Media at work after everyone else retires for the night
After working for over a decade at jobs we didn’t love, we don’t find it an inconvenience to travel blog and work hard at it. We’ve read articles about people complaining about blogging and we think about the mornings when we had to wake up for a 4:30 am call time in the dead of winter on a movie or a time when we were in our 16th hour of filming with no end in sight. Travel blogging is easy compared to working for someone else’s dream. We love it. Today, we spent our day on a black cab tour of Belfast and a visit to the Titanic museum. We enjoyed a Guinness with dinner and now we are going through photographs and notes from the day. Being a travel blogger is the most spectacular job in the world.
Travel Blog Success
We’ve written many posts to help people start a travel blog. We have given tons of advice about the business of travel blogging and we have spoken at conferences about how awesome this job is. There was a time when we considered writing an entire book about how to travel blog for a living, and we even considered mentoring and teaching people how to become travel bloggers, but we realized that this wasn’t our passion. Dave and I love to travel, we love to take photographs, write, and shoot videos. We weren’t made to be teachers…yet.
That’s why we send people to Travel Blog Success. We know owners/mentors Dave of Go Backpacking and Mike of the Art of Adventuring well. They are truly the tops of the travel blogging profession. We have sought their advice numerous times and value their opinions. If you want to start a travel blogging career, you could scour the Internet and even read articles on our blog, but if you are serious, we recommend signing up for their course. We are a part of the Travel Blog Success community and we have not only led and taken part in their tutorials, we have listened in and learned from them. We believe this is one course that will give would be travel bloggers the tools they need to succeed. Enroll in Travel Blog Success Now
It won’t happen overnight and it won’t be easy. But if you truly love travel, writing, social media and photography, with a lot of hard work, patience and guidance, you could finally be living the life you want. We won’t lie, it’s exhausting at times, it is stressful at times, and there is a lot organizations skills needed to keep on top of things, but we would never change this life for anything.
To learn more about Travel blogging on ThePlanetD visit
So You want to be a Professional Travel Blogger?
Brand and Bloggers: Where do we Start?
Get your Travel Blog Noticed
8 Ways to Promote your Travel Blog
Travel Blogging as a Couple
Hey buddy!
回复删除The information you have put up here is really useful.I am an enthusiastic camper who loves to travel and roam around the world .During camping one of the the most crucial components one needs to take with themselves is camping tent; I always prefer to carry military surplus camping tents here due to their durability and power of resistance. Military tents provides protection and fight against harsh and freezy weather.
Regards
Fred Carter