Olly Gaspar and his accomplice Haylea have all the time been obsessed with exploring new locations, they usually determined that nomadic life was for them.
After a couple of unsuccessful on-line companies, he lastly discovered a technique to fund their shoestring journey journey life-style.
He launched his weblog, We Search Journey, in 2018 as a spot to share his images and distinctive journey experiences.
He labored tirelessly to develop the positioning, they usually’ve been in a position to be on the street for the final 5 years, documenting their adventures as they journey the globe. In the present day, We Search Journey has nearly 700 journey guides—written solely by Olly—and is incomes $15k monthly.
Hold studying to search out out:
- How his childhood set him up for a lifetime of journey
- Why he created his web site
- How he initially tried to fund his journey
- How he ultimately began to fund his journey
- The place his earnings comes from
- His ideas on search engine optimisation and visitors diversification
- His approaches to key phrase analysis and hyperlink constructing
- How he creates content material
- How he grows his e mail checklist
- His favourite assets and instruments
- His greatest problem
- His biggest accomplishment
- His fundamental mistake
- His recommendation to different entrepreneurs
Meet Olly Gaspar
I’m Olly, a journey photographer and journey journey blogger. I’ve been touring globally continuous since 2018 with my accomplice Haylea and have revealed near 700 journey guides on my weblog, We Search Journey.
I initially based We Search Journey to assist get my journey images on the market and to chronicle our adventures all over the world.
At first, this was a ardour venture the place I shared distinctive mountaineering trails, hidden waterfalls, and off-beat journey experiences, however this has now grown right into a full-scale journey tourism enterprise, which sort of blows me away.
Born in Sweden, I traveled round rather a lot throughout my childhood however ultimately settled in Australia, the place I completed college and met my accomplice, Haylea.
Collectively we’ve absolutely embraced the digital nomad lifestyle since 2018, touring continuous all over the world whereas residing out of our luggage and chasing journey.
For the previous few years, we’ve been residing in short-term lodging worldwide, largely motels, hostels, and AirBnBs, whereas operating We Search Journey.
I wish to suppose that I used to be born into the nomadic, touring life-style, or a minimum of so partly. I used to be born in a small city in rural Sweden referred to as Växjö, a city most likely no one has ever heard of. On the age of seven, my mother and father immigrated with me and my sister to New South Wales, Australia on pupil visas.
Over the following few years, we moved round rather a lot. By the point I used to be 10, I might been enrolled in 4 colleges and had now discovered to talk fluent English. Wanting again, I might say this perpetual motion at a younger age had a huge impact on my ardour for journey and new experiences.
Why He Created His Website
I’ve all the time been obsessed with images, the outside, and discovering new locations. My purpose for so long as I can bear in mind was to construct a life-style that enables me the liberty to journey indefinitely.
After graduating with a enterprise diploma in 2016, I labored a number of short-term jobs whereas saving each penny to place in direction of lengthy backpacking journeys via Europe and Southeast Asia, a solo biking journey throughout New Zealand, and a number of journeys to Thailand for Muay Thai camps.
After realizing the rinse-and-repeat saving and journey cycle wasn’t sustainable, I explored varied choices to work whereas touring.
This included launching an e-commerce retailer and a digital piracy takedown company, however I rapidly realized my lack of ardour was the rationale for these finally failing.
I then turned to low-paying distant jobs together with on-line English instructing and search engine optimisation writing for a digital advertising and marketing company in order that I may hold the adventures going and work on my journey images.
The earnings wasn’t nice, however it was sufficient to fund the perpetual shoestring journey journey life-style we’d been eager for.
In 2018, I began my journey journey weblog We Search Journey, initially as a technique to share my images and off-beat journey experiences.
However, having picked up a couple of search engine optimisation abilities from my distant jobs and seeing my weblog posts about random matters I wrote for the company rank on Google, I noticed the sunshine and started turning my journey weblog venture right into a enterprise.
I assumed, if I may earn a passive earnings of $50 per day from my weblog, this could be sufficient to help Haylea’s and my modest backpacking life-style. Staying in hostels and favoring free actions like hikes and waterfalls, we didn’t want a lot to maintain our travels.
Quick ahead to 2023 and my enterprise earned $15,000 in month-to-month earnings for the primary time.
I’m nonetheless touring full-time publishing detailed vacation spot guides, journey, lodging, and journey images assets, all primarily based off of my very own experiences.
Nonetheless lately, my journey weblog can also be a key driver for varied enterprise alternatives and has organically secured me numerous journey journey images assignments.
This contains collaborations with shoppers from respected images manufacturers like Lowepro and Manfrotto to native and large-scale tour operators in addition to distinguished tourism manufacturers like Marriott Motels.
My journey weblog has additionally helped me land alternatives with regional and nationwide tourism boards, together with Seychelles Tourism and Go to Malta, to develop journey tourism in these areas and construct visible journey advertising and marketing campaigns.
Moreover, in 2023, I started working carefully with an area tour operator in Indonesia that I’d met in 2019 to run island hopping journeys between Lombok and the Komodo Islands.
How A lot He’s Incomes
Presently, my journey weblog is immediately and not directly incomes me $15,000 monthly.
This direct earnings is coming passively from show promoting through Mediavine and internet online affiliate marketing networks like GetYourGuide, Viator, Stay22, and Amazon Associates, amongst others.
My journey weblog additionally not directly sources natural leads for journey images and tourism growth shoppers. In 2023, these jobs totaled round $30,000 in further income.
Our tour operations in Lombok are additionally doing rather well, with 160 confirmed journeys over the primary season of operation, incomes us a further $17,000 in income.
How A lot Site visitors His Website Will get
We Search Journey has seen constant visitors development since its launch in 2018, leveling out at round 250,000 MPV in 2023, adopted by a slight drop in This autumn after Google’s algorithm adjustments.
Whereas I wasn’t hit practically as arduous as different journey publishers, I did see a drop in visitors of round 30% in October 2023.
I’m the only real creator on We Search Journey and I write all journey guides. These are primarily based on my expertise and adventures and solely characteristic locations I personally go to. I imagine because of this I’ve hit a slight plateau in 2023 after a sea of rivals’ generic AI weblog posts have flooded the SERPs.
Regardless, I’m holding course with confidence that vacationers are going to favor journey blogs written by actual individuals who have truly traveled to the locations we write about.
Olly’s Prime Advertising and marketing Technique
My fundamental technique is search engine optimisation.
I imagine my success with Google comes right down to overlaying a area extensively moderately than solely going for giant search quantity key phrases and rehashed listicles.
I publish many in-depth journey guides to experiences and adventures together with particular mountaineering trails, pure points of interest, waterfalls, excursions, and lodging.
These posts are often focusing on medium-high visitors long-tail key phrases and I all the time goal to share as a lot useful info as potential with distinctive insights primarily based on my experiences.
Nonetheless, generally I publish posts focusing on key phrases with none present search quantity. These posts are usually about points of interest that aren’t well-known and it is one thing I don’t see many different journey bloggers doing.
My readers appear to like these “hidden gems” after they ultimately discover them linked from different posts. I feel Google finds these posts useful and distinctive too, and generally they rank for phrases I wasn’t even contemplating.
Regardless, I all the time create a protracted pillar put up or two for every vacation spot and hyperlink between all the person posts for that area with the assistance of Hyperlink Whisper.
That being mentioned, I feel I’ve put too many eggs in Google’s basket. October 2023 was the primary time my journey weblog has been hit by a Google replace and it’s made me notice the necessity to diversify my advertising and marketing technique.
I’ve began working with a Pinterest administration group and Haylea is now serving to me full-time to develop my mailing checklist and social platforms–issues that I’ve uncared for up to now.
Key phrase Analysis
I attempt to steer clear of writing weblog posts primarily based on key phrases solely. I’ve made the error of solely writing to rank up to now and I lose ardour and burn out rapidly.
My purpose is to offer essentially the most complete journey guides that actually go in-depth right into a vacation spot and assist vacationers plan actual, genuine experiences. To do this, I’ve to generally write posts that don’t try this properly on their very own.
Nonetheless, I imagine that they do contribute to the general authority and comprehensiveness of my associated content material. For giant pillar posts and to make sure I’m focusing on the suitable search phrases for smaller posts, I take advantage of KeySearch.
In 2021, I began utilizing RankIQ to assist be certain that I’m overlaying all of the essential matters for every put up and to assist me discover further long-tail key phrases.
Hyperlink Constructing
I’ve all the time learn that hyperlink constructing is essential. I’ve by no means gone after any questionable hyperlink constructing methods, however have written two or three visitor posts.
A lot of the backlinks to We Search Journey are secured organically and are largely linked to weblog posts about particular journey experiences, mountaineering trails, mountains, islands, and itineraries since they’re distinctive and never many journey bloggers have written about them.
This has been one other clear good thing about writing weblog posts on journey content material I need to share, even when there isn’t any search quantity for these key phrases.
Inner linking is far more essential to me as a result of I can management it and I do my greatest so as to add as many hyperlinks into each weblog put up as I can.
I don’t have any SOPs or mounted variety of hyperlinks so as to add. I simply attempt to embrace something and all the things that’s related. This appears to work for me.
His Content material Creation Course of
Lately, the very first thing I do once I arrive at a brand new vacation spot is to analysis well-known points of interest and issues to do, and converse to locals and tour operators about different hidden gems.
I then search them out, take pictures, and publish particular person weblog posts about every hike, waterfall, island, mountain, viewpoint, or attraction. I solely embrace my very own images in these posts.
I often spend a minimum of a month or so in every location to actually go in-depth and discover. That is how Haylea and I desire to journey and it additionally helps me develop vacation spot topical authority on my journey weblog.
I then be certain that to jot down big in-depth journey guides to every area. These usually change into listicles and I don’t all the time love writing them since they’re simply brief summaries of every particular place.
Nonetheless, these complete journey guides assist develop my visitors and funnel readers into the distinctive experiences and adventures that I’m obsessed with sharing.
His E mail Record
I’ve lastly began rising an e mail checklist in 2023. I do know that I ought to have began this earlier, however higher late than by no means, proper?
Presently, I’m utilizing inline content material prompts and a pop-up providing my free journey images Lightroom Presets utilizing Mediavine’s Develop.
I presently have round 1500 e mail subscribers, which isn’t rather a lot however it’s rising.
How A lot Time He Spends Woking
I spend nearly each waking hour engaged on my enterprise in some type or one other.
That’s as a result of my enterprise is so carefully tied to my life-style. I don’t actually think about mountaineering, images, island hopping, or adventuring “work,” however they’re important to my enterprise.
If we’re speaking laptop computer time, I’d say about 30 hours per week.
Nonetheless, generally I am going on lengthy trekking and mountaineering expeditions in Nepal and don’t contact my laptop computer for weeks (generally over a month).
On the opposite facet, generally I spend 12-14 hours a day on my laptop computer catching up on photograph modifying and writing journey blogs.
His Favourite Sources
As a photographer, the work of Jimmy Chin, Chris Burkard, and Paul Nicklen conjures up me rather a lot.
Though social media ought to be an enormous a part of my enterprise, I don’t really feel a ardour for posting recurrently. Nonetheless, I do typically use Instagram as inspiration and to admire different photographers’ work.
For running a blog, the DNW, Journey Associates, and Mediavine Writer Fb teams are nice for sensible info. I generally learn boring articles on search engine optimisation Journal and Search Engine Land.
Spencer’s Area of interest Pursuits and Brandon Gaille’s the Running a blog Millionaire podcasts supply quite a lot of golden nuggets as properly.
I actually get pleasure from books that problem established order ideologies, particularly relating to methods to dwell. It’s sort of cliché, however Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist impressed me to prioritize a lifetime of ardour over working jobs to satisfy an finish.
His Go-To Instruments
Images is the cornerstone of my enterprise. My digicam and drone are key to my success and are what gave a objective to my journey journey from the beginning. I’ve all the time used Lightroom to edit my pictures and I couldn’t dwell with out it.
Moreover, I couldn’t run my enterprise with out productiveness instruments from Google like Gmail and Google Drive.
I additionally use TickTick to schedule duties and hold myself accountable to focus.
His Largest Problem
As a journey blogger, the pandemic was the largest problem by far. COVID hit just some weeks after I give up my on-line English instructing and search engine optimisation writing jobs, simply after I lastly began incomes $50 per day from We Search Journey.
My earnings dropped to 0 in a single day and I actually felt prefer it was an enormous setback. Nonetheless, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
We flew to Cairns for a quick interval, and whereas in lockdown I had the chance to actually double down, and I revealed over 100 new journey blogs from an enormous backlog of adventures from that 12 months.
Many of those posts make up an enormous portion of my visitors even in the present day.
Later within the pandemic we transformed a van right into a camper and traveled round Tasmania for a number of months.
I documented the entire course of and wrote an enormous weblog put up about it, which has now been learn over 100,000 instances—that’s quite a lot of vans!
His Best Accomplishment
My biggest achievement is that I’ve been in a position to assist and encourage tens of millions of like-minded vacationers all over the world to embrace genuine journey experiences and uncover one thing new, all without having to resort to turning into one other manufactured influencer to take action.
I’m additionally proud that I’ve been in a position to assist many native tour operators in creating nations, together with Indonesia and Nepal, develop their very own journey tourism companies via publicity on my weblog and by offering tourism advertising and marketing alternatives.
Moreover, my lengthy weblog put up about climbing Island Peak is one I’m significantly happy with and contains a few of my favourite pictures from the Himalayas.
I typically discover myself scrolling via it to relive the recollections from certainly one of my favourite areas on earth.
What He Needs He Knew When He Began
I want I had recognized that I don’t should study all of the technical components of running a blog on my own. I can’t rely what number of hours of analysis and trial and error I’ve gone via making an attempt to study CSS, web page velocity optimization, and UX.
If I may return, I ought to have targeted on what I’m good at, journey writing and images.
It could have been nice to satisfy Ralph Cope earlier on, who has helped me rather a lot in all technical components of my web site from search engine optimisation to constructing my WordPress little one theme.
His Primary Mistake
I remorse not beginning my journey weblog approach again in 2014 once I first began touring rather a lot.
This could have helped me get an enormous head begin within the trade and a number of other extra years of journey running a blog and images observe beneath my belt.
Whereas I don’t remorse going to school, I feel I might be doing a lot better if I had dropped out of my enterprise diploma and pursued journey running a blog earlier on.
His Recommendation to Different Entrepreneurs
Give attention to what you are really obsessed with, not the success side.
I’ve discovered via expertise that when a main purpose is revenue, success is way tougher to attain. Pursue what you’re keen on, and it will not really feel like work. Better of all, the top result’s often a enterprise you could actually be happy with.
If that one thing is journey running a blog or journey images, then launch your WordPress weblog and begin sharing your images now. One of the best ways to study is by doing.
