Last year about this time I asked you – what are your travel blog goals for 2010 – and many of you responded with aims at monetization, maintaining a blog around hectic travels, and I even chimed in with a few of my own. Now that a full year as gone by, before we start looking at 2011, I’d like to find out how far you’ve come.
- Whether you replied to the original post or not, tell us, did you accomplish your travel blogging goals for 2011?
Let me know how things went across the board if you were successful, fell short in a few places, or had some unexpected accomplishments. I’ll round up your responses as well as my own in an upcoming post before looking at the year ahead.
[photo by: betsyjean79 (doll thinking)]
Thanks for asking =) Because we’re travellers/expats who have been stuck in one place for too long, this year was about creating the blog and getting some solid posts under our belts ahead of our next round of long-term travel. It’s difficult to fix bugs and work out kinks while you’re travelling full-time – we thought best to work those out ahead of time. I think we probably exceeded our expectations this year. The goal was to get a bit of a following and to start meeting people in the community. We didn’t even think about money, though we did make a tiny little bit. We met way more people that I thought we would and even have some subscribers, which is incredible. Everyone has been tremendously supportive! And we’ve been able to develop a flow and get involved in some of the travel blogger events and communities. So, while we’re not on any ‘top travel blog’ lists or making a profit (are there tax deductions for fiscal losses due to blogging?), I think we’ve been pretty successful given we haven’t even taken off travelling full-time yet.
It definitely sounds like you’ve been busy! I certainly recommend getting all of your coding/design/technical work out of the way and stable. Once you’re quite busy with travel it’s much easier to focus on writing if the technical side of things are working as they should 🙂
As for the tax deductions…it depends on where you are and how you claim your blog 🙂
I didn’t set any goals for 2010, but I sure will be in 2011!
Would love to hear them, feel free to share!
trying to get Runawaytokyo.com up and running before my trip to Thailand. while learning as much as i can along the way through culture, bloggers, and innovators. While a full time student at UCF. life is a funny thing ya know?
Lots to do! What’s the direction you want to take the site?
I did hope that I would have achieved more in monetizing my blog and although I’ve made some good steps in that direction, I still have some way to go before my blog can provide any meaningful financial return for all the hours I put in.
The main reason is that I’m working full time in a well paid job, so my time is very limited and I don’t have the financial necessity to be really focussed in that area. Just as well that I love travelling and writing about it on the blog, or I’d have given up long ago.
With the time involved it really does become a labor of love 🙂 Hopefully in 2011 your blog revenue will reflect all the work you continue to put in.
My goal for 2010 was to reduce my working hours without reducing my income accordingly. It worked! I now work between 14-28 hours per week on average, and my income has actually gone up!
I also hit the road again (after spending a little too much time in Oz – long story), and visited nine countries, and traveled almost 20,000kms on long distance trains in about six of them.
Here’s my Holiday e-card with a summary of my 2010 adventures for anybody who’s interested:
http://www.theprofessionalhobo.com/2010/12/happy-holidays-this-was-2010/
I need to work on that too in the new year, I’m an addicted workaholic!
I loved the holdiay e-card btw and your last few posts have been quite spot-on. Great writing and lucky for me great reading! Happy holidays 🙂