An Interview with Tammilee Tillison

I first met the woman behind Tammilee Tips after the TBEX North America conference in Cancun many years ago, when we were on a post-trip together in lovely car-free Holbox Island, off the Yucatan Peninsula. After fishing, snorkeling, and sharing golf cart taxis, I asked Tammilee Tillison for some travel blogging advice to share with the Travel Writing 2.0 readers soon after. She went on to become a keynote speaker at that conference in 2022 and I’ve been in a mastermind group with her for years, learning a ton. So it’s time for an update! 

Beginning bloggers may look at the incredible success you’re having these days and oh, it looks so easy, right? What was the path like when you first started out and how did you get from there to here?

When I first started Tammilee Tips, blogging wasn’t really a thing. There really wasn’t a path to success 15 years ago. It was the wild west of learning what to do on our own. I created, updated, and broke my website more times than I can count. There were many late nights on YouTube trying to figure out how to fix what I had broken and make the site live again.

I got to where I am now, honestly, through a lot of hours in front of my computer, working on stories and learning everything I could about photography, SEO, business management, website development, social media, and everything else that goes into running a website. The path has not been quick or easy, but it has been amazing.

Looking back on the past 15 years, I am incredibly thankful for the struggles and time spent in the early years learning about the core of running an online business. Having to learn to run a website without tech help in the beginning forced me to dive deep into what it takes to fix it. I also learned how to budget for the ups and downs of running a business.

I still feel like there is so much to learn as the industry changes and grows. Every day brings a new challenge or opportunity to learn something new.

You have been a keynote speaker at the Travel Bloggers Exchange conference, but you’re not a typical travel blogger in that your “tips” also cover food, cocktails, and other subjects. How do you describe what you do to strangers and how have you managed to hold that many-faceted niche together?

My website is definitely not a “typical” travel blog. When I started the site a decade and a half ago, niche blogging wasn’t really a thing. We just wrote about anything that made us happy or that we thought people would want to read. Over time the need to create a niche has grown as the competitive landscape of blogging and content creation has grown substantially.

I love that I can still cover multiple topics with the website. My goal is to share what I am passionate about and what I think my readers will enjoy hearing about. I have worked to create an audience that enjoys reading not only the top things to do in an area but also loves learning more about the food and cocktail scene.

I describe my website as a food and travel website that is built to make you dream of a new place to visit and drool over the food you can enjoy while you are there.

A few times when I’ve heard bloggers talk about strange freebies they got from collaboration deals, I ask, “But have you gotten any kitchen appliances?” Tell us how that came about and what other perks have resulted from your successful blog and social media presence.

This question makes me giggle a bit. The kitchen appliances came from being a Best Buy ambassador for almost five years. I worked closely with their team to partner together and share amazing technology and products that our readers would enjoy. When we built our new house, we were able to partner with Best Buy to set up an amazing kitchen that I showcase through recipes.

We have partnered with some truly amazing destinations and brands through the website. It is always so much fun and a challenge to find unique ways to share a product/destination with our readers.

On a less pleasant note, but a great story, I know you successfully sued a major greeting card company for using a photo of yours without compensation. What happened with that?

I can honestly say that I never thought I would walk into a major retail store and find one of my photos on the front of a greeting card, especially when I had not signed a photography contract with the company. When this happened, I posted on my personal FB page asking if anyone had experience with this kind of situation and I was able to connect with Tyra Hughley Smith, who is not only a travel writer but also an amazing attorney.

Tyra helped me through the process of suing a manufacturing company and we won the suit. I am unable to share the monetary compensation from the lawsuit, but I am happy to say that we were able to get it resolved, and I have not found my photos on future greeting cards.

This is a reminder to make sure you are shrinking photos before loading them onto a website. The company was able to pull the photo directly from my website since it was an early photo that had not been properly sized. Since this happened, we have updated every photo on our website to prevent this from happening in the future.

Many successful bloggers decide to diversify and do that by launching or buying other websites. You built one with and for your husband instead and helped him get that rolling in the right way. What was that process like and how is the site doing now?

Five years ago, we started ParkRangerJohn.com so my husband could share his passion for parks and information on being a Park Ranger. Creating the new website was a labor of love. I had honestly forgotten how much work goes into starting a new online presence. Starting at zero definitely forces you to take a deep breath while reminding yourself it will grow.

The site is doing amazing now and has grown so much more than I could have dreamt it would. My husband’s website has a truly amazing audience that is passionate about parks and outdoor recreation. It has been gratifying to see the growth over the past five years.

The process of creating Park Ranger John has pushed me to make changes to Tammilee Tips. Creating the new site really pushed us to continue learning more about SEO and running a Facebook group.

I don’t think some people in our industry realize just how much money can be made running your own content business instead of writing for others. Can you share some numbers on your traffic and how your income from that breaks down?

I rarely write for others except for brand partnerships that include writing a post for their website. I find that writing for my own site creates ongoing income instead of a single payment per content piece. By writing on my own site, I can craft articles and topics that will pay for years to come.

My goal when I write new content is to create a post that will continue to grow and evolve over time. By focusing on content creation, we have been able to build a six-figure business that continues to grow. Our income model has evolved over the past few years to include not only ad revenue but affiliate income and referral income.

For a long time, I was only focusing on ad revenue through either AdThrive or Mediavine, depending on the website. We have a website on each ad company, so we don’t have all of our $$$ in one basket in case something were to happen.

As we continue to evolve and expand our revenue sources, I look at each post and try to find 5-10 ways I can monetize the article, including ad revenue, video revenue, and affiliate marketing. We have a spreadsheet that we use to track which affiliate links are in each individual post so we can add additional options as we sign on to new programs.

I think the most important tip I can give anyone who is looking to start a website is to make sure you are looking at multiple revenue sources from day 1. The affiliate links you add on day 1 may not pay out until day 500, but you have them placed and ready for when a reader is ready to click on them. Going back through 1600+ articles and adding affiliate links is not fun (trust me, I am still working on this now) but the payoff can be substantial.

What have you done in the past few years that has made the biggest change in your blog traffic or income?

I stopped traveling 160+ days a year and scheduled more in time at my computer. Being on the move and traveling all over the world is amazing, wonderful, and truly life-changing, but that also makes it really hard to maintain all the things that go into running a business. Being forced to spend time at home for a couple of years made me realize how much work I needed to do on updating content, building better systems, and catching up on a lot of things.

Being in the office working daily has helped me create better systems for organizing content, making plans for future content, and updating content that had been sitting for longer than I want to admit. Slowing down allowed us to put in the work needed to almost double our income and continue to grow it.

My business focus has changed over the past few years, and I am so excited to see what the future holds. We are building/creating systems today that we hope will propel us to really big income goals and creating a couple of additional websites.

—

Tammilee Tillison runs the popular lifestyle and travel blog Tammilee Tips along with her husband.