Alex Wieteska-Gasior has all the time had a ardour for journey, and as quickly as she might, she moved overseas to show English.
This gave her the chance to stay a nomadic life, which she started to doc on a weblog referred to as Roam & Thrive.
As soon as on the street, she absolutely understood the significance of not solely experiencing new locations, but additionally caring for your self each mentally and bodily.
Her web site offers sensible journey ideas and vacation spot itineraries whereas additionally leaning closely in the direction of wellness and retreat guides, maintaining a healthy diet, and health. In the present day she’s making $5k a month and dwelling the lifetime of journey she’s all the time dreamed about.
Hold studying to search out out:
- Why she created her weblog
- How her weblog led to different alternatives
- The place her earnings comes from
- How a lot visitors her web site will get
- How she grew her web site
- Her predominant advertising methods
- Her ideas on AI
- Her method to search engine optimisation
- Her key phrase analysis course of
- Her content material creation technique
- How she leverages her DMs
- Her go-to assets and instruments
- Her greatest problem
- Her best accomplishment
- Her predominant mistake
- Her recommendation for different entrepreneurs
Meet Alex Wieteska-Gasior
I’m Alex and I’m a content material writer and photographer. I’m initially from London, UK, the place I lived for many of my life, or till the age of 25.
I used to be actually fortunate to have the ability to develop up touring fairly a bit, primarily round Europe, after which, once I reached my late teenagers, additional afield.
All I wished to do was journey. Folks would all the time ask me what I wished to do for a dwelling later in life and the reply was all the time “I don’t know,” whereas I used to be continuously fascinated by how I might make a dwelling from journey.
Again then, running a blog, influencing and any sort of content material advertising didn’t exist, so I turned an English trainer as a result of it allowed me to journey.
I went to stay in China, Nepal, and Chile, and I traveled a lot of Asia due to these alternatives, however the earnings wasn’t good.
It wasn’t sufficient to construct any form of wealth and I wished to construct my very own on-line enterprise, one thing that will give me the liberty to stay life on my phrases.
That’s once I began Roam & Thrive, out of a 600-square-foot condo in Barrio Italia in Santiago, Chile, the place I used to be dwelling on the time.
I did fairly a little bit of touring in the course of the growth of Roam & Thrive, dwelling nomadically in locations like Mexico and Costa Rica after which transferring again to Europe and eventually to Puglia, Italy the place I purchased a home final yr.
I at present stay in Puglia, Italy about 50% of the yr and journey the remainder of the time.
Why She Created Her Website
I created Roam & Thrive out of my ardour for journey and a want to encourage others to discover the world whereas sustaining a wholesome life-style.
The concept got here to me throughout a interval once I was touring extensively and realized the significance of not simply experiencing new locations, but additionally thriving bodily and mentally whereas on the street.
Roam & Thrive focuses on offering sensible journey ideas, distinctive vacation spot guides away from the generic garbage you typically see on-line, wellness and retreat guides, and photographic inspiration to assist vacationers take advantage of their journeys.
Beginning out, I started by sharing my very own journey experiences and wellness practices on a easy blog platform. My preliminary content material included detailed itineraries, health routines for vacationers, and tips about discovering wholesome meals choices whereas overseas.
As I continued to journey and collect extra experiences, I expanded the weblog to incorporate extra complete vacation spot guides, and Roam & Thrive started to maneuver extra into the luxurious facet of journey, however a way more acutely aware luxe.
Progress got here by a mix of constant, high-quality content material, partaking with my viewers on social media, and optimizing my web site for Google. As I developed my pictures profession, Roam & Thrive additionally began to get increasingly more visible.
I’m somebody who’s extremely impressed by visuals once I’m doing journey analysis on-line and I wished Roam & Thrive to do the identical.
General, Roam & Thrive stays my main focus and keenness and I haven’t began another companies aside from being a contract photographer.
Roam & Thrive has grown right into a complete useful resource in recent times for vacationers searching for a wellness-focused, luxurious method to journey. By means of steady studying and adaptation, I intention to maintain increasing the weblog’s attain and impression, serving to extra individuals journey mindfully and stay higher journey experiences general.
How A lot She’s Incomes
I earn round $5-6k a month with Roam & Thrive. It fluctuates slightly all year long due to some various factors like advert RPMs, which content material is trending at completely different occasions of the yr, and many others.
Adverts, that are run by Mediavine, present the biggest portion of earnings, about 45%, and after that, internet online affiliate marketing (35%), primarily for resort, tour, and automotive rental bookings.
I additionally promote my very own merchandise like pictures prints (5%) from varied locations around the globe and I additionally promote a really specialist map-guide about Puglia, Italy (15%), which I believe is among the most complete journey assets to the area that’s on-line proper now.
Roam & Thrive isn’t my solely earnings stream, as I’m additionally an expert photographer specializing in journey and life-style pictures for varied journey manufacturers and lodges.
I additionally make cash licensing pictures from my travels to shoppers.
My web site at present will get round 60-70,000 web page views per 30 days. It was extra final yr, however we suffered fairly a bit from the Google updates.
I work on my enterprise about 6-7 hours a day. That may not all be for Roam & Thrive, as I’d have to take a little bit of time to edit some photographs for a shopper or write a contract article for one more mission, however that’s the common. I take pleasure in it although, it doesn’t really feel like work.
Her High Advertising and marketing Technique
With regards to rising Roam & Thrive and reaching a wider viewers, my #1 advertising technique has all the time been simply creating immersive, interactive content material that resonates deeply with my viewers.
I believe in the event you create nice and genuine content material, people come back and I’d wish to assume I’m fairly dedicated to delivering one of the best suggestions and content material I can and updating it when needed.
I journey to all of the locations I write about, {photograph} them in my distinctive model, and infrequently present myself in them so readers can see I’ve been to those locations and introduced a singular perspective to the desk.
It’s tremendous simple at this time to only sit at house and let AI spit out some low-quality, badly researched journey articles, and sadly, we’re seeing increasingly more of this at this time so individuals don’t actually know who or what to belief.
It’s essential to indicate readers you’ve been there and know what you’re speaking about.
I additionally ship vacation spot e mail blasts to my viewers as soon as 1 / 4 from trending locations I’ve lately been to.
In it, my viewers will get suggestions on the place to remain, eat, and play in varied worldwide locations and it’s all very native, insider intel. You’ll be able to’t discover that stuff on-line or with AI; it’s fairly unique.
In fact, I additionally use search engine optimisation as the most important advertising technique, and social media, particularly Pinterest.
I don’t assume it’s distinctive, however as I’m in a really visible area of interest and an expert photographer, I’ve been in a position to leverage Pinterest as a platform to generate an enormous quantity of visitors.
My technique there was to pin constantly and manually for years and to make use of good photos. I believe the standard of the pin/picture on Pinterest issues loads, in order a photographer I’ve been in a position to leverage that.
Her Ideas on search engine optimisation
search engine optimisation has been important to Roam & Thrive, notably firstly. I believe now with all of the updates and Google probably transferring away from supporting impartial publishers, it is likely to be getting much less essential, nevertheless it stays a spotlight for us.
Our technique has all the time been about discovering low competitors, lengthy tail key phrases and writing about that, although we’ve additionally tried to deal with a content material theme and write extra round that to construct extra authority. Watching what opponents have been writing about firstly was helpful at occasions.
Technical search engine optimisation can also be a key part. I guarantee my website is fast, mobile-friendly, and has a transparent, logical construction whereas additionally being design-friendly.
Usually updating content material, constructing high-quality backlinks, and fascinating with my viewers by social media and different platforms additional help my search engine optimisation efforts.
Key phrase Analysis
My key phrase analysis course of begins with understanding my viewers’s pursuits and desires, utilizing instruments like Google Key phrase Planner, KeySearch, and different assets to collect knowledge.
I additionally see what’s working at present, what persons are studying, and whether or not there are any content material gaps to fill round these locations.
I deal with long-tail key phrases which can be particular and fewer aggressive, analyzing search intent to categorize key phrases into informational, navigational, and transactional varieties.
Competitor evaluation helps me establish gaps and alternatives, and I map keywords to my content strategy by creating complete pillar content material and supporting cluster content material.
Common monitoring and updating of posts and key phrases guarantee my content material stays related and well-ranked however I’m not pretty much as good at updating posts as I’m creating new ones.
Hyperlink Constructing
Link building is certainly one thing I’ve struggled with up to now, by no means actually having a clear-cut technique for it.
My technique all the time went one thing like “rank on the prime of the Google Search and other people will naturally hyperlink again to you,” and in my circumstances, this has labored: our top-performing content material has essentially the most hyperlinks.
I’ve used HARO fairly a bit up to now to be featured or quoted in different content material for a backlink, and I’ve additionally written freelance content material for different websites in trade for a backlink, however that’s just about it.
Her Content material Creation Technique
Our content material technique begins with the reader. I like to write content for individuals, not for Google, so I begin by watching and listening to what persons are doing with regards to journey.
My nostril is firmly within the trade, so to talk, so I do know which locations are and is likely to be trending shortly.
I’ll do a little bit of keyword research after which I’ll journey to these, or as lots of these as I can, I’ll then do extra key phrase analysis and start writing about these locations.
I additionally are likely to take heed to my social media DMs. Many individuals ask for journey recommendation alongside the traces of “I’m visiting blah vacation spot quickly, have you ever been there?”
Oftentimes, the identical locations come up repeatedly, which makes me ebook the journey and create content material round it as I do know individuals wish to learn it.
Generally I’ll do random key phrase analysis round a vacation spot I wish to go to; typically the journey is definitely worth the whereas and I’ll take it.
We’re occurring about 350 articles.
Alex’s Electronic mail Listing
Sure, I do have an e mail checklist, nevertheless it’s comparatively small as a result of I by no means put a lot effort into rising it or had a stable technique for creating it. Nonetheless, that is one thing I’m actively engaged on now.
To grow my email list, I’m specializing in creating priceless lead magnets resembling journey guides, and unique content material, resembling our Puglia map that guests can entry in trade for a small price and their e mail addresses.
I am additionally optimizing sign-up varieties on my weblog to make them extra seen and attractive, and I am experimenting with pop-ups and inline varieties to seize e mail addresses with out being intrusive.
Mediavine’s Develop program has been nice for this, with out me having to do a lot additional.
Her Favourite Sources
I believe Brandon Gaille and his podcast, The Running a blog Millionaire, has been probably the most influential assets for me, not only for running a blog recommendation but additionally inspiration normally.
I do love Area of interest Pursuits, too, and take heed to the podcast weekly; it’s good for trade information and inspiration.
KeySearch has been and nonetheless is among the most helpful instruments for key phrase analysis, particularly firstly of your online business while you don’t have the funds to pay for the extra superior ones like Semrush.
I additionally use and love RankIQ, Brandon Gaille’s personal key phrase analysis platform constructed for bloggers. It has allowed me to put in writing prime and better-ranking content material and attain web page 1 of seek for many various key phrases.
I additionally use a Pomodoro timer on my desktop to get severe work finished. I are likely to get distracted fairly a bit once I write, so the timer helps me to deal with getting these phrases down.
Her Most important Problem
Site visitors progress! This has all the time been the most important problem: getting sufficient visitors to have the ability to attain my monetary objectives as a enterprise. It’s actually taken me years to get to a stage of fine visitors and earnings.
In latest occasions, all of the Google updates haven’t been good to us. Between the HCU and March’s core replace, we misplaced round 40% of our Google visitors, which is heartbreaking while you’re attempting to construct a web based enterprise.
As most entrepreneurs in the identical place will know, these components of the enterprise are so irritating as we are able to’t do something about them.
Having no management over many components of the enterprise is a problem, particularly with regards to progress, and that is the most important problem we face now.
Her Most important Accomplishment
I consider in small wins throughout every stage of constructing companies. Small wins which, over time, result in bigger and bigger ones. I’ve definitely had plenty of small wins alongside the way in which.
One was positively entering into Mediavine and with the ability to earn a full-time earnings from my first web site.
One other is, in fact, when readers write to you thanking you in your content material and the way a lot you helped them out.
My “why” and true motive for beginning out was to have the ability to information individuals of their queries and searches and provides incredible journey recommendation that basically helps them.
When readers come again to us and say how a lot X content material helped them, in a way we’re reaching our “why.” I believe attending to that stage must be one among my greatest accomplishments to this point.
What She Needs She Knew When She Began
I believe each on-line writer would have liked to know extra about search engine optimisation or hyperlink constructing methods, or the right way to construct an e mail checklist successfully, however I assume these are simply a part of the training course of.
I underestimated the significance of search engine optimisation from the start. Understanding the right way to optimize my content material for engines like google earlier on would have considerably accelerated my weblog’s progress and on-line visibility.
Her Largest Mistake
I’d be mendacity if I mentioned I hadn’t made fairly a number of errors, particularly firstly once I first began out.
The foremost one was not investing sufficient in myself, my abilities, and my enterprise. I used to be very frugal beginning and, trying again now, had I spent extra alone training and studying issues like search engine optimisation, I might have little question progressed loads sooner.
The second pretty massive mistake I made was not having that enterprise mindset about my enterprise from the get-go.
For the primary couple of years, it was a facet hustle, however I didn’t consider it as one thing that might succeed as a enterprise, so I handled it extra like a passion facet hustle.
I believe if I utilized that entrepreneurial and enterprise mindset to it from the start, it will have was a worthwhile enterprise loads sooner.
Her Recommendation for Different Entrepreneurs
Spend money on your self and your online business early on with no matter assets you’ll be able to. Go area of interest together with your web site.
Additionally, do not underestimate the facility of networking. Join with different entrepreneurs, trade consultants, and potential companions.
These relationships can supply help, present new alternatives, and supply insights that you simply may not have thought of.
And eventually, not simply because I run a wellness-focused journey weblog however, care for your self. Entrepreneurship might be demanding, and sustaining a wholesome work-life steadiness is essential. Prioritize your well-being to maintain your power and creativity.
