EP 98: Get Ruthed: Creating a Road Map for Success with Travel Blogger Kristi Valentini

As a full-time professional freelance writer, Kristi already has the writing part down! Her fairly new website Readymade Travel Plans is packed full of amazing content and ready-to-use itineraries to help busy families take amazing trips all over North America. You see, while Kristi’s biggest passion is travel, her superpower is planning amazing vacations that veer off the beaten path.

All of this is fantastic! Kristi’s day job, superpower, and passion all align, as does her vision for creating a travel blogging empire. In fact, her vision for her future is so clear that the fear of failure can feel even more powerful because she knows so clearly what she wants. And her biggest problem with achieving that dream is that she hasn’t figured out how to turn her passion and skills into a paying job.

So far, Kristi has been focusing on building content. This includes exciting, wonderfully detailed itineraries that can help families feel like travel is actually a fun possibility instead of an overwhelming chore. But she can’t figure out what to offer as a paid product. (Do you see the easy solution here?!) These itineraries are already amazing products, so the real challenge is to shift Kristi’s perspective on what she should sell and what she should give away for free.

It’s also time for Kristi to think about reaching out more and growing her traffic. I’ll give her (and you!) a detailed roadmap of the next steps to take. Whether you’re also a travel blogger or in a completely different field, I think this value-packed episode will help you explore topics like monetization, creating paid products, and building a young site. Finally, I hope this episode helps reassure you that failure isn’t the end. In fact, failing fast is the path to success!

Highlights

[00:54] – Welcome to the Do It Scared podcast, brought to you by Elite Blog Academy®, a program that teaches you to build a successful online business! The doors to this academy only open once a year, and your opportunity is coming up soon! Sign up for the waiting list at this link to make sure you don’t miss out.
[01:18] – Ruth welcomes listeners back to the show, and introduces guest Kristi Valentini.
[04:20] – Where is Kristi now, what is she struggling most with, and what does she want to get out of this Get Ruthed coaching session?
[05:51] – Ruth steps in to respond to and unpack some of what Kristi has been saying about her goals and vision.
[08:12] – We hear about what Kristi does now as a full-time freelance writer.
[09:43] – How is Kristi using the connections that she has made to help grow her business?
[13:20] – Kristi talks about where she is now in terms of traffic, and how she has been promoting her relatively new site.
[16:02] – How else has Kristi been working on getting page views for her site? She answers, and talks about how she got views on her previous site.
[20:32] – Kristi responds to Ruth’s question about how much keyword research she does before writing her posts.
[22:32] – What are Kristi’s plans for monetization for her business? She answers, then Ruth takes some time to rave about Kristi’s travel plans and share a new perspective on the blog.
[27:13] – Kristi poses a new question for Ruth: how does she get people to her email list if her travel plans are her products?
[30:18] – We hear about one of Kristi’s challenges, and why Ruth’s advice has touched her so deeply.
[32:27] – Ruth outlines the ways that Kristi’s blog posts should be different than what they are now, and offers some ideas for what else Kristi can provide.
[35:05] – Kristi describes an idea that she had previously come up with for monetization, and asks for Ruth’s thoughts on that product.
[37:21] – Another thing that Ruth would change about Kristi’s site is to make it look less “bloggy” and more like a static, sales-oriented home page.
[38:42] – Ruth tells Kristi what to focus on and what steps she should take to update her site and build her traffic.
[40:56] – Does Ruth have any tips on how not to get hung up on wanting to do everything perfectly?
[42:51] – Kristi definitely needs to get more traffic. Ruth points out that roundups can help with this.
[44:43] – Since Kristi is still freelancing and guest blogging, should she focus on only selling content that she wouldn’t use on her own blog?
[49:57] – Ruth ask Kristi how she feels about this big change in strategy.
[53:06] – We hear a recap of what Kristi has going for her, what she’s doing now, and what she needs to change.
[58:42] – Don’t forget to grab your FREE hard copy of Ruth’s book How to Blog for Profit (Without Selling Your Soul)! And feel free to reach out to Ruth if you have any questions or topic ideas for future episodes. You can contact her at ruth@livingwellspendingless.com or on Instagram.