We’ve been plugging away at Goats On The road for 2 and a half years, and we’ve definitely had our ups and our downs. However, we’re very happy to report that more positive things happened for our business in October, than in the other 29 months combined!
We’re so proud of the accomplishments we’ve made recently, which we want to share with you. Here’s an update about our digital nomad lives. We hope it will inspire you to set goals and think positively about your lifestyle and your business!
Here’s what October looked like for the Goats:
We Were published In The globe and Mail
On October 13, John from The globe and Mail (the largest newspaper publication in Canada) contacted us and a few other travellers to take part in an article he was putting together. What an honour! The article was all about a 2 week South African road trip and because we spent 5 weeks driving across S.A, he figured we were a good fit. The article was published in print and online on October 25th.
Our Freelance Careers Improved
At the end of September, we landed a couple of new freelance writing jobs. one of them is a permanent column on credit Walk, where we share our know-how in long-term travel and the financial challenges of nomadic life. We have also had the honour of writing a couple of articles for TransitionsAbroad.com and we’re hoping that we will one day be full-time contributors there as well.
Want to learn how we make money freelance writing? Click here.
We completed another “Guest post Bomb”
Back in June of 2013, we followed Adam Costa’s advice and wrote 20 awesome articles on 20 awesome blogs and had them all publish on the same day. It ended up resulting in a sustainable 33% increase in traffic! This month, we finally got around to doing a guest post Bomb again, only this time we wrote over 30 articles! This GPB has already accounted for approximately a 20% increase in traffic since we completed it. We’re really looking forward to seeing some new readers and making new connections from this massive outreach.
Our income Increased
Dariece and I were having a glass of wine at our private treetop balcony one night (as we often do) and we decided it was time to set a specific dollar amount for our financial goals. We set a number that was a bit unreasonable at the time, given our previous earnings, but we figured “why not?”
Well, we’re happy to say that the universe listened, and in October we earned that amount and then some! got to love the art of manifestation. Our income was nearly 3 times higher than any other month, ever. This is an outstanding reminder that if you set goals and think positively about them, they can be accomplished.
We’re now Ambassadors for the Backpacker magazine Series!
This was another serendipitous thing that happened to us in October. We’d been following along with Nomadasaurus and their outstanding adventure travelling from Thailand to South Africa by land, and when we heard that they were ambassadors for Southeast Asia Backpacker Magazine, we knew that we wanted to be a part of the program.
We know the editor of the magazine because we were published in it back in 2012, so we had a Skype meeting and before we knew it, we joined the ranks of 14 awesome ambassadors. thanks again to Nomadasaurus for the positive recommendation! We’ll be representing the company (which includes three popular magazines), and writing about our previous experiences in SE Asia, as well as our future travels through Europe and South America (don’t ask us when we’ll get there!)
Sponsorship
We’ve been lucky enough to have lots of travel gear, gadgets and trinkets sent to us in the past, but we’ve never actively pursued sponsorship. This month, I decided it was time to get some companies on board to help improve Goats On The Road, mainly our YouTube Channel. We want to get some killer footage, but camera gear can be expensive. I contacted GoPro, but I’m still waiting for a reply from their sponsorship department (I’ll keep newsletter subscribers posted on that).
Feiyu-tech is an industry leader in camera stabilization technology. I contacted them and asked for the handheld GoPro stabilizer (for the GoPro that I haven’t been promised yet!) and they agreed to send us one. now our shaky GoatLife TV and Goat shows will have a whole new, professional look! We’re really excited to give the new gadget a try.
We Were Interviewed On Our first ever Podcast
Dan Parlegreco of the travelling Dan Podcast contacted us and invited us to be interviewed on his weekly show. This was our first time ever being interviewed in audio (not just in writing) and it was a bit nerve-wracking. Actually, it turned out that we sounded alright!.
We Partnered With awesome companies in Grenada
Lately the blog has been helping us to travel in so many ways. one of them is the opportunity to work with great companies everywhere we go. generally the way it works is: we contact an airline, boat company, dive shop, tour agency, hotel, etc. and we explain to them who we are, what we do and how many awesome people follow us. We then offer online exposure in exchange for our work.
After a 3 week, fully sponsored, independent trip through the Grenadines, we decided to start pitching some cool companies here in Grenada that we thought you guys might be interested in if (when) you travel here.
First was Dive Grenada and the owners Phil and Helen were very Internet savvy and aware of their marketing strategies. They hosted me on 6 outstanding dives and it was not only great to see the underwater world, but it was awesome to meet the two of them and learn about their ongoing efforts to help the reef and marine life here in Grenada.
We also hooked up with our buddy Darryl of LovingTheBike.com who has a cafe and bike shop here in Grenada called Mocha Spoke. We headed out on an outstanding bike tour around the Grand Anse area and ended it all with a delicious lunch at his cafe.
We loved our day of sailing with Footloose Yacht Charters last month, so we figured we should get back out on the sea again. last week we teamed up with true Blue Sportfishing for a day of deep-sea fishing! video and article to follow.
Listed As top couple travel bloggers To follow in 2014
This month, Flipkey added us to their list of 25 top Couples travel blogs To Follow and we’re honoured to be in such awesome company! We recognize many of the wonderful couples on the list.
Listed As one of The top 50 travel blogs (based on traffic)
I remember finding this list on the TheExpeditioner.com a few years ago and dreaming of one day joining the ranks of the incredible bloggers. Well, we finally made the cut in October and we came in at number 38! This is the only list I know of that is based on actual Google Analytics traffic reports. There are so many awesome bloggers on it and we’re so honoured to be among them.
Interviews
On October 8th, we featured one of our favourite inspirational bloggers Ryan Biddulph and on October 13th he returned the favour by interviewing us on his site. This lead to some more excellent exposure as Ryan has a huge following of great bloggers, lifestyle designers and travel lovers in general. After being interviewed on Ryan’s site, BloggingFromParadise.com, we were contacted by another great online entrepreneurial site SuccessHarbour.com and we were interviewed by George Meszaros about our location independent business.
Discovery Channel?
We’ve all heard of Survivorman right? You know, one of the only reality TV shows worth watching? Well somehow, through the wonderful power of Twitter, Les Stroud’s camera woman decided to contact us and asked if we could cover an event here in Grenada next year. As we’ll be travelling somewhere in central or South America at the time of the event, they’ve offered to fly us back to Grenada to report on the festival next May.
We’re still not 100% sure if it will work out, but it would be such a great opportunity for us and we’re really excited about it! I don’t think the event would be on (or related to) the discovery Channel, but we can hope right? maybe one day we’ll even meet Les himself!
Here’s To more great Months!
It’s great that all of this is happening for us, but what makes us really excited is how far the travel blogging industry has come. thanks to conferences like TBEX (Travel bloggers Exchange) and brand awareness campaigns, bloggers are finally getting some credit for their work!
More and more companies are reaching out to bloggers. Journalists are starting to work with us, tourism boards are offering better press trips, and bigger brands are partnering with bloggers every day. Soon, the word “travel blogger” won’t sound like a hobby, it will sound like a legitimate career choice (which is what we already think).
We can see the future of our blog becoming very lucrative, but above that, we see the possibility for so many more people to break free and live a location independent lifestyle! We’re so stoked to be a part of this movement and we look forward to a future where work no longer has to be a place… for anyone!
How was October for you? What goals have you made for yourself, or your business lately? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below!
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