1000-1000 Challenge Introductions | 1000-1000 Challenge | Forum

I was looking through this and realized that I never posted in here even though I have started becoming more active in the forum.

I am Andy. I run Grounded Traveler as my blog. My niche is expats. Those of us that decide to live outside of our native land, not "just" travel.The tagline is "Putting down roots and still seeing the world." The blog is about life as an expat, dealing with fear (common as
attached to moving abroad and dealing with another culture 24/7) and my
travels around Europe.

I am based in Southwestern Germany and have been there for 3 years. I use my vacation to go to places in Europe. Up until last year I traveled without airplanes. I have crossed the Atlantic by boat 3 times and been all over Europe on the train. I am just getting over my fear of flight and have a trip back to the US planned for June when I am getting married.

In professional life, I have nearly 10 years experience as a web developer, so the technical side of blogging is as interesting to me as any of the others. My monetization scheme on the blog is complicated by having to deal with German work regulations, but a cornerstone is an ebook that I am writing about the technical basics of the web for bloggers. There is tons of good info in the Net about the technical stuff, my aim is to get people to be able to read and understand that information as well as provide a fundamental understanding. There are so many great bloggers that could be better with some technical know-how.

I have been around in the comments and such in TBC since the first homework. I have been trying to keep up with the homeworks and be active in the forum as much as I can, especially in the technical matters.

Cheers to all.

Hey everyone!

This space looks awesome! So many supportive bloggers! It's nice to see everyone coming out to help one another. I will surely do all I can to help as well!

My name is Kelly, and for the past year or so, I have run Travel Bug Juice, a budget-friendly site for thrifty adventurers. I like to live on a whim, I love to travel and meet new people, and I enjoy waking up everyday a happy, excited person.

So, Travel Bug Juice has been great to me. I've met most of you through there, and have had a lot of great feedback, particularly with our Bug Bytes series, which are interviews with expats living in other countries.

But, what I'm really here for is my newest venture, Go! Girl Guides.  Go! Girl Guides is a company I have recently started, that publishes country-specific travel guidebooks made for solo female travelers. Our first country is Thailand, and already we have a growing community and a list of active bloggers, who are training to become future guidebook writers.

The idea came to me in a dream, and I'm so happy to be following that dream. But I need your help! The response we've already gotten is great, but I want to hit the 1000-1000 mark!

Looking forward to following and helping you all out! Go, bloggers, go!

Twitter: @GoGirlGuides / @TravelBugJuice

Facebook: Go! Girl Guides / Travel Bug Juice

Blogs: Go! Girl Guides/ Travel Bug Juice

I sort of forgot to do this after I signed up last week :) But I remembered now! And that's all that matters, right?

I'm Abbey. I'm the owner of and blogger behind A Chick with Baggage. I'm also looking to launch two undisclosed travel blogs in Q1 and I need all the help I can get with the $1000/month. I would be able to maintain my permanent state of travel with that income (in addition to the income I make doing other freelance stuff) so that's really my only goal.

I'm currently having a life crisis in that I have seen where the $ currently in my bank account will take me, and the end of those funds is fast approaching. So I'm ready to hunker down and get some G's made.

I'm leaning towards eliminating all advertising from my personal travel blog, so I'm hoping that this blog will help me get creative in marketing my other sites to keep all three afloat.

Can't wait to see what I can learn from 1000-1000!

Theodora said:

Hello!

My name's Theodora, and I blog at http://www.travelswithanineyearold.com about the longterm journey my son and I are currently on. We left London in January 2010, and are currently in Bali, Indonesia.

I'm earning the odd couple of hundred quid from my blog, and only just installed Google Analytics, so I've yet to see what my stats are — I had been using wordpress.com stats, which are unreliable — but I receive between 300 and 3000 page views per day, depending what's happening where. I'm also working on developing a second web property, which I'll share with you in due course.

You can find us on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Travels-with-a-Nine-Year-Old/186540714691579

And I'm on Twitter as @Mummy_T

I'm really intrigued by how this community develops and hoping to learn more about the rest of you, and the business of blogging, through this forum.

 

Theodora

I notice that your facebook page name is long and unwieldy. I learned through one of these forums just the other day that you can 'claim' a shorter, more intuitive name for your page at http://www.facebook.com/username/ You have to have 25 Likes already (which I see you already have) and then you can change it. Be careful, the top section of the claim page is for your personal facebook page and the bottom section is for your fan page. The only limitation is that the name can't already be taken but I doubt that TravelsWithANineYearOld is taken! It will make your fanpage url much simpler…www.facebook.com/OneGiantStep is mine…simple! Good luck!

Hi everyone!

I love the idea of this challenge! Although I make my living online, I don't make money from my travel blogs. But my dream is to be able to travel the world and blog about it and make a full time living from it. :) I know it won't be easy but I'm determined to do it.

I started Destination Europe in 2005 when I moved to France from Australia. I initially started it as a way to meet other expats and then later just as a journal of my life in France and my travels throughout Europe.

It was only a few months ago when I decided I didn't want to continue building websites for products I wasn't interested in and instead wanted to spend my days doing what I love and nothing else. So I gave my blog a more professional look and started focusing on writing about travel as well as continuing to write about living in Paris.

I then started 2 more blogs, Vagabond, for my travels outside of Europe, and Bites of Pleasure (food blog) because food is a huge part of travelling for me :)

Current stats:

Destination Europe: 70 unique visitors per day, $10 per month
Vagabond: < 10 per day, $0 per month
Bites of Pleasure: < 10 per day, $0 per month

As I'm sure you know, $1000 per month isn't going to get me very far in Paris so I need to at least $1000 per month per blog. Obviously I have a long way to go!

I'm working on adding more content, link building, and networking on social media as a way to build up my traffic. I will then look at ways to monetize but will probably focus on affiliate offers and am looking to get set up with Foodbuzz as a way to monetize the food travel blog.

So I'm looking forward to working with everyone and hopefully as a group we can all reach our goals.

Andrea

Post edited 9:33 am – January 13, 2011 by David

Hi everyone,

I have been interested in the challenge since I first saw it mentioned on Todd's blog, but I'm not sure I'm totally up for it yet (and in any case, I'm way below 200 visits a day yet), but Todd told me that I could join the forum anyway, so here I am.

I'm David, I'm French and I'm what one could call a "slow traveler", that is when I travel somewhere new, I tend to simply move there for a few years. :) Actually, after seven years in the US (West Virginia and Florida) and five in Paris (my biggest culture shock so far… in my own country… in the very city many people think of when they think of my country… yeah I know…) I currently live in my hometown, a small city in the South West of France and I'm planning my next move. Hopefully, it will be Japan, as my wife is from there and I really fell in love with her home area (that is Shikoku island that you may have heard about on Todd's blog). I'm telling you this because my blogs are about Japan, more particularly about Shikoku (but about all of my travels to Japan really).

I'm not new to blogging (I guess I've been blogging even before it was called blogging as I maintained an "editorials and rants" section on my very first homepage back in 1999) but only recently I started to care about increasing traffic and possibly monetizing my blogs.

I started my blog about Japan in French about a year ago and decided to have an English version just last October.

As they don't get much traffic (yet?) I don't really hope to become rich and famous from them ;) but hopefully sharing experiences with all of you will be beneficial.

Hi, my name is Colin and I live in the UK.

I recently started a blog about Andalucia in Spain where I lived for a while (and still visit frequently). Unlike most other travel blogs which offer thoughts and opinions about places, I'm going to try to make mine much more factually-based. I'm still in the very early stages of creating my blog, so I guess I'll have a lot of work to do in 2011! 

Although I'm new to blogging, I've been interested in the internet for some time and have picked up quite a lot of stuff, but there's still loads I'd like to learn about WordPress, SEO and the possibilities of social media. I hope I can help people whenever I can though!