Developer Gets Paid for Weekend Trips Abroad

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

[Music]

Hello and welcome to Side Hustle School Episode 613. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host. And today's story, because every day we have a story, today's story features a California web developer who always wanted to travel, but only had limited time to do it. Because you know, she had a full-time job, like most people do. So instead of giving up the dream, she decides to pack in as many adventures as she can on a series of weekend trips abroad.

Little did she know that these adventures would become a profitable side hustle. They allowed her to visit 13 countries in a single year while working that regular full-time job under the promise of see the world at the weekend. Now, not everyone out there wants to become a so-called digital nomad. So for everybody who has responsibilities, hello, it's called life, this story might inspire you. Oh, and by the way, it's called developer gets paid for weekend trips abroad because she's making money doing this, of course.

Last year she made about $10,000. Stay tuned and I'll tell you how. [Music]

Kristin Shockett always felt the call to travel. She knew there was a whole world out there waiting to be seen, and she wanted to immerse herself in it. However, her life wasn't ready to be packed into a rucksack and carted off around the world.

She had a full-time job as a web developer that she enjoyed, a partner she loved, and a life she wanted to keep living at home. Kristin wasn't ready to give it all up for a life on the road. In her position, it might be easy to resign travel to just a pipe dream, promising to get to it when you're older or maybe when you retire, but that wasn't Kristin. She chose to see the restrictions of her day-to-day life as challenges to embrace. They weren't reasons not to travel, but obstacles to overcome.

She wanted to see how much of the world she could see in the time she did have. So Kristin began to use vacation time from her job tactically. She'd utilize weekends to visit closer destinations like Mexico and her two-week vacation time to explore further away places. And in her first year, she became so good at this that she was able to visit 13 countries without taking extra time away from work. While researching and planning her trips, Kristin noticed a trend.

There were lots of websites and travel guides suited for the long-term backpacker with plenty of time to explore their destinations, but there were very few to help the time-strapped weekend adventurer looking to eke out every second of their trip. She felt like she couldn't be the only person looking to see the world at the weekend. So she decided if nobody else was gonna do it, she would create the content that people needed. She was doing the traveling anyway, so why not document it? Her next trip took her to scenic Iceland and she packed her camera.

Kristin documented everything, from the hotel she booked and the tour she'd planned to the gorgeous landscapes and the food she ate. Every little detail a weekend traveler could need was recorded and featured in her video. When she got home, she used the free software iMovie to edit it and uploaded it to a YouTube channel she called Run the Atlas. She chose the name Run the Atlas for a number of reasons. First, she wanted it to be easy to write, so there would never be any confusion.

Second, she wanted a brand name that emphasized the fast-paced nature of her trips. And finally, she needed it to be available as a domain name she could purchase. On April 27th, 2016, Kristin uploaded her video to YouTube and found it was an instant success. It quickly amassed more than 130,000 views, more than the population of Reykjavik, where she was just a few weeks before, and it confirmed her suspicion that there were other people out there who wanted this kind of content too. So she decided she would create one of these videos for each of her trips.

She also invested in some tools to help her better understand her audience. Although she never quite replicated the success of her Iceland video, she slowly began to gain subscribers and views. This slow but continuous growth had some benefits. It allowed Kristin to create more of a brand around Run the Atlas. She added a blog and social media feeds to accompany her channel, and it gave travelers other ways to find her content.

Start-up costs were cheap. They were just about $300. But now that she was investing some money in the project, Kristin felt it was time to treat it more like a business and earn some money from it too. Her travels were already costing her enough, and she didn't want to pay to document them as well. Plus, of course, extra money could help her book better trips.

Unlike some of our other features, Kristin didn't have any products to sell, and she hardly had any time at all between her full-time job and the traveling, so she began to look at advertising and affiliate programs. She added YouTube ads to her videos and began to recommend products and services in her blog posts. She'd get an affiliate link for everything she recommended, from travel guides on Amazon to Airbnb signups, and include them in her posts or video descriptions. Much to her delight, people began to buy, and then she would get a commission. Another way Kristin has been able to generate income, or at least get her travel expenses covered, has been through networking with tourism boards.

She would attend conferences and develop relationships with them, and then offer to share videos exploring their locations. This alone has taken her to a number of countries and paid for experiences she would otherwise never have had. In addition to the free trips, all of this has led to a yearly income of between $7,000 and $10,000, again, on the side, part-time, and largely passive. Kristin says the best way to start and grow a travel business like this is to create valuable, shareable, and unique content. Find out what your audience is looking for and cater to that, but with your own take on it.

Don't forget to include your opinion. There are so many people out there vying for attention. It's on you to stand out. Looking ahead, Kristin wants to expand into creating travel guides, products, and merchandise. And she'll do this while continuing to see the world at the weekend.

So Kristin's market, her target market, the people she's trying to serve, it reminds me, in a lot of ways, of the people I had in mind when I started side hustle school, 613 days ago. So in her case, she is catering to this large group of people, in fact, the majority, who would like to travel but have no interest or ability to take off with a backpack for a year. In a lot of ways, I think this is almost a response to the digital nomad movement, to the idea that everybody can go and do that kind of thing because not everybody can, not everybody wants to. Meanwhile, I wanted to make this show and this community for people who are, again, kind of the majority of people who didn't necessarily identify with being a capital E entrepreneur. So if you're out there listening and you are that capital E entrepreneur, you're like, yeah, this is what I always want to do.

I never want to do anything other than work for myself. Well, that's great, but you aren't really who I have in mind when I make this show every day. Again, I'm making this show for people who have jobs, who have lots of responsibilities, but are trying to invest in themselves by creating a new source of income. So perhaps the lesson is, when everyone is going one direction, don't be afraid to look the other way because some people are probably being left out and you can profit from that gap. Not only that, but you might also find it to be easier than trying to be another me too and a pattern or a trim that so many other people are chasing.

I hope you enjoyed that story. This is my encouragement for you of the moment. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Our show notes for today are at sidehustleschool.com/613. That includes links to Kristen's blog or videos, anything else I mentioned.

If you are interested in traveling, I'll give you a quick little link to my number one credit card recommendation. This is where you can earn 80,000 points valid for $1,000 in travel on your choice of airlines or hotels. If you go to cardsfortravel.com/bonus, you'll go straight to that page. Again, that is cardsfortravel.com/bonus. This is the same small business card that I use every day for my own spending.

It's been very helpful and I hope it helps some of you as well. Thank you for listening. You're a rock star. I hope you'll join me again tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau and this is Side Hustle School.