Recently I've become busier with my online teaching jobs (which of course is a good thing), so I won't have quite so much time for local travels. But fortunately, I've now more or less completed the original local "bucket list" that I wrote last year. There are a couple more places that I've added to the list more recently, and hopefully I'll have the chance to visit them sometime soon. However, I don't think I'll be travelling somewhere new every week like I was before.
An advantage of this is that I'll have the opportunity to write different types of posts, instead of just write-ups of trips I've been on. This will allow me to keep this as an international travel blog, which was what I'd always intended it to be, rather than as a UK travel blog, which is pretty much what it's turned into over the last year. So over the coming weeks I plan to write some more
Travel Tips articles, as well as other posts about places I've been to and about the topic of travel in general.
Today's post is going to focus on the topic of blogging, and travel blogging in particular. This is an area that I knew very little about, when I first dipped my toe into it back in June 2017. Over the last four years (has it really been that long?!) it's become a huge passion of mine and a big part of my life. Here's how I got started...
My Blogging Story
I first started blogging in order to document my Year Abroad between 2017 and 2018, and I gave that first blog the very creative name of "
My Year Abroad Blog 2017-2018". It's kind of a rite of passage for modern languages students to write a Year Abroad blog and then share it on social media, so that their friends and family can see what they're getting up to, and I felt like it would be a fun thing to try and a good way of preserving memories of the year. So I decided to give it a go, although I was too self-conscious to share it with anyone other than close friends and family.
It took me a while to get into the process of blogging, but by the end of the year I didn't want to stop. I was hooked on living and travelling abroad, and also on writing about these experiences. That's why I decided to start my current blog, now known as
Charlotte's Travel Adventures. Again, perhaps not the most creative name, but it does what it says on the tin! I try to look for adventures wherever and whenever possible (even though that's been significantly more challenging over the last 14 months), and that's what my blog is all about. I've now written over 100 posts here, and I plan to keep going for many years to come!
One thing that blogging has taught me is just how much I love writing. Previously, I'd thought it was something I disliked; I would feel overwhelmed when I had to write long essays at school, college and university, and I would struggle for hours trying to get them done. But having the freedom to write how I want about what I want has been a revelation for me. Now I see writing as a fun and creative activity, rather than a difficult, torturous process. I'm really grateful to have discovered this passion for writing, and it's now something I try to do every day.
Blogging has also given me a love for photography that I didn't have before. When I first started, I didn't have much skill in this area at all, but I do think I've improved. I'm no expert photographer, but what I try to do is to give a sense of what it's really like to visit the places I blog about. That's why I make very few changes to the photos I take - too many travel blogs filter and Photoshop the hell out of their photos until they look completely fake. I suppose it's about creating an "aesthetic", but it's not something I'll ever do. I want my blog to be 100 percent authentic, and that won't ever change.
Thoughts on the World of Blogging
That leads me on to this next section of this post, where I'm going to discuss my thoughts on the world of blogging as a whole.
When I first started blogging, I thought of a blog as being a simple website, consisting of a series of posts in which the blogger shares their passion, just for the joy of it. Basically, something like this blog! However, it seems that in recent years the meaning of the word "blogging" has changed a lot from what it originally meant.
After I graduated from university in summer 2019 and was looking for a job that would allow me to live abroad and travel a lot, I started seeing a lot of adverts and articles popping up online promoting travel blogging as a viable career choice. ("Quit your 9-5!" "Travel the world full-time!" "Live your dream!" "It's so easy!") And I have to admit, I was extremely tempted by the idea that I could possibly make this blog into an actual career and spend my days doing what I love most: travelling and writing about travelling.
But when I read more about what I should do in order to achieve this, the idea became less appealing. It would involve relentlessly promoting my blog on social media (not really my thing), churning out posts designed to rank highly in search engine results ("Here is THE ultimate guide to a city I've only spent 48 hours in!") rather than writing about what inspires me, and paying shedloads of cash to turn my simple blog into something that I would describe as a professional corporate-style website as opposed to an actual blog. I would look at online forums and find dozens upon dozens of people asking questions like, "What should I blog about in order to make lots of money?"(Um, maybe try writing about what you're passionate about?) I also came across bloggers offering extortionately-priced courses on how to monetise a blog, which seemed to me to be almost a sort of pyramid scheme. It wasn't exactly encouraging.
Thankfully, in the end I did find a career that I love (teaching English as a foreign language) and which also allows me to travel and live abroad (well, at least in theory it does...). Blogging is such an competitive market, and even if you do follow all the steps mentioned above, it still doesn't guarantee success, which is why I'm happy to just continue blogging the way I want to. But I'm hopeful that in the future more authentic blogs will become the fashion again!
Thoughts on "Influencers"
Speaking of authenticity, or a lack thereof, so-called social media "influencers" and bloggers are two things that are often confused for one another nowadays, although they are definitely not the same thing. Obviously, bloggers write blogs, whereas "influencers" use social networks like Instagram or YouTube to make money. They are two separate categories, although some "influencers" are also bloggers and vice versa.
Now I have nothing against people earning money from creating content online; personally, I enjoy using content from food bloggers and fitness YouTubers for instance. If you have a talent or expertise that you can share online in a way that's useful or entertaining for people, then of course you should be able to make a living from that.
The problem I have is with the influencer culture that exists nowadays, which means people can get very rich and famous, without demonstrating any discernible talent or creating any valuable content. These people can get paid thousands of pounds simply for making a short, basic social media post to advertise a product, and often get showered with free gifts, ranging from small things like snacks, all the way to hugely expensive things like luxurious holidays. I just find it distasteful, when many others are struggling to get by.
Some "influencers" also have blogs, but these blogs cover such a wide range of topics, that it's obvious their authors cannot have a passion for, or a special expertise in everything they write about. Many claim to be experts in several areas at once, e.g., travel, lifestyle (whatever that's supposed to mean), fashion, beauty and fitness. To me that translates to "give me lots of free holidays, makeup and clothes". And sure enough, if you look at any of their blogposts, they're packed full of advertising.
Clearly, there's a market for this kind of content, but I do find it quite unethical, and I think it's sad that blogging is now associated with the world of "influencing."
My Blogging Future
It may sound like I'm pessimistic about the world of blogging and online content creation, but my issues with the increasing inauthenticity and monetisation of the area haven't stopped me from enjoying working on my blog.
I'm not going to deny that it would be nice to earn money from blogging, and it's definitely not something I'd rule out! However, it would have to be in a way that is ethical and that doesn't compromise the authenticity of my blog.
As for the future direction of Charlotte's Travel Adventures, I'm desperately hoping that I'll be able to move back out to
Chile soon, but every time it looks like it's on the horizon, the goalposts get pushed back again. By now it's been over a year since I should have been starting my job out there and moving in with my boyfriend, but I'm still living in a boring, isolated village with my parents, at nearly 26 years old. I can't lie - it feels so unfair and frustrating that my life has continued to be put on hold, all because of a disease that has never posed any real risk to me personally.
Sometimes it feels like I'm going to be stuck here forever, but I need to keep hoping that the situation will change eventually. One day I'll be blogging again about my adventures in
South America and beyond. Let's just hope that day comes sooner rather than later...
Image by Pixabay from pexels.com
