BRITAIN'S TOP COUPLE TRAVEL BLOGGERS
Whether it’s regular weekend breaks or full-time nomadic lifestyles, travelling can bring you closer together as a couple. These couple travel blogs feature the inspiring stories of British twosomes who love exploring the world together, one adventure at a time.
If you’re struggling to make travel work around the 9-to-5 or want to escape it altogether, these couple travel bloggers will show you how it’s done!
One duo in this category will be nominated for the British Travel Awards’ brand new Teletext Holidays Blogger Award by our expert panel.
MEET KACH AND JONATHAN, FROM TWO MONKEYS TRAVEL GROUP
“We had a very natural and unplanned path into travel blogging. Having taught English in Vietnam and South America, volunteered in various hostels and even started our own mobile massage business with a folding table and a wheelbarrow, we decided to write about our experiences and how we kept ourselves on the road without returning home to work.
When we started, we already had a good following after some mainstream media features. As well as focusing on our own content and social media, we spent a lot of time and effort networking with larger publications in order to broaden our reach and readership. In our first several months we had features and contributions in publications like Cosmopolitan, Business Insider and Forbes. After five years, we still believe that in order to grow, you have to aim far above where you currently stand.
Our income streams are much the same as any other travel blog for the most part; affiliate marketing, brand partnerships, product reviews, and advertising. More recently we have started to add certain services, such as one-to-one travel coaching.
From the very beginning, we have had a weird mix of travel styles and lifestyles, switching between full-time travel and expat life, hitchhiking and luxury travel, then two years of living on a 37-foot sailboat with two cats in the Caribbean. Now we’re moving to Montenegro to start a whole new chapter of whatever happens next. We keep ourselves on our toes and that reflects in what we post online.”
MEET JUSTINE AND SCOTT, FROM WANDERERS OF THE WORLD
“Wanderers of the World inspires couples to escape the 9-5 through day trips, weekend getaways and 1-2-week holidays. Our blogging journey started with the desire to prove to others that anyone can see the world - despite limited annual leave days. Few travel blogs are designed for professionals; our blog has been designed to fill that gap.
Since October 2016, our blog has grown to over 20,000 social media followers and 50,000 monthly page views. Over 80% of our traffic comes from search engines, while our average time on site is over 11 minutes. In other words, we truly understand what our readers want.
Currently, we monetise our blog through ads, affiliates and brand partnerships. We also plan to launch our own range of travel guides - written for normal everyday travellers, by normal everyday travellers.
To conclude:
• We’re not digital nomads. We’re happy seeing the world one destination at a time - and we want to empower others to do the same
• We’re UK travel experts. We’re proving there’s just as much beauty in our home country as there is overseas
• We’re not doing this for the ‘likes’. We spend more time crafting well-written content than battling social media algorithms”
MEET JAMES AND SARAH, FROM THE WHOLE WORLD OR NOTHING
“We started thewholeworldornothing.com at the end of 2015, almost as an afterthought before setting off on what was meant to be a one-year trip. Neither of us knew a thing about blogging. It was just intended as a convenient way to keep our friends and family in the loop.
Our first posts were embarrassing, diary-style entries that no one but our mums and a few close friends felt obliged to cast a glance at. But we persevered, and after publishing some well-received money-orientated posts, we realised that many people are extremely interested in tips on travelling well for less. Fast forward three years and we haven’t stopped travelling. We write almost exclusively about how to keep it affordable with lots of practical advice.
We’re not massive - around 60,000 readers a month - but through affiliate sales and adverts we make enough to support ourselves. Plus, we’ve recently started selling “The Whole World Or Nothing” t-shirts – shameless plug.
We’re different because we do everything independently – no tours or press trips. We like to challenge our own and others’ preconceptions by visiting less popular locations. And we enjoy these amazing experiences for less than anyone could ever imagine.”
MEET STEFAN AND SEBASTIEN, A.K.A THE NOMADIC BOYS
“How we got into travel blogging? We fell into it by accident. Stefan used to be a lawyer and Seb a computer programmer working in SEO. We quit our jobs in London in 2014 to take a Sabbatical in Asia, which turned into a 2-year adventure across the continent. Our blog back then was just a collection of our stories and photos from each place we visited, focusing on the gay scene and interviews with locals we met. About a year in, the number of people visiting our site grew a lot and we realised we were onto something new and very exciting!
Back when we registered our Nomadic Boys domain in October 2013, when we were preparing and planning for our big Asia trip, Seby’s mother and Stefan’s little nephew were our sole 2 followers. Today we’re getting around 200,000 people a month visiting our website and almost 250,000 people following our posts across our social media channels.
We love engaging with people, particularly Stefan, who manages our social media. We reply to every single one of our comments and DMs and really enjoy it. By doing this over the years, we’ve built up our own fabulous community of followers. One of the things we did at the outset was aiming to post something at least once every day/other day, with a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour wherever possible. We still do this and are loving it.
We started out monetising our blog with sponsored posts and freelance writing projects for other publications. Today we mainly make money from social media campaigns, advertising and affiliation income.
Us in three words? Engaging. Entertaining. Quirky.”
MEET CHRIS AND HEATHER, FROM A BRIT AND A SOUTHERNER
“We started our travel blog, A Brit and A Southerner, in 2011 as a way to document our travels and allow our parents to keep updated as to where we were travelling. The initial goal was simply to keep a journal so that we could reflect on our trips together in later years; it was only when we started checking our analytics and comments that we realised that we were inspiring people from all corners of the globe to explore.
Over the last 8 years, our blog has grown to over 110,000 followers across social media platforms and with 60,000 unique visitors to our website every month, we are reaching a diverse audience. We have only started monetising our website in the last 18 months through advertising, media trips and brand ambassadorships. Persistence, consistency and being “real” are the three main components of growing an audience. It’s not all about the numbers, rather it’s about having an engaged audience and that is what our primary focus is.
In such a saturated market, it’s critical that you are able to stand out from the crowd. For us, it’s our ability to relate directly with the everyday person. We both have regular day jobs at a university but can relate to the 8-5 person that still wants to travel. We focus on “exploring the world one weekend at a time” and try to inspire people to get out of their comfort zone and travel, even if it’s a few miles outside of their home town. Yes, we have started monetizing our blog but that’s second to our real passion for having a travel blog – to inspire people and increase their wanderlust!”
MEET MATT AND LUCY, FROM TWO TICKETS TO
“Whilst studying together, we discovered a mutual love of night trains and border crossings, and started the blog from scratch after entering the world of work. What began as a creative outlet for two part-time travellers became somewhere to reflect on journeys and engage with amazing people - it’s been surreal to watch us grow from 0 to 14k followers across Instagram and Twitter.
Our relentless passion is turning every snippet of leave into an adventure; sharing tips and tales from the Balkans to the Caucuses and beyond. Typically travelling overland between cities, you won’t find us in one place for long! We currently choose not to monetise blogging – although we love recommending great places and experiences to our followers!
Three philosophies we stand out for are:
• From being stranded in Bosnia to being accused of spying in Kaliningrad, things aren’t always perfect – and that’s where it gets fun!
• Despite working full-time, we squeeze every drop out of our breaks
• We love exploring areas which haven’t yet been discovered by large-scale tourism. There’s beauty and wonder to be found absolutely everywhere”
MEET AMY AND ANDREW, FROM OUR BIG FAT TRAVEL ADVENTURE
“In 2013 we quit our jobs and left London to travel the world indefinitely. We’ve been blogging about our journey at Our Big Fat Travel Adventure ever since and now have over 9,000 followers across our social media channels and email subscriber list. Rather than engaging in follow and link-building groups, we’ve let our traffic and following grow organically, focusing instead on creating useful, inspiring content about our travel experiences.
Our blog is more a labour of love than a business and we make the bulk of our income through freelance writing and teaching, but we do earn some money through affiliate schemes and ads.
We believe our blog stands out because we've been on the road for over six years and write all the content ourselves about our personal experiences. In addition, we try to steer clear from standard ‘things to do in X destination’ articles and publish a series of detailed cost posts that break down exactly how much we spend while travelling the world.”
MEET GEMMA AND CRAIG, FROM TWO SCOTS ABROAD
“We kick started Two Scots Abroad to document our 18-month career break to travel the Americas and Europe. As the stamps on our passports increased as did the site's success, going from hundreds of hits per week to now thousands every day.
Although we predominantly focus on creating ridiculously useful travel guides and packing lists, we're also social! Our Instagram, Facebook and Twitter have grown from a couple of hundred of followers to 35K. These travel lovers have followed our story from backpacking around South America, eloping to Austin, balancing full time work/travel trips and now full time professional travel blogging.
I monetise through ads, targeted keywords for affiliates, paid campaigns/press trips and Two Scots t-shirts. I also co-own the popular SEO support network, Make Traffic Happen.
Three things that make us stand out are:
• Tartan and banter
• Ridiculously useful travel guides and packing lists.
• We support other bloggers to succeed through Make Traffic Happen and fight to raise the profile of travel blogging in Scotland”
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A COUPLE ENJOYING HOLIDAY ON A TROPICAL SANDY BEACH
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