How Alesha and Jarryd of NOMADasaurus Get Paid to Travel The World [& Earn $50K/mo from 1 Blog]
This is an interview with Alesha and Jarryd of NOMADasaurus.
Hey, guys. Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do.
Hey Lidiya! We’re Alesha and Jarryd, the professional travel photographers, content creators and travel bloggers behind NOMADasaurus. We’re a married couple from Magnetic Island in Australia and have been travelling the world together practically full-time since 2008.
We work primarily in the tourism industry, partnering with tourism boards, tour operators and gear companies to experience and promote various products and destinations.
What was your life like before becoming travel bloggers?
We both started travelling shortly after finishing high school and actually met in Canada. Before becoming travel bloggers we were exploring Canada in a campervan (#VanLife before Instagram existed!), working in the ski fields and then backpacking around Central America.
We travelled for 5 years together before we even knew what a travel blog was.
When and why did you start NOMADasaurus?
We started NOMADasaurus at the end of 2013 to document our adventures travelling overland from Thailand to South Africa without flying. It was simply a place to publish stories, photos and information from our trip, and while we knew some bloggers made money online, we had no idea how. It was always a ‘wouldn’t that be nice?’ thought rather than the reason we launched.
How did you decide on the name and pick a niche?
The name came about simply because we needed a domain to register and all the good ones were taken! We were throwing around ideas and when we’d check on NameCheap they were already registered.
Eventually I blurted out ‘nomadasaurus’, kind of like a nomadic dinosaur, and as it was available we bought it. The niche was easy – overland travel, sustainability, budget backpacking and adventures, as that was what we were into. Before we knew it we had started a travel blog!
What were you writing about in the early days of the blog vs now?
We’d publish a blog post every Monday and Thursday at 12pm without fail for the first 18 months of our blog, and there wasn’t much rhyme or reason as to what we’d write about.
Sometimes it’d be about how to cross a border or get a visa in a certain country, other times it’d be a destination guide or story about an experience we had. Occasionally, I’d write an inspirational post.
As time progressed and we started getting more traffic and eventually an income, we shifted our content strategy to be heavily focused on comprehensive travel guides for different places we’d visit.
How did Jarryd get into travel writing?
Chris, a friend we met in Utila, Honduras in 2011, messaged me one day saying he was writing a travel book and would love me to write a chapter for it. I put together a short story on hiking to El Mirador, the largest Mayan temple in the world, and sent it over.
He loved it, and I showed it to some friends and family who also were impressed, and somewhat surprised, that I could write a half-decent story. It rekindled a forgotten passion for storytelling from when I was kid.
When we started the blog it was decided that I would be the primary writer and Alesha would become the photographer.
A few months into our travels, I won the World Nomads Travel Writing Scholarship which gave me the credentials and skills to start freelance writing for large media outlets.
Fun fact – Chris started working for us in 2018 as our ‘Head of Content’, which admittedly was a made-up role purely because he was a good friend asking to work with us. He ended up becoming one of the most important assets to our business. He only just stepped down from his role a few months ago to pursue his own business goals.
Are you still earning from that, aside from the blog income?
I very rarely write anymore, including for our blog, as I just don’t have time to as our business continues to grow.
Every now and then I’ll pen a story or a travel guide for a client if requested, maybe once or twice a year, but the days of pitching editors for articles are long gone.
Is travel writing still a profitable venture?
There are quite a few travel writers still making a decent salary from telling stories, but it’s a very different environment these days.
With SEO and AI content dominating publications and budgets being cut across the industry, it’s getting harder and harder to make a full-time living purely as a travel writer. Not impossible, we have a lot of friends who still do. It’s just a smaller pool to swim in now.
How long did it take you to make your first money blogging?
Excluding travel writing, the first money that we made purely from the blog came in about a year into the site being live from a sponsored post.
Essentially, we got paid $250 to write a story with a link to a business who was looking to build links. We don’t do that anymore, and haven’t for many years, but that was how we made money in the early days before we knew any better.
How did your first years as bloggers go in terms of traffic, income, and site growth?
The first year we saw fantastic growth on social media, especially on Facebook when that was the go-to platform for most people, and very, very minor growth on the blog.
The second year we started to get some media publicity which sent people to our blog, and our socials continued to grow. We also started getting some gear sponsorships from companies like GoPro and clothing and camping businesses.
From memory we ended our second year with about 25k monthly unique visitors.
In 2016 we landed our first paid tourism board campaigns. At the end of 2016, we decided to finally learn about SEO and affiliate marketing, moving to Chiang Mai and working 8-10 hours a day.
It paid off, and about halfway through 2017 we hit 100K MUV (Monthly Unique Visitors) and started earning more money than we were spending. Since then it has seen tremendous year-on-year growth.
Also read: How Olly Gaspar Grew His Adventure Travel Blog to 250K Monthly Page Views
How much traffic does your blog get now? What are your top traffic sources?
At our peak we were receiving 600K MUV, and now we’re bouncing between 300K-400K due to the recent Google algorithm updates.
Search is still our primary traffic source.
What’s your content strategy like?
Our content strategy is typically planned 12 months out with our editorial team, with a focus on targeting popular and emerging destinations or products with high revenue-generation potential.
We used to post 3-5 times a week, but these days it’s more around 1-2 times a week. We update and optimise every single article on our website in the first quarter of each year.
When did you get into SEO? And do you optimize every blog post?
We got into SEO in 2017 while living in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and these days we actually manage SEO for a number of clients.
Yes, every single post is optimised for search.
What SEO strategy has worked best for you?
Topical authority, in-depth competitor analysis and strategic on-page structure.
How much are you earning from your blog?
Every month is different, but if we only consider blog and social media income and not any of the other businesses we run, NOMADasaurus generates about $40-50k a month consistently through affiliate marketing, display advertising, brand deals and tourism campaigns.
We have about 15 different income streams through various avenues and businesses bringing in 7 figures annually.
What were the big moves that turned NOMADasaurus into a full-time business?
Learning about SEO and affiliate marketing was a big one, systemising the business another, as was discovering the power of outsourcing and scaling.
Honestly, though, it was developing the proper mindset to turn a blog making a bit of money into a fully-fledged business that changed things for us.
What other ways to get paid to travel the world have worked for you?
Income that is directly related to travelling the world (not money that we make that just so happens to allow us to travel) comes primarily from tourism campaigns, travel photography jobs and running tours.
Also read: How Manthan Grew a Photography Blog to $1K+ in Monthly Revenue
Are you actively building backlinks to your blog?
Not actively anymore, but we were for many years. Our favourite way to generate links was through PR and media features, as well as from freelance writing.
How did you land interviews and features on big platforms like Forbes?
In the early days, by finding out who the journalists were that were covering stories from people like us and pitching them!
These days, though, it is journalists reaching out to us rather than the other way around, which is a very privileged position to be in.
What is it like running a business with your partner?
Amazing, challenging, liberating, stressful and exciting all in one!
Alesha and I are perfect life and business partners though and somehow spend 24/7 with each other, travelling the world and running multiple businesses without any issues.
Also read: How This Travel Blogging Couple Turned Their Blog into a Full-Time Business
How do you stay productive while on the road?
That really is the hardest part, as we still spend around 9 months of the year travelling for work.
Having strict discipline and blocking out time to get work done is the only way we can do it.
Outsourcing tasks, utilising SOPs and automations and incorporating productivity tools is another thing we do religiously. We’re still not perfect at it though!
What would you say to those who want to get paid to travel?
Don’t listen to anyone that says the market is too saturated – there’s more opportunities than ever to get paid to travel.
Biggest tips would be to:
- treat your brand like a business from day one;
- master marketable skills;
- focus on income diversification and don’t put all your eggs in one basket. We see far too many people going all-in on Instagram or TikTok for example, which in our opinion is absolutely crazy considering it can all get taken away from you in an instant.
If you want to get paid to travel, remember that it’s a lot of work, study, networking and navigating involved, but the end result is worth the effort.
What’s next for you and NOMADasaurus?
We’re focusing more and more on our tour company, where we run adventure and photography tours to destinations such as Antarctica, Botswana, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia, with new locations being announced shortly.
As of this year, we were also named official Sony Digital Imaging Ambassadors and are now working more as photography guides and ‘Photographers-in-Residence’ for a number of companies in the adventure and expedition space.
Our digital marketing agency is still going strong but we’ve pulled back on the growth phase to focus on delivering the best services possible for our current clients.
We have plenty of other exciting projects in the works too, so watch this space.
On the travel side of things, we’re fully booked until October 2025 with a bunch of very, very cool projects, including spending 4 months in Antarctica and hitting every continent.
We’re also in the middle of building out a Toyota Land Cruiser Troop Carrier to be the ultimate overland vehicle, with the plan to ship it overseas and start driving around the world.
Maybe, just maybe, we’ll actually spend some time at home too. We’ll see what happens!
