Building a Travel Brand Beyond Blog Traffic: Anna Cook’s Blogging Journey

This is an interview with Anna Cook of Stuck On The Go.

Hey, Anna! Tell us a bit about yourself.

Hi! I’m Anna, a travel content creator based in rural North Carolina who loves any new experiences but especially outdoor adventures. I help travelers plan better trips whether it’s weekend trips along the East Coast or bucket list adventures abroad.

I’m also a coach for other travel creators who want to partner with destination marketing organizations.

How did your business journey start and what were you doing before that?

The idea for starting a travel blog first came about during my senior year of college before I went on a five week trip through Europe where I visited nine different countries.

As someone who was always searching for ways to make money online, I knew people were also monetizing blogs, but it seemed like a lot of work. Fast forward two years and it was an idea that I kept coming back to again and again.

At this point, I was working at an electrical engineering company in a project management position and I didn’t love what I was doing. I decided to start blogging to see if I enjoyed it and then see if I could make it into a business.

What inspired you to start Stuck On The Go?

I was a little different than most bloggers. Many people start blogging as a hobby and then are surprised when they can make money from it. I had intentions of turning my blog Stuck on The Go into a business from the time I launched.

For a while, I knew I wanted to start my own business so I could have more control over my own schedule and blogging seemed like it would give me the time freedom that I wanted and had a very low cost of entry.

I’ve never been a writer though, so I gave myself a year to test it out and see if I liked it before trying to monetize. I chose to go with the travel niche because that’s what I’m passionate about. I really could talk about travel for hours!

How did your niche evolve into focusing on smaller towns and outdoor adventures?

This was part necessity and part personal preference.

I launched the blog in August of 2019 so of course the following year when I was getting really serious about it, I was doing way more outdoor activities anyway because of the pandemic.

I had started dating my now-husband in 2017 and he got me started in the outdoors, then this made me lean into it even more. Many of the really epic outdoor adventures are typically closer to small towns vs big cities, so that was a natural fit.

I also live in a tiny town and while I love a city getaway for a few days, I’m a small town girl through and through. I just love the community connection and unique small businesses that make up these special areas.

How did your first year as a travel blogger go in terms of traffic and income?

Ha! I can’t remember exactly what my traffic numbers were, but it wasn’t much. Probably a few hundred people per month if I was lucky.

I don’t think I made anything during my first year. I was more focused on figuring out whether I liked doing this or not. The pandemic also happened during my first year blogging, so that heavily affected traffic as well.

How important has SEO been in your growth strategy from day one?

My traffic didn’t really start growing significantly until I learned SEO. I was part of a blogging membership that had some trainings on SEO and that got me to about 15k monthly page views.

Then I took an SEO-specific course and grew my page views to 65k monthly views. Google’s algorithms have since shifted, so I’m back down to around 15k monthly views, but the majority of my traffic still comes from SEO.

Any underrated SEO tips that have worked well for you?

Find new keywords by looking at what related keywords your existing posts are already ranking for in Google Search Console.

How much traffic do you get now? What are your main traffic sources?

I’m consistently getting between 10k to 15k monthly page views on my blog and it primarily comes from Google search.

What do you think contributed to this growth?

SEO contributed to a lot of my growth, but I think other bloggers could best learn from one of the mistakes that I made. During the time I was publishing consistently and really chasing page view growth, I started chasing trends too much.

I would write about things that weren’t necessarily helpful for my audience and tried to use SEO shortcuts. I think this is one of the biggest reasons that I lost a significant amount of traffic.

Always keep your audience in mind and write posts that are going to be truly helpful for them.

What type of content performs best for?

For the last couple of years, my North Carolina content has done the best. It makes sense because I live here, so NC is the place that I cover most.

I don’t really have a specific type of posts that does the best—it can vary from things to do, nearby beaches, where to camp, etc. 

What does your content creation process look like from idea to publish?

I’ve taken a bit of a step back from the blog these days and typically only publish when I’ve got a specific idea in mind or am working on a campaign. I post way more on social media now.

Back when I was publishing consistently, I tried to batch as much as I could.

For an upcoming trip, I would first do all my keyword research, then create outlines for three to four of those. During the trip, I would take notes inside my Google Doc outline. After getting home, I would try to write as much of each post as possible at once.

Then came selecting the photos, resizing, and uploading. And finally, formatting the post in WordPress. After hitting publish, I would typically share on Facebook and occasionally make a Pinterest pin.

Do you treat social media as a traffic source, a brand builder, or both?

I treat it as both! Most of my income comes from tourism board partnerships (mainly selling photos, videos, and blog posts to them), so staying active on social media is important for me.

It’s a nice “add-on” to content packages. Once my following grows a little more, I hope to get paid for posting on my own account as well as licensing content. Right now I’m most focused on Instagram, but I’m also active on Facebook.

I have a page for my blog but also run a group where I share tips for other creators about partnering with destinations. This group actually sends a decent amount of traffic to my blog posts for creators.

If someone only had time for one platform, which would you recommend?

If you enjoy short-form video, I would choose Instagram and you can publish all your Instagram posts to your linked Facebook page. Instagram reels are also super easy to repurpose to TikTok and sometimes YouTube shorts. So I feel like that’s the best bang for your buck.

If you prefer photography, I feel like Facebook is a better option for you. I don’t have any data to back that up, but that’s just based on my personal experience. I’ve had photo galleries do really well on Facebook and get lots of engagement.

What income streams do you rely on today? How much do you earn as a travel blogger?

My most lucrative income stream is freelancing for tourism boards, but I also make money from ads on my website, affiliate sales, my course, sponsorships & UGC, and travel agent commissions.

Before the Google updates, I consistently earned a few thousand from ads and affiliates alone. Over the last couple of years I had to rebuild my business from the ground up and I’m finally seeing the momentum come back.

As I rebuild, I tried to think about building long-term income streams that would bring in consistent income at scale (course sales, affiliate-focused posts, etc) plus short-term streams that can give me a bump when I need it (freelancing, sponsorships, etc).

How does affiliate marketing work specifically in your niche?

In travel, the most popular affiliates are places to stay, tours, and rental cars. Writing reviews of specific activities or hotels can work well or round ups of multiple places to stay or tours in a single destination.

For the outdoors adventure niche, it can also be tours but a lot of gear guides do well.

What types of products or services convert best for you?

My gear guides used to convert really well where I would round up specific types of hiking shirts, pants, or gear for other outdoor activities.  These days hotels are converting the best.

What’s your advice for beginners trying to make their first affiliate sale?

Don’t recommend anything that you don’t use and love yourself. Your audience’s trust is the most important thing and you don’t want to lose that.

How do you balance travel and actually getting work done?

This is one of the most difficult things!

In 2022, I took on 16 different partnerships with DMOs and was gone from home two weeks out of every month from May through September. I was extremely burnt out by the end of that year.

Each year since then I’ve traveled less until this year when things have ramped back up. I chose to back off on my travel schedule because I realized that I was just maintaining my business instead of really growing it because I didn’t have enough time for deep work.

What helps me most is prioritizing the things that actually make me money, batching work when I’m home to try and get ahead, and having just one focus when I’m on the road.

Sometimes that’s getting one freelance article done. Sometimes it’s keeping up with batching my social media content. It just depends what’s going on at the time.

If my trip is a week or longer, then I try to schedule some down time to specifically work while I’m on the road.

For example, I was in the UK and Ireland for almost five weeks in the spring of 2025. During that time, I tried to schedule one day each week to do nothing or minimal activity so that I could focus on work. In the middle of my trip, I scheduled a longer stay in Edinburgh (4 days) so that I could slow down a bit and catch up on work.

Do you batch content or create on the go?

Batch! This makes the biggest difference in my business when I’m able to do it. It cuts down on the friction of switching tasks and means I’m not sitting there wondering what to create today.

It also helps make posts feel more cohesive throughout the month and allows me to create a better strategy. When batching, one of the most helpful things is to come up with all your ideas for the month or quarter first. Then go through your creation process and batch those individual tasks.

Where do you see the travel blogging industry heading in the next few years?

I feel like instead of creating blog posts to answer specific questions, bloggers need to be building a well-rounded brand. Become the go-to resource for people and build a community around a specific topic or travel style. Repurpose your content so you can show up on multiple platforms.

Are you using AI tools in your business? If yes, how?

Yes! I use ChatGPT almost daily. It helps me with everything from post ideas and business strategy to writing blog posts and building email welcome sequences.

Though let me be clear, I’m not just asking Chat to write a blog post about a topic and using what it spits out. I use it as a tool to help create my content faster. So I’m providing it the post outline, I’ve trained it on my voice, I feed it my specific experience with the topic and move section by section through the post.

If you had to start again from zero, how would you grow traffic in 2026?

I actually have an entire blog post about what I would do if I started from scratch right now.

If we’re talking about growing blog traffic specifically, I would figure out what you want to be known for. Think back to when you were a beginner in the topic you chose. What questions did you have?

Like for the outdoors—when I first started hiking, I wondered what distance is best for beginner hikers, what gear do I have to have and what can I go without, and where to find the best trails in the area just to name a few.

Brainstorm as many of these questions as you can. Look in related Facebook groups and use ChatGPT to help. Then write articles answering these questions.

Learn how to use a keyword research tool if you can afford it. That’s what I would start with. Then when you’re planning a trip to a specific place, keep track of the questions that pop up for you during your planning process. Other people have probably had the same ones.

What’s next for you and Stuck On The Go?

This year I’ve put a big focus on growing my Instagram account to use it as a tool for driving traffic to old blog posts as well as landing more lucrative sponsorships with brands and destinations. I’m also heavily focused on growing my creator community and helping other creators to land partnerships especially with destination marketing organizations. If you’re a creator who wants to partner with tourism boards, I’m sharing 3 Pitch Examples that Got a Yes from my own experience.