How I Became a Full-Time Travel Vlogger in Under a Year

Over the past 2 years my life has changed unimaginably. I went from being stuck in an office in Australia to being able to travel the world continuously and live the life I always wanted.

Now I want to share with you how I've done it.

Just over 2 years ago, I was on my working holiday visa in Australia and it wasn't working out. I'd been living and working in Perth for 6 months and I'd begun to realise that it wasn't for me. I'd already been travelling for a year previously, after selling my stuff and quitting my job to travel the world , and now it was 18 months later and I was in exactly the same position just in a different country (nice work genius). The problem was that I never made a long term plan – I just saved up a certain amount of money, went to a few countries and watched the money I'd saved slowly disappear (maybe some of you can relate?).

I decided I needed to change my mentality. I WAS NEVER GOING TO WORK ON SOMETHING I DIDN'T WANT TO AGAIN. That was my mission. I was going to do whatever it took to earn money online and live wherever I wanted, working on what I wanted. I realised that the best place to do this in the short term would be South East Asia. It's beautiful, cheap, has a good infrastructure (meaning mostly decent wifi and good hostels) and I'd been there before so knew what to expect.

I started out offering web design to friends and family and picked up a few gigs, earning enough to keep me going with the savings from my job in Australia (roughly $4000). This is when I began my video blog about learning to 'Travel the World Continuously'. I had limited video editing experience as I'd half-heartedly tried to create a YouTube channel before but really, I was a complete beginner. I made a video compilation of my previous year's travels and I asked just about everyone to share it. With the help of my friends and family that video then started to go viral. It wasn't that I was a master editor – I just took a long time to edit it, using video tutorials whenever I ran into trouble. WATCH IT HERE

So I traveled and worked online for the first few months, picking up a few gigs here and there. I even picked up a client that wanted to pay me $2500 to create them a website! I worked long hours to make sure I finished the website but... the client never paid. To this day, I haven't seen a cent of that money. Obviously that was a big setback and didn't help my dream of travelling continuously, but I kept going regardless and carried on with the video blog, trying to upload at least every 2 days.

The most important thing about this part of the story – I CARRIED ON AND KEPT GOING.

After about 3 months my video blog was beginning to pick up some traction and people were finding me. I lived as cheap as I could and found anything I could online to make small amounts of money. With 6 months of continued effort and learning, I had reached about 7000 subscribers and was making a couple hundred dollars a month from my videos.

I don't believe it wasn't because my videos were amazingly shot or edited that I was gaining popularity, I think it was because I was continually improving and trying to make each video better than the last (mainly through trial and error and watching YouTube tutorials).

I was now 6 months into my journey and running low on money. I'd been living as cheaply as I possibly could but still my savings were running low and I wasn't bringing in enough revenue with my current strategy. I decided that I could either spend more time doing web design or double-down on what I really wanted to do and spend more time and effort on the video blog. I went for the video blog. This decision was when my life started to change.

All my time was now devoted to making videos and other content. Through my efforts on social media and approaching sponsors, I lined up my first press trip! It was an all expenses paid trip to China for a 2 month residential Jiu-Jitsu course. I had just about 8000 subscribers at this point and the opportunity was incredible (thank you to GJJ China, Ferdinand and Alison for all their support). It wasn't paid but all expenses were covered i.e. food, accommodation and training included.

Not only was this an incredible experience but it also allowed me to really concentrate on growing my video blog without worrying about the money. I believe this was instrumental in creating the YouTube channel I have today and although I understand that it was a fortunate opportunity, I also believe that you have to recognize these opportunities when they come along and make the most of them.

From here it just snowballed. I continued to create videos every two days, constantly trying to improve my quality and relate back to what my growing audience wanted to see. I made the most of any money-making opportunities I could i.e. licensing videos, ad revenue, affiliate links (more about all of this in a future post) and soon enough my next sponsorship came along – a luxury cruise with Royal Caribbean!

I won't go through all of the companies I've worked with and places I've been since, if you are really interested then you can check out my channel HERE

The point I am trying to make is that my luck began to change when I REALLY went for it. It was when I really committed to the video blog and began to put all my effort into it that I started to notice the rewards. I would happily work 12 hours days behind the laptop in order to make it work. I would share my videos absolutely everywhere, constantly thinking of new ways I could find subscribers. I employed the idea of daily gains, making sure I found new subscribers every day, in order to create a larger audience in the long run.

From my experience, that is what I would say is the essence of growth on social media – CONSISTENT MARGINAL GAINS. Making sure that you are growing every day, making sure that you are making new connections or learning something new EVERY DAY. That has been, in short, my secret to success over the past 2 years. There are always some days where you grow more and some days where you grow less, but as long as you are consistently putting in the effort every day then you will always be moving forward.

If you consistently put your content out there then people will find it. Keep going, keep creating content and employ the philosophy of marginal gains and who knows where you will be in a years time.

Tips to remember:

• Continual improvement & learning
• Make an upload schedule (at least once a week, more frequent the better)
• Share everywhere
• Make consistent marginal gains
• COMMIT.

If you want to learn more then make sure to check out my YouTube channel