Hundreds of people venture into the wild to explore exotic cities, try unusual cuisines and spend nights at the world’s most peculiar hotels. But most of them still come home after a while, whether it’s a week or a whole year. And then there are people who turn traveling into their lifestyle. More often than not they start their own travel blogs and get ridiculously successful with what they do. Can you imagine a life of never-ending journey? It might seem like fun, but there’s a lot of work that needs to be done while on the road. Easier said than done! Here are the most successful bloggers in the world who manage to not only travel, but also make a living out of it.
Meet Lauren Bullen, 24, and Jack Morris, 26. They each have millions of followers (1.2 for Lauren and 2 million for Jack to be exact). They earn around $9000 per photo posted on Instagram, which makes them a real gold mine for advertising companies and tourism organizations.
Jack writes his own blog ‘Do You Travel’, while Lauren is also a writer and has a blog of her own called ‘Gypsea Lust’. The couple met last year to do a project on Fiji together and now they’re celebrating their first anniversary.
Jack is from Manchester, England. He was born in a small village and did skateboarding for most of his childhood. In fact, back in the day this was his only passion! He did skateboarding for 9 years and thought it would become his occupation.
He skipped college to pursue his skateboarding dream and became pretty successful with it. He got featured in some magazines and found a few sponsors, but as time went by his passion started wearing out. In 2008 he fractured his knee and it became a turning point that changed his life.
Before becoming a travel blogger, Jack worked as a carpet cleaner to save some money. After 5 years of a boring lifestyle he decided that was enough and bought a one-way ticket to Thailand. His savings started running out soon and that’s when his popularity on Instagram started to grow.
He was almost broke, but still managed to go on! His Instagram was continuing to grow and bigger offers started coming in. Some of them were too good to resist, and that’s when Jack started accepting them!
His next new locations for 2017 are: South Africa, Finland and Tahiti. Jack revealed that the worst city he has ever traveled to was Marrakesh. Why? Because the people there were extremely rude and told him to get lost – and worse – all the time. Although the city itself was truly beautiful!
Jack’s favorite thing about traveling is the complete freedom to go wherever he wants and do whatever he wants. The only drawback is that he doesn’t get to see his family – mostly on Christmas or when he passes through Europe. Last year he even missed Christmas! But Lauren’s family came to visit the couple on Bali instead.
Lauren is from Northern NSW Australia and is a self-taught photographer with a passion for traveling. She moved to northern Queensland to continue photography in a more exotic setting, but was still doing a day job as a dental assistant. By the time her Instagram account reached 16,000 followers, she has already landed a job with a tourist company that paid her to go traveling while posting cool shots of the region.
She’s been spending more and more time traveling and posting photos to Instagram, and soon it became reasonable for her to quit the day job. Some of the trips took weeks of traveling and she wanted all the flexibility to turn traveling into her permanent job. And so she did! Now Lauren and Jack are working to promote a bunch of different brands, but they only work with the ones they truly believe in. It’s a dream come true!
