When Lauren Juliff took an opportunity and give up her day job to journey the world again in 2011, she was fearful that she had made an enormous mistake. However she was very, very flawed.
That journey set in movement a brand new life for Lauren. She created an internet site, Never Ending Footsteps, to maintain her household and associates abreast of her travels. Nevertheless, she shortly discovered that she might monetize it, initially by promoting backlinks and later with online marketing.
Over the past 12 years, Lauren has not solely hiked over glaciers in New Zealand and climbed an lively volcano within the D.R.C., she has additionally printed a ebook, experimented with a variety of monetization strategies, and acquired inventive throughout Covid.
As we speak her journey weblog is incomes as much as $15k/month.
Maintain studying to search out out:
- What occurred after she began her website
- How she initially made cash from it
- How she diversified her weblog’s monetization
- The place her earnings comes from
- Her predominant advertising technique
- How she approaches key phrase analysis
- How she lands authoritative hyperlinks
- Her content material creation course of
- Her ideas on work-life stability
- Her go-to instruments
- Her largest problem
- Her biggest accomplishment
- The recommendation she would give to different entrepreneurs
Meet Lauren Juliff
Hello! My identify is Lauren. I’m from a small city on the outskirts of London, England, however at present dwell in Melbourne, Australia with my Kiwi associate.
In 2011, I give up my job to journey the world, questioning if I used to be making an enormous mistake. As an alternative, it turned out to be the perfect choice I ever made.
I’ve now been touring for 12 years — largely full-time — and it’s all been funded by my profitable journey weblog.
Over the previous decade, I’ve camped within the Sahara Desert, hiked over glaciers in New Zealand, climbed an lively volcano within the D.R.C., been on safari in Namibia, swam within the turquoise waters of Bora Bora, cruised by means of the jungles of Borneo, and a lot extra.
There’s no query that journey — and working a journey weblog — has modified my life for the higher.
Nowadays, I break up my life 50-50 between dwelling and journey.
After a decade of being a digital nomad, I’ve discovered that some dwelling comforts and routines are obligatory for me to remain wholesome and sane. And so, I spend six months of the 12 months in Melbourne and 6 months touring the world.
Why She Created Her Web site
Initially, I didn’t count on Never Ending Footsteps to herald any actual earnings. I definitely didn’t count on it to evolve right into a six-figure enterprise!
I began the location again in 2010 after I made the choice to journey for a 12 months after graduating faculty.
At first, I merely meant for By no means Ending Footsteps to be a spot to maintain family and friends up to date on my adventures. It wasn’t till I found that you might make cash from journey running a blog that I thought of working it as a enterprise.
I began to construct up an viewers earlier than I’d began my journey by posting on social media, then was completely gobsmacked when someone emailed to ask if they may promote on my website. I made the simplest $200 of my life. Immediately, this complete journey running a blog factor appeared an entire lot extra viable.
Within the early days, promoting textual content hyperlinks on an internet site was one of many solely methods of making a living from journey running a blog, so all of us did it. Basically, it entails charging an organization to publish a hyperlink in your weblog to their website – which helps them to rank larger on Google.
Doing so can lead to a penalty from Google, shedding your search visitors, so it’s a dangerous endeavor! However again then, all of my visitors got here from social media, so I wasn’t involved. (For sure, this isn’t one thing I like to recommend different bloggers do!)
By the tip of 2011 – a couple of months after setting off to journey – I used to be making $2,000 a month from stated link-selling; sufficient to dwell in cheaper areas of the world indefinitely. I promptly determined that I used to be going to journey the world ceaselessly.
My website solely grew from there. My journey misadventures and engaged viewers caught the eye of a writer and I landed myself a ebook deal for a memoir titled How To not Journey the World. That was when issues actually began to take off.
Most significantly, a fast experiment with online marketing doubled my earnings in a single day. I left the shady hyperlink gross sales behind and transitioned in the direction of a extra passive earnings: show promoting and associates had been now my jam.
By 2017 – seven years after beginning the location – I had began making six figures. It was at this level that I actually began to investigate what I wished from this enterprise. I used to be making more cash than I might spend, was filling up my financial savings account, and was capable of take weeks off at a time.
Did I need to concentrate on development, development, development, working each spare minute of the day to extend my earnings even additional? Truthfully? I completely didn’t. I used to be happy with the success ranges I’d reached and wished to reap the benefits of the liberty it might now afford me.
Nowadays, I’m all about working effectively: sustaining my present earnings stage, prioritizing spending time with household and out in nature, and preserving my stress ranges low. After all, generally a Google replace will hit my website and I’ll have to drag 90-hour weeks to get well, however for probably the most half, I dwell a chill life working a satisfying enterprise that I’m enthusiastic about.
Earlier this 12 months, I launched a second web site with my associate, known as Everything Victoria. We’re at present primarily based in Melbourne, so it made sense for us to pair up and check out our fingers at one thing new. These area of interest journey websites have a tendency to search out success a lot quicker than a generalized journey weblog, so we’re now placing that idea to the take a look at.
The positioning has solely been up and working for a couple of months, so visitors ranges are nonetheless low – simply 1,000 natural visits a month – however its charge of development has nonetheless shocked us each and we count on it to be on Mediavine inside the subsequent 12 months.
How A lot She’s Incomes
Over the previous 12 months, my month-to-month earnings has ranged between $10,000 and $15,000 a month. In the mean time, it’s on the decrease finish of that scale, because the summer time months are all the time (paradoxically!) a decrease income-earning interval for journey web sites.
This stage of income has remained regular for me for round six years now, with a slight lower through the pandemic for apparent causes!
Over time, I’ve experimented with so many various earnings streams.
I ran a Patreon web page, the place I shared untold tales from my travels. I provided a one-on-one weblog teaching service for brand new bloggers to assist them get began and work their manner as much as a profitable enterprise.
I launched an anxiousness course to encourage fearful vacationers to take the leap to see the world. I additionally dabbled with freelance writing and modifying for different journey publications.
You’ll discover that I’m writing previously tense for the entire above.
Whereas I’ve all the time cherished to experiment with new earnings streams, I’ve in the end discovered that almost all of them require an excessive amount of of a time dedication to be value it.
For instance, my weblog teaching resulted in a number of thousand {dollars} a month in earnings however required me to work a stable eight hours a day with my college students – I did not have time to run my very own enterprise!
And likewise, my Patreon concerned an identical stage of workload, once more to the extent that I didn’t have time to work on By no means Ending Footsteps.
Because of this, I finally closed down all of those aspect earnings initiatives with the intention to concentrate on extra passive income.
As of 2023, my predominant earnings streams contribute the next percentages to my complete earnings:
Promoting with Mediavine: 45%
- I’m not an enormous fan of adverts so I maintain the density of those comparatively low, though it means taking a little bit of an earnings hit
Affiliate earnings: 45%
- That is primarily from firms like Reserving, GetYourGuide, Viator, Amazon, World Nomads, RentalCars, and Skyscanner.
Guide royalties from my journey memoir: 5%
- I earn royalties from gross sales of my journey memoir, nevertheless I don’t actively promote this anymore.
Copyright infringement of my pictures: 5%
- I exploit Copytrack to maintain monitor of internet sites that use my pictures with out my permission. Payouts from these copyright infringements have ranged between $150 and $9,000.
By no means Ending Footsteps receives 200,000 web page views a month.
Lauren’s High Advertising and marketing Technique
I concentrate on including character and private experiences into every part I do.
Journey running a blog is a distinct segment that’s notably liable to low-quality content material. Since you don’t essentially must have a excessive stage of technical information with the intention to write about journey, it’s straightforward to simply sit at dwelling and desk analysis the perfect issues to do in a spot.
You’d be shocked what number of high-ranking articles are put collectively by individuals who have by no means even stepped foot within the nation they’re writing about.
It’s turning into much more of a problem with the appearance of generative AI. Why trouble going to a spot and writing about it if you will get “ok” content material whereas sitting at dwelling?
It drives me loopy and as this low-quality content material has proliferated, it’s pushed readers to seek for personality-driven content material from individuals who have been to the locations they’re writing about. And that’s the place I are available.
In every article, I concentrate on making it abundantly clear that I’ve been to that vacation spot. Every thing is written in first individual. I share pictures of me in well-known spots, revealing the place I used to be standing within the captions. I share robust opinions and suggestions – each for issues to do and issues to keep away from. I solely suggest lodging that I’ve personally stayed in.
All of those mixed assist my website to face out in a sea of faceless, generic journey blogs.
Key phrase Analysis
My key phrase technique is comparatively easy and comes from having innate information of the journey running a blog trade. I already know which model of weblog posts are more than likely to rank, convert, and make cash without having to do a lot analysis.
For every new metropolis I go to, I do know I’ll be writing a collection of basic guides to that place: the perfect issues to do, the best way to spend three days there, a packing listing, and so forth. The key phrases I’ll be concentrating on for these items are all the time basically the identical, simply specializing in a distinct metropolis.
I’ll use SEMRush to see if there’s any destination-specific articles that will be helpful to put in writing. For instance, international locations which are seen as being extra harmful might profit from a information to staying protected, whereas a spot that’s historically considered being costly will push me to put in writing a funds journey information.
I do check out who’s at present rating within the high 10 for my chosen key phrases and analyze their URLs in SEMRush to see what different key phrases these articles are rating for – simply in case there’s something uncommon I haven’t thought of.
Roughly a 12 months after publishing an article, I’ll check out its rating key phrases with the intention to get an concept of the way it’s performing. I’ll hone in on any low-hanging fruit throughout this audit. If there’s a time period that I’m rating 11-20 for, I can often enhance that as much as a high 10 place.
Hyperlink Constructing
I’ve been lucky to have amassed a whole lot of high-authority hyperlinks by means of little effort on my half. It’s one thing that tends to occur naturally if you’ve been working the identical web site for over a decade!
For probably the most half, then, most of my hyperlinks have been obtained organically. That is often from large publications asking for a quote for an article or web sites eager to interview me, in addition to different publishers discovering my guides to be useful and linking to them as a useful resource.
Turning into a broadcast writer additionally helped. Whereas the royalties from the ebook have but to make me a millionaire, the hyperlinks I’ve gained from my promotional rounds considerably boosted my area’s authority. Every time someone publishes a evaluation of my ebook, they often hyperlink to my website, too.
Nonetheless, I do acknowledge the worth in link building, so I spend a few hours per week engaged on this. I’ve had big success with HARO, particularly.
My trick is straightforward: I put collectively a quotable paragraph that the journalist can copy and paste into their article without having to make edits. By formatting my response on this method – usually writing in third individual – I’ve discovered that almost all of my pitches do end in a hyperlink. Make the journalist’s work as straightforward as potential!
I additionally take part in collaborations in Facebook groups for journey bloggers. These contain giving a quote a few vacation spot you’ve been to for different journey bloggers to function in a round-up. Suppose: the 25 Finest Islands in Thailand.
They get the free content material and also you get the hyperlink, so it’s win-win! That is my predominant technique for my new website, because it’s a fast strategy to rating dozens of hyperlinks a month.
Lauren’s Content material Creation Course of
Now that I’ve been working the location for 12 years, I spend extra time updating current content material than I do publishing new articles!
Within the journey trade, issues are all the time altering.
Costs have skyrocketed post-pandemic, which suggests each article of mine that lists costs (basically all of them!) must be usually up to date. Lodges and eating places and tour suppliers usually shut down, so suggestions usually have to be changed. Updating outdated content material may very well be a full-time job at this level.
On the subject of producing new content material, step one is deciding the place to journey to. I really like exploring lesser-visited international locations, so I don’t have a enterprise/monetary mindset in relation to this a part of the decision-making.
If I wished to take advantage of amount of cash, I’d solely write in regards to the U.S. (which has the best promoting rpms), however that isn’t super-exciting to me.
So, as soon as I’ve determined the place I’m going, I begin my keyword research. I wish to arrive in a brand new nation with an inventory of at the very least 10 potential article concepts. Then, as soon as I’m there, I can hit the bottom working and begin visiting sights and taking pictures.
I spend weeks devising the proper journey. I make it possible for my itinerary is one which different folks will need to replicate, so my itinerary articles are more than likely to transform.
I select to remain in a mid-range lodge that’s rated larger than 9.5 in order that I can strongly suggest it to readers. I’m all the time on the lookout for excursions to take in order that I can provide these private suggestions in articles.
Whereas I’m on the journey, I take in depth notes. I don’t write articles whereas I’m touring, so I want to verify I don’t neglect any of my analysis. As quickly as I get dwelling, I begin writing every part up.
I monitor every part, so I do know precisely how a lot every journey has value me and the way a lot each article I wrote about it has made. I make it possible for each journey I take makes 5-10x greater than I spent on it, so this will help me decide whether or not I want to provide extra content material a few vacation spot or not.
All articles I publish are a minimal of 4,000 phrases, in order that I can goal loads of long-tail key phrases along with my predominant ones. And as soon as an article is dwell, I verify in on its efficiency each 3-6 months to make sure it’s on monitor to repay my journey bills.
I at present have 500 articles dwell on my website.
Lauren’s Ideas on Work-Life Stability
The quantity that I work varies wildly primarily based on the place I’m.
I keep a house in Australia, the place I spend round half of my 12 months. The opposite half is spent touring.
After I journey, I don’t work.
Years of being a digital nomad taught me that it’s tremendously troublesome to stability work with journey, particularly if you’re altering location each few days. The standard of my work suffers from the fixed motion and stimulation, after which I see much less of the locations I’m touring to as a result of I’m all the time attempting to work.
As a result of my earnings is passive and doesn’t actually change all year long, I’ve been capable of experiment with taking a number of months off, discovering that it doesn’t truly have an effect on my earnings.
Subsequently, after I journey, I attempt to keep as offline as potential. I work possibly 4 or 5 hours per week – sharing updates on social media, replying to pressing emails, and updating any outdated info I’ve on my website on the international locations I’m touring to.
After I’m at dwelling, my predominant precedence is figure. I spend the overwhelming majority of my days publishing new articles and updating outdated ones. Throughout this time, I common anyplace from 30 to 50 hours per week, relying on how overwhelming my to-do listing feels.
To summarize: it’s in all places. I estimate that it averages out to twenty hours per week throughout a whole 12 months.
Her Go-To Instruments
SEMRush: I’m all the time monitoring and analyzing By no means Ending Footsteps’ efficiency, and it’s made a lot simpler with SEMRush.
I exploit this device to carry out keyword research, discover opponents to investigate, monitor my present positions, and extra. It’s a useful device for website positioning for me.
Self Management app: As someone with unmedicated ADHD, getting something finished is an actual downside. That is the worst sort of profession for my neurodivergence: with no boss, no workers members, and no deadlines, I can simply lose weeks at a time to inertia.
Self Management is the one purpose I get any work finished round right here. It blocks entry to the web for a set time period, which eliminates the overwhelming majority of distractions. After I actually need to get one thing finished, I set the timer for a number of hours and begin focusing.
Shutterstock: I all the time attempt to use my very own pictures in my articles; nevertheless, as a result of I now journey with an iPhone as a substitute of a digital camera, my photograph high quality isn’t unbelievable. I subsequently use Shutterstock to obtain a fairly featured picture for many of my articles. This helps enhance my CTR on social media and makes my website look aesthetically pleasing.
Her Greatest Problem
I began doing this again in 2010, when the one journey blogs had been narrative-based. In these days a journey weblog actually was a weblog: all of us shared diary-style updates and humorous tales, giving a private perception into what it’s actually wish to journey long-term. Unsurprisingly, none of us had been actually making a lot cash.
However I did discover success by specializing in storytelling: I constructed an enormous viewers who cherished studying about my misadventures. I printed a ebook to share extra misadventures. I ran a Patreon, the place greater than 100 folks paid each month to learn untold tales from my travels.
But it surely made me so little cash. The Patreon pulled in round $500 a month however required me to work for 100 hours a month to publish sufficient tales to not get unsubscribes. After the preliminary gross sales rush, the journey memoir made $700 a month or so for the primary few years, then petered out to little or no. And my storytelling articles on my website are my worst-performing: I would make $50 from Mediavine after I first publish them, however then they disappear into my archives and I earn nothing additional.
The issue was: I had now cultivated a small however passionate, loyal – and very vocal – viewers who longed for my journey weblog to stay the way it all the time had. Deviate from the journey tales? My readers would let me know the way boring they discovered it; how disillusioned they had been. However this viewers had supported me for over a decade and had helped me discover preliminary success; I nonetheless wished to serve them.
However I additionally wanted to make cash.
Behind the scenes, I experimented with publishing useful guides and assets and immediately, my visitors and earnings skyrocketed. Whereas that shaggy dog story would possibly make a one-off $50, an in depth journey information might make $2,000 a 12 months, yearly, for the foreseeable future.
From a enterprise perspective, the answer was clear.
In my eyes, it was extra difficult.
For some time, I secretly ran two completely different sections of my website. I had my journey tales and private updates that I’d push on social media and share with my viewers. And I had my useful journey content material that I’d backdate in my archives and conceal from my homepage and archives. One a part of the location made me cash and the opposite happy my neighborhood.
Clearly, that was ridiculous and a poor use of time.
I hated feeling like I used to be letting down the individuals who supported me most through the preliminary phases of constructing my website, however I needed to cease publishing the tales. Change is inevitable. Now, I write articles which are prolonged and useful, however compromise by inserting little anecdotes and humorous moments from my explorations.
To me, although, it’s win-win. It helps show that I’ve truly been to town, and retains readers engaged with tales and jokes, however nonetheless permits me to really make cash.
An instance of how I do this may be seen in my guide to spending three days in Delhi. You’ve acquired tons of helpful info for profiting from your time there, but in addition acquire an perception into a few of my private experiences within the metropolis.
Lauren’s Best Accomplishment
My predominant accomplishment is that I managed to outlive the pandemic as a journey author! I can’t stress sufficient simply how wild March 2020 was from a journey running a blog perspective.
I went from incomes round $500 a day in February to roughly $8 a day in March. Virtually all of my earnings streams dropped to zero and barely anyone was studying the location.
I pivoted shortly.
I’d just lately launched my Patreon the place I charged $1-10 a month to learn untold narratives and behind-the-scenes updates. I instantly doubled down on that. I shared every part I might consider which may persuade readers to subscribe: scandalous tales, embarrassing journey disasters, enterprise particulars I’d lengthy saved secret… I shared all of it. And amazingly, my viewers stepped up and subscribed in droves.
I then launched a one-on-one mentorship program, aimed toward exhibiting new travel bloggers the best way to get began and discover success. I did every part: arrange their websites, put in their themes, rewrote their web site code, and revealed each single factor they wanted to do to make cash.
I consider that the pandemic offered an important alternative for brand new journey bloggers, primarily as a result of most of the big-name ones stopped actively engaged on their websites and began new companies.
These two new earnings streams, mixed with a couple of high-earning weblog posts that maintained their visitors, managed to get me again as much as 70% of my regular earnings ranges.
Whereas my passive earnings sources had fallen off a cliff, I suspected that inside two years, journey can be again to regular. I watched my competitors abandon their websites and noticed a chance: reasonably than take a step again, I went all in on content material manufacturing.
And when journey lastly began to make its triumphant return? My visitors started to soar.
What She Needs She Knew When She Began
I want I had identified that not all people goes to love you, and that’s completely tremendous.
It was an actual shock after I obtained my first-ever damaging remark. I used to be livid and devastated in equal measure. I couldn’t consider that someone hadn’t appreciated the trouble I’d put into creating my content material. Even worse: they thought I used to be an fool.
For a very long time, I struggled to take care of someone not having fun with my writing. I wished to be preferred by everybody. A number of years in, in reality, I might recite, word-for-word, each single piece of criticism I’d ever obtained as a result of it took up that a lot area in my thoughts. Generally I cried over it.
It took a whole lot of work to study to cease taking the feedback personally – however the reality is: there may be actually no person on the planet who’s universally preferred. It’s simply that if you’re a ~Particular person on the Web~ it’s extraordinarily straightforward for folks to succeed in your inbox and inform you they hate you.
Don’t reply, tune it out, and keep targeted in your work. Let your haters drive you to dwell a greater life than they ever will.
Her Most important Mistake
It took a very long time for me to acknowledge my value.
I discussed a few occasions that I used to run a weblog teaching service through the pandemic, the place I’d work one-on-one with bloggers and provides them limitless entry to me. Initially, I priced it at… $150 a month. Sure, actually.
I shortly realized how ludicrous my pricing was when I discovered myself spending 40 hours on every of my college students each month. I’m undoubtedly an over-deliverer! Inside a couple of months, I used to be charging $1,000 a month for a similar service, with simply as many bloggers prepared to pay that quantity.
This has been a typical theme all through my running a blog profession. I might fortunately write prolonged, in-depth articles for $100, regardless of being a broadcast writer and glorious author. I ought to have been charging ten occasions that.
Wanting again, it’s one thing that makes me cringe, nevertheless it was an necessary lesson to study. Now, I worth my time above all else.
Her Recommendation for Different Entrepreneurs
If you wish to do one thing comparable, get began now. Like, proper now. As we speak. This very second. The earlier you begin, the earlier your online business turns into worthwhile.
Is it too late to begin? Is the trade too saturated? Nope.
New companies are launching every single day, even in crowded niches, and plenty of go on to thrive. If you’ll find a strategy to stand out and are motivated to work onerous, you’ll find that success, too.
The one factor that ensures failure? Not beginning.
