In a world of influencers and brand deals, travel blogging has slowly worked its way up to being a highly coveted career for those who want to work in social media. However, every rose has its thorn, and travel blogging comes with its own set of challenges to overcome.
We wanted to offer #SmallBizSupport by giving advice on overcoming obstacles to small business owners, and looked at a recent study to see what kinds of challenges self-employed people were facing.
Here are four issues that self-employed travel bloggers have to overcome.
Separating time to work and time to play
When you are travelling around the world and experiencing things that will change your life forever, it can be difficult to remember that you have a job to do. However, while everybody should love their job, it is important to remember to make time for the more challenging aspects of the career. Being a rigid boss to yourself is a great way to make sure you keep up with deadlines and stay focussed on working hard, even while you are living it up on the other side of the world.
Coping with rising costs
Rising costs affect everybody. Whether you’re self-employed, or working for a huge corporation, you know that the cost of everything has climbed recently – and a recent study conducted by the London School of Economics and the Centre for Economic Performance has found that rising costs are the number one economic concern that is troubling small business owners. Over 76% of those who work in media have admitted that this is something that has been a challenge to them over the last 12 months, which indicates that those working as travel bloggers will also share some of this impact.
Accessing additional funds
Part of working for yourself means being able to pay for things in advance, in the hopes of recovering your costs. While other businesses might pay for raw materials or the staff and equipment to make things, as a travel blogger you are expected to get yourself from place to place and pay for your food, accommodation and all of your experiences – never mind electronic equipment to capture the experience and share it with others. While only 5% of small businesses reported needing to take an additional loan in the last 12 months to cover expenses, this is something that you might need to be prepared to do if your work goes through a slower spell as a travel blogger and you don’t have the funds to keep yourself afloat.
Working with the right brands
Life as a blogger of any kind can mean striking up relationships with brands, but when you are a travel blogger specifically you are automatically going to be exchanging a higher value commodity – the cost of a travel excursion. It can take time to find the right brands, specifically if you are offering your readers a particular kind of travel experience, and with the study finding that one of the biggest concerns for small business owners is being able to gain new clients, this is always going to be a big concern to travel bloggers.
Have you ever wanted to make a career out of travelling? Are you already being paid to travel the world?
Share your tips or concerns in the comments below.
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