Turning her Passion for Rome into $16K/Month

Elyssa Bernard is the founder of Romewise, a website for travelers to get the most out of their trips to Rome 🇮🇹

She shared in an interview…

I met my husband traveling, with a backpack, back in 1997. We got married in 1999, and were living in the States… in 2001 we decided to move back to Rome and open a bed and breakfast.

Elyssa writes on her site 👇

I used to sit with all our guests, and talk to them about what they were going to do that day. I’d say, wait a minute, you shouldn’t do that, or you should try this restaurant, or you should consider going there, etc.

She wanted to help travelers avoid the mistakes she made on her first visit to Rome.

Over the years of running their B&B and answering guests’ questions, Elyssa amassed a ton of insider knowledge about Rome. She realized this information could benefit many more travelers, not just their hotel guests.

So in 2009 she launched Romewise to share her passion and expertise about the city 🚀

The site took off thanks to the helpful, in-depth content.

Elyssa explains…

When we create pages for this website, we pour hours of research, planning, information, photograph curation and writing into it. It usually takes about 2-4 weeks to write one page.

Such effort and diligence has led to over 100,000 organic visitors per month 📈

Elyssa monetizes the site through a mix of display ads, affiliate links for tours and tickets – eg. on this page – and her own ebooks and other products.

Elyssa is a subscriber to this newsletter 👋 and recently told us via email…

I think this year we will be close to grossing just under 200k. We also recently launched florencewise.com and we believe it will turn a profit by the end of the year.

So that’s about $16,000 per month, mainly from one website about a popular tourist destination 😎

Reminds me of a couple of other stories we’ve featured…

• $12k/month website about San Francisco
• $50k/month blogging about Mexico
• $2500/month website + newsletter about Mallorca

I reckon there are plenty more opportunities to create profitable sites like these.

Really, there should be one for every popular tourist destination.

Google around and see if any sites exist for places you’re familiar with.

Even if there are, ask yourself: how could I make something even better? 🤔

Get 10 more business ideas in your inbox each week