Red White Adventures Bloggers Josefine and Dominik

I met Josefine Kraemer and Dominik Kropacek the first time I attended the Bansko Nomad Fest, when I was spending weeks in Bulgaria. Then we’ve connected at TBEX too and they’ve participated in my travel blogger agency‘s brand campaigns. They were back in Bansko as we worked on this interview because it’s their frequent home base. I got the lowdown from them on how they got started and what’s happening now with their Red White Adventures travel blog. 

Two people from different countries, often located in a third, what’s your back story on meeting and then starting an adventure travel blog?

Well, funny story: we actually met in a hostel room of all places. We were both backpacking the East Coast of Australia in the summer of 2016, and both ended up in the same hostel room before a multi-day trip to Fraser Island.

We both had the urge to travel and experience new things together, and we wanted a place to share our adventures, which led to us starting Red White Adventures. Little did we know that it would eventually turn into a full-time business!

We originally met in Bansko, Bulgaria and you’re back there for the summer. What have been the advantages of being based there regularly?

Traveling is a blast, and we continue to visit new places and return to old places, and Bansko is one of those that we seem to continually go back to. In Bansko, we always find the right balance of work, community, time for ourselves, and being out in nature. For us, it checks all the boxes and makes for a really good time.

The combination of all these things, including the Bansko Nomad Fest, makes for a perfect place to spend the summer (we’ve been doing it for 6 years in a row now).

How do you divide the many tasks a travel content-creating couple needs to do, and how do you handle working while traveling?

Unlike most other travel blogger couples, Dom is actually the writer and creative one, while Josie is the more technical person. Dom writes the blog posts, and Josie edits them + optimizes for affiliates. For a long time, we’ve split the workload completely, but we have recently started doing a few weekly “coworking sessions” where we meet up for an hour and actively work on our top priorities together.

As for balancing work and travel, that’s a bit harder. We’ve found the best way to balance this is to first of all accept that there is no perfect balance, and second of all, to slow down. Whenever we’re in one place for a few months at a time, we have way more time to prioritize work without having FOMO of wanting to explore all the fun things that are in each destination.

When we do more fast-paced travel, we try to schedule some downtime in before and after to focus on work to balance it out that way.

What are your main sources of income and what else are you working on for the future?

All of our income comes from our brand, Red White Adventures, but we have many different avenues and ways we monetize our website, socials, and brand. Our main driver is our blog, where we have affiliate marketing, partnerships, paid ads, etc. We also have a growing social media presence on Instagram with 20K+ followers where we work with brands.

On top of that, we have a bunch of different digital products like our Madeira Travel Guide. Recently, Josie also started offering coaching services for bloggers and content creators.

Our future plan is to continue to grow our brand, Red White Adventures, while navigating this ever-changing industry (and new world of AI opportunities).

Now that you’ve been at it for years and can support yourselves while being nomadic, any advice for creators who aren’t as far along as you yet?

Slow travel! No matter what industry you’re in, you don’t need to move around all the time and travel fast. If you’re trying to enjoy the nomadic lifestyle while also growing your creator business, slow down. You’ll enjoy it more, have more time to work on your craft, and you’ll scratch more than just the surface of the places you visit and genuinely build great connections with the place and the people.

Which countries have you stayed put in the longest, and where would you spend more time if they let you, if the visa restrictions didn’t cause you to move on?

It would probably have to be Bulgaria, New Zealand, Madeira, Prague, and Canada.

We’ve been coming to Bansko specifically since 2021, and we always stay for at least two months whenever we come. For some, that might not be long enough, and for others two months might sound like an eternity, but for us it’s the perfect amount of time to make the most of the summer and enjoy this little mountain town tucked away under the Pirin Mountains.

Thinking of where we could spend more time, if possible, is a hard one, but it would probably be New Zealand. We lived in New Zealand for the first time in 2017 and absolutely fell in love with the country, so we’ve gone back three times since then. We love the outdoors, the slow pace of life, and the lifestyle that New Zealand offers, which keeps drawing us back. If it were closer to our families and visas weren’t an issue, we could definitely see ourselves living here more long-term!

Josefine Kraemer and Dominik Kropacek are the couple behind Red White Adventures, a travel blog that has been seven years in the making as they traveled the world and lived in five countries together. They reach 60,000 people a month interested in adventure, sustainability, and he digital nomad lifestyle. See more about them here.