When Lauren Juliff took an opportunity and stop her day job to journey the world again in 2011, she was fearful that she had made a large mistake. However she was very, very improper.
That journey set in movement a brand new life for Lauren. She created a web site, By no means Ending Footsteps, to maintain her household and buddies abreast of her travels. Nonetheless, she shortly discovered that she might monetize it, initially by promoting backlinks and later with affiliate internet 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 revealed a e book, experimented with a variety of monetization strategies, and received artistic throughout Covid.
As we speak her journey weblog is incomes as much as $15k/month.
Preserve studying to seek 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 principal advertising technique
- How she approaches key phrase analysis
- How she lands authoritative hyperlinks
- Her content material creation course of
- Her ideas on work-life steadiness
- Her go-to instruments
- Her greatest problem
- Her best accomplishment
- The recommendation she would give to different entrepreneurs
Meet Lauren Juliff
Hello! My title is Lauren. I’m from a small city on the outskirts of London, England, however presently stay in Melbourne, Australia with my Kiwi companion.
In 2011, I stop my job to journey the world, questioning if I used to be making an enormous mistake. As a substitute, it turned out to be the perfect determination 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 via the jungles of Borneo, and a lot extra.
There’s no query that journey — and operating a journey weblog — has modified my life for the higher.
Lately, I break up my life 50-50 between house and journey.
After a decade of being a digital nomad, I’ve discovered that some house comforts and routines are obligatory for me to remain wholesome and sane. And so, I spend six months of the yr in Melbourne and 6 months touring the world.
Why She Created Her Web site
Initially, I didn’t anticipate By no means Ending Footsteps to herald any actual earnings. I actually didn’t anticipate it to evolve right into a six-figure enterprise!
I began the location again in 2010 once I made the choice to journey for a yr after graduating school.
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 can generate profits from journey running a blog that I thought-about operating 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 anyone emailed to ask if they might promote on my website. I made the simplest $200 of my life. Abruptly, this complete journey running a blog factor appeared a complete lot extra viable.
Within the early days, promoting textual content hyperlinks on a web site was one of many solely methods of earning money from journey running a blog, so all of us did it. Basically, it includes charging an organization to publish a hyperlink in your weblog to their website – which helps them to rank larger on Google.
Doing so may end up in a penalty from Google, dropping your search site visitors, so it’s a dangerous endeavor! However again then, all of my site 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 – just a few months after setting off to journey – I used to be making $2,000 a month from mentioned link-selling; sufficient to stay in cheaper areas of the world indefinitely. I promptly determined that I used to be going to journey the world without end.
My website solely grew from there. My journey misadventures and engaged viewers caught the eye of a writer and I landed myself a e book 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 affiliate internet 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 extra money than I might spend, was filling up my financial savings account, and was in a position to take weeks off at a time.
Did I need to give attention to progress, progress, progress, working each spare minute of the day to extend my income even additional? Truthfully? I completely didn’t. I used to be glad with the success ranges I’d reached and wished to reap the benefits of the liberty it might now afford me.
Lately, I’m all about working effectively: sustaining my present earnings stage, prioritizing spending time with household and out in nature, and retaining my stress ranges low. In fact, typically a Google replace will hit my website and I’ll have to tug 90-hour weeks to get well, however for essentially the most half, I stay a chill life operating a satisfying enterprise that I’m keen about.
Earlier this yr, I launched a second web site with my companion, known as Every thing Victoria. We’re presently based mostly in Melbourne, so it made sense for us to pair up and take a look at our arms at one thing new. These area of interest journey websites have a tendency to seek out success a lot sooner than a generalized journey weblog, so we’re now placing that concept to the take a look at.
The location has solely been up and operating for just a few months, so site visitors ranges are nonetheless low – simply 1,000 natural visits a month – however its fee of progress has nonetheless stunned us each and we anticipate it to be on Mediavine throughout the subsequent yr.
How A lot She’s Incomes
Over the previous yr, my month-to-month earnings has ranged between $10,000 and $15,000 a month. For the time being, it’s on the decrease finish of that scale, because the summer season 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!
Through the years, I’ve experimented with so many alternative earnings streams.
I ran a Patreon web page, the place I shared untold tales from my travels. I supplied 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 enhancing for different journey publications.
You’ll discover that I’m writing prior to now tense for the entire above.
Whereas I’ve all the time beloved to experiment with new earnings streams, I’ve in the end discovered that the majority of them require an excessive amount of of a time dedication to be price 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.
Consequently, I finally closed down all of those aspect earnings tasks in an effort to give attention to extra passive income.
As of 2023, my principal earnings streams contribute the next percentages to my complete earnings:
Promoting with Mediavine: 45%
- I’m not an enormous fan of adverts so I hold the density of those comparatively low, although it means taking a little bit of an earnings hit
Affiliate earnings: 45%
- That is primarily from corporations like Reserving, GetYourGuide, Viator, Amazon, World Nomads, RentalCars, and Skyscanner.
E book 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 take advantage of Copytrack to maintain observe 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 Technique
I give attention to including character and private experiences into the whole lot I do.
Journey running a blog is a distinct segment that’s significantly vulnerable to low-quality content material. Since you don’t essentially must have a excessive stage of technical data in an effort to write about journey, it’s simple to only sit at house and desk analysis the perfect issues to do in a spot.
You’d be stunned 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 arrival of generative AI. Why hassle going to a spot and writing about it if you will get “ok” content material whereas sitting at house?
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 give attention to making it abundantly clear that I’ve been to that vacation spot. Every thing is written in first particular person. 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 proposals – 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 data of the journey running a blog trade. I already know which model of weblog posts are most definitely to rank, convert, and generate profits with no need to do a lot analysis.
For every new metropolis I go to, I do know I’ll be writing a sequence of elementary guides to that place: the perfect issues to do, how you can spend three days there, a packing listing, and so on. The key phrases I’ll be focusing on for these items are all the time primarily the identical, simply specializing in a special metropolis.
I’ll use SEMRush to see if there’s any destination-specific articles that may be priceless to write down. For instance, nations which can be seen as being extra harmful might profit from a information to staying secure, whereas a spot that’s historically regarded as being costly will push me to write down a funds journey information.
I do check out who’s presently rating within the prime 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 yr after publishing an article, I’ll check out its rating key phrases in an effort 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 increase that as much as a prime 10 place.
Hyperlink Constructing
I’ve been lucky to have amassed quite a lot of high-authority hyperlinks via little effort on my half. It’s one thing that tends to occur naturally once you’ve been operating the identical web site for over a decade!
For essentially the most half, then, most of my hyperlinks have been obtained organically. That is often from huge 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 e book have but to make me a millionaire, the hyperlinks I’ve gained from my promotional rounds considerably boosted my area’s authority. Every time anyone publishes a evaluation of my e book, they often hyperlink to my website, too.
Nonetheless, I do acknowledge the worth in hyperlink constructing, so I spend a few hours per week engaged on this. I’ve had enormous success with HARO, specifically.
My trick is straightforward: I put collectively a quotable paragraph that the journalist can copy and paste into their article with no need to make edits. By formatting my response on this method – typically writing in third particular person – I’ve discovered that the majority of my pitches do lead to a hyperlink. Make the journalist’s work as simple as potential!
I additionally take part in collaborations in Fb teams for journey bloggers. These contain giving a quote a couple of 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 principal technique for my new website, because it’s a fast solution to rating dozens of hyperlinks a month.
Lauren’s Content material Creation Course of
Now that I’ve been operating the location for 12 years, I spend extra time updating present content material than I do publishing new articles!
Within the journey trade, issues are all the time altering.
Costs have skyrocketed post-pandemic, which implies each article of mine that lists costs (primarily all of them!) must be repeatedly up to date. Accommodations and eating places and tour suppliers repeatedly shut down, so suggestions typically should be changed. Updating outdated content material might 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 nations, so I don’t have a enterprise/monetary mindset with regards to this a part of the decision-making.
If I wished to take advantage of sum of money, I’d solely write concerning the U.S. (which has the very 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 key phrase analysis. I wish to arrive in a brand new nation with a listing of at the very least 10 potential article concepts. Then, as soon as I’m there, I can hit the bottom operating and begin visiting sights and taking pictures.
I spend weeks devising the right journey. I make it possible for my itinerary is one which different individuals will need to replicate, so my itinerary articles are most definitely to transform.
I select to remain in a mid-range resort 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 intensive notes. I don’t write articles whereas I’m touring, so I want to ensure I don’t overlook any of my analysis. As quickly as I get house, I begin writing the whole lot up.
I observe the whole lot, so I do know precisely how a lot every journey has price 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 can assist me decide whether or not I want to provide extra content material a couple of 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 principal ones. And as soon as an article is stay, I test in on its efficiency each 3-6 months to make sure it’s on observe to repay my journey bills.
I presently have 500 articles stay on my website.
Lauren’s Ideas on Work-Life Steadiness
The quantity that I work varies wildly based mostly on the place I’m.
I preserve a house in Australia, the place I spend round half of my yr. The opposite half is spent touring.
Once I journey, I don’t work.
Years of being a digital nomad taught me that it’s tremendously tough to steadiness work with journey, particularly once 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 making an attempt to work.
As a result of my earnings is passive and doesn’t actually change all year long, I’ve been in a position to experiment with taking a number of months off, discovering that it doesn’t truly have an effect on my earnings.
Subsequently, once 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 data I’ve on my website on the nations I’m touring to.
Once I’m at house, my principal 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 complete yr.
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 take advantage of this device to carry out key phrase analysis, discover rivals to investigate, observe my present positions, and extra. It’s a useful device for website positioning for me.
Self Management app: As anyone with unmedicated ADHD, getting something completed is an actual downside. That is the worst kind 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 cause I get any work completed round right here. It blocks entry to the web for a set time period, which eliminates the overwhelming majority of distractions. Once I actually need to get one thing completed, 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 picture high quality isn’t unbelievable. I due to this fact use Shutterstock to obtain a reasonably featured picture for many of my articles. This helps enhance my CTR on social media and makes my website look aesthetically pleasing.
Her Largest 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 beloved studying about my misadventures. I revealed a e book to share extra misadventures. I ran a Patreon, the place greater than 100 individuals paid each month to learn untold tales from my travels.
However it 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’d make $50 from Mediavine once 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 intensely 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 dissatisfied 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 generate profits.
Behind the scenes, I experimented with publishing useful guides and assets and immediately, my site visitors and earnings skyrocketed. Whereas that joke would possibly make a one-off $50, an in depth journey information might make $2,000 a yr, yearly, for the foreseeable future.
From a enterprise perspective, the answer was clear.
In my eyes, it was extra sophisticated.
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 glad 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 can be 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 the town, and retains readers engaged with tales and jokes, however nonetheless permits me to really generate profits.
An instance of how I do this may be seen in my information to spending three days in Delhi. You’ve received tons of helpful data for taking advantage of your time there, but in addition achieve an perception into a few of my private experiences within the metropolis.
Lauren’s Best Accomplishment
My principal accomplishment is that I managed to outlive the pandemic as a journey author! I can not 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 not too long ago 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 the whole lot I might consider which may persuade readers to subscribe: scandalous tales, embarrassing journey disasters, enterprise particulars I’d lengthy stored 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 journey bloggers how you can get began and discover success. I did the whole lot: arrange their websites, put in their themes, rewrote their web site code, and revealed each single factor they wanted to do to generate profits.
I consider that the pandemic supplied a fantastic 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 just a few high-earning weblog posts that maintained their site 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 could be again to regular. I watched my competitors abandon their websites and noticed a possibility: slightly than take a step again, I went all in on content material manufacturing.
And when journey lastly began to make its triumphant return? My site visitors started to soar.
What She Needs She Knew When She Began
I want I had identified that not everyone goes to love you, and that’s completely high-quality.
It was an actual shock once I acquired my first-ever unfavourable remark. I used to be livid and devastated in equal measure. I couldn’t consider that anyone 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 cope with anyone not having fun with my writing. I wished to be preferred by everybody. A number of years in, actually, I might recite, word-for-word, each single piece of criticism I’d ever acquired as a result of it took up that a lot house in my thoughts. Generally I cried over it.
It took quite a lot of work to be taught 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 once you’re a ~Particular person on the Web~ it’s extraordinarily simple for individuals to succeed in your inbox and inform you they hate you.
Don’t reply, tune it out, and keep centered in your work. Let your haters drive you to stay a greater life than they ever will.
Her Important Mistake
It took a very long time for me to acknowledge my price.
I discussed a few instances 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 just a few 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 standard 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 instances that.
Trying again, it’s one thing that makes me cringe, nevertheless it was an essential lesson to be taught. Now, I worth my time above all else.
Her Recommendation for Different Entrepreneurs
If you wish to do one thing related, 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 start out? Is the trade too saturated? Nope.
New companies are launching on daily basis, even in crowded niches, and plenty of go on to thrive. If you’ll find a solution to stand out and are motivated to work onerous, you’ll find that success, too.
The one factor that ensures failure? Not beginning.
Add Comment