I am not going to reinvent the wheel and try and tell you that one way to fund your travel around the world is to start a travel blog – it is a common post by travel bloggers proclaiming their bloginess. I have met many a blogger that is making anywhere from a few dollars to a a few thousand dollars a month via their blogs – not to mention all the free or massively discounted stuff they get.
But talking to a good friend Backpacking Matt one thing that has struck me is what happens to that blog when you stop travelling. Many bloggers continue their blog indefinitely tinkering in the evenings, writing a few posts a week and collecting the extra cash. Others try to keep the blog alive by bringing in more writers. But there is then the issue of the name of the travel blog, take NomadicMatt, BackpackingMatt, JasmineWanders – these sites are about one persons travels. (Perhaps Nomadic and Backpacking Matts could merge, invite all the other Matt’s and create a community of travelling Matts – could call the site FlyingCarpets).
Surely, then it makes sense to name your blog something that might have a life after your travels. I think GapYearEscape has done a great job of building himself a very profitable web business that has the potential to carry on for many years to come, now that he is back in the UK, from what I can see from the outside.
Alternatively, though I was thinking that surely there is room for a second hand travel blog market! If blogs are such a great way to make money while you travel then once you have finished travelling could you not sell your travel blog with all the traffic and revenue to someone else. How much would that be worth? If you were earning USD$1,000 per month then I would think that someone travelling for a year would pay US$6 to $9k – seems about right to me, especially if you could prove to them that the revenue will rise over the year if they do x, y and z. Surely, buying a travel blog that is already making money is a huge kick start rather than building something up slowly from scratch.
Which begs the question of my thoughts – wouldn’t it be better to call you travel blog something generic that you could subsequently sell (or get in more writers)? Just a thought.
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While buying a travel blog with dedicated traffic, followers, and advertising revenue is arguably a smart financial move, you’d be hard pressed to find a traveler setting off on a RTW trip who could rationalize putting down the $6k – $9k it would be worth. Perhaps to other investors it’d make sense, but not to a backpacker with limited resources.
More importantly, I’d argue you’d be foolish to sell such a blog. Take the case of GapYearEscape who – from the looks on the outside – seems to do quite well in regards to advertising sales. He gets the traffic, has the page rank, and many of the posts are sponsored or guest posts. Anyone in the writing or blogging world knows the biggest time commitment is producing the content. If someone else is doing that for you, the return on your investment (simply time at this point) is huge.
Yes exactly – and one of my key points is that if you name your blog nice and generic then it is much easier to attract sponsored and guest posts.
I was thinking about this some more – the weakness in my argument for valuation will be if the majority of the traffic comes from “non-sustainable” or “short-term” traffic such as is the case from Twitter or Stumble Upon.
Organic search engine traffic of course is very valuable but a site that gets most of it’s traffic from say Stumble Upon (as many many travel blogs do) is not going to be anywhere near worth as much.
Interesting. I’d venture that if a blog was earning $1k a month and the traffic is organic, then the $6-9k valuation is a bit on the low side — especially as is a new trip was “latched onto it” as all things being equal should be able to earn progressively more over time. Even smarter would be if the blog was to be onsold to a DMO/destination website who could slot their own writers into it and leverage their existing traffic into it. Food for thought
I think it depends on your intention from the get go… when I started blogging, I really didn’t think about making money or having others blog on my site. I wanted it to be a source of inspiration for people who were afraid to make the leap. Since my site is just about my travels, I still don’t accept guest posts or advertisers to write a post for my site.
I agree with Matt, if you did end up selling a travel blog after you stopped traveling, it would be hard to find a regular backpacker to buy it for that much money. A travel agency or marketing company, on the other hand…
The intuitive answer is “Yes” (it would be better to use a non-personal title), but then again, guidebook authors like Arthur Frommer, Eugene Fodor, and Temple Fielding were able to sell their brands. (Arthur Frommer is still alive and working, but he no longer owns the Frommer’s guidebooks or Frommers.com, which are published by Wiley.)
FWIW, our own site, Europeforvisitors.com, is labeled “Durant and Cheryl Imboden’s Europe for Visitors,” but in the unlikely event that we sold it, a buyer could strip off our names and photo and keep the Europe for Visitors brand. That’s a pretty good compromise between “personal brand” and “generic brand.” (Although I think the best brand in the travel blogosphere is probably “Johnny Jet,” who’s currently John DiScala but could become a fictitious figure a la Betty Crocker if he ever sold his Web site and brand.)
Couldn’t agree more. I think it gives you greater scope for expansion and if someone one day does come knocking with a large cheque, you aren’t selling your identity…