There’s two big constraints when it comes to travel, and of course everyone who wants to travel immediately knows what they are:
Time and money.
If you have the time, you probably don’t have the money. (Ironically, to get the money you have to sacrifice the time.)
I’ve told the story of how we took a 5 month covid-era “adventure” with our two kids under 5, but in that post I didn’t go far into the details that everyone wants to know when you talk about extended travel:
Where’d we find the time, and how’d we fund the trip?
My husband had a good telecommunications job that he gave up when we decided to travel.
I won’t lie; that was a hard decision, made just a little easier by a difficult situation. We decided to go two weeks before we left, he gave his notice and that was that.
Sometimes, good things require sacrifice of other good things.
To get the time to travel, he had to give up the job.
That’s one half of the equation, and it’s the easier half for most people.
Money can be more challenging.
One of the factors that made the choice slightly easier for us is that I have created a job that comes with me on the road.
A computer and an internet connection are all I need to make a full-time income.
Years ago, I would have called myself a “blogger” – these days that’s uncool and we’re supposed to say “content creator”. (My husband thinks that has only f*ns connotations, so honestly I try not to get into the discussion with anyone too often.)
13 years ago I started my first website. It was actually a travel blog. We’d just come home from an around the world trip (pre-kids), and I had wanted to document it and make money by writing… but that site never got off the ground. I was wildly overwhelmed by WordPress, and never logged into it more than a handful of times.
For a couple years I read everything I could about “blogging” and making money with websites and the dream just kind of chilled on the sidelines.
In 2016, pregnant with my first baby, I decided to give content creation a real honest go. Like my life depended on it.
(I couldn’t bear the thought of paying someone else to watch my kids all day while I made minimum wage and brought home less than $1000 per month.)
I put in 60 hours per week the first year. I spent every free moment I had writing and promoting my old school “mom blog”.
I invested and studied and experimented and applied – and one day I opened adsense to find I had made 17 cents.
I knew that where there was 17 cents there was more… and I was not wrong.
Within a year my website was making over $5000 per month.
That feels like a lifetime ago now.
Ai has changed the landscape of the internet into something totally unrecognizable in the past few years.
I use to teach people how to start content creation businesses (I still have some information available at carlycampbell.co, but only what I think is relevant now). I don’t sped a lot of my time teaching people how to make money online anymore, because I’m so far removed from the start it’s hard to be relate-able… but despite the changes, business is just as good now as it’s ever been.
Income streams fluctuate, and there’s always a sort of uncomfortable uncertainty about the future (but you kind of get used to that).
The tiny draw back to be aware of in regards to travel is that when we travel I take my computer.
Once the kids are in bed I open it and I work for an hour. Sometimes, my husband takes the kids to the pool or a playground and I get in two hours. I pay for wifi on every flight because that’s often a whole work day I can squeeze in.
There is no time off… but when your work time can overlap with your vacation time, you suddenly solve the time issue.
It’s a small price to pay for the ability to be able to pay for a vacation with money you made on the vacation.
People ask me all the time; do I think it’s worth start a new website in 2027?
I think there’s still lots of potential for people to make money with websites, yes. Even if we’re having to learn to navigate the Ai world.
In fact, I think that the value in human written content will only go up over the next few years.
I’d even bet on it.
After all, here I am, writing another 1000 words on a brand new website, on a brand new-to-me subject, with a brand new bet I can make this work.
13 years later; I finally have my travel blog. Wish me luck!
