Nomadic Backpacker
The Blog

Hi, I am Trevor Warman, low-budget traveller backpacker and the blogger behind Nomadic Backpacker.

I have been travelling with a backpack for more than 30 years, through more than 100 countries and territories.

Latest Post:

​The Giant's Causeway, possibly the most popular tourist attraction in Northern Ireland

Connect with me on Twitter and Facebook.


​This blog is slightly different to almost all travel blogs these days in that posts are not written solely around ads, which annoy the fuck out of me if the truth be known.

The blog posts are infornative, written to help fellow travellers but also to provide some entertainment and inspiration, "this is what I did with my life".

And within the blog, you'll find posts about places almost no other bloggers go to. Travelling is beyond just seeing nice stuff and all the popular places that everyone goes to.

I was on the North Antrim Coast in Northern Ireland and went off in search of Ireland's smallest church is the hamlet of Portbradden:
It's a shame really that I didn't start blogging earlier. Imagine all the content I would have had, 10,000 blog posts?
Travel blog dedicated to long-term, low-budget travel. Raw travel stories packed with logistics, tips and advice based on 30 plus years of experience, through more than 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.
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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 use code to create the 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.



This blog focuses mostly on the journey I started just before Covid fucked everyone over. I left home on January 6 2020 when Covid was still in Wuhan.

(Photos and diaries pre 2010 have been lost for good yet the memories remain and will never be forgotten).

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The principles of the blog remain. I only blog about places I have been to. I post lots of selfies to give my work credibility. I hate all this fake shit that is around and blog posts written around advertising. Bring me a story, post some photos, even if they are crap, but make it real. Why blog about places you only ever visited in your dreams? I just don't get it. Whats the point!

I am reaching out to take the blog a little further, with a new section called  "ATM Fees", where I detailing ATMs and their associated withdrawal fees focusing on showing you where you can get free withdrawals and where not, which ATMs have the lowest withdrawal fees.

But I don't accept 3rd hand intel. I must know the person who gives the data. Not from one one the many expats who don't know shit or from those who found it on an old blog.

​So much has changes in a year or 2 and am recently finding, stuff is changing quicker than ever before.

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 and coffees via PayPal.

The Future of Nomadic Backpacker:

The travels continue, the blogging continues. The modus operandi will not change.

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 follow me on Twitter and Facebook
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