Hey Owlets,
It’s been such a long time since I last uploaded that I’m wondering if I can even still call you that? Let’s call it what it is - 2021 was a total train wreck for my blog. I think I uploaded maybe 10 blog posts, if that. I’ve had loads of messages asking if I’m still going to be a blogger, and even people coming up to me in the street and asking why I don’t post anymore. So, with that in mind I wanted to take some time now to catch you up and explain what’s been happening.
For three incredible years I was so lucky to call The Owlet my job - opening my emails to find someone asking me to review a cruise ship or fly to a random country for an epic road trip (here’s looking at you, Romania). Then 2020 happened. As much as I love my blog I’m sure you can understand that there isn’t a lot of call for a travel blogger in the middle of a pandemic. I woke up one morning (actually the morning I was supposed to be heading to Barcelona for a work trip - go figure) to find that my job was no longer required, along with the rest of the travel industry.
My options were go and get a normal job, hope the pandemic didn’t last too long or work something out - well winging it has worked for me so far so that seemed like the obvious choice.
I rebranded my LinkedIn to call myself a content and copywriter, spoke about my experience with SEO and social media etc. Basically I thought of any skill or piece of knowledge that I had even remotely come across over my time as a blogger and sold myself on it. And do you know what? It actually worked.
2021 was the year of “oh my god I don’t even have time to breathe”. As a blogger you get used to the “make hay while the sun shines” way of working (otherwise known as feast or famine if you’re more pessimistic). I took on every client that wanted to hire me and accepted every piece of work that came my way. It’s the most money I’ve ever made in my life (granted, I was a student and blogger before that so the money wasn’t exactly rolling in). It felt amazing to be earning a proper living without having to go to an office or fit in a corporate box. With travel looking like it was going to take a long time to return to normal we decided to buy a house, and I went from 0 savings to a fairly decent house deposit in just one year. This was everything I’d always wanted since I first realised that people made money with the internet but, I’ll be honest with you, I’m exhausted.
Last year I wrote a piece called “why the productivity movement is toxic” which was a slight vent/sub-tweet at my frustrations. During December I worked 7am-9pm without a break every single day because I’d taken on so many clients - I felt like I needed to “catch up” with all of my friends that had normal jobs and had been saving for a house for years. Okay, I did it but I was so burnt out that I’ve spent the first three weeks of January doing nothing apart from some minimal freelance work.
So, by now you might be wondering if there’s a point to my moans and I promise there is. Let’s talk about 2022 and the future of The Owlet.
After what was simultaneously the best and worst year of my career I’ve decided that I don’t want to end up in that position again. I miss being able to chat to you so much, but I just didn’t have the mental energy to sit down and write for you after churning out tens of thousands of words every day. I’m going to talk more about my goals in another article, but as I’ve already mentioned on Instagram I want to be kinder to myself.
Over Christmas, Jack and I sat down and talked about what I wanted to achieve in 2022. I made a Trello board of yearly goals, then broke them down into steps I needed to take in each quarter (and further down into each month) to actually manage it. I desperately want to go back to weekly uploads on The Owlet, and I love doing Youtube but I’ve just struggled to find the time. Meanwhile, my views on both my blog and my Youtube have still been growing which makes me even more enthusiastic.
First of all, The Owlet isn’t going anywhere but it might change a little bit. In pursuit of views and SEO juice (all of the things that make money as a blogger) I lost the reason that I started my blog. This was always my diary of things that I’ve done and mistakes that I’ve made to share my life with you and hopefully help you learn. I love the advice and tips posts but they’re draining, and even to this day my favourite entries are the ones that tell a story.
The plan is to spend some time bulk-writing blog posts for The Owlet so I can achieve my goal of having weekly uploads by May. There might be a few tips posts, but on the whole my blog is going back to exactly that - my diary of cool things I’ve done and want to encourage you to do too. Once I’ve got a good backlog of posts I’m going to focus on building up a backlog for Youtube. Weekly, and even fortnightly, uploads proved to be too much with everything else going on so I’m thinking of doing monthly uploads of a 30 minute or so vlog and then I might sprinkle a few sit down posts in between. That way I can focus on the quality and documentary style that makes me happy without having to rush.
Onto the more advice/tips style posts. They’ll still be around but they’re getting a new home. The plan is to launch two new websites (one for travel, one for fashion and beauty) which will be the same kind of friendly vibe that I love in my writing, but not focused on me. That way I can get all of the things that full time bloggers need from those websites, still give you the advice you’re looking for and take my blog back to the OG Owlet days that made me fall in love with the internet in the first place.
Finally, let’s talk about actually being able to afford to live. I’m continuing my freelance work but scaling back the number of clients and only taking on longer term projects. I now have a maximum of 5 clients at any one time so that I can be a little less headless chicken and have time to focus on my own work as well.
I’ve been doing a lot of research into passive income and different revenue streams - being totally honest I’ve fallen down the side hustle TikTok rabbit hole way too many times. I’m going to be trying a few of these ideas out, so if you want me to write about it (or create my own side hustle TikTok) then let me know. The aim is to find ways to make my income more sustainable and less draining so that I can get back to doing a good balance of all of the things I love.
So, that’s it. If you stuck around for the whole essay then thank you, and if you’ve stuck around for the not even one blog post per month over the last year then thank you even more! I promise that it won’t be like this for much longer. I’m working on it, and I’ll hopefully be back on all of your favourite platforms soon.
Thank you again for supporting me on this incredible journey.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Have your say; it's a hoot!