Each week we will be featuring an interview with a member of the Superstar Blogging community. These interviews will highlight the ups and downs faced on the road to success, illuminating helpful tips and tricks along the way. If you want to get inspired and succeed in the world of travel blogging, video, writing, or photography then consider these interviews must-read material! This week we are interviewing Jeremy, a member of the Business of Travel Blogging course.
Tell us about yourself!
Hey, hey. My name is Jeremy. I’m an adventurous traveler, cocktail bartender, dumpling-lover, and relatively well-seasoned travel blogger. I’m about to turn 31 and still can’t figure out if I’m an adult.
I went to school at UMass Amherst (Matt and I later learned that we not only both went to the same school but we lived in the very same dorm room, five years apart) and graduated Cum Laude with a degree in Communications. I was most interested in advertising and the way that people interact with and connect to various forms of media. Today, my interests have come full circle, and I find myself enamored with content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, and other forms of inbound marketing.
So, basically, marketing.
How did you get started traveling? What inspired your wanderlust?
I actually didn’t like traveling when I was younger. My mother offered an all-expenses paid trip to Australia when I was in my early twenties and I turned it down. “It’s too far,” I said. A few years later I graduated college in the middle of the economic recession and found myself working IT contracts in downtown Boston. The cubicle walls were too stifling, so I did what any reasonable person would do—I bailed. With $4k in my bank account I flew to Australia with a one-way ticket (I showed you, Mom!) and never stopped.
What are some of your favourite places you’ve been to? Any particularly memorable experiences or highlights?
I’ve been an expat in a few places, but New Zealand and China are the two that resonate with me most. New Zealand is just plain gorgeous and I have a strong love for the Kiwi people. China is culturally opposite to the West and I learned to thrive on the discomfort of it all. I also had all the dumplings I could want (five for a dollar!) so I was a pretty happy camper. Both places hold a very special place in my heart.
How long have you been blogging?
I was “blogging” before it was ever called blogging, back in the days of LiveJournal. I started travel blogging, though, when I first traveled to Australia in 2010. My first site was named Honestly Australia, but as you can guess, I found myself in a bit of a predicament when I moved to New Zealand.
I started blogging full-time about 18 months ago, when a job contract fell through and I was left stranded in Colombia without a backup plan. I had an “oh shit” moment and, when I realized I was going to have to learn how to make money travel blogging in order to survive, I did.
What struggles have you had during your blogging career? How have you overcome them?
The single greatest struggle is in knowing what you don’t know. What I mean is this: nobody starts blogging as an expert content creator and marketing guru. It’s a learning process. Three years ago I thought I knew everything there was to know about blogging, and now I realize that I knew next to nothing.
There are so many things we don’t know and, in most cases, we don’t know what we don’t know. You have to recognize that. There is still a lot I don’t know, and I’m working harder than ever to find out what exactly that is. Despite this relative version of success I’ve found, it’s important to stay humble, to stay hungry, and to never stop learning.
My other struggle has been coming to terms with the notion that what I want and what’s realistic are two different things. Everybody goes into travel blogging with the best of intentions and big plans for the future. You want to become the biggest social media influencer or you want to dominate at video or whatever. But that’s not necessarily realistic nor is it always financially sustainable.
There are travel bloggers who are brilliant at what they do but they still scramble to eat—that makes me sad (and also worried). As much passion as these people have, their work isn’t financially sustainable. You can create until your face is blue, but if you aren’t financially realistic about the future, you simply won’t last.
What that calls for is doing things that you don’t enjoy, and sometimes doing (and learning about) things that you downright dislike. No job is perfect and no job is without its downfalls. Just because you’re your own boss doesn’t mean you can say, “well, I don’t really want to do that, so I’m not going to.” If you want to learn how to start a travel blog and actually make money with it, you’re going to have to do some things that simply aren’t enjoyable. That’s how you get to do the things that are enjoyable.
What do you enjoy the most about blogging?
Marketing and photography are my two favorite things right now. I say right now because my interests are always changing. It’s important to be flexible in this game—with new platforms and new technologies launching every other week, and with travel blogging still in the early stages of professionalism, you have to be flexible and learn to change, passionately, with the times.
In addition to this course, what other resources do you rely on for help or information? What apps do you use that make your blogging career easier when traveling?
A few months ago I started using a Bullet Journal. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s tagged as “the analog system for the digital age.” I’m too good at procrastinating and the apps I was using only made it easier to “productively procrastinate”. The Asanas, Trellos, and Wunderlists couldn’t keep me organized, so I gave good old pen and paper a try.
The Bullet Journal uses a very specific system of rapid logging for keeping track of your life. If you struggle to keep yourself organized, I’d recommend checking it out. In the past few months, my productivity has gone through the roof.
Why do you keep blogging?
I do this because I love the lifestyle it provides for me. I love that I can work in coffee shops I love that I get to take pretty pictures and get paid for it. Whereas other people have to put in requests for time off, I can fly to Iceland on a whim or backpack Europe for the summer. Anything goes, and to me, that’s invaluable.
What is one thing you can’t travel without?
A sense of humor. Some people get so stressed when they travel. I’m like, “chill the eff out, man.” You’ve gotta be able to laugh it off. I love a good story, so if something goes wrong, and if I know I can turn it into a funny story, I secretly want things to get a lot worse. Sometimes I’m too blahzay about things, though. I’ll show up in a brand new country without having done a lick of reading about it. That’s when my iPhone comes in handy. So I guess, the thing I can’t travel without is my iPhone. Ha!
What camera/video equipment do you travel with?
I just got the Fujifilm X-T2, but for the past couple years I’ve used the Canon Rebel SL1 with a variety of essential travel photography equipment like neutral density and graduated filters. I like to keep my bags light, so I always opt for small cameras (and small equipment) that pack a punch.
What are some of your favourite travel stories/publications/books? What are some of your favourite blogs to read?
It’s confession time: I don’t read travel blogs. In fact, I mostly read marketing blogs, entrepreneurial blogs, and high-performance blogs. IMPOSSIBLE, AppSumo, and CoSchedule are a couple favorites.
Do you have any blogging regrets? (a photo op missed, a story they didn’t write or could have written differently? A glaring error when you started blogging, etc.)
I regret nothing. There’s a learning curve when it comes to blogging and entrepreneurialism, and as I grow and evolve, so too does my blog.
What’s one piece of advice you’d give to a fellow blogger?
First of all, don’t compare yourself to the big guys. In most cases, they’re a terrible example of what you should do. They’re at a different stage in the game and they have different goals than you. Be clear about the goals you need to accomplish, and set out to accomplish them, one by one.
Secondly, think of your blog a marketing tool. Once you realize that your blog is the ends to a means, not the means itself, your whole world will change. The reasons businesses have blogs is to promote their product (that’s content marketing 101). So think of your blog as a business—what is your product?
Tell us about your blog and where we can find you on social media.
You can find me sharing travel stories on TravelFreak, interesting articles on Facebook, or posting pretty pictures on Instagram. Hope to see you there :)