The blogger profession travels from A to Z

Do you dream of working as a travel blogger, but are you still hesitating? Today, Arthur and I have decided to be transparent and show you behind the scenes of the travel blogger profession. We explain our job, but also our daily life. Without taboo, we reveal our digital nomad reality and the way we perceive our professional life. Here’s everything you need to know about being a travel blogger.

Business travel blogger: what is it?

The travel blogger profession has the merit of making many people dream. Many of you think that we are incredibly lucky with Arthur because we travel for free all year round. In exchange of what? Some photos and an opinion given on social networks! Too easy, it’s within everyone’s reach… And yes, that’s the kind of thoughts we hear regularly, and many people envy our job. However, once these same people learn what we had to put in as work to get where we are and that every day, we invest ourselves fully to achieve our dream, most of them change their minds.

Indeed, the travel blogger profession is an exciting profession. It is a profession of writer, photographer, director, negotiator, seller, and promoter. It is an exciting job, but also absorbing. The fact that we work as a couple implies that our work is at the heart of our lives. Never forget that behind a trip hide hours of work, phone calls, organization, traveler photos, videos, and writing. All this, without forgetting the tough competition that surrounds us. Every day, we must surpass ourselves to offer the best of ourselves and make a difference with other travel blogs.

Our salary, we talk about it. To live, the blogger must negotiate partnerships. It is these collaborations that allow us to live from our blog. The pay isn’t commensurate with the amount of work we provide, but that’s what every entrepreneur does. Certainly, the game is worth the candle; we get to meet great people and visit incredible places. Now that you know the behind the scenes, do you still agree?

HOW TO BECOME A PRO TRAVEL BLOGGER?

Before considering the travel blogger profession, let us share with you our daily life. In this way, you will be better able to make a decision that suits you. It will also avoid too many disappointments. Indeed, many people get started without knowing the behind the scenes and quickly turn around before the magnitude of the task. In the end, they experience this experience as a failure and that’s a shame. Here are some essential elements of the travel blogger profession:

Travel photos and videos

You understood, the photo and the video occupy a place of choice for a blogger. For each destination created as part of a collaboration, we take photos or videos for our partner. Attention, these are not simple photos or videos. In general, we take our photos that we edit in post-production or our raw videos that we edit to make an advertising film that will serve as promotion for our partner.

And yes, we don’t spend our time by the pool, sipping cocktails. Like any good professional, we have our pro equipment, and we provide work that meets expectations. Besides, we have the advantage of a drone. Arthur being declared as a professional drone pilot, we could sell aerial shots and that really makes all the difference. In this way, we offer our customers exceptional content that will make their customers dream and generate new sales for them.

Travel writing

As we told you, blogging is like writing. Our goal is to make you dream by sharing our travels and our beautiful discoveries. It’s always a pleasure to tell what we have experienced and above all to share good tips and good addresses. The important thing for us is to give you useful advice that will help you if you decide to go on vacation. Be careful not to neglect the optimization of articles, the famous SEO! And yes, as a blogger, we need to post content that appeals to you, but also appeals to search engines like Google.

Be that as it may, know that we refuse any collaboration for which we are “forced” to write on a subject that does not correspond to us or in a way that does not resemble us. Besides, you can see at the end of each sponsored article, the mention of the collaboration with the name of our partner. Our goal has always been to be honest and transparent with you. It is out of the question to write articles that do not correspond to our values ​​for money. We have principles to which we adhere, and it is out of the question, for us, to write anything for money!

The travel blogger profession and social networks

Here is a true love story: the blog and social networks. You have the right not to like social networks and not to invest in it. However, they are a real springboard for developing a community and generating new readers for a travel blog. For Arthur and I who like to talk and exchange, networks are a real opportunity. We communicate daily on Instagram and weekly on Facebook. We tell what we do, where we are, what we think, what we feel, and we are lucky to have a beautiful community that reacts to all of this. This is a significant advantage, especially if you want to get more visibility for your blog.

We share products from our partners, for which we are paid. One more time, we only talk about products that are in line with travel, drones, and our values. We refuse any collaboration that does not correspond to the message we want to convey. To give you a concrete example, we would not promote pharmaceutical products.

Professional travel blogger: the salary

You understood, we are paid to travel. In exchange for this, we must produce content that will be published on our blog, but also on social networks. Even if you want to know the amount of what we earn per month, this is impossible for us for reasons of confidentiality. Indeed, we cannot disclose the amounts received by our various service providers. It is part of our communication budget, and it remains something personal that affects our business. That said, we can tell you without fear that we are not the rich. We are two young people who live humbly in our apartment.

We are lucky to be able to make a decent living from our passion and that is what matters most to us. Certainly, our work takes up 100% of our time. Sometimes we stay locked up for several days to produce the content on time, but we like it! We’ve never been happier than now and that’s what matters, right?

TRAVEL BLOGGER JOB: OUR LIFE AS A DIGITAL NOMAD

Have you ever heard of digital nomads? These are people, like us, who work online. Concretely, this means that we only need a computer and a wi-fi connection. We agree that it’s a new buzz term, but it fits perfectly with this boost of general well-being that we feel. Namely: better consumption with vegans, feeling good about yourself with yoga, etc.

Man needs to refocus on himself and to be happier than ever. This is what we want to live every day. All this we understood during a trip to Bali. We regularly met digital nomads working online, living off surfing and Bintang (a local beer) and earning enough to live in their little paradise. It really made us think about our lifestyle and what we really wanted to do. We wanted to give meaning to our lives and be useful to others by transmitting our message of well-being. Finally, we are happy digital nomads, in accordance with our values ​​and that is what counts.

Where do we live?

Officially, we have no ties, and we can live our travel blogger job wherever we want, in the country of our choice. Finally, after traveling for three years away from our families, we understood that we had roots that were close to our hearts. We were ready to become digital nomads, provided we kept a home base. With Arthur, we wanted to have a home, to find a fixed place with good landmarks. And then without hiding it from you, we particularly like France. We are lucky to have a magnificent country with a sacred gastronomy, so why deprive ourselves of it? This is how we settled in Vannes in 2017, after a long ten-month trip to New Zealand. The advantage is that we live in town and the sea is right next to us.

Where do we work for our travel blogger job?

Upon our return from New Zealand and once settled in Vannes, we spent the summer of 2017 working on our travel blog. It was an important job since Les Droners didn’t exist yet. We had to create everything, from A to Z. We wrote, set up the blog, developed the drone part, then started looking for partnerships. Unfortunately, the more the months passed, the more cramped we felt.

Working as a couple, in our own apartment, weighed on us. In this place, we slept, we ate, we worked, we laughed, but we also argued. In short, it was no longer viable. When you work as a couple, at home, the boundary between private life and professional life is reduced and this can represent a danger for work, but also for the couple.

What is a coworking space?

It is a place open to digital nomads as they are so well called! So, people like us with the travel blogs. At the beginning of our activity as bloggers, we spent all our time there when we were not traveling.

The advantage of working in a coworking space is being able to meet people from all walks of life. A mix of experiences, skills, and ways of working. But coworking is also a huge opportunity to develop your professional network. We have also met many partners in our new place of life, and we love that!

Today we no longer have time to go to a coworking space, we are on the road all the time, reporting or filming and often work from a hotel, a train, a plane… but we like it equally! At least no routine!

OUR REVIEW OF THE TRAVEL BLOGGER PROFESSION

What if we take stock of our professional life and our fabulous job? We have become professional travel bloggers and we love what we do. We are two enthusiasts who never tire of our travels, our encounters, and our discoveries. We like to move and experience new adventures. This way of life is totally adapted to our personalities, and we absolutely do not regret this choice of life. Each trip is a real pleasure, whether in Brittany, France or on the other side of the world.

Above all, we love sharing our adventures with you on our travel blog, seeing your reactions and reading your comments under articles or on social media. It’s great to see the enthusiasm around our trips, to read your reactions or to answer your questions. However, there is one last point to be clarified: are we influencers? Many people ask us if we consider ourselves as such.

Travel blogger or influencer?

Let’s be honest, we don’t really like the term influencer. It denotes a negativity that does not correspond to us. For us, the line between influence and manipulation is thin. Therefore, we don’t like to be seen as influencers. An influencer is a personality who has a huge community of several thousand or even millions of people. This personality is very often followed by his community, whatever his actions or the messages he passes.

In most cases, this type of influencer doesn’t even have a blog. Its only job is to place the products of its partners. Attention, I am not saying that this person does not work. It’s just that a blogger will have to use their creative, editorial, and digital skills to stand out, exist and gather a community behind it. As we have just explained, behind a blogger, hides an immense work of content production. An influencer doesn’t have to worry about writing SEO essays or editing a video for a collaborator.

THE DRONERS, INSPIRING BLOGGERS

To conclude, let’s say that we are passionate US travel bloggers who can, through our sharing, inspire you. Our goal is to produce quality content that you will enjoy and to share our tips and good advice so that you, in turn, can fully enjoy your vacation. We are happy to know that you trust us and that you visit places that we ourselves have discovered and shared.

We are delighted to offer you dreams and give your ideas for your next vacation. We are happy to help you choose the right drone for your needs, because Arthur is an expert in the field, and he enjoys sharing his knowledge. We are happy to know that we are a source of inspiration for you who, behind your screen.

In any case, we hope you enjoy the Droners adventure and that our travel blogger profession inspires you. If you have any questions about our job, the travel blogs, or our way of life, don’t hesitate to ask us in the comments. We will be happy to answer them! See you soon.