Nomadic Backpacker - About The Blog
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Nomadic Backpacker: Travel stories interspersed with logistics, tips and advice based on 30 years of experience as a low budget traveller, through 100 countries.
I was first introduced to the world of blogging (and Weebly) in a hostel in Ljubljana, Slovenia in November 2011. I was nearing the end of my 18-month trip which ran from June 1st 2010 to December 1st 2011.
At that time I was only posting photos of my trip on FaceBook. 2 weeks later back home, I set up my first blog. It was called White Monkey Travels.
At that time I was only posting photos of my trip on FaceBook. 2 weeks later back home, I set up my first blog. It was called White Monkey Travels.
White Monkey was a nickname given by an Indonesian friend. She was Brown Monkey, and I was White Monkey, for obvious reasons.
I travelled. So the blog was called White Monkey Travels. I used the blog as an alternative to FaceBook. I posted photos.
I then progressed to documenting the journey with tales of my adventures supported by very bad quality photos.
I made all the mistakes as a newbie blogger with that blog. In an attempt to customize everything, I coded everything. Page loading time was terrible.
I hadn't been introduced to Grammarly, did it even exist then? Well, my spelling and grammar skills were pretty bad. The structure of more than 300 pages was BAD. Very bad.
I knew nothing of SEO, I hadn't bothered to read Weebly's own SEO guide.
But we learn more from the mistakes we have made.
The blog was hacked. It was copied, lock, stock and barrel, given a new name, and hosted by the criminals at GoDaddy (yes they had a rep for hosting skimmed, copied and fake content).
I had Google take it down! Thank you, Google!
And this is why you cannot, easily at least, copy and paste any text, nor download images from my blog.
Eventually, I grew bored with blogging.
In 2018, I restarted my venture. I set up Nomadic Backpacker. At first, it was a Weebly dot com domain. But after a few months, I upgraded and bought the www.nomadicbackpacker.com domain. I had from the outset, used HTTPS. I Am amazed how many new blogs are being set up these days with just HTTP. If a blog is such, I just click off, asap. Get with it, fellow bloggers!
I was warned by WordPress bloggers that I wouldn't get anywhere with a blog hosted by Weebly. I asked them why. They didn't actually know why. But it became a game of sorts, to prove the naysayers wrong.
I read Weebly's own SEO guide, which is a dedicated guide on how to maximise SEO on Weebly.
Starting a blog requires a lot of work. I learned how to tweak the front-end coding on Weebly. I love everything to be "just right". I would adjust the font size by a few pixels and the line height, letter spacing, margins, and page width. I learned to live with the limitations and found my own workarounds. Sometimes this gives me a massive workload but hey, it's fun.
I don't use blog-style pages so nothing is automated. I have to set up everything myself.
I am pretty much done with the appearance/layout of the blog.
I only use code to create H1 title tags and to code in photos and text links that I want to be NOFOLLOW, as all links are by default on Weebly, DOFOLLOW.
I am an active member of the Weebly Community, helping out wherever I can. The admin staff love me so much that the 60 USD yearly fee for my blog gets waived.
The plan was to make a go of it. I wanted to be able to live a simple backpacking life off of the income generated by the blog.
*****
This blog focuses mostly on the journey I started before Covid fucked everyone over. I left home on January 6 2020 when Covid was still in Wuhan, with some back posts from the previous 20 plus years.
I have travelled through France, Tunisia, Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, and Kenya where I got stuck, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia, Turkey, Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador. I have produced 400 plus blog posts from my adventures.
I did go home for two weeks when my dad passed but am now back in Mexico. The journey continues. The blog continues and I have upped my game.
The principles of the blog are as straightforward as they ever were.
I only write about places I have been to. The only content I have which is written by others are the posts featuring The Top 3 Favourite Countries of fellow travellers.
Everything else is personally written by me. I just don't agree with copying other people's stuff. Not only is it immoral but also because the facts, the intel, cannot be trusted because the author hasn't checked the facts and has copied a blog produced years ago.
In the research for my latest blog post, 19 Totally Free Museums in Mexico City (2022) I came across a blog "33 Free Museums in Mexico City" (I also use Google Maps and the relevant government sites to locate the free museums as there are more than 150 museums here in CDMX).
Number 1 on the list of the 33 was the Frida Kahlo Museum. 2nd was the Anthropology Museum. I was like, WTF.
I knew damned well that these 2 museums were not free. Well, not totally free. In fact, the Frida Kahlo museum was only open for free to kids under 6 and those who could provide proof of disabilities and limited means. This represents a minute fraction of possible visitors and can hardly be called free in my opinion.
So the blog was using the word 'free' just for SEO purposes. Google loves the word FREE. Sure why not capitalise on it but not use it for all museums, free or otherwise.
Google also loves to see a number and it also loves to see odd numbers like 33, and 19.
Yes, I have decided to write a few posts that are great for SEO, other than writing my Backpacking in Mexico City type posts which are a travelogue of sorts crammed full of logistics.
But where the author of the 33 Free Museum post only copied from Forbes and CNTraveler, yes they even admit it, I put in the leg work myself. In 3 weeks I visited 23 museums to bring you the most up to date facts possible for 19 museums.
I crisscrossed the city on foot and by Metro/MetroBus.
Just on Monday, I made the trip south to Universidad to visit the last 3 Totally Free Museums. The Sculpture Park, The MUCA and the 3rd Soumaya Museum.
The Sculpture Park was nicely checked. But this is where those copycat bloggers will come unstuck. The Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Arte is presently closed for renovations.
But if you use only GoogleMaps and FaceBook and blogs that have simply copied other blogs from years ago, just adding a small inclusion in the top part of the blog post "UPDATED for 2022" without changing any details, you would be led to believe that it was open.
This is where leg work is required. And with these self-imposed morals, I aim to bring you the most accurate and raw blog posts ever. I always date my blogs: Details correct as of May 2022, for example, as things do change. I am trying to update GoogleMaps as I go.
I travelled. So the blog was called White Monkey Travels. I used the blog as an alternative to FaceBook. I posted photos.
I then progressed to documenting the journey with tales of my adventures supported by very bad quality photos.
I made all the mistakes as a newbie blogger with that blog. In an attempt to customize everything, I coded everything. Page loading time was terrible.
I hadn't been introduced to Grammarly, did it even exist then? Well, my spelling and grammar skills were pretty bad. The structure of more than 300 pages was BAD. Very bad.
I knew nothing of SEO, I hadn't bothered to read Weebly's own SEO guide.
But we learn more from the mistakes we have made.
The blog was hacked. It was copied, lock, stock and barrel, given a new name, and hosted by the criminals at GoDaddy (yes they had a rep for hosting skimmed, copied and fake content).
I had Google take it down! Thank you, Google!
And this is why you cannot, easily at least, copy and paste any text, nor download images from my blog.
Eventually, I grew bored with blogging.
In 2018, I restarted my venture. I set up Nomadic Backpacker. At first, it was a Weebly dot com domain. But after a few months, I upgraded and bought the www.nomadicbackpacker.com domain. I had from the outset, used HTTPS. I Am amazed how many new blogs are being set up these days with just HTTP. If a blog is such, I just click off, asap. Get with it, fellow bloggers!
I was warned by WordPress bloggers that I wouldn't get anywhere with a blog hosted by Weebly. I asked them why. They didn't actually know why. But it became a game of sorts, to prove the naysayers wrong.
I read Weebly's own SEO guide, which is a dedicated guide on how to maximise SEO on Weebly.
Starting a blog requires a lot of work. I learned how to tweak the front-end coding on Weebly. I love everything to be "just right". I would adjust the font size by a few pixels and the line height, letter spacing, margins, and page width. I learned to live with the limitations and found my own workarounds. Sometimes this gives me a massive workload but hey, it's fun.
I don't use blog-style pages so nothing is automated. I have to set up everything myself.
I am pretty much done with the appearance/layout of the blog.
I only use code to create H1 title tags and to code in photos and text links that I want to be NOFOLLOW, as all links are by default on Weebly, DOFOLLOW.
I am an active member of the Weebly Community, helping out wherever I can. The admin staff love me so much that the 60 USD yearly fee for my blog gets waived.
The plan was to make a go of it. I wanted to be able to live a simple backpacking life off of the income generated by the blog.
*****
This blog focuses mostly on the journey I started before Covid fucked everyone over. I left home on January 6 2020 when Covid was still in Wuhan, with some back posts from the previous 20 plus years.
I have travelled through France, Tunisia, Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, and Kenya where I got stuck, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia, Turkey, Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador. I have produced 400 plus blog posts from my adventures.
I did go home for two weeks when my dad passed but am now back in Mexico. The journey continues. The blog continues and I have upped my game.
The principles of the blog are as straightforward as they ever were.
I only write about places I have been to. The only content I have which is written by others are the posts featuring The Top 3 Favourite Countries of fellow travellers.
Everything else is personally written by me. I just don't agree with copying other people's stuff. Not only is it immoral but also because the facts, the intel, cannot be trusted because the author hasn't checked the facts and has copied a blog produced years ago.
In the research for my latest blog post, 19 Totally Free Museums in Mexico City (2022) I came across a blog "33 Free Museums in Mexico City" (I also use Google Maps and the relevant government sites to locate the free museums as there are more than 150 museums here in CDMX).
Number 1 on the list of the 33 was the Frida Kahlo Museum. 2nd was the Anthropology Museum. I was like, WTF.
I knew damned well that these 2 museums were not free. Well, not totally free. In fact, the Frida Kahlo museum was only open for free to kids under 6 and those who could provide proof of disabilities and limited means. This represents a minute fraction of possible visitors and can hardly be called free in my opinion.
So the blog was using the word 'free' just for SEO purposes. Google loves the word FREE. Sure why not capitalise on it but not use it for all museums, free or otherwise.
Google also loves to see a number and it also loves to see odd numbers like 33, and 19.
Yes, I have decided to write a few posts that are great for SEO, other than writing my Backpacking in Mexico City type posts which are a travelogue of sorts crammed full of logistics.
But where the author of the 33 Free Museum post only copied from Forbes and CNTraveler, yes they even admit it, I put in the leg work myself. In 3 weeks I visited 23 museums to bring you the most up to date facts possible for 19 museums.
I crisscrossed the city on foot and by Metro/MetroBus.
Just on Monday, I made the trip south to Universidad to visit the last 3 Totally Free Museums. The Sculpture Park, The MUCA and the 3rd Soumaya Museum.
The Sculpture Park was nicely checked. But this is where those copycat bloggers will come unstuck. The Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Arte is presently closed for renovations.
But if you use only GoogleMaps and FaceBook and blogs that have simply copied other blogs from years ago, just adding a small inclusion in the top part of the blog post "UPDATED for 2022" without changing any details, you would be led to believe that it was open.
This is where leg work is required. And with these self-imposed morals, I aim to bring you the most accurate and raw blog posts ever. I always date my blogs: Details correct as of May 2022, for example, as things do change. I am trying to update GoogleMaps as I go.
So after finding the MUCA closed, I took a pause in the grounds of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and found another FREE museum nearby, which would be my last of the 19.
I went up to the 18th, the Soumaya Plaza Loreto Museum and then bussed it out to the Zona Arqueológica Cuicuilco. Job done.
It took 3 weeks to gather the intel for the post. The joys of the work involved bringing you the raw intel.
My target audience is budget travellers. Budget, of course, can mean high or low but I am a backpacker and in the traditional English meaning of the word, a backpacker is a LOW budget traveller. A travel vlogger who bangs on about LOW BUDGET travel and stays in a 50 € a night AirBnB is not in my opinion a budget traveller.
Of course, a traveller on any budget can make use of the intel provided. But a 50 € a night vlogger will not be interested in how you can live for 10 USD a day. They like blog posts and even books on how to travel the world for 50 USD a day. And they like the expensive convenience of the taxi. What do they know about saving a few cents here and there.
I have travelled in 100 countries in the 30 years that I have been a backpacker. It is high time that I can capitalise on that experience.
I went up to the 18th, the Soumaya Plaza Loreto Museum and then bussed it out to the Zona Arqueológica Cuicuilco. Job done.
It took 3 weeks to gather the intel for the post. The joys of the work involved bringing you the raw intel.
My target audience is budget travellers. Budget, of course, can mean high or low but I am a backpacker and in the traditional English meaning of the word, a backpacker is a LOW budget traveller. A travel vlogger who bangs on about LOW BUDGET travel and stays in a 50 € a night AirBnB is not in my opinion a budget traveller.
Of course, a traveller on any budget can make use of the intel provided. But a 50 € a night vlogger will not be interested in how you can live for 10 USD a day. They like blog posts and even books on how to travel the world for 50 USD a day. And they like the expensive convenience of the taxi. What do they know about saving a few cents here and there.
I have travelled in 100 countries in the 30 years that I have been a backpacker. It is high time that I can capitalise on that experience.
Monetising the Blog
My blogs provide information. I have to name drop. It's the nature of the game.
In the early stages of this game, I was name dropping and linking to business websites and Wikitravel for a more detailed explanation, as DOFOLLOW links.
I have now stopped doing that. Well, I do name drop but I don't put in any links. My DA has gone up because of this new strategy.
I have on a few occasions, received a night or 3 at a hostel for free, in return for name dropping. I don't like to bang on about how great a hostel was and that you simply must stay in this particular hostel, because every hostel or hotel is never perfect yet bloggers who only list the good parts when writing a review, are not providing an unbiased reviewed. They are being paid to write and leave out the bad bits.
I would rather not give my opinion. I simply mention the business. Period.
It's a bit like advertising at a football match. Players wear football shirts with Coca Cola or the NatWest emblazoned on them. Do you think they only drink Coke and bank with NatWest? No. It's just sponsorship. They don't promote the said brand other than wearing it on their shirt.
And I am doing this on my blog in that I have started to run sponsored logos on my blog. I am not promoting the said business per se. I simply display the ad in exchange for a very small fee. I code the logos in as NOFOLLOW. I am quite upfront about this and repeat the rules of Google. Businesses generally don't need link juice anyway.
Travel blogs of friends need link juice and in my Top 3 Favourite Countries series, I include DOFOLLOW links in exchange for content. My DA is now 26. The links are VERY relevant and won't get me penalised by Google.
As for affiliates, I ran 5 affiliate programs and never had 1 hit. It was always my view that you need massive traffic in the hope of getting a sale and then the commission is so small and I hear that some just don't wanna pay out. I also hate annoying ads which pop up and there is no way to click them off. These blog sites are only designed to make an income, not to provide the reader with anything relevant.
I am also open to donations on PayPal and coffees are more than welcome. "Coffees keep the blog posts coming".
In the early stages of this game, I was name dropping and linking to business websites and Wikitravel for a more detailed explanation, as DOFOLLOW links.
I have now stopped doing that. Well, I do name drop but I don't put in any links. My DA has gone up because of this new strategy.
I have on a few occasions, received a night or 3 at a hostel for free, in return for name dropping. I don't like to bang on about how great a hostel was and that you simply must stay in this particular hostel, because every hostel or hotel is never perfect yet bloggers who only list the good parts when writing a review, are not providing an unbiased reviewed. They are being paid to write and leave out the bad bits.
I would rather not give my opinion. I simply mention the business. Period.
It's a bit like advertising at a football match. Players wear football shirts with Coca Cola or the NatWest emblazoned on them. Do you think they only drink Coke and bank with NatWest? No. It's just sponsorship. They don't promote the said brand other than wearing it on their shirt.
And I am doing this on my blog in that I have started to run sponsored logos on my blog. I am not promoting the said business per se. I simply display the ad in exchange for a very small fee. I code the logos in as NOFOLLOW. I am quite upfront about this and repeat the rules of Google. Businesses generally don't need link juice anyway.
Travel blogs of friends need link juice and in my Top 3 Favourite Countries series, I include DOFOLLOW links in exchange for content. My DA is now 26. The links are VERY relevant and won't get me penalised by Google.
As for affiliates, I ran 5 affiliate programs and never had 1 hit. It was always my view that you need massive traffic in the hope of getting a sale and then the commission is so small and I hear that some just don't wanna pay out. I also hate annoying ads which pop up and there is no way to click them off. These blog sites are only designed to make an income, not to provide the reader with anything relevant.
I am also open to donations on PayPal and coffees are more than welcome. "Coffees keep the blog posts coming".
The Future of Nomadic Backpacker:
I have now set up base in CDMX with Miss CDMX. The blogging continues. The modus operandi will continue. The blog is about travelling on a low budget. Staying in hostels, using buses and the metro, detailing where you can find the cheap deals.
I want to bring on some bigger names. This is going to take a lot of effort but I believe it is possible. I want to be paid for wearing T-Shirts with logos on them. I want to be paid more for name dropping.
I am also looking for platforms where I can have my logo displayed. I am not after link juice, merely traffic and exposure so I don't need DOFOLLOW links.
I am continuing to produce content that will give me more traffic and with that, I hope to be able to live a simple backpacking life off of my blog #NomadicBackpacker.
You can contact me via Email, follow me on Twitter and Facebook
I want to bring on some bigger names. This is going to take a lot of effort but I believe it is possible. I want to be paid for wearing T-Shirts with logos on them. I want to be paid more for name dropping.
I am also looking for platforms where I can have my logo displayed. I am not after link juice, merely traffic and exposure so I don't need DOFOLLOW links.
I am continuing to produce content that will give me more traffic and with that, I hope to be able to live a simple backpacking life off of my blog #NomadicBackpacker.
You can contact me via Email, follow me on Twitter and Facebook
