Now the most obvious ways are to scrimp on what you spend, to assign a portion of your wage into a separate account with high interest and to cut out those amazing extras, but I don’t want to focus on that. I want to find some creative ways you might not have thought of to help make it all seem less daunting.
1) Start A Travel Blog
We’re a dying breed, but I’ll stand by it, I’m getting more traffic from Google Organic than any other year in the 15 years I’ve been running the blog.
My first point would be to ask if you’re truly passionate about travel? If not, pick a different niche which you truly care about. Because when it gets to a Thursday evening when you’re tired from work and you have to go home, eat dinner, then spend your evening writing, it can feel overwhelming. If you prefer food for example, then angle your blog in that direction.
You might even feel your niche is around dogs, then you could arrange dog friendly holidays!
Next step is buying your domain name, seriously don’t rush picking the brand name as you’re stuck with it. While you’re working on other bits and making choices, I’d strongly recommend getting some articles written up whenever you get some free time, people underestimate how much this alleviates the stress once the blog launches.
You need to set up your hosting (can be done when you handle the domain name). Pick your CMS, such as WordPress. Then you need to work out a theme or style. Don’t automatically go down a travel angle when looking for a theme, you might find looking at say beauty themes or food themes actually works amazingly for a travel blog.
I could write so much about this subject, but I’ll leave the partnerships for a later stage (we’re talking affiliate deals, press trips, ads etc), as the first step really is launching, which is time consuming and intensive, so worry about the rest later, the important thing is to jump in, don’t let fear stop you!
2) Become A Content Creator
I still find it weird when I speak to people big on Instagram and they call themselves ‘bloggers’, despite not owning a blog. It’s because the term ‘influencer’ is truly cringey. But content creator, that’s alright!
I would recommend setting your name up on all the profiles, so you have them covered. So this does include TikTok, Instagram and YouTube (beyond that it’s optional).
Videos are king. The best part nowadays is that you can create a portrait video and publish it as a reel on Instagram, on TikTok and on YouTube Shorts. Making the video is 90% of the work, then uploading is the easy bit, so it blows my mind that people don’t upload to all of them.
Then once you’ve grown the account to a level you’re comfortable with, you can reach out to hotels, restaurants or tourist boards and see whether they would be interested in a partnership. This would involve you creating content on your channels in exchange for a free stay or a free experience.
Just remember to disclose if you are working with a brand, something the ASA is quite hot on.
I use CapCut for the video editing, while you also have Edits for Instagram which is decent (not around when I got used to CapCut). You’ll pick these up really quickly. Forget the trash templates, just go from your raw footage, clean them up, connect them, maybe add a voiceover, watch others to learn what you like.
3) Freelance Before & During
One of the most surreal moments I had while travelling was sitting down in a hostel overlooking a beach, plugging in my laptop, helping myself to the included free coffee, then writing all morning for a client, before spending my afternoon swimming in the sea and then heading out for the night in a city I didn’t know.
See if your work is open to you freelancing, or even carrying on your work on a part time basis while abroad. You can also ask around to see if others are looking for work in your area of expertise. I can talk about marketing all day (it’s what my career was built around), but word of mouth with gaining freelance work really is amazing. LinkedIn was also surprisingly good.
Of course, you could visit a Raketti casino while abroad, or buy a scratch card in advance and maybe you’ll be a big winner. That’s always been my dream, I still enter the lottery each week, heading to the newsagents as a bit of a tradition, ready to retire and travel the world full time.
4) Work Abroad
When I went to South America, I had been saving up towards buying a house, it was a crazy dream as I was a million miles away, being single and needing a deposit that seemed unreachable at the time, so my head turned to travelling abroad and I booked my flights.
While over there, I spoke to someone who had spent the last 5 months working in a jaguar wildlife conservation site, where he would help feed them, administer medicine, clean and generally get to be around these gorgeous creatures.
Sure, he wasn’t paid, but they covered all of his costs in regards to food, drink and where you stayed. This meant he got to have a once in a life time experience, help endangered animals and it didn’t cost him anything, then spend the 3 months after travelling around, so his money stretched a lot further.
Of course, you could also work abroad, many of my friends became teachers in Vietnam, while I gained a TEFL qualification (which I never used), but it depends if you like the idea of teaching, as that’s an intensive job, I’d rather something easy when abroad.
