Hey!

I still laugh thinking about this one time when Mike and I were coming back from French Polynesia. We’d been there for a month — part work, part adventure — and got stuck in the customs line at LAX.

When it was finally our turn, the immigration officer looked at our passports and said,
“French Polynesia for a month? What were you doing there?”

“We’re travel bloggers,” I said. “We were researching for our blog.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What’s your blog?”

*Which one?* I thought to myself..

“Mike and Laura Travel.”

He immediately pulled up our YouTube channel, of course. Most people assume we do videos.

“Huh. You only have a few thousand subscribers. You do this full time?”

“Yes.”

“Wow… your biggest video has, like, 20,000 views. You make enough money from this?”

“Not from YouTube. We write blog posts.”

He frowned. “Oh, so Instagram?”

“I mean, yes, we’re on there. But that’s not how we make money either.”

At this point he just shook his head and said, “I’ll never understand you influencers.”

These conversations are always hilarious. And slightly frustrating because it’s a reminder that most people have no idea what we do as travel bloggers.

So here’s the short version of what we really do, how we make money, and what a typical day looks like for us:

How We Actually Make Money Blogging

We publish blog posts about travel. But not just any posts.

Every article we write is created with a purpose:

1. Search-based posts - things people are actively looking up on Google, Bing, and Pinterest.​
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2. Buzz-style posts - the kind that get shared on places like Google Discover, Facebook, or Flipboard because they make people feel something.. inspired, curious, excited.

When someone clicks on our post, they see ads (we earn about $40 per 1,000 views on average) and might click on one of our recommendations.

If they book a hotel, tour, or buy a service or a product through our links, whether that’s on Booking.com, Amazon, or REI, etc. we get a small commission at no extra cost to them.

It’s called affiliate marketing, and it’s how most full-time bloggers make their living.

We only recommend things we know, trust, and genuinely like.

Our Businesses + The Numbers

Our travel blog was the first to take off, and averages between 50,000 and 200,000 sessions each month. That success opened the door to everything that came after.

Once I understood how to grow a blog, I started building a few smaller niche sites to test new ideas and strategies.

From there, I began teaching others how to do the same, and it was incredible to see my students find success using the same methods.

That teaching side of the business grew quickly.

Our course reached over 1,000 students, and we even hosted in-person blogger conferences before deciding to shift toward a more flexible lifestyle as we started our family.

After learning how to scale an online course, I began consulting for other course creators.

Around the same time, Mike launched Intermediate Guitar with our friend Ben. Ben handles the teaching, Mike and I run the marketing, and he’s also one of Ben’s best students. We are beta launching their course in November.

More recently, I teamed up with a friend to build a course on financial success. She leads the content, and I handle the strategy behind the scenes.

It’s taken years for all of this to evolve, but I truly love the life we’ve built. I went from working 80+ hours per week to make this work to about 30 hours per week and feeling really flexible.

I’m not sharing this to brag but to show you what’s possible. I started with zero blogging experience and learned everything through years of trial, error, and curiosity.

If you’ve ever thought, “That could never be me,” it absolutely can.

A Day in Our Life
​(When We’re NOT Traveling)

4:30am: Mike’s up early. He does meditation, stretching, breakfast, maybe an hour of work.
​
​7am: Ellie wakes up. Breakfast round two.​
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​8:30am: I wake up at 8:30. And it's glorious.

9:30am: Mike and I go running together as we push Ellie in the stroller.

10:30am: Work starts. This includes calls with blogging students, site audits, new blog posts, or system-building.

*I usually work about three days a week on the blog and our businesses, and Mike takes two. We swap things around when one of us needs a little more (or less) time; it’s pretty flexible. My dad watches Ellie on the days we both need a bit more time.

12:30pm: Lunch.

1:15pm: Back to work. Emails, Pinterest, newsletters, strategy.

4pm: Outside time with Ellie.

5pm: Mike makes dinner while I play more with Ellie.

7pm: Bedtime for her, then we hang out. That usually includes guitar, TV, stargazing, whatever we feel like.

9pm: Mike’s asleep. I work in bed or spend some time reading, meditating, journaling, etc.

Midnight: I finally stop for the day.

A Day in Our Life
​(When We ARE Traveling)

When we travel, the rhythm shifts.

We like to work half the day, and explore half the day.

We usually do one month at a time in each destination so that gives us plenty of time to do both.

But if it’s a faster-paced trip, I batch my content ahead of time or just focus on essentials. We have several contractors who also help keep things running smoothly.

In the past seven years, we’ve spent over a month in places like:

• Bali
• Thailand
• Chamonix, France
• Montenegro
• Croatia
• Milos, Greece
• Crete, Greece
• The Azores, Portugal
• Pucon, Chile
• Coyhaique, Chile
• Quito, Ecuador
• Big Island, Hawaii
• Mo'orea, French Polynesia

…and we’ve explored many other destinations for shorter stretches of time.

When we slow travel, we usually rent Airbnbs for a month or longer, and they’re often much cheaper than you might think.

For example, our month-long Airbnb on the Big Island was just $900.

In Montenegro, we stayed for a full month for $500.

A month in French Polynesia was $2,000 (one of our more expensive stays, but hey.. it's French Polynesia!!).

And in Quito, Ecuador, we had a large three-bedroom Airbnb for $800 for the month.

So if you’ve ever assumed this lifestyle has to be expensive, it’s more within reach than you might imagine!

The Truth About Blogging

Blogging isn’t easy, but it’s so worth it.

Some weeks I work less than 20 hours. Other weeks, I’m fitting work in at every free moment. There are ups and downs, algorithm changes, seasonality, and learning curves.

But once you start, it’s hard to stop. You begin seeing blog ideas everywhere.

If you’ve ever thought about doing this too, be sure to keep following this newsletter. I send out weekly tips, strategies, and success stories to over 30,000 bloggers.

If you haven’t yet, join the waitlist for Scale Your Travel Blog, our top-rated course and coaching program for travel bloggers. Enrollment is currently closed, but we’ll be opening again in January.

>> Click here to join the waitlist for Scale Your Travel Blog and be the first to know when spots open!

Because once you know how blogging works… you’ll never look at the internet the same way again.

Have a great week,

Laura

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