I wanted to do something a little different this week. Over the past year, we’ve been featuring interviews with community members from the four Superstar Blogging courses. These interviews have highlighted the successes and struggles of each member, sharing tips and inspiration along the way. This week, I wanted to check in with one of our course members to see how things are progressing. I interviewed Joan from Against the Compass seven months ago. Let’s check in to see just what Joan as accomplished since we last talked!
It’s been 7 months since your last interview. Time flies! What have you been up to since then?
It’s been an incredible seven months. Here is where things are for me:
From a traveling perspective: In March, I went back on the road and, since then, I have been traveling continuously. From my home country, I flew to Israel, where I attended the TBEX held in Jerusalem. After that, I spent nearly one month traveling around Palestine. From there, I entered Jordan and traveled to Pakistan. I wandered around 2 months in Pakistan and then I entered China overland. After just one week in Xinjiang, I have been traveling across Central Asia, starting in Kyrgyzstan (2 months), Tajikistan (1 month) and Uzbekistan, where you can find me currently. From Uzbekistan, I will go to Turkmenistan and then back to Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan. After Iraq, I am planning to fly back home.
From a blogging perspective: As you can see, I’ve been through some hectic travels so, unfortunately, I haven’t focused on my blog as much as I would have liked. However, I’ve taken some long breaks, like a 25-day break in the capital of Kyrgyzstan and a 2-week break in the capital of Tajikistan as well as other shorter breaks in other cities where I found good internet.
During the online hours: When I was online, I’ve been mainly focusing on getting traffic through SEO and Pinterest and trying to increase my Instagram and Facebook followers. On SEO, I’ve done some guest posting as well as getting links through 3-way swaps with other bloggers. I’ve also worked hard on optimizing old posts by using keysearch.co, which has given me the fastest and most effective results. On Pinterest, I spend quite a lot of time designing beautiful pins and scheduling 10-15 posts a day with Tailwind.
During the offline hours: I think I’ve taken some advantage of the offline hours, especially when it comes to improving my photography skills. Thanks to buying a new camera and spending hours and hours shooting at random things, I’ve received some positive feedback from my readers. I have also read tens of articles about blogging which I previously downloaded
How are you finding Pinterest? A lot of course members are saying it generates some decent traffic. Has your experience been the same?
Around 10% of my traffic is from Pinterest, which it might not be a lot but, honestly, I barely invest any effort on Pinterest if I compare to the hours I’ve spent on Instagram and Facebook. Moreover, the traffic you get from Pinterest has a better quality than the one you get from Facebook. Your Facebook users will click one post because they are bored, want to be entertained and, most likely, the bounce rate will be high. On the other hand, since Pinterest works as a search engine, your traffic will highly interested in the articles they click, because that is what they were looking for.
What has been your biggest success since then?
I haven’t had any huge success but some small achievements which I am proud of:
Being featured in Lonely Planet (twice): This would be the greatest one I guess!
They featured 2 of my posts on two different occasions. Lonely Planet has a program for bloggers called LP Pathfinders. When you sign up for this program, every month, they ask bloggers to submit their work, including articles, videos and Instagram pictures. They select their 5 favorite ones and mention you on their website as a blogger to follow, including one link to the relevant article and one to your home page. You can sign up for the program here
Happy with my SEO results: I managed to rank highly for a few very competitive keywords, which are giving me quite a lot of traffic
Engaging audience on Facebook: I only have 2,300+ followers but all the growth has been organic and my audience is surprisingly engaged. I get an average of 50-120 likes per picture I post and, on one post, I got around 400 likes! For some reason, a lot of my readers find me through Facebook.
A couple of dollars with affiliates: Not so much money but it’s a symbol that this is going somewhere!
Have you had any particular challenging struggles since we last talked? How are you working to overcome them?
Instagram: This is, by far, my biggest struggle. It used to be my social network with the biggest potential but, I’ve been stuck at 7,500+ followers now for almost two months. I don’t know what is going on but clearly, they have changed their algorithm significantly. I’ve heard that now Instagram prizes those users who engage a lot with other accounts. This is what I am trying to do now but, unfortunately, I don’t have the time for that.
Time to write a lot of posts: I just don’t have the time! If I am lucky, I would post a new article every 10 days. My articles tend to be very long and I have to write them in two languages. When I finish this journey in November, I will focus on writing my endless list of pending articles.
My Spanish audience: The number of my Spanish readers should be higher, especially because I have never seen any other blog within my niche. My Spanish audience is less than 20% of my total traffic but, to be fair, I focus all my efforts on my English audience.
My bloody SSL certificate: I seriously need to move to https but I don’t where to start from. I’ve always struggled with all the technical stuff.
What are your travel plans for the next year?
I don’t know yet but I might do a 3-4 month trip through Turkey, Armenia and Georgia, starting around March. From there, I would fly to Zimbabwe to attendTBEX. After the conference and exploring Zimbabwe, I am thinking of starting an overland journey through Africa. Let’s see.
And for your blog – what are you goals for the next year?
I have many things in mind but these would my three biggest upcoming goals:
- Getting serious with affiliates: By serious I mean implementing a strategy. Now, I just have affiliates placed in random articles. I want them to be placed with more common sense and I also want to start writing articles with a sale affiliate objective (product reviews, etc.)
- Increasing my email list and starting a newsletter series: For increasing my readers, I have in mind a small e-book which my readers can download for free after subscribing.
- Increasing my Spanish audience: In fact, I already started work on this. I have become a member of a few communities and I am currently writing a guest post for a popular travel blog in Spanish.
What are some things you wish you knew 7 months ago, when it comes to blogging?
- The existence of a tool called Keysearch: Which is an SEO tool that not only gives you monthly search volumes, but also, it gives you a bunch of extremely useful analytics. If I had known about this tool before, I would not have to go through and optimize my old posts.
- Detailed, long informative posts are what actually works for me: I discovered that my travel guides and informative posts about places are where I get the best results. I write around 3,000-word posts and give a very personal perspective, along with good pictures of course, and as much local insight as I can, as well as all the information regarding accommodation and how to get to places. Google likes long posts because you can add a lot of keywords plus the reader stays longer on your page. In addition, if you write a very long and detailed post, the reader will have to come back to your site over and over. I have received a lot of emails from random people who love this sort of post and saying that other blogs should have more posts like that. This is what works for me, it might not work for you. I am talking about this kind of post.
Have you read any helpful books or been to any conferences since we last talked?
I attented TBEX in Jerusalem. I met some interesting people and got some very useful contacts! However, I personally believe that, if you really want to take advantage of TBEX, you should attend several of these conferences.
I haven’t read any blogging books, basically, because I haven’t had the time. However, I am continuously reading articles from internet gurus. I recommend Digital Nomad Wannabe.
What final advice do you have for the rest of the community?
Get Keysearch: The most useful blogging tool that all bloggers should have.
Don’t be in a rush to start making decent money: If you have enough savings, don’t be in a rush to start making good money. For example, I still have savings to survive for the next 18 months I believe, which means that, as long as I keep traveling on a budget, I am not in a real rush to start to monetizing my blog (or readership). Focusing on the money part, takes soooo much time, time that could be spent on increasing your readership. Focus on your readers and, when the time comes, start thinking about money.
Where can we find you online and on social media?
My blog is Against the Compass and you can find me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest.