Alex Wieteska-Gasior has all the time had a ardour for journey, and as quickly as she might, she moved overseas to show English.
This gave her the chance to dwell a nomadic life, which she started to doc on a weblog known as Roam & Thrive.
As soon as on the street, she absolutely understood the significance of not solely experiencing new locations, but additionally caring for your self each mentally and bodily.
Her web site gives sensible journey ideas and vacation spot itineraries whereas additionally leaning closely in direction of wellness and retreat guides, maintaining a healthy diet, and health. Right now she’s making $5k a month and residing the lifetime of journey she’s all the time dreamed about.
Hold studying to search out out:
- Why she created her weblog
- How her weblog led to different alternatives
- The place her earnings comes from
- How a lot visitors her web site will get
- How she grew her web site
- Her essential advertising methods
- Her ideas on AI
- Her strategy to search engine optimisation
- Her key phrase analysis course of
- Her content material creation technique
- How she leverages her DMs
- Her go-to assets and instruments
- Her largest problem
- Her biggest accomplishment
- Her essential mistake
- Her recommendation for different entrepreneurs
Meet Alex Wieteska-Gasior
I’m Alex and I’m a content material writer and photographer. I’m initially from London, UK, the place I lived for many of my life, or till the age of 25.
I used to be actually fortunate to have the ability to develop up touring fairly a bit, primarily round Europe, after which, once I reached my late teenagers, additional afield.
All I wished to do was journey. Individuals would all the time ask me what I wished to do for a residing later in life and the reply was all the time “I don’t know,” whereas I used to be continually fascinated about how I might make a residing from journey.
Again then, running a blog, influencing and any sort of content material advertising didn’t exist, so I grew to become an English trainer as a result of it allowed me to journey.
I went to dwell in China, Nepal, and Chile, and I traveled a lot of Asia due to these alternatives, however the earnings wasn’t good.
It wasn’t sufficient to construct any sort of wealth and I wished to construct my very own on-line enterprise, one thing that might give me the liberty to dwell life on my phrases.
That’s once I began Roam & Thrive, out of a 600-square-foot residence in Barrio Italia in Santiago, Chile, the place I used to be residing on the time.
I did fairly a little bit of touring through the improvement of Roam & Thrive, residing nomadically in locations like Mexico and Costa Rica after which transferring again to Europe and at last to Puglia, Italy the place I purchased a home final 12 months.
I presently dwell in Puglia, Italy about 50% of the 12 months and journey the remainder of the time.
Why She Created Her Web site
I created Roam & Thrive out of my ardour for journey and a want to encourage others to discover the world whereas sustaining a wholesome life-style.
The thought got here to me throughout a interval once I was touring extensively and realized the significance of not simply experiencing new locations, but additionally thriving bodily and mentally whereas on the street.
Roam & Thrive focuses on offering sensible journey ideas, distinctive vacation spot guides away from the generic garbage you generally see on-line, wellness and retreat guides, and photographic inspiration to assist vacationers take advantage of their journeys.
Beginning out, I started by sharing my very own journey experiences and wellness practices on a easy weblog platform. My preliminary content material included detailed itineraries, health routines for vacationers, and tips about discovering wholesome meals choices whereas overseas.
As I continued to journey and collect extra experiences, I expanded the weblog to incorporate extra complete vacation spot guides, and Roam & Thrive started to maneuver extra into the posh facet of journey, however a way more aware luxe.
Progress got here via a mixture of constant, high-quality content material, partaking with my viewers on social media, and optimizing my web site for Google. As I developed my pictures profession, Roam & Thrive additionally began to get an increasing number of visible.
I’m somebody who’s extremely impressed by visuals once I’m doing journey analysis on-line and I wished Roam & Thrive to do the identical.
Total, Roam & Thrive stays my major focus and fervour and I haven’t began another companies aside from being a contract photographer.
Roam & Thrive has grown right into a complete useful resource lately for vacationers searching for a wellness-focused, luxurious strategy to journey. By steady studying and adaptation, I intention to maintain increasing the weblog’s attain and impression, serving to extra folks journey mindfully and dwell higher journey experiences general.
How A lot She’s Incomes
I earn round $5-6k a month with Roam & Thrive. It fluctuates slightly all year long due to a couple various factors like advert RPMs, which content material is trending at completely different occasions of the 12 months, and so on.
Advertisements, that are run by Mediavine, present the most important portion of earnings, about 45%, and after that, affiliate internet marketing (35%), primarily for lodge, tour, and automobile rental bookings.
I additionally promote my very own merchandise like pictures prints (5%) from numerous locations around the globe and I additionally promote a really specialist map-guide about Puglia, Italy (15%), which I feel is among the most complete journey assets to the area that’s on-line proper now.
Roam & Thrive isn’t my solely earnings stream, as I’m additionally an expert photographer specializing in journey and life-style pictures for numerous journey manufacturers and lodges.
I additionally earn a living licensing pictures from my travels to purchasers.
My web site presently will get round 60-70,000 web page views per 30 days. It was extra final 12 months, however we suffered fairly a bit from the Google updates.
I work on my enterprise about 6-7 hours a day. Which may not all be for Roam & Thrive, as I would must take a little bit of time to edit some photographs for a shopper or write a contract article for an additional mission, however that’s the common. I get pleasure from it although, it doesn’t really feel like work.
Her High Advertising Technique
Relating to rising Roam & Thrive and reaching a wider viewers, my #1 advertising technique has all the time been simply creating immersive, interactive content material that resonates deeply with my viewers.
I feel if you happen to create nice and genuine content material, folks come again and I’d prefer to assume I’m fairly dedicated to delivering the very best suggestions and content material I can and updating it when mandatory.
I journey to all of the locations I write about, {photograph} them in my distinctive model, and sometimes present myself in them so readers can see I’ve been to those locations and introduced a novel perspective to the desk.
It’s tremendous straightforward in the present day to simply sit at residence and let AI spit out some low-quality, badly researched journey articles, and sadly, we’re seeing an increasing number of of this in the present day so folks don’t actually know who or what to belief.
It’s necessary to indicate readers you’ve been there and know what you’re speaking about.
I additionally ship vacation spot e mail blasts to my viewers as soon as 1 / 4 from trending locations I’ve not too long ago been to.
In it, my viewers will get suggestions on the place to remain, eat, and play in numerous worldwide locations and it’s all very native, insider intel. You possibly can’t discover that stuff on-line or with AI; it’s fairly unique.
In fact, I additionally use search engine optimisation as the most important advertising technique, and social media, particularly Pinterest.
I don’t assume it’s distinctive, however as I’m in a really visible area of interest and an expert photographer, I’ve been in a position to leverage Pinterest as a platform to generate an unlimited quantity of visitors.
My technique there was to pin persistently and manually for years and to make use of good photographs. I feel the standard of the pin/picture on Pinterest issues loads, in order a photographer I’ve been in a position to leverage that.
Her Ideas on search engine optimisation
search engine optimisation has been important to Roam & Thrive, notably initially. I feel now with all of the updates and Google doubtlessly transferring away from supporting unbiased publishers, it could be getting much less necessary, but it surely stays a spotlight for us.
Our technique has all the time been about discovering low competitors, lengthy tail key phrases and writing about that, although we’ve additionally tried to concentrate on a content material theme and write extra round that to construct extra authority. Watching what opponents had been writing about initially was helpful at occasions.
Technical search engine optimisation can also be a key element. I guarantee my web site is quick, mobile-friendly, and has a transparent, logical construction whereas additionally being design-friendly.
Commonly updating content material, constructing high-quality backlinks, and interesting with my viewers via social media and different platforms additional help my search engine optimisation efforts.
Key phrase Analysis
My key phrase analysis course of begins with understanding my viewers’s pursuits and desires, utilizing instruments like Google Key phrase Planner, KeySearch, and different assets to collect knowledge.
I additionally see what’s working presently, what persons are studying, and whether or not there are any content material gaps to fill round these locations.
I concentrate on long-tail key phrases which might be particular and fewer aggressive, analyzing search intent to categorize key phrases into informational, navigational, and transactional varieties.
Competitor evaluation helps me determine gaps and alternatives, and I map key phrases to my content material technique by creating complete pillar content material and supporting cluster content material.
Common monitoring and updating of posts and key phrases guarantee my content material stays related and well-ranked however I’m not nearly as good at updating posts as I’m creating new ones.
Hyperlink Constructing
Hyperlink constructing is certainly one thing I’ve struggled with prior to now, by no means actually having a clear-cut technique for it.
My technique all the time went one thing like “rank on the prime of the Google Search and folks will naturally hyperlink again to you,” and in my circumstances, this has labored: our top-performing content material has essentially the most hyperlinks.
I’ve used HARO fairly a bit prior to now to be featured or quoted in different content material for a backlink, and I’ve additionally written freelance content material for different websites in trade for a backlink, however that’s just about it.
Her Content material Creation Technique
Our content material technique begins with the reader. I like to write content material for folks, not for Google, so I begin by watching and listening to what persons are doing in the case of journey.
My nostril is firmly within the trade, so to talk, so I do know which locations are and could be trending shortly.
I’ll do a little bit of key phrase analysis after which I’ll journey to these, or as a lot of these as I can, I’ll then do extra key phrase analysis and start writing about these locations.
I additionally are inclined to hearken to my social media DMs. Many individuals ask for journey recommendation alongside the traces of “I’m visiting blah vacation spot quickly, have you ever been there?”
Oftentimes, the identical locations come up repeatedly, which makes me e book the journey and create content material round it as I do know folks wish to learn it.
Typically I’ll do random key phrase analysis round a vacation spot I wish to go to; generally the journey is definitely worth the whereas and I’ll take it.
We’re occurring about 350 articles.
Alex’s Electronic mail Listing
Sure, I do have an e mail record, but it surely’s comparatively small as a result of I by no means put a lot effort into rising it or had a strong technique for growing it. Nevertheless, that is one thing I’m actively engaged on now.
To develop my e mail record, I’m specializing in creating worthwhile lead magnets comparable to journey guides, and unique content material, comparable to our Puglia map that guests can entry in trade for a small charge and their e mail addresses.
I am additionally optimizing sign-up types on my weblog to make them extra seen and engaging, and I am experimenting with pop-ups and inline types to seize e mail addresses with out being intrusive.
Mediavine’s Develop program has been nice for this, with out me having to do a lot additional.
Her Favourite Assets
I feel Brandon Gaille and his podcast, The Running a blog Millionaire, has been some of the influential assets for me, not only for running a blog recommendation but additionally inspiration basically.
I do love Area of interest Pursuits, too, and hearken to the podcast weekly; it’s excellent for trade information and inspiration.
KeySearch has been and nonetheless is among the most helpful instruments for key phrase analysis, particularly initially of your small business whenever you don’t have the funds to pay for the extra superior ones like Semrush.
I additionally use and love RankIQ, Brandon Gaille’s personal key phrase analysis platform constructed for bloggers. It has allowed me to jot down prime and better-ranking content material and attain web page 1 of seek for many various key phrases.
I additionally use a Pomodoro timer on my desktop to get severe work completed. I are inclined to get distracted fairly a bit once I write, so the timer helps me to concentrate on getting these phrases down.
Her Essential Problem
Site visitors progress! This has all the time been the most important problem: getting sufficient visitors to have the ability to attain my monetary objectives as a enterprise. It’s actually taken me years to get to a stage of fine visitors and earnings.
In current occasions, all of the Google updates haven’t been good to us. Between the HCU and March’s core replace, we misplaced round 40% of our Google visitors, which is heartbreaking whenever you’re attempting to construct a web based enterprise.
As most entrepreneurs in the identical place will know, these elements of the enterprise are so irritating as we are able to’t do something about them.
Having no management over many elements of the enterprise is a problem, particularly in the case of progress, and that is the most important problem we face now.
Her Essential Accomplishment
I consider in small wins throughout every stage of constructing companies. Small wins which, over time, result in bigger and bigger ones. I’ve actually had a lot of small wins alongside the way in which.
One was undoubtedly entering into Mediavine and having the ability to earn a full-time earnings from my first web site.
One other is, in fact, when readers write to you thanking you to your content material and the way a lot you helped them out.
My “why” and true cause for beginning out was to have the ability to information folks of their queries and searches and provides incredible journey recommendation that basically helps them.
When readers come again to us and say how a lot X content material helped them, in a way we’re attaining our “why.” I feel attending to that stage needs to be one in every of my largest accomplishments to this point.
What She Needs She Knew When She Began
I feel each on-line writer would have liked to know extra about search engine optimisation or hyperlink constructing methods, or methods to construct an e mail record successfully, however I suppose these are simply a part of the educational course of.
I underestimated the significance of search engine optimisation from the start. Understanding methods to optimize my content material for search engines like google earlier on would have considerably accelerated my weblog’s progress and on-line visibility.
Her Largest Mistake
I’d be mendacity if I stated I hadn’t made fairly a number of errors, particularly initially once I first began out.
The foremost one was not investing sufficient in myself, my abilities, and my enterprise. I used to be very frugal beginning and, wanting again now, had I spent extra alone training and studying issues like search engine optimisation, I might have little doubt progressed loads quicker.
The second pretty giant mistake I made was not having that enterprise mindset about my enterprise from the get-go.
For the primary couple of years, it was a facet hustle, however I didn’t consider it as one thing that might succeed as a enterprise, so I handled it extra like a passion facet hustle.
I feel if I utilized that entrepreneurial and enterprise mindset to it from the start, it could have become a worthwhile enterprise loads quicker.
Her Recommendation for Different Entrepreneurs
Spend money on your self and your small business early on with no matter assets you’ll be able to. Go area of interest along with your web site.
Additionally, do not underestimate the facility of networking. Join with different entrepreneurs, trade specialists, and potential companions.
These relationships can provide help, present new alternatives, and provide insights that you simply won’t have thought-about.
And eventually, not simply because I run a wellness-focused journey weblog however, handle your self. Entrepreneurship may be demanding, and sustaining a wholesome work-life steadiness is essential. Prioritize your well-being to maintain your vitality and creativity.
