Belgian Blogger Gets Paid to Wander Through Europe

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

Would you like to get paid by tourist boards and exotic locations to promote their destinations? Well, let's say yes, since, you know, that's what this episode is about. If so, how would you go about getting some experience? How would you get your first paid gig and the opportunity to grow it into a sustainable second income, maybe even a full-time income? Welcome to Side Hustle School, my name is Chris Guillebeau.

We'll look at that question through the lens of today's story, where a Belgian travel blogger gets paid by tourism boards to roam through Europe. Also, speaking of travel blogging, what are the sources of income for blogging in particular? In the case of this person, there are three main sources of income, advertisements, affiliates, and destination marketing campaigns. We're going to focus this story on that last one, destination marketing. I'll also give you some tips in case you'd like to pursue this yourself or in the event you know someone who might be interested.

So that story is coming up in just a few seconds. Stay tuned. Sophie Cowernerg, a native of Belgium, knew she wanted to do something with writing. After graduating with a master's degree, she landed a job as a copywriter for a publishing house and then with the Belgian Press Agency. It seemed as if everything was going according to plan, except she didn't really love that plan.

In fact, it turned out she was bored. Sophie realized she needed more creative freedom and a greater sense of responsibility for her work. It was actually her parents who suggested she start a website about travel. With earnings from her job, Sophie had already begun traveling around Europe in her spare time. And having traveled together as a family growing up, her parents saw a way for Sophie to combine her love for writing with her passion for travel.

That idea sounded good to her, so she got to work building out a free blog. It started purely as a hobby, with a diary-like collection of stories from her trips. But she figured out pretty quickly that it could also be a business opportunity. The site was called Wonderful Wandering's. Not being someone who follows blogs to know about the people behind them, Sophie instead focuses on practical advice.

It's all practical. What to see? Where to eat? And what area to stay in? She meticulously plans her trips around Europe, rarely even entering a restaurant without first analyzing its reviews.

And in less than a year, someone offered to sponsor a blog post on her site. That was the first way she monetized her content, but it wasn't the last or the most effective. You see, Sophie's thorough research on destinations was highly useful. She wouldn't just provide an objective collection of things to do, she would provide a whole ready-to-use itinerary that other travelers could print out and take with them. As she homed in on this focus, her dissatisfaction with the day job grew.

Eventually, she decided to take a leap. The website still wasn't making a ton of money, but she decided to quit her job and work on it. Sophie's parents, who had first tipped her off with a travel blog idea, admitted later that they were a little scared for her at the time. But they chose not to show it. Instead, they were supportive.

Some nice parents there. Besides, Sophie had a backup plan. She could always go look for a job again if things didn't work out. In the second year of the blog, it turned a profit of about 15,000 euros, a bit more than $16,000. The third year, it surpassed 20,000 euros, or more than $23,000.

That year, Sophie reinvested some of her earnings into improving the site, getting contractors on board to help with research and translations, since she runs the site both in Dutch and in English. So let's talk about that. How does she actually make that money? Well, the most effective way Sophie gets paid is through destination marketing campaigns. And this is how it works.

In a nutshell, countries, regions, and city tourism boards hire her to visit their destination and create promotions. They ask for a certain number of deliverables, usually social media and blog posts, so they can get in front of her audience. Sophie prefers destination campaigns for going on a trip with a specific tour operator, because if something on the tour goes wrong, you might be stuck getting paid to write about an experience you don't recommend. And of course, you'll also be stuck on the tour. Working with destinations, on the other hand, allows Sophie to always be honest and to travel as she would naturally.

So when she was starting out, Sophie attended conferences and trade fairs where she could pitch campaigns to potential clients. She also sent out a lot of cold pitches, emailing travel boards from contact info she found on their websites. And I asked her a bit about this because I was curious, do you just go to the website and write the generic email address? And she said, well, I would always see if I could find the email address of either the press person or the marketing person at the tourism board. They sometimes list that on their website, but I would also ask around to see if I could find the relevant person through LinkedIn.

And then I would just guess their email address, because lots of tourism boards, just like other companies, have an email address structure that's something like, you know, first letter of the first name followed by the last name at their domain, domain.com. And finally, if she really couldn't find the relevant address, then she would write to the generic one, but say something like, please forward to the marketing department at the top of the message. That was how she was getting started. These days, travel boards tend to find her instead of the other way around, either through her previous work or from a referral. In terms of pricing, Sophie learned that a quick two-day campaign with a single blog post and maybe some minor social media posts might cost the brand around $1,000.

That's what she would get paid for it in addition to her travel expenses. Anything more than that would be higher, often several thousand dollars per campaign. Sophie's most successful campaigns happen when she's given the most freedom to create her own itinerary. When she collaborates with the tourism boards, sometimes they want a specific topic addressed or a specific place mentioned, but it works best when she's truly free to go spend her time in the destination however she wants. This allows her to plan the trip around the keyword research she's done, which in turn gives her articles a greater chance of ranking well on Google.

That, of course, contributes to a positive cycle, which leads to better relationships and the ability to command a higher value from the tourism board. So I'll get things there. And in reflecting on her success and turning a hobby into a side hustle and then eventually into her full-time business, Sophie puts a lot of weight on the intangible benefits, not just the money. She also has this freedom to visit her grandparents more often, the comfort of wearing sweatpants to work, a growing confidence, a newfound network of friends, and the ability to invest in her future while seeing the world. All right, so let's talk about if you want to do something like this, what are your action steps to get these kinds of assignments?

Let's assume you're not trying to do it full-time like Sophie ended up doing. You just love the idea of being able to travel, report on a different destination, maybe go to a different place once a month, but get your expenses covered and then also get paid for it. Well, you're going to need a couple of things. First one is some kind of platform, you're going to need a website, you're going to need a blog, you're going to need some social media, et cetera. So make sure you choose a name like Sophie chose wonderful wanderings.

Spend some time developing your writing style or if you're going to make videos, your video style or some other format, whatever it is. Try to over time figure out a way to stand out just like she did by focusing much more on practical information as opposed to personality-based travel blocking, which is what a lot of travel blocking is these days and she was kind of saying, "I'm going to cut to the chase and just show people exactly what they need to know about these different destinations." I think that was smart. So similarly, you're going to come up with some kind of pitch for yourself and then speaking of pitch, next you're going to contact those travel boards, which is what she did. I like how she actually found a way to use LinkedIn, guess at people's email addresses, instead of just writing to the generic one on the website, that's usually going to help a lot. In many cases, she got referrals as well and once she had done it a couple of times, then she had references and so on.

So it just kind of builds and builds in this positive cycle. Now you also want to think a bit about your pricing, think about some packages, think about imagine that you write one of these tours and boards and they say, "Yes, we'd be interested in this. What's your price?" Essentially. You want to have a good answer for that. You don't want to just say, "Well, I don't know.

You tell me. What do you want to pay?" You want to be able to say, "Okay, well, here's the price for a two-day campaign where I have this many deliverables, etc. If you want to do something more elaborate, then here is the price for that," and so on. So you can ask around. You can see what other people are charging.

Sophie is in Belgium, so maybe the market is different there. If you're in the States or somewhere else, what are other people charging for this? Maybe base your intro pricing on that and raise your price as you go along and get more experience. Also, as you go along and get more experience, you want to ask for those referrals because a lot of this business is very much about referrals. So a couple of tips for you there.

We're going to link up Sophie's website and maybe some others as well if you're interested in learning more about this field, or just seeing what she's up to. Those will be on the show notes page, sidehustleschool.com/1046, episode 1046. Thank you so much for listening today. Wherever you are in the world, I hope you're having a good day and you're working towards something you believe in. I'll be back again tomorrow.

My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.