Are You Running a Content Creator Business or Just a Travel Blog?

If you’re a travel blogger, there’s a question you should probably be asking yourself on a regular basis: “Am I running a real content creator business, or is this just a travel blog getting some ad money?” The latter will take up less of your time and be more passive, but if you want to grow it into the foundation of a real business, it’s probably going to need to extend beyond putting up random articles and hitting “publish,” just hoping to see the money roll in.

Back in 2013 I spoke at what may have been the real turning point when travel blogging exploded: TBEX Toronto where more than 1,000 people were registered. My talk was titled “Beyond Your Blog: Expanding Your Publishing Empire.” Some of the resources and tools I mentioned are no longer around, but the underlying principles are as valid today as they were then.

The people who kept rolling through the algorithm changes like an ATV hitting streams and puddles were diversified. They had multiple streams of traffic and multiple streams of income. They weren’t getting 90% of their visitors from Google and were not getting 90% of their money from display ads.

I’ve seen the social media venting — and had the corresponding, “I’m doing great” conversations at TBEX conferences — so the patterns are quite clear. I could have told you in 2013 that this was going to be the case.

The principles in that talk eventually formed the framework for my Travel Writing Overdrive course that I’ve offered for a decade now, helping students go from one income source and so-so earnings to multiple streams that add up to real money. The three key themes of that course are three that I’ve found to be the keys to my success.

1) If you want to earn like a real business does, you have to treat what you’re working on as a real business.

People looking in from the outside think that travel writers lead a life of leisure. Instagram doesn’t help in that regard. Any of us making a living at this are working as hard as most managers in an office do, maybe more, but people think it looks fun so it must not be all that hard.

Much of the wok is enjoyable, of course. I never dread Mondays and I’m genuinely happy to sit down at my desk in the morning and get started because I love writing and I’m passionate about travel. I’d rather be in the zone creating something worthwhile that will last instead of frittering away my life watching the latest sub-par show on Netflix. When I’m traveling and doing research, it’s downright fun.

Often we have to work hard though, and write when we don’t feel like writing, and deal with technical crap that’s out of our comfort zone. We have to do accounting and send invoices. Sometimes we have to write the article Google wants or what an editor wants instead of the article that could win awards and really fuel our soul.

Plus people have compared writing a book to the process of giving birth, with a lot of time and pain. So yes, sometimes being a content creator feels like real work that is not so fun. Suck it up and get it done because that’s what a job is about sometimes, especially when you own the business.

2) Most successful businesses are diversified, with multiple income streams. 

What if Apple only sold one model of phone and nothing else? What if Pepsi only owned one flavor of soft drink? What if Marriott only had one hotel brand? Would any of them have kept growing?

Unless you love to live on the edge and you’re the kind who bets on a single number in roulette, you want to diversify. That’s true in investing and it’s true in publishing. More diversity is going to smooth out the financial roller coaster and help you sleep better at night.

Diversity in where the money is coming from, what drives the income, and if possible, there’s diversity in niches too. If you have one blog and it loses 50% of its traffic in a Google update, you’re screwed. If you have a few of them, it’s very unlikely that they’ll all take a hit at the same time.

Ideally you want to diversify your dependence on search traffic as well, though that’s much harder than taking a course on SEO and tweaking your headings. I do that through publishing books, doing a lot of e-mail marketing, getting quoted/linked from other sites, running a Substack newsletter, and freelancing here and there.

Others do it through social media campaigns, Pinterest, video cross-promotion, or getting quoted in the media constantly. All of these can be an extension of your blog—of your platform—but they’re not as dependent on what Big Brother decides to change or not change in its algorithm.

3) You have to show up consistently and do the work.

When I look back at the students who have done well in my Travel Writing Overdrive course and the ones that have just muddled along or given up, it’s the ones who persist and stick it out who are the success stories. They’re not necessarily the best writers, the most original thinkers, or the ones with the most social media followers. Every week they show up, do what they said they were going to do, and hit “publish” over and over.

I know it’s going to be trouble when a student pushes back on committing to a set publishing schedule, even one as vague and unambitious as “I’m going to put up a new blog post once every two weeks.” They’re waiting for the muse to strike so they’re going to be toast. I don’t need a crystal ball to know they’ll fail.

The successful ones are also doing what I would call the janitorial work of blogging that’s unsexy but effective. They’re fixing broken links, interlinking relevant posts, updating old posts, and combining/tweaking posts that have failed in order to turn them around and generate traffic.

Then the ones that really knock it out of the park are always asking themselves, “What’s next? What will take me to the next level? What can I do today that will get me to where I want to be in a year?” Often that’s outsourcing, or starting a second site, or buying one to rehab and grow. That’s thinking like a business owner! It’s going from artisan to entrepreneur.

Yes you can do this part-time.

If you have a job you love, one that pays the bills and gives you joy, then there’s nothing wrong with being a part-time travel blogger. I know lots of bloggers that are very comfortable earning a few hundred bucks here and there and getting invited on the occasional press trip. For them it’s like a hobby that pays them back sometimes and they don’t aspire to do more.

For some travel bloggers, their blog is just a way to express themselves and talk about where they’ve been. For others it’s just a path to freebies, a way to get some comped travel and get them out of the house on someone else’s dime.

There’s no shame in that if it’s the path you’ve chosen. If you’re stuck on that path despite trying to get out of it though, to exchange the job you hate for the business you would love, then that’s another story. Figure out how to break out of that rut and grow your income..

Otherwise, keep creating consistently

Ask any of the bloggers that are making a comfortable living, many of whom we’ve interviewed on this travel writing blog, and they’ll tell you they’re running a real business that pays their bills and then some. The blog is the anchor, not the be-all end-all.

For some, the blog isn’t even their main source of income: a side business they started running tours or a podcast or a book publishing enterprise is now bringing in more money than the blog itself. If you’re continually experimenting and testing new things, you can benefit when one of them takes off.

For other creators the blog, or multiple blogs, will still be the primary income source, but they supplement that with 6, 10, 12 or more other sources. They write books, they lead tours, they write freelance articles, they shoot video, they sell photos, they get hired as speakers. They’re regularly asking, “Is there something else I should be doing with this platform?”

“Gosh, that sounds so tiring!” some bloggers have told me, right after they spent ten minutes moaning about how their income was only $200 a month. Well duh! Since when is running a business that throws off thousands of dollars in cash every month easy? That kind of thinking is what drives the market for get-rich-quick schemes and courses.

Yes, it takes serious energy and sometimes long hours to get traction with a profitable business that pays all your bills. Ask the construction company owner, the food stall owner, or the software company founder. If you want to join the adult entrepreneurs of the world, you need to sweat and get tired sometimes, especially the first few years of blogging.

Sure, you don’t want to spread yourself too thin, but that’s an overblown fear for most people. You can solve most time management problems through automation, outsourcing, and back office AI. Or by just doing a better job of prioritizing what is actually moving the needle and what’s not. When it gets to be too much, you back off of one project or you sell it and take the cash.

The Case for Multiple Lines of Business

Personally, I’m a strong believer in going beyond one blog and that has served me very well over the years. I sold one blog in 2015 for more money than I’ve earned in a year sometimes and still had other websites left to work on. In 2023 I sold a city walking tours business I started from scratch in Mexico. In 2024 I sold one of my websites. All resulted in nice cash-outs for a business that I took from $0 in earnings to a sellable asset.

That’s the power of building a real business, one with multiple parts that can be detached, rather than putting all the eggs in one basket. You’ve got equity that has real value. The hard work in the beginning gets you to a fat payday later when someone else takes over. (The next one I’ll probably put through Empire Flippers. Check them out at that link.)

It’s also important to be humble and recognize good luck when it comes your way—and also to avoid beating yourself up when things take a downturn. We can set up our stretch goals in January and aim to get X visitors per month or Y affiliate sales per quarter, but much of that often ends up being beyond our control.

We can’t control what Google or Amazon does, for instance, so there’s a limit to how much we can move levers and immediately see changes. Sometimes working 80 hours isn’t going to accomplish more than working 30 (especially if we’re spending a chunk of that time on social media).

What we do have control over is how we spend our time, how we prioritize our tasks, and whether we approach our content creator business as a real business. There will be many, many days of frustration along the way, but if you keep building, keep diversifying, and show up every week, eventually you’ll find yourself sitting atop a real business that’s earning real money.

P.S. – If you’re wondering what that graphic is at the top, that’s a snapshot collage of earnings reports from my travel content business one particular month. Not all of them, of course, because they won’t all fit…