2017 Round-Up | Our First Year Travel Blogging

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2017 was an amazing year for us, it was our full first year travel blogging, I graduated from university, Yannick quit his desk job and we travelled to some of the most amazing countries around the world. Curious how many flights we caught? Where we travelled to? How much we earned in our first year travel blogging? And our highlights of 2017? If so, keep reading as we’re spilling all on our 2017 in review, plus a sneak peak into where we are heading and what we’ve got planned for 2018!

Flight Statistics

In total I’ve flown 233 times, whereas Yannick has flown 289 times. However I’ve flown 528,383 miles compared to his 439,670 due to flying long-haul more often.

In 2017 we both flew 44 times and spent just over 8 days of 2017 on a plane. Below is a snapshot of our 2017 flights in review.

As you can see our flight patterns are fairly linear, we travelled to four continents: North America, Europe, Asia and Oceania and visited 13 countries all whilst Yannick having a full time job and myself studying at University in Sydney. Wondering how? Read our post on how to travel the world as a student.

According to the list of the most travelled travel bloggers of 2017, we would have ranked #12! Pretty impressive seen as we weren’t full time travel bloggers yet! Maybe next year we will get on the list, and rank even higher 🙂

Here is the list of the places we travelled to this year by month:

January: Oxford, Hamburg, Brussels and Sofia.
February: Berlin, Abu Dhabi, Bangkok, Koh Phangan, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney and Cairns.
March: Uluru and the Whitsundays.
April: Vanuatu and Brisbane.
May: Gold Coast and Cairns.
June: Abu Dhabi, Amsterdam, Dubai, Oman, Los Angeles, San Diego, Utah National Parks.
July: Arizona National Parks, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Zurich, Abu Dhabi and Sydney.
August: The Whitsundays.
September: Jervis Bay Territory.
October: Bali and Komodo Island.
November: Queenstown and New Zealand road trip.
December: Rarotonga, Aitutaki and Sydney NYE!

Below are some more detailed stats on our most visited airports, top airlines, top aircrafts and most frequented routes:

Wanting to find out your total number of flights and keep a record of them? Just head to: Myflightradar24 to create an account!

We are hoping to tick off a few more countries in 2018, keep reading to find out which we are have already booked and planning on booking!

Top 10 Highlights Of 2017

Every trip we take, we always have memorable experiences both good and bad. From the eye of a hurricane hitting us whilst on my birthday weekend in the Whitsundays to diving with manta rays in Komodo Island.

However, here are our top 10 highlights of this year:

1. Winning the Trip of Wonders Quiz by the Indonesian Tourism Board and travelling to Komodo Island with them for 4 nights! Thank you guys if you’re reading this! 🙂
2. The Vaka Cruise in Aitutaki, to date the most clear and bluest water we’ve ever seen. Pure paradise.
3. Hiking just under 40km return to camp at Havasu Falls and Mooney Falls in Arizona, USA.
4. NYE in Sydney!
5. Living it up on the 4th July in Las Vegas.
6. Graduating from University! Duh!
7. Sunrise over Uluru.
8. Creating our own Instagram Success Course!
9. ALL of New Zealand. The most naturally beautiful country we have visited!
10. Becoming full time travel bloggers since December!

As we were writing this, we started think how lucky we really are, how many incredible places we have been and why we are so grateful for what we have. 🙂

First Year Travel Blogging: Income

Sadly we only have our income spreadsheet from April onwards because we accidentally spilt coke over our previous MacBook, and none of our work was backed up, lesson learned! *cry*

We calculated roughly between January and March we earned $4900 through Instagram and around $300 through affiliates.

Total 2017 income – $31,242.31

In 2017, we earned $31,242.31 from our travel blog. Below is how our income break down in the different blogging income categories:

• Affiliates: $1847.91.
• Instagram Account Management: $4,000.00.
• Instagram Sponsored Posts: $13,470.00.
• Instagram Success Course: $9587.40.
• Sponsored Posts, Link Placements and Content Writing: $2,337.00.

We’ve worked with some of the largest travel brands including: Luxury Escapes, Cathay Pacific, Kayak, Hilton, Discovery Channel and Six Senses to name a few. Fingers crossed next year will be even better! 😀

When we first started out, we never thought in our wildest dreams we would earn this much money in our first year travel blogging. As a result, we created a number of posts to help you do the same!

• Building a successful Instagram account: everything you need to know.
• 10 awesome Facebook Groups for bloggers.
• Get paid to travel the world as a blogger.
• How to start a travel blog from scratch.
• 15 tips before starting a travel blog.
• 10 ways to make money from social media and blogging.
• How to gain more followers on Instagram.

Our Travel Plans For 2018 

2018 is going to be completely different, first of all we aren’t tied down to University and a desk job anymore meaning we are open to travelling wherever our blog takes us and we are open to all kind of trips that will be offered to us!

Our travel plans for this year are split into already booked and our travel wish-list.

Already Booked: 

• 6 month road trip around Australia starting on the 9th January 2018.
  • Check out our whole detailed itinerary here!
• One week in Bali and Nusa Penida from 24th to 31st March 2018.
  • To break up our Australia road trip.
• One night in Kuwait.
  • Flight connection.
• Sri Lanka.
  • Unsure about the length of stay at this moment.

Travel Wish-list

• Cappadocia, Turkey
• Maldives
• Iceland
• Road trip through Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Italy and France.
• Mykonos & Santorini, Greece.

These are just a few of our bucket-list destinations that we think are realistic to tick off in 2018. If you’re wanting the full sha-bang, then head to our ultimate bucket-list post.

Our Blogging and Business Plans For 2018

At the end of the day, Luxurybackpacking is our business, without an income coming in we wouldn’t be able to live our dream, write about what we love and share it with you guys, therefore having a business plan is just as important as a bucket-list/travel wish-list.

Here are our blogging and business goals for this year.

• We want to create and sell our own travel journal geared towards bloggers and avid travellers!
• Double our monthly page views and income.
• Be more organised!
• Produce another online course geared towards helping others achieve their dream of blogging.
• Increase our Instagram following to 100,000.

Right now these seem fairly farfetched, but at the beginning of the year we never thought we would have achieved what we have right now. We always believe if you’re passionate about something, it will shine through. Here’s to 2018!

So that’s a wrap on our first year travel blogging! Thank you to everyone for keeping up with us at Luxurybackpacking. Because of you guys we am able to live our dream, so from the bottom of our hearts: THANKS A TRILLION AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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