Posted: 3/26/18 | March 26th, 2018
As I approach my ten-year anniversary of blogging, I tell you a story. The story of an accidental travel writer who simply wanted to afford beer, dorm rooms, plane tickets, and backpacker pub crawls.
I shared part of this story of why I started this website before but, today, I want to go into more depth about the journey from this being a part-time to full-time thing.
Once upon a time, I started this website with only a singular, selfish goal: to make money to keep myself traveling. I wanted my website to be an online résumé where editors could see my writing and go, “Yeah, we want to hire that guy!” — and then pay me to go somewhere and write a story about it.
I imagined myself a cross between Bill Bryson and Indiana Jones. My dream was to write guidebooks for Lonely Planet. I imagined no cooler job than a guidebook researcher.
Anything was better than working in the cubicle I was sitting in at the time.
Ten years later, it’s not about how I can keep myself traveling. It’s about how I can help others travel.
Every day, the team and I constantly ask ourselves: “How do we help and inspire others to travel cheaper, better, and longer?”
Today, it’s all about you.
But, back then, the only thing I ever said was “How do I help myself?”
In those early days, I worked as an English teacher in Bangkok and Taiwan.
Blogging was never meant to support me full–time — let alone lead to book deals, conferences, speaking events, and so much more.
In fact, I didn’t care much about this website. I mean, sure, worked on it and didn’t want it to fail. I wanted it to become popular.
But building it into something bigger than myself was not the goal.
Instead, I wanted the “digital nomad” dream: passive income. I wanted money to be coming in while I slept.
Money to afford one more day of travel.
I was 27 with no responsibilities. I wasn’t looking toward the future. I just wanted the good times to never end.
I never thought anything grander than that.
While I earned a little bit of money from affiliates and selling links on this site (back in those days, you could make a lot of money selling text links to companies looking to artificially increase their Google ranking), I spent most of my time creating other websites, designed solely to get people to click on Google ads.
Yes, it is true. I was a scammy internet marketer! I helped fill the web with junk.
I put all that money I made into these websites: getting people to write articles, optimizing the websites for search, creating even more websites, and lived off my teaching income.
I found search terms with high ad rates and designed very niche and ugly websites around them. I had websites on teaching English, growing corn, taking care of dogs and turtles, and even raising pigs.
At one point, if you went searching for advice on how to train your beagle, every website on the first page was mine.
Yes, those were some weird days. All the content was legit (I hired dog trainer friends to write the articles) but the websites lacked soul.
As time went on, between this website, my teaching job, and those AdSense sites, I was earning around $8,000 a month. More than enough to keep a backpacker going.
Then one day it all changed.
I was part of this course called the Keyword Academy. It was run by two guys from Colorado, Mark and (I think) a guy named Brad. (We’ll call him Brad for this story.) As part of my membership, we had monthly consulting calls. During one, Brad said, “Matt, why are you building this crap? You know travel. You have a website that people read and like. You have a skill set. Focus on that. This shit is stupid. We only do it because it’s quick cash.”
And he was right.
That shit was stupid. All I was doing was taking advantage of the fact that Google couldn’t differentiate spam websites from real websites. It wasn’t exactly work I liked.
Travel was really my passion.
And, since those sites were making enough money per month, I decided to make a change.
In late spring 2009, I shifted my focus back to this blog and, over time, let those other websites die or sold them off. (They made money for about a year after I stopped updating them.)
I took what I learned and focused solely on this website. (When Google finally learned to filter those spammy websites out, all the people I knew from those days were left with nothing. I have no idea what they do now. It’s certainly not running websites as I’ve never come across their names again.)
First, until your hobby can pay your rent, don’t quit your day job. There are a lot of people telling you to “follow your passion” — but they neglect to tell you that unless your passion can pay your bills, you should keep your “unpassionate” day job. Teaching English and those scammy websites allowed me to have some income while I focused on “Nomadic Matt.”
It wasn’t until the end of 2009 / early 2010 that Nomadic Matt earned enough where I needed no other sources of income.
Second, no matter how good or helpful your blog is, marketing is important. If no one knows how to find your website, it’s all for naught. Those crappy, scammy websites taught me how Google and SEO worked as well as the importance of marketing and messaging. I took that experience to improve this website, optimizing my content for Google, created products, and started networking with bloggers outside travel.
I think this is one of the things that gave me an edge over other bloggers at this time. While they focused solely on writing and social media, I focused on that as well as SEO. This ensured that I ranked high in search engines, got visitors every day, and helped get my “brand” other there (I got interviewed on CNN once because the writer found me on Google).
And, as I built this community and saw my friends’ incomes collapse with the change of an algorithm, I learned the most important lesson of all: when you create a business that helps others, you create something sustainable and gives meaning and joy to your own life. I hated those other websites but I will work 24/7 on this one because I love what I do.
I don’t agree with basically anything I did in those early days. It was a very scammy way to make money.
But I don’t regret one moment of it because it showed me a better way and helped me get here.
I guess the saying is right.
When you find a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.
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Jeroen Vogel
Matt, it’s all good. You did what you had to do at the time. I will always laugh at people who put money first – that’s just inhumane and I’m all about Humans First – but it’s a damn convenient thing to have.
Two years ago, I travelled overland from Canada to Ushuaia. I ended up broke and needed a day job to fill the bank account again. Now, two years later, I will resign from that job again in two days time. I’m going on a long trip again. Is it going to cost me all my money again? Will all my savings go into this new trip? No, of course not. I’ve created a back-up fund, have chosen a cheap itinerary, and have taken care of my circumstances.
But taking that trip, two years ago, was something I had to do at the time. It was the first time I deliberately went on a long journey to write a book about. It was my “Great Railway Bazaar” (Theroux), if you will (without the sales numbers, got to admit).
Each and every action leads to another. Looking for something without any financial risk, I decided to walk the Bryson Line out of “The Road to Little Dribbling” by Bill Bryson. And of course I’m going to write a book about it. That’s what I do, and will always be doing.
I think this blog post resonates with pretty much everyone, and that’s the one thing you have figured out best – reaching out to your audience. Keep it up!
Veronika Primm
That’s fun to know Matt, I had no idea! Hardly anyone is proud of their beginnings 😀 But even crappy sites gave you a certain level of experience that you could apply to the blog afterwards.
I’m still keeping my day job for exactly the same reason (and I like living at a place I can call home). But blogging is going well and perhaps I’ll get one day half way where you are and will be able to solely focus on helping others only and not just make ends meet 🙂
Ryan Biddulph
Hi Matt,
My shift has been from fear to fun.
I feared running out of money big-time 10 years ago. So I did desperate stuff to make money. Then I released a wee bit of the fear but still felt it, and did stuff like getting paid to write quality articles but to place on content mills. At the time – years ago – it seemed OK because all folks did it. But I had a light bulb idea a few years in, realized it was a dying niche, hit the road and Google caught on too, doing away with guest posting just for links and trying to place on page 1 through crappy, 1000 category blogs, for crappy sites in most cases.
Now I love blogging to:
– have fun and express myself
– serve people
– inspire people to live their dreams
– build strong 1 to 1 bonds with human beings
Most of my energy is about following my passion. I left my 9-5 security guard job and never looked back when I had no money. Going through nightmarish struggles made me whom I am today because I felt, faced and experienced terrors most folks never experience; being down to 4 cents, being 70 Gs in debt, losing all my money during my trip – again – and then, after feeling and purging these fears I became a helluva lot more fearless and did freeing but uncomfortable things by habit.
I cannot tell bloggers to quit their job and follow their passion BUT I cannot tell them to stay in a sh*tty job and not follow their passion. I’d be a complete hypocrite if I advised the ladder because by leaving a depressing job and following my passion (even though I had no money and ran into financial nightmares) I have been featured on Forbes, Fox News, Virgin and Entrepreneur and a growing number of folks (for whatever odd reason LOL) see me as the top blogger on earth in my niche. I just have fun and dive into my fears. But if more folks see me in this light either the bribe money is hitting bank accounts (hehehe) or the path I took made me who I am, with an extremely high tolerance for doing uncomfortable things so I give 99% of my energy to following my fun and passion, and 1% to outcomes.
Do what your heart tells *you* guys. Matt has one journey. I had another. Yours may be different. But as you progress, realize when you’re doing stuff just to serve you, and make a shift toward serving humanity, sharing value and building 1 to 1 bonds. Fun, happiness, service, joy and worldly success flow through generosity, in any blogging niche.
Thanks for sharing Matt.
Ryan
Kathryn OHalloran
Totally agree about not quitting the day job until you can afford it. Too many people try to sell the follow your dreams and the universe will provide philosophy but my motto is the universe doesn’t give a f*ck. It’s all about hard and smart work.
I make my living writing fiction and I actually wasn’t earning enough to live on when I quit my job (well, I didn’t quit, I was a contractor and my contract ended) but I gave myself a hard deadline. I planned on a 6 month break but was making enough money at the end of that to keep going.
Brittany
Wow, this post could not have come at a better time for me. I’ve been working at monetizing my travel blog recently, and I won’t lie- I’ve been wondering if It’s really worth the effort and if it will ever happen. This post reminded me that so much of why I’m doing It is because I LOVE it, and I love when my readers say I’ve helped them start their own adventures.
Hayyan
I had no idea! Hardly anyone is proud of their beginnings ? But even crappy sites gave you a certain level of experience that you could apply to the blog afterwards.and I love when my readers say I’ve helped them start their own adventures
Babeesh
Thanks for sharing! It’s so interesting to trace the development of the internet. I’m glad you decided to focus on your travel blog and not those spammy websites! But even with travel blogging, it is so interesting for me to see how much the industry has changed in the past ten years. Who knows what will be valuable ten years from now!?
I’m definitely not at the point where I can depend on my blog for income, and I honestly doubt I will ever get there, but it seems time and again to be important to not “put all your eggs in one basket” and not just spend all your time with one aspect of blogging (like social media). It must be stressful to make a living from selling links like those people did a while back and suddenly lose everything!
Kate
Ahh the things we learn as we get older and wiser! Blogging is not easy but when you are doing it from a place of integrity and genuinely want to help people, it becomes something that is enjoyable.
Andra Lynn
Hi Matt,
I believe sometimes we get started for the wrong reasons but we find what we’re meant to do eventually. It’s all apart of growing up and finding your passion. I can relate.
Thanks, Andra
Lisa
I was in TKA too. That was a great community! I am pretty sure his name was Court 🙂