Ever wondered how to turn your passion for travel into a thriving online venture?
Ben Aston is joined by Kyle Kroeger—Founder & CEO at ViaTravelers—to talk about the secrets behind transforming a personal blog into a global travel platform.
Tune in for actionable strategies and insights into building a niche audience and monetizing your passion.
Interview Highlights
- Guest Introduction [00:25]
- Kyle Kroeger is the Founder and CEO of Black Bear Media, a boutique online publisher specializing in travel, sustainability, and personal finance.
- Kyle’s Journey from Analyst to Media CEO [01:10]
- Kyle’s desire to build something long-term and embrace a digital nomad lifestyle led him to the travel industry.
- Started with a digital camera and evolved into a full-scale travel platform.
- Inspired by entrepreneurial parents, Kyle wanted to create something meaningful.
- The Birth and Growth of ViaTravelers [03:10]
- ViaTravelers started as a personal travel blog and expanded into a diverse platform with contributors worldwide.
- ViaTravelers focuses on immersive travel experiences, embracing different perspectives worldwide.
- Kyle emphasizes the importance of showcasing various cultural perspectives through travel content.
- Understanding the ViaTravelers Audience [04:01]
- ViaTravelers began with Kyle’s personal experiences and evolved into a platform for global perspectives.
- Initial growth achieved through traditional SEO strategies, with a focus on evergreen travel topics.
- Kyle emphasizes direct communication with the audience, aiming to make travel easier and smarter for readers.
- Monetization Strategies and Challenges [06:38]
- ViaTravelers’ revenue mix includes display ads (66%) and affiliate marketing (33%).
- Kyle envisions developing products and value-added content, exploring membership-based solutions and tangible products.
- Challenge: Focused too much on a single entity (Google) for audience growth.
- Lesson: Recognizing the importance of diversifying channels, including social media and digital products.
- ViaTravelers engages the audience through a newsletter, seeking feedback on content needs.
- Their email list comprises various lead magnets catering to diverse travel interests.
- Key metrics include time to produce content, revenue per 1000 visits, and optimizing user experience.
- ViaTravelers uses surveys to understand audience needs and tailors content accordingly.
- Monetization Mix: Display ads, affiliate marketing, sponsored content, and potential for future direct placements.
- Future Plans for ViaTravelers [12:49]
- Kyle plans to leverage other channels, especially social media, to showcase the extensive media bank.
- He envisions creating value-added content, digital products, and possibly a coffee table book.
The goal is to do more with less. If I can get a small tribe of a few thousand people that want to buy a product, let’s do that.
Kyle Kroeger
- Insights on Content Strategy and Team Structure [13:44]
- Balancing Act: Deciding on content strategy balancing affiliate funnel creation and long-tail keyword focus for page views.
- Addressing content gaps and user needs take precedence in content creation.
- ViaTravelers uses Google Forms to conduct surveys and gather audience preferences.
- Asking for audience input resulted in valuable insights and suggestions for improvement.
- Kyle emphasizes the importance of genuine experiences and avoiding generic travel content.
- Despite efforts to showcase original photos, ViaTravelers faces challenges with Google ranking generic images.
- ViaTravelers has a team of 16-18, including editors, writers, and operations personnel.
- They’re producing approximately two new articles and one revamped article per day.
- ROI Approach: Iterative tracking of successful content and continuous improvement of page layout for better results.
- Lightning Round: Quick Insights from Kyle [24:39]
- Kyle attributes his success to the habit of relentlessness and persistence.
Survey a hundred people, understand their problems, and create content around those needs.
Kyle Kroeger
Meet Our Guest
Kyle Kroeger is the Founder and Owner of ViaTravelers.com. He is a full-time traveler and entrepreneur. Kyle started ViaTravelers.com to help travelers experience a fully immersive cultural experience as he did initially living in Italy. He’s a converted finance nerd and Excel jockey turned world wanderer (and may try to get lost on purpose). After visiting 12 countries and 13 national parks in a year, he was devoted to creating and telling stories like he’d heard.
Just start. You can never get anything done if you don’t start. So just start.
Kyle Kroeger
Resources from this episode:
- Apply to join the Indie Media Club
- Subscribe to the newsletter to get our latest articles and podcasts
- Connect with Kyle Kroeger on LinkedIn
- Check out ViaTravelers