How Carrie 24x’d Her Blog Income
• Originally broadcast September 26, 2024 via email •
Carrie Green-Zinn is a 65-year-old travel blogger and student of our program, Scale Your Travel Blog.
I recently chatted with Carrie about her experience going from concept to 50,000 monthly readers (and applying for Mediavine), and I can’t wait to share that with you today!
Like others, Carrie struggled with common blogging challenges like outdated themes, tech issues, and SEO missteps.
But her journey is nothing short of amazing..
…and as I always like to say, “if she can do it, so can you!”
How Carrie Picked Her Travel Blog Niche
Carrie always had a love for writing and travel, but it wasn’t until she stumbled upon successful travel bloggers like The Blonde Abroad that she realized she could turn her passion into a profession.
In 2021, she launched “Carrie Green-Zinn A Travel Blog,” focusing on travel in San Francisco, NYC, hiking, and European destinations.
If you’re struggling to find your niche like Carrie once was, here’s a quick guide:
- What experiences or expertise can you offer?
- Do you have the passion to write about it consistently?
- What’s the market demand, and can you monetize it?
Laura’s Quick Tip: Treating your blog like a personal diary will make it very hard to attract readers. Keep in mind, most people’s favorite topic is themselves, not the life of someone they don’t know.
Instead, try positioning your blog as a helpful guide for others, sharing your expertise in areas they’re interested in.
Carrie’s decision to focus on specific destinations where she had the most experience helped her narrow down her audience and create relevant content.
Making Mistakes With Her Website Design
As most bloggers do, Carrie ran into many technological hurdles. When she first started, she chose to use the website theme, Divi, which would later prove to be a big roadblock to her site’s growth.
It wasn’t until July 2024, when she switched to the WordPress theme, Kadence, that her blog’s performance drastically improved.
Laura’s Quick Tip: When building your blog, don’t underestimate the impact of your website design. As mentioned, I highly recommend the Kadence theme. It’s free!
Or to make it easier, consider purchasing a pre-built Kadence Child theme. We recommend Sarah Pasiuk’s theme’s here:
–> Memories Kadence Child Theme
–> Postcard Kadence Child Theme
This Mistake Also Held Carrie Back From Success
After joining Scale Your Travel Blog, Carrie realized she had made SEO mistakes during her first 18 months as a blogger.
She spent months updating her posts to be optimized for search engines, which eventually paid off because her traffic grew quickly after that.
Laura’s Quick Tip: Choose a platform to “target” (like Google, Pinterest, Facebook, etc), and learn what that platform wants from its creators. FYI… I typically do NOT recommend using Instagram to grow your blog’s readership.
Once you’ve picked your platform, start by optimizing your posts for that ONE platform and slowly diversify your traffic sources.
Making Money With Her Blog
Carrie started making money with her blog through ads and affiliate marketing. It took six months for her earnings to hit $100, but from January 2024 to August 2024, her monthly income skyrocketed from $117 to $2,419!
What Helped Carrie Monetize?
- Affiliates: She partnered with brands like Stay22 and Viator.
- Ad Revenue: Carrie joined SheMedia initially, and is now with Mediavine.
Carrie recommends learning the essentials from the get-go including SEO, link building, and affiliate marketing.
Carrie’s Blog Grew to 50K Monthly Sessions
While Carrie’s initial growth was slow, she continuously put in the work, honed her strategy, fixed SEO mistakes, and learned new ways to promote her blog.
Positive feedback from readers and seeing her traffic numbers rise kept her motivated during the ups and downs of blogging.
She’s also seen success thanks to her niche. By honing in on San Francisco and NYC content, she built a lot of authority, which helped her blog become recognized by many platforms.
Carrie’s Advice For New Bloggers?
Get help from the start!
Joining Scale Your Travel Blog later in her journey gave Carrie the tools she needed to grow, but she wishes she’d taken the leap and learned the necessary skills from day one.
>> Join us in Scale Your Travel Blog here!
What To Watch This Weekend
- 5 Newsletter Ideas You Can Start This Weekend– Matt McGarry
- How This Affiliate Program 3x’d Our Travel Blog Income – Mike & Laura Travel (me)
- 3 Steps To Grow Your Travel Blog Income in 2025 – Laura Peters (me)
Coming Up Next…
⏩ Next week, I’ll dig deeper into Google Search Console to show you how to use this free tool to easily find new content ideas for your blog (that people are actually searching for!)
Keep an eye on your inbox for that email update!
Have a great week!
Laura
P.S. Here are our top recommended blogging resources.
(These are affiliate links, meaning that if you purchase through them, we will make a small percentage without ANY additional cost to you. Thanks for supporting our site, Reader!)
✔️ #1 Travel Blogging Course + Coaching + Community: Scale Your Travel Blog
✔️ #1 Travel Blogging Course + Community: Scale Your Travel Blog
✔️ Join my next free live training: 3 Secrets To Exponentially Grow Your Travel Blog
