So every time someone comes across my Instagram profile and find me traveling around the world, they ask the same inevitable question: how do I sustain this lifestyle if I don’t have a job. “Do you get paid to travel?” they would ask. And when I tell them that I do (get paid to travel) because brands hire people like me — the so-called travel influencers of the digital age — to promote their services and destinations on our channels, they sound even more confused. “What is this term travel influencer, what does it even mean? Why would a brand hire you to promote them” and a few other relating questions that come next, almost effortlessly. It happened to me recently that I was contacted by a medical student asking me for a way to have a quick escape in her life. She wanted to travel around the world and needed a way out. And as I started explaining things, and with that, using some technical jargon, I figured that I was only confusing her more. …

Off-late I’ve started getting a lot of message requests from my readers showing their interest in travelling and becoming a full-time travel blogger — people working as investment bankers and engineers earning a seven-figure income, yet unsatisfied with their lifestyle, wanting to break into (how it appears to an unschooled) the ever glorious field of travel blogging. In the previous month itself — and particularly after my recent blog trip with The Golden Chariot, as I posted some flashy pictures from a luxury train ride in India — I’ve received a few dozen such queries, all starting with a brief praise for making blogging a successful carrier for myself followed by the inevitable: “I want to do the same but just don’t know where to start from, and how!” So if you too are struggling with a similar unsettling bug of making travel blogging a carrier choice, here’s my advice to you… Start With Becoming A Part-Time Blogger Blogging is a slow process and takes time to eventually grow into a full-time revenue-generating business. Even if you’re exceptionally good …

When I started blogging in 2016, I had no idea what a media kit is, and how crucial can be if I want to travel the world as a travel influencer. I remember for the initial few months of blogging, I contacted about a hundred travel companies and wrote them emails without a media kit attached to it, and it either gave me no positive response or no response at all. Though back in days, I thought it was because of the fact that I was new at blogging and my readership wasn’t impressive enough, now that I  look back at it, I know that I didn’t get any (positive) response from them because my email spoke of my inexperienced blogger-self. A 500-word long email with no media kit attached was, in fact, the reason — consider sending a 500-word email to an employer with no attached resume. So, having a media kit is important, particularly if you’re looking at blogging as a long-term plan and want to gain travel sponsorships and even make money …

Travelling to Europe? Run a blog? This guide can help you find sponsors and travel Europe for free. If you run a travel blog which is fairly new and doesn’t help you score any FAM trips, do not worry. Travelling the world on FAM trips isn’t a big deal. In fact, the reality is, if you continue blogging and gaining more followers, even if at a slow rate, you’re eventually going to end up attending FAM trips to one country, or the other. Brands and tourism boards are constantly looking for bloggers, in new markets, for delivering their brand message and convince more people to visit them. But are they contacting you? I guess not! So as I always say, if they aren’t contacting you, why don’t you contact them? Send them an email introducing your blog, tell them about your blog’s efficiency, and how you can help them redirect your blog readers to their website and social media accounts, and eventually, to their destination. Do not forget to share a Media Kit though. [Read: …