{"id":16615,"date":"2022-10-10T10:23:25","date_gmt":"2022-10-10T07:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.travelpayouts.com\/blog\/?p=16615"},"modified":"2025-07-23T17:08:06","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T14:08:06","slug":"twooutliers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.travelpayouts.com\/blog\/twooutliers\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Start a Successful Blog in the Post-COVID Era \u2013 The Story of Twooutliers.com"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How It All Began<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Sarah grew up in Virginia, while Matt is from Boston. Outside of our blog, we both work standard 9-to-5 jobs. Sarah works for a medical device company, while Matt works in the organ transplantation field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, we both worked full-time in the office. However, once COVID hit, we were forced to work from home. After about one year of working from our apartment in Virginia, we decided to sell most of our belongings, pack up what was left, and hit the road. From there, we lived in different places each month, while we traveled and explored as much as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We always loved sharing travel insights and swapping tales of our epic outdoor adventures, so we figured that we might as well put our thoughts in one place and try to make some money from our passion. Hence, we started our blog<\/a> in November 2020, just before we started living nomadically and traveling across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than anything, we simply love to see people using our blog and the information we provide to experience amazing adventures! We\u2019ve been very fortunate to be able to live a life that allows us to travel, adventure, and do all sorts of crazy outdoor activities. This is why we love sharing the information, lessons, and details we learn along the way to allow other people to share in the same experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About twooutliers.com<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The main idea behind twooutliers.com<\/a> is to inspire people to do things outside of their comfort zone and provide them with all the information they need to do those things!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We believe that life is about pushing your boundaries, taking risks, enjoying nature, and doing whatever makes you happy. We hope that our website will not only inspire people to take more chances and pursue their dreams, but will also give people the information they need to explore off-the-beaten-path destinations and live life outside the norm!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right now, we do everything ourselves. There\u2019s no team here\u2014it\u2019s just the two of us. Sarah does all of the behind-the-scenes work, like SEO optimization, keyword ranking, and general blog planning. She also takes and edits all of our photos. Matt is the main writer, but Sarah also writes plenty of blogs as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Travel Blogging Journey<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve learned so much since we started our travel website! Starting out on the absolute ground floor with no website design or blogging experience, we had no idea how difficult it would be to gain an audience and turn our blog into a legitimate, trusted source of information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest challenge we\u2019ve faced is simply growing our audience. When we started blogging, we were attracting a handful of visitors to our website each day. It stayed like that for a while! But then, we started learning more about SEO and how to optimize our website to rank for specific terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After becoming more knowledgeable about SEO, we didn\u2019t just write about whatever we wanted. Instead, we choose specific blog topics based on optimized keywords, which has definitely been the most effective way we\u2019ve improved our website over the years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\nFree SEO Course<\/span>\n
\nGet actionable tips to grow your blog traffic and income.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nGo to Course<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

When we first started blogging, we placed a ton of broken links all over our website. Be careful and make sure you do it correctly!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Content<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We only write about things that we\u2019ve done ourselves. If there is a guide, recommendation, or insight posted on our website, you can be sure that it is something we\u2019ve experienced personally. As such, our content is primarily driven by our own experiences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That being said, of course, we don\u2019t write about everything we do. To select specific topics, we utilize KeySearch to find keywords that have a high search volume and we think we could rank for based on our domain authority. We have an ongoing list of potential topics and prioritize those articles where we think we have the highest chance to rank compared to the anticipated traffic volume. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We faced so many challenges when we first started, but at the most basic level, the largest challenge we faced was growing our brand, especially in terms of SEO. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naturally, when you start a blog from scratch, no one, not even search engines, knows who you are. Because you\u2019re the new kid on the block, you\u2019ll have very little domain authority and search engines will be unlikely to rank your articles, no matter how comprehensive, well-written, organized, and SEO-optimized they are. You\u2019re simply too new to be trusted!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But with time, we improved our domain authority and kept creating high-quality content. As a result, slowly, our ability to rank improved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Persistence makes a successful content creator different from one who fails. No one starts a blog and is successful overnight. In fact, most people won\u2019t start seeing a return on their investment of time and money for many years. It\u2019s a long haul and you have to be patient.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, if you are persistent and continue to create high-quality, SEO-optimized content, in time, your traffic will grow and your blog will become successful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traffic<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Most of our traffic from search engines is organic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The single most important thing you can do to increase your blog traffic is to utilize search engine optimization. Having a website that is optimized to rank within different search engines and focusing your content around optimized SEO keywords is absolutely critical to your blog\u2019s success.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most important metrics we pay attention to are our daily and monthly views. While other metrics are important and can provide insight into other aspects of your website, to us, it all comes down to views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within the umbrella of SEO, keyword research and optimization are definitely the most important tools. In the early days, we\u2019d just write about anything we did recently. But the website really started growing when we conducted more focused research to find keywords for which we knew we could rank and that would drive traffic to our site. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\nFree SEO Course<\/span>\n
\nLearn how to find keywords that your website can rank for.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nGo to Course<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t rely on social networks to drive traffic. That might seem a little surprising, but we\u2019ve found that it\u2019s easier to drive traffic to our blog organically than through Instagram, which is our primary social channel. While we love posting on Instagram and it is a great way to engage with our audience, we don\u2019t find that many of our Instagram followers visit our website through the app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also get a significant amount of traffic from guest posting on other websites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monetization<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Seasonality has not had a large impact on our earnings. At the moment, we make about $500 per month from our website. Our two monetization methods are affiliate marketing and brand partnerships. We\u2019re hoping to be able to put ads on our website in the near future, which we expect will boost our overall revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We make the most money from affiliate marketing. This is also the most consistent source of revenue from our blog. Brand partnerships are less consistent and make up a smaller portion of our overall revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Affiliate Marketing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We joined several travel affiliate programs<\/a> through the Travelpayouts partnership platform<\/a>, such as GetYourGuide<\/a> and Viator<\/a>. We love that Travelpayouts is easy to use and allows us to work with multiple companies on one convenient platform.<\/p>\n\n\n

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<\/div> \n \n
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\n Join the Travelpayouts partnership platform\n <\/h5>\n\n \n\n \n Join today\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n Powerful<\/i> AI tools for grow<\/span>\n <\/div>\n
\n 600k<\/i> partners already trust us<\/span>\n <\/div>\n
\n 90+<\/i> travel
brands<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n \n \n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n

We also joined some other programs outside of the Travelpayouts platform. Here are some of the brands we work with:<\/p>\n\n\n\n