Did Travel Blogging Fund Our Long Term Travel?

When we set off on this adventure in 2013 we hoped we could travel indefinitely, or at least for several years, on our savings and a few small income sources. We had a travel blog that was doing OK and we had a dream, would, could, travel blogging fund long term travel? Almost 1 year in and we’re running short of money. We’re having a ball but spending more than we planned, we’re going to have to stop for a while when we hit the 12 month mark.

Why Have We Spent Way More Than We Planned?

So much fun in our month in Sri Lanka, possibly our favourite country.

The simple reason is, life doesn’t always go to plan.

We aimed to spend years in Asia travelling slowly on a very modest budget ( around $50/day). We found that achievable despite setbacks . Emergency surgery on Ko Phangan kept us stuck in a more expensive, but wonderful, place for a while and a bike crash took a chunk out of our savings.

Family problems in the UK forced our hand and took us to the expensive side of the world after only 6 months of Asian travel.

The UK cost us a lot. ( 1 month in UK=5 months in Asia for us). We found reasonably priced accommodation and food but we didn’t scrimp on admission to attractions like the Harry Potter Studio Tour and The Doctor Who Experience. If you have to scrimp, it’s not fun.

So we got really silly with the cash

We then bizarrely decided to compound our overspend by splurging on an Atlantic Crossing Cruise.  We were in the right place at the right time for what we thought would be a once in a lifetime experience ( we were wrong, cruise 3 is comming up and it’s HUGE!) That cruise was awesome and worth every penny!

New York in the polar vortex and a month touring the USA followed, another money guzzler, including days in the Orlando theme parks and New Orleans for Mardi Gras. It was all wonderful, but it wasn’t Asia-cheap.

From there we took ourselves down to El Salvador to explore Central America for a couple of months before we hitch a ride back to Europe on another cruise ship.

Then we will be out of money. My husband will be getting a job.

No Regrets, No Way!

6 weeks of island paradise Ko Phangan. Another highlight, we want to go back.

It would have been nice to spend years in Asia but then we would have seen only a small fraction of the world.

Seeing such a broad cross-section of countries and experiencing diverse forms of travel has been a great experience. This trip was for the kids, part of their education, they’ve certainly seen a lot.

No regrets, ever, is the best way to live.

We’ve discovered unexpected things by going with the flow and grabbing opportunities. We never thought we’d go on a cruise, let alone enjoy it so much that we’d book a second one.

I’d never really fancied a road trip around the USA, that part of our year was for my husband, but it was great fun for us all.

Canada was wonderful, we only managed to stay for two days but we fell in love instantly.

Seeing my home country, the UK, as a tourist over Christmas was delicious. It gave me a whole new appreciation for my amazing country.

Now Central America is proving interesting, challenging and exciting. I’m well out of my comfort zone for once and that’s good.

Blogging Doesn’t Pay the Bills (Yet).

6 weeks in Laos. Another place we adored.

This blog is 18 months old. We are Page Rank 3 and have over 25,000 page views per month.

I never expected to be able to live off this blog. I started it for fun and to promote the idea of homeschooling and travelling with kids. I found out that it was possible to make money through blogging after I’d started, it was news to me.

I was hanging out for the traffic to increase and Google to finally update PRs for a long time, but it seems that’s not the answer, our income hasn’t increased with the traffic.

In December last year, just after my Google page rank increased to a 3 from a 1, we made a decent amount of money. Almost $2000 that month, enough to live off if we could keep up that level. Since then things have slowed down to a trickle, a few hundred here and there. Other bloggers have reported the same recent trend. It helps a lot, but it won’t keep us travelling.

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There are bloggers out there who make very good money through a combined approach, multiple blogs and income streams and really taking this business seriously. It’s something we need to try to do if we want to carry on travelling.

Amazon affiliate links have made us under $50 in the 18 months that this blog has been running, I need to lift my game there. ( I’ve put some more on this page). I’m about to try adding other affiliate programmes and Google Adsense to try to get a steady drip coming in.

There are other great perks to blogging, we qualify for media passes to a lot of attractions, we do very well in that area as family travellers, it’s been great. Bloggers often manage to score free accommodation deals. We haven’t as yet, mostly due to lack of time. If we were to pay virtual assistants to send out the hundreds of pitches necessary to secure deals it may be a different story. Virtual assistants also handle all social media for the bigger bloggers, I can see why, it takes a lot of time.

A non-lucrative bonus of the last 18 months is the group of wonderful friends I’ve made in the blogging community, we’ve shared and helped each other at every step of the way.

Are We Ready To Stop Travelling?

Yes we are, for a while. I’ve not had my fill of seeing the world but I have had enough of the constant work involved.

We are spending hours and hours online researching our next moves, finding accommodation, working on the blogs and keeping up with social media.  I could do with some quiet time to focus on the children and step away from the computers. Maybe I can find a way to really make these blogs pay once the travel pressure is off.

I’d like the children to be able to sit still too. They’d like to complete some written and computer projects we’ve talked about and not had the time nor facilities to start. We’re always running out of time, we need to catch up.

When I say stop travelling, I don’t mean go home to Port Douglas, we hope Chef can find a job somewhere and we can just hole up for a few months. We don’t really mind where, he’s started looking already. Once our finances are happier we’ll be back on the road again. We still haven’t been to Burma or Bhutan, they’ve been at the top of the bucket list for too long to give up on them now. Travel is part of us, that won’t go away, but we’re ready for a far more relaxed pace for a while.

I haven’t abandoned the dream of funding our travels through blogging, it IS possible, but being a home educating mum and non-business minded full-time traveller doesn’t give me the time to focus on making money. I’ll keep plugging away and constantly learning the trade, who knows where this journey will take us from here.

If you have any advice on how to help me, or other new bloggers on our way, shoot away, I’m all ears!

Update: This post was written quite a while ago, things have improved financially, but still we are a long way from funding our travels through the blog. Adsense brings in a regular amount and I’be been doing some freelancing as a VA. Our traffic has more than tripled and we’re still travelling and enjoying it, with a new balance. I don’t even try to work seriously on the blogs when we’re on the road, I save that for the stationary times. We are, however, getting some amazing travel opportunities in exchange for promotion, that makes all the hard work totally worth it. We’re still trying new things and seeing what works and what doesn’t, one day we’ll get there!