Talking With Laura Bronner, the Eternal Expat Travel Blogger

I’ve known Laura Bronner for many years and she may be the only person interviewed on here that I’ve watched the Super Bowl with…in Mexico. She is known as the Eternal Expat but has not been living in a single place, or even a single country. She also added a second blog focused on one destination, so read on to see how all that has played out.

What did you do before becoming a travel blogger and how did that transition happen?

I’ve had a lot of odd jobs over the years, which in part, is what finally led me to travel blogging.

I graduated from college in 2010 and immediately left for what was meant to be a gap year. The plan was to take some temp work for a few months in New Zealand, save up some money, and then travel for the rest of the year before returning to the US, applying for a Master’s degree (in politics if you can believe it!), and getting on with being a grown-up.

Instead, I ended up staying for a whole year in New Zealand where I worked for the city council of Christchurch, then I did some light farm work in exchange for food and accommodation.

I moved to Australia where, for two years, I worked for a software company. My first and only taste of corporate life. It was good to confirm that it wasn’t for me.

There was the year I taught English in Korea where I was able to quickly cross “teacher” off of the list of possible career paths.

It had been four years of working jobs I didn’t love, saving as much money as I could, quitting those jobs, and traveling until I was almost broke again.

It sounds romantic looking back on it, but it was hard and stressful and I knew I couldn’t keep collecting all of these odd jobs on my resume. I wanted to build a career that I could take with me around the world.

I started my blog Eternal Expat in 2016 when I moved to Mexico City with the intention of turning it into a full-time business. While I built the website, I was a copywriter for different travel websites as well as doing some freelance travel writing for publications like Lonely Planet and Matador Network.

How long did you work at it before you started making enough to live on? Was there any single turning point?

It took two years of working on Eternal Expat before it really started to take off and earn real money with advertising and affiliate income.

It was about two and a half years of work before I finally gave up the last of the copywriting jobs.

I distinctly remember staying at a magical little cabin in the jungle in Costa Rica in 2018. My boyfriend was out on the porch reading a book in a hammock, drinking a cold Imperial. I was sitting inside under the mosquito net, close to the Wi-Fi router, sweating profusely while typing out yet another copywriting job.

When I finished it and went outside I realized that I didn’t actually need to be taking these jobs anymore. My website had paid for this trip and I wasn’t even enjoying it. That was the last copywriting job I did. I enjoyed the rest of my trip in Costa Rica, which I happily wrote about on my blog once I got back home a few weeks later.

Your hubby’s job is an interesting one and it has taken you to several places as an expat. Tell us about that and how it has influenced what you covered.

Yes! Luke works as a soccer coach and his job has taken us to places we never would have chosen on our own. As he grows in his career he is always interested in finding roles that push him further and he’s found those roles in Mexico City, Lithuania, and most recently, Seattle, Washington. The third one surprised us most of all.

I built much of my business at the beginning on our life in Mexico City and my travels through the rest of Mexico. We spent four years in Mexico City and then a final nomadic year around the country in places like Mazatlan, Chihuahua, Los Cabos, and Todos Santos.

I had always known we wouldn’t stay in Mexico forever, so I did my best to prepare my readers for new destinations. When we moved to Lithuania, it was the perfect opportunity to expand my business across much of Europe.

Many of the people who love to travel to Mexico were also suddenly interested in what I had to say about Greece, Italy, France, and Spain. Writing about more countries has also allowed me to grow my audience beyond what was possible when I was only writing about one country.

Now that we’re back in the US, I mostly intend to continue growing my Mexico content since it’s a short flight to Los Cabos, Puerto Vallarta, and Mexico City. I’ve already been back twice since we moved here six months ago!

You’ve run a general travel blog for all these years but more recently started a regional one about Spain. What inspired that and how has it been going?

I was spending a lot of time in Spain while I was living in Lithuania and when I would write about it on my main travel site, it would rank almost immediately on Google. I was intrigued by this, so did some more digging around to see what competition existed for a Spain-specific travel site.

It seemed like a good business decision and I always wanted to test my blogging skills to see whether Eternal Expat had just been a fluke or if I might actually know a thing or two about growing a website.

I started The Spain Travel Guru in March of 2023 and since then I have grown the organic views to about 65,000 monthly readers.

I spent most of last summer living in and traveling around Spain and am planning a few return trips for the end of 2024 and early 2025. It’s exciting to have a new project, especially amid all of the turmoil with Google search at the moment and their general travel search results getting so useless.

How many income streams are contributing to your overall earnings and how have they changed over time?

I currently have 7-8 different income streams across my entire business. Both blogs are on Mediavine, which means I’m earning income from advertising on both sites. Both are also earning affiliate income. Sometimes I earn a small amount of income for sponsored articles on the websites.

I have a YouTube channel where I earn ad income as well as earning from sponsored content when I work with companies.

I have four guidebooks about different destinations around Mexico which are available digitally on my site as well as on Amazon in paperback form.

I have worked hard in the last few years to grow my websites so that they are almost entirely passive. That’s changing now and I would say in the next 12 months I will be spending significantly more time on my YouTube channel and trying to build more income from sponsorships.

Since you’re on blog #2 now, what advice would you give to someone who is starting from scratch or thinking of adding an additional site?

Spread your risk. While a year ago, Google and SEO-focused sites were a reliable way to build your business, I think it’s time to start thinking about how else you can drive traffic and build community that will go with you everywhere.

I would recommend starting to build your e-mail list from the beginning, especially with niche sites. E-mail lists are a great way to continue to bring traffic to your site whenever you publish new content and build dialogue with your readers.

SEO is still important and it’s not dead despite how a lot of bloggers are feeling these days. You still want to create content that people want to read and that, for me, has always been the root of SEO. When you understand what people are searching for on the Internet, you can write the solutions or answer their queries in your blog posts.

I also think video is becoming more and more important. Whether you are posting on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, or elsewhere, we can’t, as bloggers, continue to ignore what a huge role it is playing in the industry. I actually think the smartest move in 2024 is to start a niche YouTube channel rather than a niche blog (at least until we know what Google’s next move is!).

 

Laura Bronner is a travel writer, YouTuber, and travel addict. She left home for what was meant to be a gap year and 14 years later, she’s still scratching the travel itch. You can find her most often on Instagram, YouTube, or on her sites Eternal Expat and The Spain Travel Guru.