How To Become A Travel Blogger

Niall Doherty:

Hey everyone, this is Niall Doherty from 3 Months 1K, and I’m speaking to you from a very rainy Moscow today. I’m here with another interview to help you get started working online so you can live and work wherever you want in the world. The lady I’m interviewing today is a great example of just that. Her name is Janet Newenham. She is also from Ireland. Over the past few years, I’ve seen her build up her travel blog, JournalistOnTheRun.com, her social media following as well, and her freelance writing business, to the point where she visited 31 countries last year alone, several of them on paid press trips. Yes, she essentially gets paid to travel. She can basically now go wherever she wants, when she wants.

It’s the kind of job that many people dream of, and in this interview, Janet tells me exactly how she created it for herself and what she’d advise anyone looking to do similar. Among the questions I asked and Janet answers in this interview: what were you doing before you started working for yourself online, how much money do you make nowadays and from what sources, how many hours per week do you actually work, what were the key skills you needed to develop to build your business, and how did you learn those skills, how did you find your first clients, how did you get published in National Geographic, a really good story behind that one, and what advice would you give to someone just getting started.

Janet answers all those questions and lots more, and I think some of the answers will surprise you, for example, how many hours she works per week. In short, a lot less than she used to work at her day job while making more money. The interview runs about 52 minutes total, and you can refer to the accompanying page on my website for lots of related notes and things, so no need to take notes yourself as you’re going through it. It’s all on the website. Alright, let’s get stuck in. Here is my conversation with Irish travel blogger extraordinaire Janet Newenham.

Okay, we’ll start with this. Can you give us a quick sense of what your life is like these days, so what you’ve been doing, where you’ve been so far this year, say?

Janet Newenham:

Sure, yeah. I work as a full-time travel blogger and freelance writer. I’ve been traveling full-time for the last two years. For this year, so far, I started the year in Mexico. I did three months in Mexico with side trips to Cuba, Aruba, and Belize. Then I spent two months in the United States. Then I flew to Portugal. Then I did a press trip to France, a press trip to Switzerland, and now I’m back in Ireland.

Niall Doherty:

Whew. Okay, so hang on. I’m writing all this down as you’re saying them. By my count, that is probably six, seven, eight, nine countries so far this year including Ireland?

Janet Newenham:

Yeah.

Niall Doherty:

Wow.

Janet Newenham:

It’s been a quiet six months.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah. I mean, because it’s two years full-time, so this or even more intense has been your life for the last two years.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah. Last year, I did 30 … No. I think I did 31 countries.

Niall Doherty:

Whew.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, so it was a bit much, but it’s just the way it happens.

Niall Doherty:

What were you doing before you started all this?

Janet Newenham:

I’ve been blogging for many years. I think a lot of people don’t realize that. They think I’m like this newbie that’s suddenly, like bam, there she is, Journalist On The Run, but I’ve been in the background, blogging for quite a few years. I set up my blog in 2009. I would say I was one of the people that … From the very beginning, I was travel blogging but just for fun. I never knew you could make money from it. I never knew you could travel for free with the travel blog. I never knew it could be your full-time job, but I just loved writing. I was getting pretty good traffic all the time. I just loved it.

I was working as a teacher in South Korea for two years, and then I worked as a PR manager in Dublin for two years. It was while I was doing my PR manager job that I made friends with an SEO expert. Honestly, that’s the start of where my blog starts to take off. I didn’t even know what SEO was. He was just giving me all these tips to do with my job, for the company I was working for. Secretly, I was taking all these tips home with me. I was putting them into action on my blog. I’d be doing work, and then I’d go home and I … It was like having a second job. I would work until 1:00 in the morning every night on my blog. Traffic increased and was doing better and better, and then I started getting press trip invites, and just started from there.

Niall Doherty:

Were you always blogging about travel?

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, always, yeah. Yeah, since the first time I moved to South Korea, I used to … Well, I was blogging about my life in South Korea. I was doing a lot of side trips to Taiwan and Philippines and Hong Kong, but I was mainly writing about what it was like to live in South Korea, about the different food I was eating, about funny stuff my students were doing. It’s more like an expat blog to start with, and then once I started traveling full-time, it was more of a full-on budget travel blog.

Niall Doherty:

The last real “job,” in quotations, that you had was the PR manager gig in Dublin?

Janet Newenham:

Exactly, yeah.

Niall Doherty:

Can you tell us how much you were earning per month doing that?

Janet Newenham:

I think after tax, I can’t remember, I think it was like 2,000, maybe like €2,000. No, it was more, maybe. A little bit more than 2,000 once tax was taken off, I guess.

Niall Doherty:

2,000 a month, I’m assuming.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, 2,000 a month, which isn’t that much. It’s not that much. I mean, I know friends who make way more, but because I’ve been working in Korea where I was earning less than that, I was delighted to come home and be making that. Now, I’m making more than that, and I work way less hours.

Niall Doherty:

Oh, nice. Okay, so how much of the time … It was a full-time job, your PR gig. We’re talking 40 hours?

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, I was working 9:00 to 6:00, and I would often stay in the office until 7:00, sometimes 8:00. Sometimes, I wouldn’t get home until 9:00 PM, and I was working Monday to Friday.

Niall Doherty:

I see. You had a bit of a commute to and from the office as well.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, I had an hour-long commute to work every day.

Niall Doherty:

Oh, yeah, that’s Dublin for you.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, a bus and a DART, so horrible, and I spend so much money getting to work. It’s actually why I quit my job. I was like, I’m spending so much money getting to work, getting home, and on rent, that I have hardly anything left at the end of each month. I’m literally working … I’m working to, I don’t know, to go to work.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah. To me, that’s part of the beauty of working online and why I’m amazed more people in Ireland aren’t doing it, because a lot of people have to move to the big city to get a job, and then they end up spending a fortune getting to and from work, a fortune or rent, and then just the time you spend going to and from work is time you’re not getting paid for as well.

Janet Newenham:

Exactly, your full five days, really, Monday to Friday, I had no life outside of work, really. By the time I got home, I have to get up early, and I’ll be too tired. You try to make the most of the weekends, but I don’t want to just live for the weekend.

Niall Doherty:

I want to come back in a bit to talk about how you managed to build your blog on the side while doing that, but before we get there, you mentioned, now you’re working less hours and you’re making more money. Can you give us an idea of how much you’re making on average each month now?

Janet Newenham:

On average, each month, I make between €2,000 and €3,000. It goes up and down, depending on how many freelance articles I write. I have steady income from about three clients that I freelance write for. Then on top of that, I make money writing for my blog. I would do sponsored articles for my own blog. They have another purpose, like promoting whether it’s a product or a destination, but I would get paid to write them as well. I have a few different categories of how I make money, but the freelance writing would be the main one. I think the best month I ever had, I made €4,000 in one month.

Niall Doherty:

From everything?

Janet Newenham:

Actually, it was everything, but it was before I started affiliate marketing and sponsored posts, so actually, it was freelance writing. It was about €4,000 from freelance writing. It was like I was doing a nine-week contract with a big travel company. It wasn’t permanent. It wasn’t forever like, but for that nine weeks, it really added up fast, because it added on top of all my current clients that I already have. Suddenly, I went from earning 2,500 to earning 4,000 in one month.

Niall Doherty:

What percentage would you say now, again on average, you get from the freelance writing?

Janet Newenham:

I’d say, most of the time, I make 2,000 a month from freelance writing, and then an extra thousand from my blog.

Niall Doherty:

Over two-thirds is coming from the freelancing, which I find very interesting, because I think a lot of people assume with a travel blogger, it’s just you’re putting up blog posts in your own site and somehow the money magically comes rolling in.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, it’s very hard for that money to magically come in. You have to work so hard.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah, you really do.

Janet Newenham:

While you’re doing that, you need to be making money in another way. That’s why I do the freelance writing.

Niall Doherty:

Okay. When you decided to leave the PR job, your old job in Dublin, you said you’ve been building up your own blog on the side, and I assume, your freelance writing business on the side, yeah?

Janet Newenham:

I haven’t built up my freelance writing. I just had my blog. My blog was doing quite well. Not making money, but traffic-wise, I was getting lots of free trip invites. I made it myself. I sat down and I wrote what I called the Unemployment Plan, because my parents were furious at me for quitting [inaudible 00:10:00]. They were so angry. They’re like, “What are you going to do? You don’t have any …” I have no savings. I never have savings. I’m the worst saver ever. My unemployment plan was I had to work out how I was going to make a minimum of €1,000 a month to survive before quitting my job. I had actually landed my first freelance contract, and that freelance contract was worth over €1,000 a month. I was like, “This is amazing. I just have to do one article a week, and I’m going to be able to make more than €1,000 a month.”

Niall Doherty:

That gave you the confidence to go ahead and hand them your notice [crosstalk 00:10:34].

Janet Newenham:

Once I had signed the contract with them that I would be getting a set amount of articles every month, I just walked into my boss’ office, gave him my two weeks’ notice and left.

Niall Doherty:

How did you start finding your first clients for your freelance writing? Was it like a cold outreach?

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, well, actually, I started writing for a company that I love anyway, a travel company, and I love them. I use them a lot. I had written about them a lot before I ever knew you could get paid to write articles about other people, whatever. I had written about them, and I was actually ranking on Google higher for their search term that they were.

Niall Doherty:

Wow.

Janet Newenham:

Which I felt was pretty funny, so I was pretty cheeky and I emailed them. I said, “Just to let you know, my articles rank higher than yours and it’s your website, so that’s a bit silly,” and I said, “Don’t you think I should be writing for you?”

Niall Doherty:

Wow.

Janet Newenham:

They said, “Yes, actually, you should.”

Niall Doherty:

Did you then just quote them a price and they went for it?

Janet Newenham:

I didn’t actually quote them a price, because I was just starting. I wouldn’t have had a clue what’s worth what. I probably would’ve said €50 or something stupid. They already had freelance writers writing for their other, their blog and their website in other countries. They have a set standard fee. They told me how much it was. I was delighted, because to write one article for them was almost equivalent to a week’s work in my current job, and I can write an article in three hours. It was crazy.

Niall Doherty:

It was all travel-related stuff?

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, it’s all travel writing, yeah.

Niall Doherty:

It sounds like two of the main skills that you were able to leverage to start working for yourself, obviously, writing and having your own blog was a key part of that, because it’s just a massive portfolio of your writing and you have a lot of traffic coming to it as well. Also, it sounds like learning those few things about SEO really gave you an advantage.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, I think if I could say three things, that would be freelance writing, because I have degree in journalism. I have a master’s. I have always been writing. I have pretty good portfolio for writing. Then SEO, the fact that … That was very important for this company, because all of their posts, they want most of their traffic to come from Google. I have to SEO optimize every article I write. For other people that freelance writing, that doesn’t come in very much. I know a lot of people that write for other big companies, and they don’t really know that much about SEO. They just write this very nice beautiful travel article, but it’s not in Google.

Then the third thing would be like being my own PR manager, I feel like because I had such good experience PR, I know how to sell myself. You’re going to have to be brave to email a company and say, “I’m doing a better job than you are. You should hire me,” and then prove to them why they should do this. I mean, it’s confidence, but I think it’s also PR, because you’re selling yourself.

Niall Doherty:

Okay, so let’s dig into those three things a little bit. Well, not all of them, because I think some of them are quite obvious. Journalism, your writing skill has obviously developed over years of your education and also writing on your own blog and just practice, lots of practice, right?

Janet Newenham:

Exactly, yeah.

Niall Doherty:

The SEO was, well, I guess a lot of that was practice on your own blog and getting tips from somebody who really knew what they were talking about.

Janet Newenham:

Exactly, that was the key, getting tips from someone that really know what they talking about blew my mind, essentially, because I didn’t know any of this. The minute I put in his tips into action … He actually helped me create one of the top ranking blog posts on my blog of all time. This single blog post brings in 50% of my traffic to my blog. It makes me, probably, 50% of my affiliate income. I owe this guy a pint.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah. Yeah, I think most websites, they have that disproportion in amount of traffic coming from one or two key articles.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, a lot of them do these days, yeah. It’s starting to balance out now, because what I did was I was so successful with the model for that post, I used that model for 10 other destinations, and three of the ones are now ranking just as well as the first one. One was about Ireland, and now I have one about Switzerland, Vietnam, Bosnia, and I’m about to publish one … Well, actually, I’ve got about 10 drafts, but anyway, they’re all ranking just as well, and they’re almost bringing in just as much traffic but not quite.

Niall Doherty:

If somebody listening to this wants to learn a bit about SEO themselves, are there any online resources you’d recommend?

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, there’s one I was checking out recently, I think it’s called MarketingProfs.com, so Marketing Professionals. I also subscribe to Matthew Woodward, I think that’s the name, I think, Woodward, a few different … What’s his name? Derek Halpern. I just have a few newsletters that come into my inbox every day, and I don’t always read them, but every now and then, I do. I go to a lot of conferences, and I find that helps me immensely. For me, travel blogging conferences, so I get expert advice from people that are doing 10 times better than me. I get SEO tips from them. Every time I go to a new conference, I learn more tips, and I put those things into action. Within a month, I can see the difference.

Niall Doherty:

When you’re at these conferences, how do you get that advice? Are you just walking up to them and asking them?

Janet Newenham:

Well, it’s talks. Well, they do SEO talks. They would be-

Niall Doherty:

Oh, alright.

Janet Newenham:

There’s nearly always someone doing an SEO talk, and then I make friends with them over a few pints and ask more questions, deeper.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah. Okay, so that’s the journalism or the writing, the SEO, and I’ll have links. I’ll follow up chat with you to make sure we have links to all the stuff you mentioned there. I just heard a key thing you said is being your own PR manager. What does that look like?

Janet Newenham:

Well, for example, for a blogger, being my own PR manager, it’s like, sometimes, I write press releases about myself. If anything good happens, I’ll write a press release, and I’ll send it to all the radio stations and newspapers speaking about myself in the third person. It really works, because you get a lot of publicity from it, and then you get a lot more traffic. You can get some really good … Whether it’s freelance writing or sponsorships, stuff like that just from that kind of publicity.

Then just like a freelance writer, it’s about, I guess, like cold emailing people. It’s a mixture between PR and just confidence in what you do, but find blogs, find websites and businesses that don’t already have a good blog. I was doing this this morning actually, and I found some really big companies, really big travel companies that have god-awful blogs and could really do with a good blogger helping them out. They could get loads more traffic, and then probably lots more sales. It’s about finding companies like that, and then emailing them and saying, “Look, I could do a really good for you. Here is an example of some of my articles. This is how I can get people to your blog,” set a little a plan for them. Be proactive, I guess.

Niall Doherty:

I would imagine, probably, your social media comes into this as well, in terms of marketing yourself, right?

Janet Newenham:

For sure, yeah. Twitter is great for that. LinkedIn, I use not so much right now, but when I was first starting, I’m looking for freelance writing gigs and I wasn’t making that much money, I was really good at networking on LinkedIn. Anyone I thought might be helpful to me, I would just add them and LinkedIn with them. Even still, sometimes, it does help to use LinkedIn for that. Then Twitter, I set up auto tweets for people if I’m trying to get their attention. I will always interact with them and tweet them.

Say, for example, a Lonely Planet editor, I did this before, actually, and then maybe three weeks later, I’ll send them an email, like, “Oh, it’s been great interacting you with Twitter, anyway, I thought I’d pitch you an article,” and then they know me. They’re like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve seen some of your articles. I’ve seen some of your stuff. You’re funny,” whatever. It’s just like you’ve made an effort. They recognize your name rather than you’re just a total random or coming from nowhere.

Niall Doherty:

When you say auto tweets, what do you mean?

Janet Newenham:

There’s apps that you can use and you put in a few usernames and it will auto retweet certain accounts for you. I do it for Irish Independent, Lonely Planet News, just so that there’s always good content on my Twitter, but also if I’m trying to get an editor’s attention or something.

Niall Doherty:

Would that retweet everything from, say, the Irish Independent on your account?

Janet Newenham:

No, it will just retweet maybe two of their tweets a day or something.

Niall Doherty:

Oh, very good. When you’re managing these relationships, do you have a spreadsheet of who you want to reach out to, anything like that?

Janet Newenham:

Yeah. Well, I have a guy that does the … There’s this thing called Mass Planner, and he will do that for Twitter for me. I just send him a list of usernames, and it might just change every few weeks if I’m trying to get other people’s attentions. I just have a list, and I just send it to him.

Niall Doherty:

Okay.

Janet Newenham:

Another way of networking pretty good is in Facebook groups, so many Facebook groups. I’m probably in 200 Facebook groups.

Niall Doherty:

How do you network in those?

Janet Newenham:

I mean, loads of them, there’s one … I got one really good freelance writing gig, and it’s like Female Digital Nomads. The girl that was running it had a big contract with a very big travel company, and she was looking for a team of 30 writers of a nine-week period. I applied and I got it, and it was really nice bit of extra money.

Niall Doherty:

Very cool.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, there’s digital nomad groups. Business Of Blogging is good for learning more stuff about SEO or just blogging stuff in general. There’s a group, Stop Working For Free, I love looking at that to see that I’m not the only person who gets asked to work for free all the time, all different types of creative people. I don’t know. Yeah, there’s just lots of good Facebook groups, and just making friends with bloggers. You just never know what options this could come up. I made friends with one blogger, and I only met him ones, but we stayed in touch on Facebook, and I’d always be liking and interacting on their stuff. Then she got asked to go on a paid trip but couldn’t go, so she recommended me.

Niall Doherty:

Wow.

Janet Newenham:

That was actually the second paid trip I ever did, so I wouldn’t have got it if I hadn’t been just interacting with her in Facebook.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah, a friend of mine, Tom, likes to say that business is a game of relationships, and the person with the most relationships and the best relationships usually wins.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah.

Niall Doherty:

It sounds like that’s very much the case for you.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, for sure. Sometimes people say, “Oh, you’re always wasting time on Facebook.” I’m like, okay, 50% of the time, they’re probably right, but the other 50%, look, I really am, I just try to be friends with everyone and I try to network to everyone. If anyone messages me in Facebook and asks for a favor, I will always help them out to the best of my ability, and then most likely, in a month’s time, they’ll be able to help me out with something I need, whether it’s a contact for a hotel or a car rental company, just like I’ll get someone to share one of my videos that I’m trying to make go viral, just stuff like that. I think it is, it’s just all about networking.

Niall Doherty:

Speaking of video, you’re pretty active. You’re very active in Instagram, and I think you’re starting to become more active on YouTube as well. Are those key for you too?

Janet Newenham:

Yeah. I haven’t got too much into YouTube yet. I’ve gotten very into videos, but I’m actually staying loyal to Facebook with my videos. I find I get a lot more traction a lot easier, because I know Facebook so well, I know the groups, I know the pages, I know a lot of admins. I have a pretty strong and very engaged following on Facebook. These days, every time I post something, it just does well straightaway. With a tiny little boost or a tiny push by sharing videos into various groups, most of the videos seem to go at least a tiny bit viral these days.

Whereas I feel that YouTube, it just takes so much longer to build up the subscribers and to build up the traffic. I’m actually not bothered about YouTube actually, at the moment, because if I’m pitching someone, they don’t actually care whether it’s on Facebook or YouTube. If I can say, “I’ll get 50,000 people to watch this video about your camper van company,” they don’t really care whether it’s people watching on Facebook or YouTube.

Niall Doherty:

Sure, yeah.

Janet Newenham:

It’s much easier for me to get the videos go viral on Facebook because it autoplays.

Niall Doherty:

Right. If somebody was just getting started and they want to narrow their focus and get the best return on investment, is there any particular social network you think they should focus on?

Janet Newenham:

It’s kind of hard, because it depends in what way you’re trying to get started. If you’re really good at taking photographs, or you’re really stylizing, you always have cute little outfits and stuff, then Instagram is the way to go. It is very focused on photography and having a theme, and when people land on your page, they should recognize your theme or your branding straightaway. Every time you upload a photo, they should always click in to the rest of your brands.

People are really getting mad about Instagram lately, because the algorithm keeps changing, and people’s likes and engagement has just plummeted. It’s gone down an awful, awful amount over the last few weeks. For me, I still think Facebook is the most important one. It’s the hardest one to grow. I’m at 50,000 on Instagram, but I’m only at 15,000 of Facebook, but I would actually value my Facebook way more than I would value my Instagram.

Niall Doherty:

Let’s focus on Facebook, how did you build that audience?

Janet Newenham:

It took, probably, the first two years to get to a 1,000 likes, which is awful, but it was just then friends and family and just people that are reading my blog. I mean, videos, honestly, every time my video goes viral, I get an extra 1,000 likes. It’s crazy.

Niall Doherty:

I know you really stepped up your video game in the last year or so with drone stuff. Has that made a difference?

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, huge. All worked out now, because I’ve been pitching a few companies videos for me to go make paid videos for them. I was checking my analytics, and my videos now reach a million people every month.

Niall Doherty:

Wow.

Janet Newenham:

That’s a pretty big number. One of my most viewed video then, one of them had almost half a million views, and it got featured in various online publications and stuff. The drone video is what pushed it, and a lot of them, I find them easier to go viral, the drone videos, because they’re just so unique.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah.

Janet Newenham:

Lately, my drone was out of action for a few months, and I didn’t want to stop making videos just because I didn’t have a drone. I had to get creative. It really pushed me to get creative, to be like, “How to possibly shoot a viral video without your drone?” It works. I just made Culture Trip or Business Insider style videos, square videos that have text over them, and it was like, “You’ll never believe this,” or “Whoa, look at this hostel,” sort of fun, quirky ones. I never make my videos over one minute. I try to keep them under a minute. It just works. It just works. The videos all started going viral. Now, people are waiting for my new videos every week, which is fun.

Niall Doherty:

Did it take you long to learn how to edit video?

Janet Newenham:

It took me a while to learn how to edit a video well.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah.

Janet Newenham:

The first few were pretty awful, but some of them, I think, it’s a skill that I picked up quite early on, and I enjoy doing it. Now, it takes me maybe an hour to edit a good video, which is not very long. As long as I’ve got the shots, as long as I’ve got all the right shots and stuff. Now, I’m just trying to step it up a bit, because I want it to be more presenter style, whereas before, it was just, I was never actually in the shot. Now, I’m trying to put myself in the shot. It’s just trickier, because I have to use my tripod and make sure, do it a few times to make sure I am actually in the show when I’m recording and that you could hear me.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah.

Niall Doherty:

I want to go back to … You told us how much you earned on average now, and you mentioned as well, you work way less now. Can you give us an idea of the time commitment?

Janet Newenham:

Well, I could easily get all my work done every week in one day. That’s a fact. It depends how much I’m procrastinating. My main earner, my main clients, I can get the article done, it normally takes me three hours, sometimes it takes me two hours. I could get all my other articles done that I need to get done, paid work, in probably another three or four hours. I’ll say one day, like eight hours, eight hours a week. That’s for my freelance writing not my blog. That’s eight hours a week for my freelance writing.

Well, my affiliate income is all passive income, so I don’t actually do anything. It just comes in every month front Affiliate Window, Hostelworld, and AdSense. That’s almost another thousand that at this stage I don’t have to do anything for that to keep coming in, but I obviously want to make more money, so I’m writing more blog posts with affiliate links all the time. Then I do sponsored posts and stuff as well, which could take, say, another two hours a week, another two hours. That brings to maybe 10 hours. Well, I do work crazy hours apart from that, but it’s not to make money. It’s just to build my blog.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah. Just for the freelance writing stuff, which you said brings in about two grand a month.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah.

Niall Doherty:

We’re talking about 10 hours a week?

Janet Newenham:

Yeah.

Niall Doherty:

Nice.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, it’s good.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah. Is that how you would recommend … If someone wants to be a travel blogger, from everything I know about it, that takes a long time to really make good money from your blog, would you advise them to go the freelance writing route to start?

Janet Newenham:

I would recommend people don’t quit their job unless they have savings. That is honest, honest advice, because it is so hard to make money at the start. If your only focused at the start to become a travel blogger is to make money, you’re going to take every crappy gig that comes your way, and you’re going to be like, “Oh, you’re going to give me $50 to write an article about poker machines in Las Vegas? Cool, yeah, sure,” and you’ll do it, and your blog, no one is ever going to want to read your blog. It’s never going to build up to what you wanted it to be.

I just think that, because I have a few friends that quit their jobs recently, but they had a good amount savings, and their blogs are so good, because they only write about the stuff that they want to write about, and it’s really good writing. It’s really interesting. It’s really funny, and their audience is building up really quickly, and they’re probably going to monetize within a year, because of … Whereas if you want to monetize from day one, I honestly think that’s the wrong thing to go. Some people will disagree me, but I really think it’s the wrong way to go, because you’re just struggling to get money.

Yeah, freelance writing, it’s not really anything to do with your blog, use your blog as the portfolio. You wouldn’t get the freelance writing gigs if you didn’t have your blog. Start your blog, get your freelance writing gigs, and so that’s what I do. I don’t feel under pressure to write certain articles on my blog, because I make enough money from my freelance writing to just … I do, do press trips and sponsored trips, but so much of my travel these days, I just go where I want. I do what I want. I hitchhike. I stay at hostels. I go overland. Well, I attempted to go overland in South Africa.

Niall Doherty:

Right.

Janet Newenham:

I know a lot of bloggers that just do press trips nonstop, and then only writing what that tourism board wants them to write about.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah, I think that’s the … I’ve written a bit about follow your passion and how that’s often bad advice, because it can take so long to make money from it.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah.

Niall Doherty:

It’s stressful just trying to make money from it. You can easily lose the love for … I think, like what you did, building up that freelance business to pay the bills, and then-

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, so you don’t have to worry about it, I guess, yeah.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah, and then it gets to a point where you are, where you can fit into 10 hours a week.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah.

Niall Doherty:

Then you’ll have plenty of time to work on your passion project without that “Oh, I need to make money from this tomorrow.”

Janet Newenham:

Exactly, so about two years ago, I set up a second website. I just bought the domain name, wrote three articles, and nothing ever happened, because I was so busy trying to make money, like I wasn’t making enough money to really survive properly, so I just put it on the back burner. This summer, I teamed up with two other people, and we’re full on launching the website this summer. It’s so good to be at that stage where I can get all my paid work and all that stuff out of the way, say, on Monday, and now I can work on this other project for the rest of the week, which I plan to monetize by the end of the summer. It feels so good. It’s like I’m starting a business, even though … It’s like my job is one day a week. That’s on a Monday, and now I have all this free time to do something that I’m really passionate about.

Niall Doherty:

When you’re actually traveling as much as you do, how do you stay productive?

Janet Newenham:

With difficulty.

Niall Doherty:

Because there’s no routine, right?

Janet Newenham:

There’s no routine, whatsoever, yeah.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah.

Janet Newenham:

I’m very last minute most of the time, because I’m always going to new places. I’m traveling nonstop, really. Even when I was in Mexico for three months, I didn’t rent an apartment. I was traveling nonstop. You just have to make time. I always say, when you wake up in the morning, and I’ve heard other people say this, do the thing that makes you money first, because you need money to survive. If you have to do social media and Instagram and write a blog post or write a freelance article that’s going to make you €300, do that one first. Do the article that will make you the €300. Then if you have time throughout the day, go do your other stuff. Otherwise, you can get very stressed out. I did, my first year, I found it very hard to balance everything. I was getting very stressed out.

It’s hard, but it’s just about finding … It’s like I don’t socialize all the time. Sometimes I’ll just get a private room and I’ll lock myself in that room for two days, be really unsociable. When I meet people at hostels, they always question my motives, so like, “You’re so weird. You’re supposed to be traveling, but you just lock yourself in and you didn’t come drinking last night and you didn’t come talk to us.” I’m like, “I’m not on holiday. This is work for me. You don’t have to understand that, that’s fine, but this is work for me.” At the start, it was very stressful, but now, I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I will just go get myself an Airbnb for a week. I’ll go to Lisbon and I won’t see Lisbon, and I don’t care.

Niall Doherty:

I mean, I’ve gotten that same criticism over the years. I used to actually envy the people who were at three months backpacking trip and attacking this on their own, but they have to go home at the end of three months and go back to this regular job or something that they didn’t really lie, whereas you get to keep doing exactly what you want to do.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, and that’s what I tell them. Then I guess in those situations, it’s about me. It’s about being, I guess, being motivated and being good with my time. The fact is I can get it all done in a 10-hour period, but if I spend my whole day procrastinating and don’t get it done, and the next day, they’re like, “Hey, we’re going to climb a volcano, do you want to come?” I’m like, “Oh, I can’t because I have all this work today.” They’re like, “Oh, I thought you got all your work done in one day?” Like, “Oh, well, I mean, I could do, if I was actually working yesterday, but I was on Facebook the whole day.” Yeah, you have to push yourself, because I do miss out on opportunities sometimes because I haven’t got down to it, really got down to it and … the work done.

Niall Doherty:

What about when you were just getting started and you were saying, when you’re working your old job, you come home and you’d be up until 1:00 in the morning working on your blog?

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, super motivated then. You’re really motivated when you’re trying to quit a full-time 9 to 6 job.

Niall Doherty:

That was just a matter of I’m going to do whatever it takes.

Janet Newenham:

Exactly, yeah. Yeah, I was doing … Honestly, I was working two jobs, because I was working until 6:00, I’d go home and I’d have to write those freelance articles. Then on top of that, I’d be trying to work on my blog to get it to a stage where I can travel just from my blog. Yeah, I remember all my friends used to say to me like, “I honestly don’t know how you do it,” like, “You’ve never …” Then I was running an adventure travel company at the weekend.

Niall Doherty:

Wow.

Janet Newenham:

Making extra money to save for my travels. I was running these tour groups pretty much every weekend for the summer, and then doing my blog and doing my freelance writing and working full-time. Yeah, like you said, I was doing whatever it took to get to a stage where I could quit my job.

Niall Doherty:

If you could go back again, would you do anything differently, maybe, to speed up the process or make it easier?

Janet Newenham:

I don’t think I probably could have. I mean, I guess if I just emailed and reached out to people sooner, but at the end of the day, I don’t really have any regrets, because that year taught me so much SEO tactics and stuff and just creative content, marketing. I learned quite a lot in that job. I don’t think I would be as good of a blogger that I am now if I hadn’t had that job for that year. I don’t really have any regrets.

Actually, that year, so about a month before I quit my job, that was probably the final straw, I got published in National Geographic. I was like, “Oh my God, I just got published in National Geographic,” like, “What am I doing working for a [inaudible 00:36:19] PR manager?” Yeah, I was so excited about that. I think then, all my friends were like, “Yeah, you should probably just quit you job and be a travel writer.” I was like, “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Niall Doherty:

How did the National Geographic piece come about?

Janet Newenham:

It’s actually like the same way all my stuff seems to happen, it was a bit random. I was browsing their site and I was trying to find, was there anything that they hadn’t written about, a place where I had been that they hadn’t written about. There was a place. It’s a really random place, but it’s Groningen, which is in the Netherlands, and I lived there for a year to do my master’s. They have never written about Groningen. I just said, “You’re National Geographic, you should have covered everywhere.”

Niall Doherty:

Yeah.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, I just happened to be in one place that I haven’t written about. I wrote an article about it, and they liked it, and they published it. I couldn’t believe it.

Niall Doherty:

Wow.

Janet Newenham:

It only happened once, but still.

Niall Doherty:

Did you reach out to them just the same way you do everyone else?

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, exactly, I just emailed, find the editor. I went through LinkedIn actually, because I had some sort of random contact on LinkedIn, and he had worked for National Geographic. I PMed him, and I was like, “Hey, I see that you’ve written for National Geographic, can you give me the editor’s email? I need it.”

Niall Doherty:

Wow.

Janet Newenham:

Then I just emailed. They never told me. It was so weird. They never told me, and I have this Google alert for my name, which sounds very vain, but just to see if there’s news articles about me and stuff. The next thing, I get this Google alert saying that there’s a National Geographic article that I’ve written. I’m like, why like, they told me that they published it at least.

Niall Doherty:

You told me one of the misunderstood things about your life and your work, which is people think you’re on holiday all the time, whereas you actually had to knuckle down and get work down. Is there anything else that you think people misunderstand about what you do?

Janet Newenham:

These days, it’s getting much better. At the start, when I first quit my job within the first six month, everyone just thought maybe I had savings and I was traveling the world and I was getting some free stays here and there, but I wasn’t really working. A lot of people just thought I had this great life. Until one of my friends joined me on a trip for four months last year, she couldn’t believe how many hours I put in to build my blog and to really work on it and travel, planning. I think as well, I think my parents’ friends was the big thing, because my sister was always quite successful and doing quite well, and I don’t think my parents or my parents’ friends got that I had a real job. They just thought like, “Oh, where’s Janet? Is she traveling again?” Like, “Yes, I’m always traveling, because it’s my job.”

Niall Doherty:

Yeah.

Janet Newenham:

It took them quite a while to understand that this is actually a job and I do very well at it. It wasn’t until earlier this year actually, I was in Mexico, and I got an email saying that I had won, what was it, Digital Media Travel Journalist Of The Year. I wasn’t able to go to the award, so I sent my mom in my place, which she loved and she brought my sister. She got to meet all these top Irish TV personalities and travel writers and travel presenters. Then I think it was that, that made her realize, okay, this is actually a job for Janet. She’s [inaudible 00:39:38] up there with other people.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah, that must’ve been great to just have family understanding, finally.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, that was it. Then, when she told her friends that and then they started seeing me on bigger websites like The Irish Times and getting featured on radio stations and stuff, I think then they started to realize, oh, wow, this is her job, I’m starting to get it now.

Niall Doherty:

You mentioned before, but when you quit your job, you already had a good freelance gig that you landed.

Janet Newenham:

I had, yeah.

Niall Doherty:

Were you pretty confident that you could make it work right as you quit your job, or did it take a while before you said to yourself, “I’m really starting to believe I could this.”

Janet Newenham:

I was confident that I could make the €1,000 a month, which meant that I could go live in Thailand and not live in Ireland, because you cannot survive on €1,000 a month in Ireland. Well, you could struggle to do that. I did head to Southeast Asia, I will admit. I didn’t stay in Ireland. Well, actually, I head to South Africa, and after South Africa, I went to Southeast Asia. It was fine. It was just enough to travel on and live on, but it wasn’t enough to save, to go to other places, to go other countries I wanted to go to, just stay in hotels to start saving.

Honestly, it wasn’t until probably almost a year ago that I was like, “Wow, I’m actually doing this.” I had to pinch my say and like, “This is actually working. How did this happen?” I was really making more than enough money to survive. I was able to go do whatever I wanted. I was like, “I think I’ll go to Mexico tomorrow.” I would just book a [inaudible 00:41:17] to Mexico. That happens, and then when I was in Mexico, I was like, “I think I’ll go to Cuba in two weeks. Yeah, I’ll go to Cuba,” and I was just going to Cuba for two weeks. I paid for everything myself. It was quite an expensive trip, and then came back. Then the biggest decision was probably going to the US for two months, because US is expensive.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah.

Janet Newenham:

There’s no way I could have done that two years ago. I never would have had enough money to travel to US pretty much on my own dime for two months.

Niall Doherty:

If somebody wanted to build a business like yours, let me lay out just what you told me now, say, I wanted to get started, the steps that I would take, we’ve discussed. The first thing I would do is I would start blogging.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah.

Niall Doherty:

I would start building up my own blog. I would get a lot of practice writing. I would learn a bit about SEO using those resources you recommended.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah.

Niall Doherty:

Once I felt fairly confident that what I was putting out there was good stuff, sharing it, getting good feedback on social media. Then I would start reaching out to … Looking for freelance writing gigs. The way I would do that is through all the ways you mentioned, Facebook groups, interacting in there, building relationships, actually targeting travel companies that I like and seeing, finding gaps on their sites that you could help with and basically reaching out to them and pitching them on writing for them.

Janet Newenham:

There’s a lot of companies that are always looking for travel writers like Matador Network, FlightNetwork. Every single week, they’re calling out. Some of them don’t pay that well, but I worked for them at the start. Once I got my foot in with them, it landed me much bigger clients.

Niall Doherty:

For just getting started, what do you think is a decent rate for freelance writing?

Janet Newenham:

It depends on the length of the article. When I first started, the first time I ever got paid to write a blog post for someone else, I think I accepted $50. When I think back now, yeah, that is pathetic compared to what I get now, but also, it only took an hour. That’s $50 for an hour’s work. It’s like some people are so quick to stick their noses up and be like, “Oh, I’d never work for that amount of money.” I’m like, “That’s way more than I was getting in my full-time job.” If I could go home after a hard day’s work, sit down, watch my favorite TV show, bang out an article and get €50 extra. That’s great in my eyes.

Then once I got a little bit of practice, I put my prices up to €100 an article. Mainly, it wasn’t that the article was taking longer. It was just that my reputation was better, and so they knew that I had this big social following and that I could push it back to my social following and they would get more readers. Then now, it’s much more than that, I will say.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, you build it up.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah, so you reach out. You get those first few gigs, and you establish yourself and get some consistent work flowing to you.

Janet Newenham:

Exactly.

Niall Doherty:

To the point where you’re earning enough to pay the bills, and then you try and minimize the amount of time you’re spending on paid work while still increasing your income or at least keeping it steady. Then you can devote time to building up your brand even more, building up your own blog like you’ve done.

Janet Newenham:

I think that’s important, because there was a stage last year when I was doing way more work than I’m doing now. Say, I was doing almost 20 hours a week. I was so stressed out from it, and I was making less money, because I had taken all this very underpaid jobs, but I was like, “Oh, this is amazing. Everyone is giving me work.” Other bloggers were paying me $40 an hour to write stuff for their blog. I was like, “This is amazing,” I was spending every waking hour writing just literally hundreds of articles, like, oh, pushing out content like there was no tomorrow, but not on my own site. I was doing other people’s dirty work, essentially.

I was making pretty good money, but then I was getting so stressed. I actually prefer to make €500 less amount and have an extra day at the beach, get to do some fun activities, just work on my own blog better. My own blog suffered for about three months then. I probably only wrote one article a month in my own blog. My friends were like, “Janet, you never blog on your own site anymore.” I just lost my way, and so it’s important to pull back at that stage. Then I actually got rid of some of the clients. I apologized. I said, “I can’t work for you anymore. My own blog needs to take priority.”

Niall Doherty:

It’s not you, it’s me.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, pretty much. I was kind of lying, because actually, I went off and I just found better paying clients. Sometimes, it’s funny, because I was writing articles, but it wasn’t even of their blog. They had got a deal from a client to write, say, five articles a month, then they would push those articles on to me, so that I would just be getting probably 20% cut of what they were making. Then I was like, so then there’s obviously big travel companies that are probably paying them way more than I’m getting. Then I would go direct, not to their client, but direct to other similar companies, and then that’s when I got much better money.

Niall Doherty:

When you’re reaching out … Because, I mean, it sounds fairly straightforward. I imagine people listening to this are like, “Okay, I could do that.”

Janet Newenham:

Yeah.

Niall Doherty:

There probably is a lot of rejection or just never hearing back, is there?

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, a lot of the time, I don’t hear back. I will send a follow up email, and then often they’ll just say, “Well, not right now.” One person that I do remember said, “We have enough writers now, but come back to me in two months.” It was quite a long time, but I did, and I landed the gig in two months’ time, and it’s been a regular gig since then.

Niall Doherty:

How do you remember to follow up?

Janet Newenham:

I’m not that organized. I really amn’t that organized, so I just do … I just go through my emails and search for certain, I don’t know, certain subject lines and stuff. I’m still finding emails now, because I have about a thousand unread emails. I’m very bad. I’d go back, and there might be an ambassadorship email or a sponsorship email, but when I’m on the road and I don’t have time for that stuff, I’ll just leave until I get home early, or leave it until I have a week and a place, then I’ll just go for it.

Niall Doherty:

Actually, I recommend a little tool for you there, a free tool that I use all the time there on my email. It’s called FollowUpThen.com.

Janet Newenham:

Okay.

Niall Doherty:

Basically, what I do, say, someone email me this morning actually, and they’re interested in taking one of my courses, but said, “I’d have to finish my studies first. In about two months, I’ll consider it.” I reply back to them, and then I inclined, Cc, Bcc two months at FollowUpThen.com

Janet Newenham:

Okay, that’s good.

Niall Doherty:

Two months from now, that email will appear back in my inbox and I’ll have a look at it, and it’s like, “Oh, okay, I should follow up with that person, see how they’re getting on.”

Janet Newenham:

I do need something like that, because it’s like some people, if they’re really interested, they will actually just email me again, saying, “Hey, Janet, just wondering, did you get my proposal for us to place a sponsored post for $5,” go away.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, and they actually follow up even though I say, “No, my rates are $300.” They’re like, “Oh, well, we don’t have that, but how about $10?” They follow up. They keep following up. I’m like, “No.” That’s why I do just not read a lot of my emails. I just knows there’s rubbish. Yeah, no, there are some things that I have probably forgotten about that I definitely should have followed up on.

Niall Doherty:

Yeah, that little thing is great, because you can just change it on the fly. You can put in one week of FollowUpThen.com. You can do it even like every Thursday, if it’s a recurring thing. It’s just all instantaneous in your emails. You don’t have to use a different app or anything.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, no, I definitely need something like that. That’s great.

Niall Doherty:

Okay, so let’s start wrapping this up then, Janet. There’s a question that came in from Hazel, when I told her I was doing this interview. She asked, she said, “From my point of view, travel blogging is competitive and saturated. How can a new blogger really stand out from the crowd?”

Janet Newenham:

It’s tricky. It’s so true. It is so oversaturated, and there are so many new people coming. No one knew before, but everyone now knows you can get free stays and free flights and often get paid to travel blog, and now everybody wants to do it. I think, really, it is just about finding quite a specific niche at the start or building a brand in a certain way. The bloggers now that are doing very well have a very niche audience. They’re like, “I’m only going to target black people living in America.”

I know someone that does that. She literally writes every single blog post aimed at black people living in America. She doesn’t care about any other audience. That’s her audience. She will share stuff to do with that audience. She will write stuff. She’ll make videos, and she’s kicking ass. She’s doing so well. Another person is only trying to aim at just Americans in general, American that have never really traveled before.

It just depends. It has to be more specific than just solo travel, because every single girl writer these days, female blogger is writing about solo travel. I know two bloggers that write about wheelchair travels, really interesting, like wheelchair-accessible destinations, wheelchair-accessible hotels. There really is niches out there for everyone. Another friends does fashion, it’s kind of broad, but fashion mixed with … Like chic travel, so definitely not budget backpacking. You just have to pick a niche.

The other thing is, and this is something I realize, and this is partly why I’ve come back to Ireland, is sometimes it’s not about all your … I don’t know how to say this. Essentially, what I want to say is like I want to build my Irish audience, because it’s really good to have an audience in your home country, because if you grow big there, you can get featured in radio stations, newspapers, TV shows way easier than if you’re just constantly trying to get an audience from a different country. Building an audience in your home country, start with your home town. If you’re not traveling, then you would start with, write loads of positive articles about your hometown, and then they’ll start to get shared, and then go bigger, bigger, bigger. I think you’ll get a name for yourself doing that.

Niall Doherty:

Very cool. Actually, there is one thing I want to mention there as well, just in terms of standing out when it’s so competitive. I think one of the things I see you doing very well and that we talked about a little bit is building relationships, reaching out to people, staying in touch with people, sharing other people’s stuff, and just genuinely being nice and helpful.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, that [inaudible 00:52:20] you are good. Building relationships, especially with other bloggers, so much of my work comes from other bloggers, and when other bloggers list you in top 10 travel bloggers or top 10 Instagramers, and a lot of the times, these posts will go viral, and you can really build up your following from these posts. I’ve written a lot of them myself for other people, and people have always been happy to be listed in these posts.

To get on these posts, first of all, you can write some of them yourself, and then other people will include you, and then another thing is just to be nice to everyone, share other people’s content, retweet other people’s blog posts, comment, reading other people’s blog post is pretty good. A lot of people blog, but don’t read any … You can’t really be an author of a book if you don’t read books. You need to know what makes a good book, same with what makes a good blog post.

Niall Doherty:

Yup, absolutely. Okay, if anybody wants to get in touch with you, I mean, I’ll have lots of links and everything for people to check out your stuff, but where would you recommend, what’s the best way?

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, you can email me, [email protected], or they can tweet me @janetnewenham, or yeah, my Facebook page, Journalist On The Run, any way at all.

Niall Doherty:

Okay.

Janet Newenham:

You’ll find my contact information pretty much on all my social media profiles.

Niall Doherty:

You have an email list as well that you would send out to and get all your blog posts.

Janet Newenham:

Yes.

Niall Doherty:

Okay, perfect. Well, thanks so much for taking the time, Janet. This is a really good look into how people can become a travel blogger. I really appreciate you sharing all this info.

Janet Newenham:

Yeah, of course.

Niall Doherty:

Okay, that was the interview with Janet Newenham. Thank you for listening all the way through. I really appreciate that. Don’t forget, you can find lots of handy links and notes related to this interview over on my website. If you found the information in this interview helpful, I urge you to write down what action or actions you are going to take and when you are going to take them to put that information into practice.

I say this at the end of every interview, because knowledge is easy, but learning is hard. We really only learned something once our behavior changes. Please, please, please don’t let this information go to waste. I would really encourage you to take action, make things happen. Of course, if you need any help, as always, please just reach out and let me know. Thanks again for listening, and I will talk to you soon.