How This 29-Year-Old’s Adventure Travel Blog Earns Up to $15k/Month From SEO

Olly Gaspar and his companion Haylea have at all times been captivated with exploring new locations, they usually determined that nomadic life was for them.

After a couple of unsuccessful on-line companies, he lastly discovered a strategy to fund their shoestring journey journey life-style.

He launched his weblog, We Seek Travel, in 2018 as a spot to share his images and distinctive journey experiences.

He labored tirelessly to develop the location, they usually’ve been in a position to be on the street for the final 5 years, documenting their adventures as they journey the globe. At the moment, We Search Journey has virtually 700 journey guides—written solely by Olly—and is incomes $15k monthly.

Hold studying to seek out out:

• How his childhood set him up for a lifetime of journey
• Why he created his web site
• How he initially tried to fund his journey
• How he finally began to fund his journey
• The place his revenue comes from
• His ideas on search engine marketing and site visitors diversification
• His approaches to key phrase analysis and hyperlink constructing
• How he creates content material
• How he grows his e mail listing
• His favourite sources and instruments
• His greatest problem
• His best accomplishment
• His predominant mistake
• His recommendation to different entrepreneurs

Meet Olly Gaspar

I’m Olly, a journey photographer and journey journey blogger. I’ve been touring globally continuous since 2018 with my companion Haylea and have revealed near 700 journey guides on my weblog, We Search Journey.

I initially based We Seek Travel to assist get my journey images on the market and to chronicle our adventures world wide. 

At first, this was a ardour challenge the place I shared distinctive mountain climbing trails, hidden waterfalls, and off-beat journey experiences, however this has now grown right into a full-scale journey tourism enterprise, which sort of blows me away.

Born in Sweden, I traveled round loads throughout my childhood however finally settled in Australia, the place I completed faculty and met my companion, Haylea.

Collectively we’ve totally embraced the digital nomad lifestyle since 2018, touring continuous world wide whereas residing out of our luggage and chasing journey. 

For the previous few years, we’ve been residing in non permanent lodging worldwide,  largely accommodations, hostels, and AirBnBs, whereas working We Search Journey.

I wish to assume that I used to be born into the nomadic, touring life-style, or no less than so partially. I used to be born in a small city in rural Sweden referred to as Växjö, a city most likely no person has ever heard of. On the age of seven, my dad and mom immigrated with me and my sister to New South Wales, Australia on pupil visas.

Over the subsequent few years, we moved round loads. By the point I used to be 10, I might been enrolled in 4 faculties and had now discovered to talk fluent English. Trying again, I might say this perpetual motion at a younger age had a huge impact on my ardour for journey and new experiences.

Why He Created His Web site

I’ve at all times been captivated with images, the outside, and discovering new locations. My objective for so long as I can keep in mind was to construct a life-style that enables me the liberty to journey indefinitely.

After graduating with a enterprise diploma in 2016, I labored a number of short-term jobs whereas saving each penny to place in direction of lengthy backpacking journeys by way of Europe and Southeast Asia, a solo biking journey throughout New Zealand, and a number of journeys to Thailand for Muay Thai camps.

After realizing the rinse-and-repeat saving and journey cycle wasn’t sustainable, I explored varied choices to work whereas touring. 

This included launching an e-commerce retailer and a digital piracy takedown company, however I shortly realized my lack of ardour was the explanation for these finally failing.

I then turned to low-paying distant jobs together with on-line English instructing and search engine marketing writing for a digital advertising company in order that I might maintain the adventures going and work on my journey images.

The revenue wasn’t nice, however it was sufficient to fund the perpetual shoestring journey journey life-style we’d been eager for. 

In 2018, I began my journey journey weblog We Search Journey, initially as a strategy to share my images and off-beat journey experiences.

However, having picked up a couple of search engine marketing abilities from my distant jobs and seeing my weblog posts about random matters I wrote for the company rank on Google, I noticed the sunshine and started turning my journey weblog challenge right into a enterprise.

I believed, if I might earn a passive revenue of $50 per day from my weblog, this might be sufficient to help Haylea’s and my modest backpacking life-style. Staying in hostels and favoring free actions like hikes and waterfalls, we didn’t want a lot to maintain our travels.

Quick ahead to 2023 and my enterprise earned $15,000 in month-to-month revenue for the primary time. 

I’m nonetheless touring full-time publishing detailed vacation spot guides, journey, lodging, and journey images sources, all based mostly off of my very own experiences.

Nonetheless lately, my journey weblog can also be a key driver for varied enterprise alternatives and has organically secured me numerous journey journey images assignments. 

This contains collaborations with purchasers from respected images manufacturers like Lowepro and Manfrotto to native and large-scale tour operators in addition to outstanding tourism manufacturers like Marriott Resorts.

My journey weblog has additionally helped me land alternatives with regional and nationwide tourism boards, together with Seychelles Tourism and Go to Malta, to develop journey tourism in these areas and construct visible journey advertising campaigns.

Moreover, in 2023, I started working intently with an area tour operator in Indonesia that I’d met in 2019 to run island hopping journeys between Lombok and the Komodo Islands.

How A lot He’s Incomes

At the moment, my journey weblog is immediately and not directly incomes me $15,000 monthly.

This direct revenue is coming passively from show promoting through Mediavine and affiliate marketing networks like GetYourGuide, Viator, Stay22, and Amazon Associates, amongst others.

My journey weblog additionally not directly sources natural leads for journey images and tourism growth purchasers. In 2023, these jobs totaled round $30,000 in extra income.

Our tour operations in Lombok are additionally doing rather well, with 160 confirmed journeys over the primary season of operation, incomes us a further $17,000 in income.

How A lot Visitors His Web site Will get

We Search Journey has seen constant site visitors development since its launch in 2018, leveling out at round 250,000 MPV in 2023, adopted by a slight drop in This autumn after Google’s algorithm adjustments. 

Whereas I wasn’t hit practically as exhausting as different journey publishers, I did see a drop in site visitors of round 30% in October 2023.

I’m the only writer on We Search Journey and I write all journey guides. These are based mostly on my expertise and adventures and solely characteristic locations I personally go to. I imagine this is the reason I’ve hit a slight plateau in 2023 after a sea of rivals’ generic AI weblog posts have flooded the SERPs.

Regardless, I’m holding course with confidence that vacationers are going to favor travel blogs written by actual individuals who have really traveled to the locations we write about.

Olly’s High Advertising Technique

My predominant technique is search engine marketing. 

I imagine my success with Google comes all the way down to masking a area extensively slightly than solely going for large search quantity key phrases and rehashed listicles. 

I publish many in-depth journey guides to experiences and adventures together with particular mountain climbing trails, pure points of interest, waterfalls, excursions, and lodging. 

These posts are normally concentrating on medium-high site visitors long-tail key phrases and I at all times goal to share as a lot useful data as doable with distinctive insights based mostly on my experiences.

My readers appear to like these “hidden gems” once they finally discover them linked from different posts. I believe Google finds these posts useful and distinctive too, and typically they rank for phrases I wasn’t even contemplating.

Regardless, I at all times create an extended pillar put up or two for every vacation spot and hyperlink between all the person posts for that area with the assistance of Link Whisper.

That being mentioned, I believe I’ve put too many eggs in Google’s basket. October 2023 was the primary time my journey weblog has been hit by a Google replace and it’s made me understand the necessity to diversify my advertising technique.

I’ve began working with a Pinterest administration group and Haylea is now serving to me full-time to develop my mailing listing and social platforms–issues that I’ve uncared for up to now.

Key phrase Analysis

I attempt to avoid writing weblog posts based mostly on key phrases solely. I’ve made the error of solely writing to rank up to now and I lose ardour and burn out shortly.

Nonetheless, I imagine that they do contribute to the general authority and comprehensiveness of my associated content material. For big pillar posts and to make sure I’m concentrating on the fitting search phrases for smaller posts, I take advantage of KeySearch. 

In 2021, I began utilizing RankIQ to assist be certain that I’m masking all of the vital matters for every put up and to assist me discover extra long-tail key phrases.

Hyperlink Constructing

I’ve at all times learn that hyperlink constructing is essential. I’ve by no means gone after any questionable hyperlink constructing methods, however have written two or three visitor posts.

A lot of the backlinks to We Search Journey are secured organically and are largely linked to weblog posts about particular journey experiences, mountain climbing trails, mountains, islands, and itineraries since they’re distinctive and never many journey bloggers have written about them. 

This has been one other clear good thing about writing weblog posts on journey content material I wish to share, even when there isn’t any search quantity for these key phrases.

Internal linking is way more vital to me as a result of I can management it and I do my finest so as to add as many hyperlinks into each weblog put up as I can. 

I don’t have any SOPs or mounted variety of hyperlinks so as to add. I simply attempt to embrace something and all the pieces that’s related. This appears to work for me.

His Content material Creation Course of

Lately, the very first thing I do once I arrive at a brand new vacation spot is to analysis well-known points of interest and issues to do, and communicate to locals and tour operators about different hidden gems.

I then search them out, take photographs, and publish particular person weblog posts about every hike, waterfall, island, mountain, viewpoint, or attraction. I solely embrace my very own images in these posts.

I normally spend no less than a month or so in every location to essentially go in-depth and discover. That is how Haylea and I favor to journey and it additionally helps me develop vacation spot topical authority on my journey weblog.

I then be certain that to jot down enormous in-depth journey guides to every area. These sometimes develop into listicles and I don’t at all times love writing them since they’re simply brief summaries of every particular place. 

Nonetheless, these complete journey guides assist develop my site visitors and funnel readers into the distinctive experiences and adventures that I’m captivated with sharing.

His Electronic mail Checklist

I’ve lastly began growing an email list in 2023. I do know that I ought to have began this earlier, however higher late than by no means, proper? 

At the moment, I’m utilizing inline content material prompts and a pop-up providing my free journey images Lightroom Presets utilizing Mediavine’s Develop. 

I presently have round 1500 e mail subscribers, which isn’t loads however it’s rising.

How A lot Time He Spends Woking

I spend virtually each waking hour engaged on my enterprise in some type or one other. 

That’s as a result of my enterprise is so intently tied to my life-style. I don’t actually think about mountain climbing, images, island hopping, or adventuring “work,” however they’re important to my enterprise. 

If we’re speaking laptop computer time, I’d say about 30 hours per week. 

Nonetheless, typically I am going on lengthy trekking and mountaineering expeditions in Nepal and don’t contact my laptop computer for weeks (typically over a month).

On the opposite facet, typically I spend 12-14 hours a day on my laptop computer catching up on picture modifying and writing journey blogs.

His Favourite Sources

As a photographer, the work of Jimmy Chin, Chris Burkard, and Paul Nicklen conjures up me loads. 

Though social media needs to be a giant a part of my enterprise, I don’t really feel a ardour for posting recurrently. Nonetheless, I do usually use Instagram as inspiration and to admire different photographers’ work.

For running a blog, the DNW, Journey Associates, and Mediavine Writer Fb teams are nice for sensible data. I typically learn boring articles on search engine marketing Journal and Search Engine Land. 

Spencer’s Niche Pursuits and Brandon Gaille’s the Running a blog Millionaire podcasts supply a variety of golden nuggets as nicely.

I actually take pleasure in books that problem established order ideologies, particularly relating to methods to reside. It’s sort of cliché, however Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist impressed me to prioritize a lifetime of ardour over working jobs to fulfill an finish.

His Go-To Instruments

Pictures is the cornerstone of my enterprise. My digicam and drone are key to my success and are what gave a goal to my journey journey from the beginning. I’ve at all times used Lightroom to edit my photographs and I couldn’t reside with out it.

Moreover, I couldn’t run my enterprise with out productiveness instruments from Google like Gmail and Google Drive. 

I additionally use TickTick to schedule duties and maintain myself accountable to focus. 

His Largest Problem

As a journey blogger, the pandemic was the most important problem by far. COVID hit only a few weeks after I give up my on-line English instructing and search engine marketing writing jobs, simply after I lastly began incomes $50 per day from We Search Journey.

My revenue dropped to 0 in a single day and I actually felt prefer it was an enormous setback. Nonetheless, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

We flew to Cairns for a quick interval, and whereas in lockdown I had the chance to essentially double down, and I revealed over 100 new journey blogs from an enormous backlog of adventures from that yr. 

Many of those posts make up an enormous portion of my site visitors even immediately.

Later within the pandemic we transformed a van right into a camper and traveled round Tasmania for a number of months. 

I documented the entire course of and wrote a huge blog post about it, which has now been learn over 100,000 instances—that’s a variety of vans!

His Biggest Accomplishment

My best achievement is that I’ve been in a position to assist and encourage hundreds of thousands of like-minded vacationers world wide to embrace genuine journey experiences and uncover one thing new, all without having to resort to changing into one other manufactured influencer to take action.

I’m additionally proud that I’ve been in a position to assist many native tour operators in creating international locations, together with Indonesia and Nepal, develop their very own journey tourism companies by way of publicity on my weblog and by offering tourism advertising alternatives.

Moreover, my lengthy weblog put up about climbing Island Peak is one I’m notably happy with and contains a few of my favourite photographs from the Himalayas.

I usually discover myself scrolling by way of it to relive the reminiscences from certainly one of my favourite areas on earth.

What He Needs He Knew When He Began

I want I had identified that I don’t need to study all of the technical components of running a blog on my own. I can’t rely what number of hours of analysis and trial and error I’ve gone by way of making an attempt to study CSS, page speed optimization, and UX. 

If I might return, I ought to have targeted on what I’m good at, journey writing and images.

It might have been nice to fulfill Ralph Cope earlier on, who has helped me loads in all technical components of my web site from search engine marketing to constructing my WordPress youngster theme.

His Major Mistake

I remorse not beginning my journey weblog method again in 2014 once I first began touring loads. 

This is able to have helped me get an enormous head begin within the business and several other extra years of journey running a blog and images observe underneath my belt.

Whereas I don’t remorse going to school, I believe I might be doing a lot better if I had dropped out of my enterprise diploma and pursued journey running a blog earlier on.

His Recommendation to Different Entrepreneurs

Deal with what you are really captivated with, not the success facet. 

If that one thing is journey running a blog or journey images, then launch your WordPress weblog and begin sharing your images now. The easiest way to study is by doing.