A Day In The Life Of A Full-Time Travel Blogger [Podcast Ep. 5]

Curious what a day in the life of a full-time travel blogger really looks like?

Then this episode is for you!

Right now, I’m pulling back the curtain to provide an honest look at what being a travel blogger is really like, specifically when not on the road.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What a typical blogging schedule looks like for a full-time blogger
• How I stay organized as a travel blogger
• Some of the regular blogging tasks that are on my to-do list
• My favorite self-care apps
• Why I love being a travel blogger (Hint: It’s not just the travel aspect!)
• And more!

A Day In The Life Of A Full-Time Travel Blogger – Podcast Episode Audio

Listen to the full episode using this embedded player…

…or click the links below to tune in on your preferred audio platform:

Click here to listen on Apple Podcasts/iTunes

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Prefer video?

The above offers a video version of this podcast version — with some humor included!

To help you really jumpstart your blogging success, I’m offering you a seat in my free five-day profitable travel blogging e-course.

This free e-course takes you from branding through community building to monetization. By the end of the five days, you’ll have a clear plan for making money through your website.

Click here to grab your seat inside!

Links From The Episode

Here are some quick links to episodes and tools mentioned in this week’s episode. Note that this list contains affiliate links, though I only recommend products I love and think you would, too!

Asana. Free project management + scheduling tool.

YogaDownload. An online yoga school with thousands of yoga and meditation classes.

Shine Text. Sign up to receive a free daily pep talk via text at the time of your choosing.

Insight Timer. A free app focused on helping people meditate and sleep better.

The Miracle Morning. A life-changing book by Hal Elrod that shares how you can change your life by changing up your morning routine.

Click here for the podcast episode on building an email list for free.

Click here for the podcast episode on creating a mindful morning routine.

Click here for the free five-day profitable travel blogging e-course.

My Daily Blogging Routine – Episode 5 Transcript

You have the most fun job in the world!

Do you just work on the beach all day and drink pina coladas?

So you just go to places and write about them and make money?

These are just a few of the statements I get regularly from well-meaning people who absolutely do not get what I do as a full-time travel blogger.

Is travel blogging a fun job?

Absolutely!

But I definitely don’t work on the beach all day — actually, sand would get in my blogging laptop — and I absolutely can’t get drunk all day or I’d get nothing done. And since as a blogger I’m my own boss, it is essential that I stay on top of my work.

If you’re curious about what being a full-time travel blogger is really like, stay tuned because in this episode I am going to be sharing what my day is like beyond what I post on social media.

Now before we dive into this episode, I want to direct your attention to the show notes where I’ve shared a link to my free 5-day profitable blogging e-course. It’s one of the best free blogging courses online!

If you’re at all interested in starting a blog that earns you an income, this free email course will show you step-by-step exactly what you need to do to make this happen.

So feel free to pause this episode to go grab that.

You back?

All right, let’s dive in!

What does a blogger do?

Before researching how to start a travel blog and make money, I think it’s important to understand what a blogger actually does to see if it aligns with what you want to do.

Let me start off by saying that if you’re interested in travel blogging because you think you will just go to places, write about them and get paid, you’ll be very disappointed.

Your blog is an online business, and just like with any online business you’ll put in a lot of hard work; so, you need to be organized and have a business plan for bloggers template mapped out.

I actually use Asana, a paper planner, and a paper calendar to keep myself organized — plus a ton of Post-It notes.

I like to use Asana to map out my big goals as well as my daily, weekly and monthly tasks, and then I transfer what I need to do into my paper planner, adding any major events like coaching calls with students and photo tours I’m leading onto my paper calendar the night before.

I’ll actually look at my paper planner, see what needs to get done the next day and map out a schedule so I can be as productive as possible and make sure I get the important tasks completed.

Being organized like this means my morning is less stressful and I don’t wake up needing to check emails and Instagram DMs immediately.

A full-time blogger’s morning routine

While I’m usually against looking at screens within the first hour of waking up, there is one reason I will look at my phone:

To get my daily 6:00 AM texts from Shine, a self-care app that sends me a morning pep talk through a short blog post.

Actually, today’s topic was on slowing your pace and not feeling guilty about it. Love it!

From there. I’ll usually do some combination of self-care activities. I’m a big fan of The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod who recommends doing exercise, meditation, journaling, reading affirmations and visualization for 10 minutes each in the morning.

Some mornings I do all of this, though I’ll admit many mornings I stick to reading my Shine text, doing a 20-minute yoga session with YogaDownload, meditating for about five minutes using the Insight Timer app, and journaling in my notebook.

I am a little weird and have a simple marble notebook journal as well as a journal that I paint and decorate. The latter is for when I feel like I have a really good journal entry and I want a more beautiful space.

By the way, I do talk about my entire morning routine in-depth in the podcast episode on mindful morning routines.

From there I take a shower, get ready and make breakfast — always eggs and fruit.

Honestly, when I’m traveling and can’t have eggs and fruit, I feel really off. My partner always makes blueberry pancakes and I never join him in that. I need my protein.

Daily blogging work schedule

Once breakfast is done, it’s time to get into work mode.

Often I’ll go to a cute cafe nearby for some cold brew or a cappuccino, though sometimes I’ll work from home and make myself a Nespresso.

Quick note:

I know these machines can be bad for the environment, so I want to throw in here that we do recycle the pods, just for anyone wondering. There is no coffee on earth that wakes me up like Nespresso. I love it so much.

At my standing desk I look at the schedule I’ve created for myself. No two days are totally alike since every month brings a different big goal.

This week I’m working on relaunching one of my blogging courses — which is one of the main ways I monetize my travel blog — so I’ll spend the morning crafting my launch emails.

My email list is hands down the most important part of my blogging business, and it’s where I focus most of my energy in terms of growing and nurturing of community.

I think of my email list as my family to an extent, and have met up with a lot of the people on it in real life, with many also taking my courses and joining in on my Facebook Lives — all that good stuff.

And another quick note, I do have an episode on how to grow your email list for free as a blogger.

In the morning I’ll also complete my daily tasks like checking my tour booking software for new tour bookings, interacting in the Facebook groups I manage as well as the ones I’m most active in to become more visible, manually pinning on Pinterest, and checking on my Facebook Advertising to make any necessary adjustments.

Daily blogging routine lunchtime

I don’t check email until lunch. Otherwise, I’d get nothing done. My focus in always on growing my blog fast, so I can’t waste time.

I usually make myself a salad and a veggie burger and work on emails for about an hour or so.

After I’ve done emails, I need to edit a blog post and video from a recent trip I went on.

Sometimes this content is for my own trips and other times it is content I’ve created for a press trip or a brand campaign. Other times it might be a post I’ve created to help educate my blogger community or promote an affiliate partner I think my audience will love.

For all content, I want to make sure that the blog post is in-depth with pinnable graphics, clickable tweets, social media sharing buttons, a free bonus resource, and usually a video to really make it engaging and shareable.

On another day, my afternoon might look a little bit different.

For example, I may set up to film a video I’m recording for my travel blogging audience.

My videos consist of travel blogging tutorials as well as actual travel videos that I shoot on location.

With the blogging centric videos, I also create a free resource to pair with the video that people can get by joining my email list.

Again, my blogging strategy is really growing and nurturing a community. So everything I do keeps this in mind.

Honestly, on this day I’ve scheduled a lot of big important tasks so I’m going to leave my launch emails as well as the blog posts and video as drafts so I can check everything again tomorrow when I’m fresh.

I don’t like to get myself to that point where I’m struggling to even keep my eyes open; where I’m re-reading sentences over and over again because I can’t concentrate.

That’s when you really need to just close up and go enjoy your night and come back to everything tomorrow because you don’t want to put out a post or an email that just sounds super weird, but sounded okay to you when you were kind of out of it.

The end of a day in the life of a blogger

To end my day I’ll hop on social media to respond to comments and messages as well as answer more emails.

Quick note:

If you’re wondering how to do social media marketing, remember that social media should be social, and that interacting with your community is important.

I’ve also been slacking on Instagram stories lately so I’m going to create a few in Canva for the next few days to get ahead of myself.

When I’m traveling I usually share short phone videos and clips on Instagram Stories, but when I’m home I’ll create the Stories in Canva.

Usually, I’ll end the day around 6pm or 7pm, though tonight I’ve got a live Q&A call with my Travel Blog Prosperity members, which means I’ll be working a little bit later.

Other nights I’ll take a power yoga or hip hop class, head to happy hour with my friends, or just veg out on the couch to Netflix and chill and eat dinner with my fiance, Andy.

I’m also a big fan of relaxing with a glass of wine and an adult coloring book — just for some self-care.

Why I love being a blogger

I’ll be honest:

While I do spend at least one week each month traveling, my favorite part of being a full-time travel blogger is really getting paid to be creative and be my own boss, even when I’m home in New York.

I also love the time freedom because, yes, while there are always things that need to get done as my own boss, I can shift my schedule to do them whenever I want. You know, when it’s convenient.

Maybe Andy and I decide we want to head upstate for the day and go on a long bike ride. So the things that I was planning to do today, I’ll shift to tomorrow and the next day.

All right, now I hope you enjoyed this episode.

I hope this gives you some good insight into what a typical day looks like for travel blogger.

Don’t forget to grab your seat in my free five-day profitable travel blogging e-course and make sure to subscribe for future episodes so you don’t miss a single profitable blogging strategy.

Happy blogging!

Do you still have questions about what a day in the life of a full-time travel blogger is like?

Have anything else to add about the experience of being a travel blogger?

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