If you had told me ten years ago that I would become a travel blog at this stage in my life, you would have been called crazy! Here I am.
What began as a small travel blog for friends and family to stay up-to-date on our trip around the world has evolved into something bigger. This unexpected trip has changed my life, as well as the lives of Tim, Tyler, and Kara.
This post will explain the evolution and development of Earth Trekkers, one of the top travel websites on the Internet. We’ve experienced some highs and some lows and faced our fair share of challenges.
If you want to learn more about the story, sit back and relax with a cup (or glass) of wine or coffee.
Table of Contents
Earth Trekkers: The Idea
Earth Trekkers was born in early 2014. Our plans to travel the globe for a year were already underway. We were selling our house, planning a route around the world, and dreaming of far-off places.
This was the time when we began this travel blog. This blog was created to keep our friends and families informed about our travels and to document them. We had hoped that Earth Trekkers could become more after our trip around the world ended. However, we didn’t know if this would happen.
This leads us to choose a blog name.
What’s In A Name?
It’s important to come up with the right name for your travel blog. It must be memorable, catchy, and relevant. It must also be unique from other names. This name becomes your trademark and is a part of you. This is not a decision to be made lightly.
Tim and I spent more than a week brainstorming site names. Some of them were terrible. For example, Waffles and Wine. Could you imagine that? Chasing Elephants was my favourite, but registering the domain cost $2500.
Earth Trekkers (an acronym for Four Go Around the Globe) and 4gortw were our top choices. The name 4gortw is short and sweet, but for those unfamiliar with the abbreviation RTW, it will lead to long explanations. Once our trip was done, the name would no longer make sense.
A Newbie Travel Blogger’s Life
Earth Trekkers was launched on February 1, 2014, with no prior experience in website design, blogging or writing for an audience.
Immediately, I realized how much work it would be. It took me days to design the website and create a flow. I thought it would only take an hour to write a post. Was I ever wrong? Writing a blog post takes hours (and sometimes I spend days writing one post). How could I do all of this, travel, and homeschool Tyler and Kara at the same time?
I wrote about our previous travels in the months leading up to the trip so that we could have some content for the website. Some of these posts are still available and have been quite popular. For example, the post about hiking to Trolltunga in Norway and Kjeragbolten.
Our First Taste of “Fame “
The Baltimore Sun interviewed us about a week prior to our trip around the globe. Tim and I were expecting to be featured in an article that would appear on pages 2 or 3 of their travel section. The day before our trip began, we received a wonderful surprise. We were not on page 2, nor was it a small article. The Baltimore Sun’s travel section featured us on the front page. We were blown away!!
Our website also saw a huge increase in traffic. In just one day, we got over 1000 views! It’s not much, but up until June 28, we only got 25 to 75 views per day. With the increased website traffic, we also received well wishes from new supporters, not just in Maryland but across the US.
Earth Trekkers suddenly found themselves enjoying some fame. We were excited but also nervous.
While we waited to board our first flight at JFK, I could not help but feel stressed. All of a sudden, we were being watched by a large number of people. It was a new pressure to not only share our experiences and do so well but also to avoid failure. It was impossible to fail with so many people watching.
Travel blogging was our first experience. We blog about everything. We let people know where we’re going. You will all know if something goes wrong, regardless of whether it is our fault or not, when we travel. There’s a lot of pressure to make sure we travel well, don’t miss anything and do not mess up. We travel bloggers are expected to be experts in our field, right? Ha ha! That’s not the case all the time.
Blogging during the Around the World Trip
We travelled the world for 13 months, visiting 35 different countries across five continents. I’m still grateful for this amazing experience every day. As Tyler and Kara grow older, I am thankful to have shared that experience with them when they were young. Tim and I were most grateful for the memories and family bonding we created together.
I began blogging during this period. As we travelled more, our articles (and photography) improved. We gradually but steadily gained new followers and were featured in Terp Alumni Magazine, National Geographic, Matador Network and Voice of America.
During this period, my biggest mistake was to ignore the importance of social networks. I didn’t get it. Perhaps it’s because I am 40 and not one of these 20-something bloggers who tweet and Snapchat with ease. I was posting regularly on Facebook, but that’s all. We have never used our Twitter account, nor have we used Pinterest or Instagram. ).
If I knew what I know today, I would have spent more time on social networks. It is crucial to building your brand, gaining new followers and driving traffic to the website.
Coming home
The summer of 2015 marked the end of our around-the-world trip. We were ready for home. We kept up a fast-paced, ambitious level of travel that left us completely burned out at the end. It was worth it.
Tim and I did not intend to return to our hometown to live our “old life” after the trip. We had more freedom now. Why not move to Colorado, California, or New Zealand? We learned that living in Maryland with our friends and family was quite enjoyable. It can take leaving home to appreciate how wonderful home is.
We moved back to our hometown. It’s been great.
It was important to us that Tyler and Kara experience high school life with all its friends, sports, tests and dances.
We put our long-term travel plans on hold to give Tyler and Kara the experience they deserve (but let me tell you, we still talk and dream of another big trip around the world one day).
After an Around the World Trip
After we returned home, Tim and Tyler easily returned to their normal lives. Tim went back to work in the aerospace sector, feeling refreshed and re-energized after his year off. Tyler and Kara returned to school without missing a step.
I was lost. Over the past year, I’d put all my energy into this website and written about our travels several times a day, but we were no longer travelling.
How can you write about travel when you no longer travel?
I was unsure how to continue Earth Trekker.
In the interim, I returned to my position as a physician assistant and worked in the operating rooms of a local facility several days per week. Prior to our trip, I had worked for 15 years in sports medicine and orthopaedics. It’s a great job to be a PA, and I love being in the OR. But my goal was to make Earth Trekkers more than just a collection of our experiences.
2016 – My Chance to Transform Earth Trekkers into something Bigger
2016 was an experimental year. I gave myself a year to really work hard to see if we could make our blog bigger. I would pull the plug on Earth Trekkers if, by the end of the first year, there was no progress.
I worked so hard, not knowing whether Earth Trekkers or this website would become as popular as I hoped. I hadn’t considered money yet.
So, I redesigned my website, joined social media and began posting more information about how to travel better.
You don’t just sit down and type a blog post every few weeks. Social media is about getting involved, answering emails and updating posts. It’s also about planning trips in the future, fixing problems when they occur, and responding to emails. The more traffic you receive, the more comments and emails you will answer.
In the middle of the evening, I would be in a state of panic and wonder what I was doing. Is it a waste of time to do this? Do I make the wrong choice here when we have to pay for college soon and save for retirement?
The risk was huge, and I felt uneasy throughout 2016. I felt irresponsible investing so much of my time in a travel website that wasn’t making any money.
We would then receive an email or a message about how someone enjoyed our blog or that we had helped them plan the perfect trip. I would literally shed tears of joy knowing that I was really doing something great for people.
2017: A turning point
2017 was a year of change for us. Our website traffic grew like crazy. Mediavine allowed us to start putting ads on our website.
Do we agree with the idea of ad-blocking this website? Nope. It’s not possible.
The main objective of this website is to make a profit. Money has never motivated me. But I want to live the best possible life.
We want you to be happy.
We are here to help you discover new places and create some incredible memories.
2018: More Changes
In 2018, I left my job as a physician assistant to devote my full energy to this site.
Over the past twenty years, I have worked as a physician assistant, initially in sports medicine and orthopaedics and then as a surgical PA. After returning from our trip around the world, I got a part-time position in an operating room at a local hospital.
In May 2018, I quit my job as a physician assistant so that I could devote all my time to the website. Giving up a long-time job was difficult. Travel blogging is great, but being a professional PA was my dream job. It also set an example for Tyler, Kara and their parents, who were considering their future careers.
Now, I work full-time for this website and enjoy every moment of it. After working in the medical profession for so many years, it’s still amazing to me that I am writing a travel blog.
2019: One of our best years (so far)
Our website traffic has skyrocketed due to the big changes we made in 2018. This was combined with a lot of travel within and outside the United States.
In January 2016, this website received 23,000 monthly page views. Year by year, our traffic steadily increased, and in early 2018, we had just over 400,000 monthly page views. In March 2019, we reached 1 million pageviews for the first time. This is an incredible milestone.
The hard work and effort put into the website paid off. With that traffic, we became one of the top travel blogs on the Internet.
2020…A challenging year in many different ways
We had big plans and high expectations for 2020. In January, we had over 2,000,000 page views per month! We had a lot of cool trips planned in the coming year, and the website was doing great.
Then, news of a tiny viral infection began to spread. In March, this virus took lives all over the world. The travel industry was brought to a screeching stop as countries were put on lockdown and flights grounded.
The experience was terrifying and depressing on many levels.
We scrambled, like many travellers, to cancel our plans and get refunds for hotels and flights. Daily news about death tolls and a virus spreading rapidly took priority over all else. The weeks of March and April were surreal.
COVID-19 cases were raging across the United States. It was obvious that 2020 would be an important year for domestic travel.
As the number of cases in the US began to decline, we wanted to continue to travel safely and also add valuable content to our site for the future. As there were talks about a vaccine that would take 18 months to develop, it was very likely that many US citizens, including the majority of our readers, could be “stuck in” the United States by 2021.
2020 was the year we chose to celebrate US national parks. We were able to go hiking and on road trips while minimizing contact with others. We were able to travel a lot. In 2020, we visited 17 national parks, which gave us enough content to create a section on our website dedicated to US National Parks.
Our website did well in 2020. In March, our website traffic was severely affected. However, it recovered nicely during the summer as Americans took road trips and visited national parks. Overall, however, our website views were lower in 2020 than they were in 2019.
With the talk of vaccines in 2021, we hope things start to look normal again.
Another Strange Year
For many Americans, 2020 was the year for domestic travel. The national parks were a great investment, and website traffic increased to “normal” levels in the summer.
Tim quit his job in May to work full-time on the website. He took over many projects that I was unable to complete, and we are extremely grateful that we can work together.
The website traffic during the summer and autumn was great (we had between 1 million and 1.7 million monthly page views), but travellers were very cautious about the COVID-19 Delta and Omicron versions, and this was reflected by the number of people making travel plans.
In 2021, we will continue to travel within the USA and never leave. During the summer, we spent seven weeks in Alaska and Hawaii and went hiking in Sedona.
Tyler began college in the fall, and Kara started applying for college.
Tim and I have discussed our plans to travel to Europe this fall. Climate change is also something we consider when travelling. We plan to stay at a destination for several weeks if we are taking a long international flight or a flight from Maryland to Alaska. This is because long flights have a high carbon footprint. Kara couldn’t be left alone at home for such a long time. So, our fall trips were restricted to trips within the national parks.
2022…Travel Is Back in a Big Way
The year 2022 was an important one for travel, not only for us but also for people all over the world. Travel abroad has increased dramatically, and we made our first trip to Europe after more than two years.
In 2022, we took two major trips: one, a six-week hiking trip to Europe, where we hiked the Walker’s Haute Route and visited the Dolomites in Italy, Chamonix and France.
The Walker’s Haute Route, a two-week journey from Chamonix in France to Zermatt in Switzerland, is called the Walker’s Haute Route. This route crosses the French and Swiss Alps by foot from Mont Blanc to Matterhorn. It was a truly extraordinary experience.
Kara began college in the fall, and Tim and I became empty nesters. As soon as Kara started college, Tim and I went to Italy for five weeks. Our website now has more than 100 articles about Italy.
Our website traffic grew as more people travelled. In 2022, we had an average of 1.2 million monthly visitors and over 2 million views on our website.
2023… Our Best Year Yet
The year 2023 was a great one for us on many levels.
Tyler studied in Sydney, Australia, between February and May. He chose this location because he enjoyed our time in Australia during our around-the-world trip and wanted to surf. Tyler spent his time in Australia getting certified in scuba diving and skydiving. He also took trips to Bali and New Zealand. The highlight of Tyler’s trip was a multiday scuba-diving tour at the Great Barrier Reef.
Tim and I made the most of Tyler’s location, spending the first five weeks on a road trip through New Zealand. It was one of our favourites from the around-the-world trip. We then joined Tyler for a week in Sydney and visited the South Australian wine region.
We flew back together in mid-May after visiting Samoa and the National Park of American Samoa on our way.
Kara, who is majoring in User Experience at SCAD, has been thriving. She is also a local, so we spend weekends in Savannah with her. In the summer, she took her first road trip to New England with a friend.
Tim and I went on a five-week road trip across Portugal’s mainland in the fall at the request of many of our readers. We were planning to visit Portugal in 2020, but we know what happened with travel that year. We finally visited Portugal in 2023, and it was worth the wait.
In terms of our website, 2023 has been a record-breaking year. Our website averaged 1.5 million visitors per month and over 2.5 million views per month.
2024… a challenging year for travel bloggers
Google’s search results are a major factor in the number of views that travel bloggers receive on their websites. Google will release its first Helpful Content Update at the end of 2023. This major algorithm update was created to move spammy websites down the list and provide better search results for users. This was a big boost for companies like Reddit, TripAdvisor, and Conde Nast. In some cases, smaller websites lost over 90% of the traffic to their site, which essentially put them out of business.
Google continued to implement these algorithmic changes throughout 2024. These changes affected not just us but all websites on the Internet. The search results of 2024 were horrible and unhelpful. We started using Bing to search for information, as we couldn’t find it on Google without having to scroll and sift through pages of results.
It’s not only the Google algorithm that affects how many people discover our website. AI is a growing trend, and people are using AI models to plan their vacations.
In 2024, we lost 45% of the traffic to our website. We did better than others. Many blogs that have high-quality, useful content and are popular lost almost all of their traffic. They had to give up. We were fortunate not to be included in that group.
It was a disappointing year. It leaves us (and many other bloggers) wondering what the future will bring. As more people use AI, we could be wiped out by another algorithmic change. Will we be doing this in 2 years? How about in 5 years?
We spent the last few months of 2024 focusing on redesigning this website. Tim and I invested a lot of time in learning Google’s rules and hired SEO experts. Kara, now a UX student in college, completely redesigned the website. In December, we unveiled our ‘new website’.
This was done to improve your experience with our website.
We are passionate about what we do, and we hope to continue doing it for many years to come. Google’s algorithm changes are discouraging, but I love the challenges of running this website… in the last 11 years, each year has been unique.
We travelled in 2023. I took a month-long road trip in southern Spain, spent two weeks in Madeira in the summer, and went on a road trip through Sicily (where my 50th birthday was celebrated) in the fall. Kara and I visited the Christmas markets of Germany in December. Tyler participated in the IRONMAN World Championship race at Taupo in New Zealand. Tim and Tyler took a road trip around New Zealand. They also day-hiked Milford Track.
