EXCITING NEWS! I am shifting my blog focus from travel-oriented to more lifestyle facing. This does not mean I will stop writing about travel, but that I will open my range of topics to serve the audience that I really connect with: young women who are reaching (or have reached) their thirties, looking for daily tips and inspiration for a more improved way of living, be it in travel, beauty, and mind. If you are wondering why I rebranded my blog and its focus, there are various reasons that made me take the leap.
Granted it was not an easy decision, nor was it straightforward in any way. But it was necessary. And below I will explain to you exactly why I rebranded my blog from exclusively Travel, to a Lifestyle niche (and exactly what does this mean).
Table of Contents
EMAIL LIST
First things first, let’s start from the basics and the reason why I am so behind on my email list. Honestly speaking, writing a travel newsletter is HORRIBLY HARD! First, think about it, why would you read my email about tips to Morocco if you are not planning to go there?
Moreover, people who read travel blogs are people who are looking for specific tips for their upcoming trips or looking for inspiration for a trip they plan on taking. These people are hard to stick around as regular readers because there is not a good enough retention rate. Simply put, they don’t have a reason to come back.
Admittedly, I myself don open ANY travel-related emails from fellow travel bloggers, even from my favorite travel creators. In contrast, if I want a travel tip, I will go to Pinterest and search for it. I do not need someone sending travel tips to my inbox, especially if they are not even talking about an issue that I would be facing at that specific moment in time (how can the blogger know exactly what you want to know about a destination?).
Moreover, I hardly go back to the same blog to get travel tips. Usually, I would go to a variety of different blogs, as each one would be talking about a specific question I would have about a certain destination, making this situation far from ideal.
For these reasons, I have been postponing my newsletter for a year, simply because I didn’t know what to say. Since I changed my focus and my avatar, everything has become much clearer (and I’m so happy!)
PS – In case you are wondering, my current newsletter comprises of 3 main topics (click on them to join it and please feel free to join as many as you want – they are all free to join, of course):
- Barcelona City Tips (as I live here since 2016, you can bet I am filled with tips) & General Travel (if I have any fire travel tips to share. I usually like to recommend travel experiences)
- Wonderful Thirties (a personal development newsletter for women who want to live the best version of themselves – with weekly inspiration, beauty tips, and the wonders of minimalism for a happier life)
- Be a Blogger (tips, hacks, tools, courses, making money, social media – basically a newsletter to help you succeed with blogging) – This newsletter will also contain ALL MY BEST TIPS on getting collaborations, my specialty as a sales executive.
It is so much easier to write when you know you have something of value to offer (i.e. as opposed as pushing an email ‘’best beaches in Sri Lanka’’ I am much more excited to press send on an email that teaches you ‘’How Get More Done in Less Time’’.
I am especially excited about the Wonderful Thirties newsletter. I love being 30 and I have never been so happy with myself and who I am. My friends even labeled my tips the ‘Palombini rituals’ because of my constant external (and internal) self-care tips.
It feels great to take care of yourself as a woman!
LASTLY, (and to add up to the above point) whenever I wrote a travel post, I didn’t feel like sharing it so much, even with my friends. Don’t get me wrong, my travel posts are packed with information and useful tips, but truth be told, no one had interest in reading about a place they don’t intend on going (except my dear momma, who tried her best to read about Iceland in English, even though she has no intention on ever going there).
However, now that I write about my awesome tips for women and bloggers, I actually know a pool of women and close friends who might be interested in knowing more about the topic I am talking about (be it for a more minimal life and style, to genuine location tips or my knowledge in growing a blog of your own.
DIGITAL PRODUCTS
Point two was perhaps even more important than point one, to be honest. Since the beginning, I always knew I wanted to create digital products f my own to sell, but I mistakenly thought that as long as you are creative you can come up with a digital product for every niche, but giiiiiiiirl, was I wrong!
Turns out that creating valuable products within the travel niche( a product in which people would be willing to pay for), is just as hard as finding a needle in a haystack. It will ultimately drive you insane. Granted, it is not impossible, but I never wanted to spend hours creating travel guides that would never be as good or complete as Lonely Planet’s (which are already established and already sold for a reasonable price). Simply put, I would be doing hours of research to have a super complete guide, only to compete with a huge competitor that was already fairly pricing their product.
You don’t have to be a genius to see that the ROI was not worth my time.
Simply put, it is not easy creating something of value solely in the travel niche and that is why 95% of travel bloggers out there also talk about blogging so that they can also create and sell their digital products in order to hopefully increase their income.
Related: I did manage to create an eBook before I made the switch, though. Even though this eBook was originally created having pitching hotels in mind, it can also be applied to pitching BRANDS for collaborations.
In case you struggle to get brand deals, check out my eBook right here! It is also great for lifestyle bloggers (in case you wish to get more money from sponsored posts, you will have the knowledge and freedom to reach out to brands yourself and increase your sponsored collaborations, yaaaay!)
Check out my eBook ‘’How to Pitch Brands for Collaborations’’ here.
I LOST THE EXCITEMENT
Going back to point one, I wasn’t feeling excited about what I was doing. My whole life, I have always said I love to write and I never round myself uninspired to create written content. In fact, I can easily write a 3,000-word post in 1 hour without even hesitating.
That is why it was so hard to keep going these past months. I didn’t see a lot of value in writing exclusively travel content. For the first time in my life, I had writer’s block. And it was horrible!
It is terrible to create consistent content when you feel uninspired and disconnected from your audience. I am rebranding because I want to speak about things I care about and to people whom I connect with, which brings me to my next point:
TRAVEL BLOGGERS
This might sound weird at first, but hear me out: I felt I was too old to be a travel blogger.
Not because I believe 30 is old, but simply because when you reach your thirties your focus in life shifts. I don’t intend to travel all the time, nor to quit my job to go to Bali. Honestly thinking, I would feel a bit ridiculous doing so.
(Don’t get me wrong, if I were unhappy with my life, quitting everything and moving to Asia would be extremely attractive. However, right now it feels a bit silly to do so, especially because I already lived in Asia for a long time and I am happy in Europe, in my little apartment in Barcelona, where I live with Cris.
I am happy with my baby steps towards adulthood and I can’t wait for more: to further decorate our flat and buy non-Ikea furniture one day, to becoming a momma, to being able to afford high-end jewelry with my own money, etc).
In addition, I felt that most travel bloggers were very young people, who were living abroad for the first time, who still had that desire and passion of living in Bali. Lastly, and frankly speaking, to me, in general, travel bloggers seem broke (this is not a rule. There are many successful travel bloggers out there, I am aware. However, I do believe a big chunk of them don’t make a lot of money).
Yes, staying in luxury hotels for free is quite amazing, however, living off free hotel stays doesn’t pay my bills (even if it was great to not pay for most of our hotels during our Sri Lana trip). If you know me at all, you are aware of how ambitious I am and travel blogging didn’t seem to be the correct path for me.
Disclaimer – I am not saying it is impossible to make money as a travel blogger. But some niches are harder to make money, and that is a fact. It is no wonder that so many travel bloggers also talk about either Pinterest, affiliate marketing, or blogging itself. Unfortunately, talking about the Maldives alone won’t make you rich.
Lastly, talking about travel all the time made me feel uneasy. I didn’t want to pretend my life was perfect or that all I do is travel. That is not true. Right now it is 6h AM and in one hour I have to shower to go to the office and I have no idea when my next trip will be.
When you are a travel blogger, you seem to boast a lot about traveling however I want to go beyond that. I want to provide genuine value to my audience of like-minded women who wish to evolve every day as human beings.
RELATED|: HOW DO BLOGGERS MAKE MONEY ANYWAY?
AFFILIATE MARKETING
Affiliates proved to be a big issue in my first year of blogging and a big factor in why I rebranded my blog. I thought it would be easier to make money from affiliate marketing, but turns out I wasn’t doing it properly.
In fact, it took me ages to make money with affiliate marketing simply because I was not passionate enough about travel products in general. Granted, I enjoy a good travel app or a convenient backpack, but honestly speaking, there is so much passion I can have for a travel backpack.
ANXIETY
Not feeling excited about what I wrote gave me a certain degree of anxiety. I was trying to juggle so many things at once, without a clear direction. This resulted in me being less productive, less creative, and thus not getting the results I deserved from all the hard work.
I didn’t know what to send to my newsletter, or even what value I could continually offer my readers, and that made me extremely anxious. Not knowing what valuable content to post to my blog made me not want to write. Writing about posts that were only about a certain destination made me disgruntled and not want to promote it in different places.
Moreover, going back t the prior topic, not knowing what travel product I was passionate enough to create affiliate posts/reviews was killing me inside. This led to a one-year procrastination (thus, one year without cashing in from affiliate marketing properly, ugh)
Lastly, I can’t tell you the number of times I changed my ‘New Start Here’’ page, simply because I never made up my mind towards who or what I was serving (if you haven’t read it yet, give it a quick read).
WHAT CHANGED
As you are aware, I made the shift to expand my range of topics to talk about more things that I am passionate about that can help women who belong in a certain age group (30) and who want to learn tricks to be more elegant, evolved and happy with themselves.
OVERWHELM
I was extremely overwhelmed, trying to succeed yet not going anywhere. I felt I had no direction and that I was running in circles. I also felt I was talking to people who didn’t know me, simply because my travel posts don’t retain people as much.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Lastly, I was bored out of my ass with my Instagram account. Not because it looked bad (not at all! Check it out here), but because honestly, I was demanding way too much of myself from it. I would exclusively post perfect pictures but, in order to get them, either 1) I had to wake up at sunrise wit is to go to famous landmarks without tourists, 2) I would have an intense photo-shoot at a hotel.
This meant my pictures were never exactly ‘’current’ with what I was actually doing. Three months after I went to Sri Lanka I was still posting pictures from that trip, simply because I didn’t have anything else to post.
This made me bored and unimpressed. As a result, I posted less and less to the point where I stopped.
Related: Find me on Instagram!
WHAT CHANGED
Now I am more relaxed regarding the content I post. I don’t care anymore about only posting the most perfect pictures. I’d rather have a more relaxed life and more flexibility to take pictures (i.e. not only with golden light behind me). This allowed me to post more consistently and be more connected to my audience. Instagram is finally fun again, yay!
And these are the 8 reasons that made me shift from being exclusively in the travel niche towards a more lifestyle-orated one. I am confident I have hundreds of topics to write about (I have already written a list of posts). My next goal is to write as much as possible in the next few days in order to properly establish my blog as Lifestyle.
RELATED: HOW TO TAKE EPIC TRAVE PHOTOGRAPHY LIKE YOUR FAVORITE INLUENCERS
PIN THIS POST
Find bellow some posts that are coming up fresh from the oven (click the category to be included on the list and not miss out any posts that you are interested in reading about):
- Unique Things to Do in Barcelona
- Fun things to do Summer in Barcelona
- What to wear Summer in Barcelona
- Things you need in your 30s
- 3 Morning Habits to Kickstart the Day Secrets to an Effortlessly Chic Style
- 6 Easy Ideas to Help you Become More Stylish
- What is the Korean skincare routine
- Skincare products worth the investment
- Holy Grail beauty products (dearly)
- My experience with laser waxing (is it worth it?)
- Why I shifter to a more minimal style in my 30s
- 6 types of minimalists, which one are you?
- 10 ways to be a minimalist
- Why I decided to become more minimal
- One jeans, 5 looks (video content)
- How Protein Shakes changed my life
- How to accomplish more in less time
- Easy hacks to drink more water every day
- What’s it Like to Date an Italian as a Brazilian girl
- Which Country I Enjoyed Living the most (and the least) – France, Brazil, Switzerland, Thailand, Spain or US?
Have an existing blog in need of powerful growth? Check out some services I use and love:
- Tailwind: Pinterest + Instagram scheduling tool
- Envato Market: Premium blog templates (the one I use)
- Deposit Photo – THE place for stunning travel stock photos
- Long Tail Pro – Keyword research tool for SEO (w/ course included)– 30% Off with my link
- Canva – Ridiculously easy Graphic Design
- Powerful Tools Every Blogger Can Benefit From
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