The Retirement Newsletter: Travelling in retirement — hobby or side-hustle?
Issue Number: -47 — can I finance my love of travel through travel?
Welcome
Welcome to issue number -47 — Travelling in retirement — hobby or side-hustle?
This week, I will look at travelling and ask if I can change my love of travelling into a side hustle and make some extra cash.
Travelling — hobby or side hustle?
I like to travel.
I like going to new countries, exploring, and trying new foods.
I have been lucky because I have travelled a lot for work and pleasure.
I’ve also had the opportunity to spend some considerable time living abroad in the States and Malaysia.
I enjoy travelling.
Over the years, I have travelled through Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and Europe.
During my travels, I have often kept a journal of my adventures and sometimes posted my stories to a blog.
Of course, all this ended in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic started. My travel was curtailed, and I moved to Zoom and Teams for my work — no more overseas travel, either for business or pleasure.
And, now we’ve got used to the Zoom/Teams meetings, and also, because I changed jobs, I no longer do a lot of international travel.
I’ve not left the UK since 2019. I used to take three or four trips overseas a year. Now it is none. I look at my suitcases in the corner of the room and wonder when I will use them again for international travel.
So, travel in retirement, hobby or side-hustle?
When I retire, I plan to go back to travelling, although I must admit it won’t be as I used to do when I was at work, and I will confine my travel to mainly exploring the UK. There is a lot of the UK I have not seen.
But could I increase my travel by monetising it?
Travel as a side-hustle — some things to try
Well, how could I fund my travel habit through a side-hustle?
Broadly, my options fall into two groups: telling people what I am doing, where I am travelling and how, or supporting people who want to travel. Or it could be a mixture of the two. And for the last 20 years, I have partly funded my personal travelling through a series of blogs and websites I have run.
What am I doing?
There are several ways that we can sell our travel stories; all that changes is the ‘medium’ we use to tell the story.
We could get our travel stories across as:
Blog — we write about our travels on a blog. It could be a WordPress site or a host such as Medium. On WordPress, we could make money through advertising or affiliate sales. On Medium, it would be from membership fees. Over the years, I have tried both. I never made much money through my WordPress site, and I am migrating my blog’s content to a site on Medium — NicksWanderings. On Medium, I get quite a few reads, and I have a good number of followers, but I don’t make a lot of money.
Newsletter — you could run your blog as a newsletter on sites such as Substack. One advantage of using a site such as Substack is you build an email list which you can then use to market your services (see below).
Photographs — you could run a blog focusing on photographs you take during your travels or sell your travel photos online. Maybe, set up an Instagram account or a Facebook page? I take many photos while travelling, so my blog on Medium — NicksWanderings — contains quite a few photos. I also tried selling my travel photos online but made little money. However, every little revenue stream helps.
Podcast — record podcasts about your travels. I have never tried this, but it must work because of the number of travel podcasts available.
Vlog — as for podcasts, but with video. That is, start a YouTube channel about your travels. Again, this must work as there are a lot of YouTube travel channels. It is something I have never tried. It might be time that I did.
With all the above, you do not have to focus on one thing. You could consider ‘recycling’ (i.e. repurposing) your material from one form to another. For example, when on a trip, you could take photos, record a video or two, and write a blog post. The blog post could be reused to make a podcast, and the videos could be used for YouTube. One trip, multiple outputs.
How can I help you?
There are several ways that we could make some money supporting fellow travellers and explorers:
Teaching English abroad — well, you are abroad, and if you speak English, you could teach it.
Travel agent — there are ‘white-label’ services where you can set yourself up as a travel agent. This could work well if you have a travel blog and want to offer a service promoting trips to countries and places you have visited.
Travel consulting services — this is like the travel agent idea above, but in this case, you offer a service on countries you have visited — a sort of travel tips thing.
Travel guidebooks — this would (or could) also be a spin-off from blogging. You compile a series of blog posts or newsletters from a trip into a travel guidebook and sell them on sites like Amazon or Gumroad. You could use your email list from the newsletter to promote your guidebooks.
Travel-related products — these could be sold through your blog or newsletter using affiliate links.
Writing services — again, this links in with blogging, but you sell your output to a publisher.
Summary
It could be possible to use travel to make a little cash and support your travel in retirement.
One clear thing is that there is the scope in a travel side-hustle to ‘re-cycle’ a lot of the material produced into other formats, so you get the most return for the investment of your time. But paying for one trip will take a lot of work.
Next week
Next week, I wonder if I will be ‘economically inactive’ in retirement.
Thanks
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Until next time,
Nick
PS, If you want to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, anything — please get in touch.