10 Things I've Learned From Being a Travel Blogger for (Nearly) 10 Years

April 2024: Taking in the view of Cobh, Ireland, steps away from St. Colman’s Cathedral

One whole decade. That’s how long this site, All Things Wanderful (née Logan’s Run), has now been in existence. There are many words I could use to describe this 10-year journey I’ve been on, but let me give you just a handful: inspiring, anxiety-inducing, fun, annoying, time-sucking, fulfilling, enlightening, maddening. And that only begins to cover it.

Let’s not waste a lot of time prattling on with an overdone introduction, though, right? Instead, allow me to invite you to strap in, as there is certainly a lot I’ve learned about travel blogging since March 2016. Go ahead and dive in, hey?

1. The Love-Hate Relationship with Constant Content Creation

Writing and travel are two of my greatest passions in life, so you’d think combining them would send me into a state of euphoric delirium. The truth is that being a travel blogger means I am constantly thinking of ways to make content out of my travels, which can be draining at times. When you’re in a new place experiencing new things, it’s generally best to simply be in the moment and enjoy it, but there is always a little voice in the back of my mind reminding me that these posts don’t write themselves.

In the age of AI, I’m sure you’re thinking: “Actually, yes, they do.” But here’s the thing: I refuse to allow the robots to do my work for me. They can assist with blog post titles and perhaps refining a sentence or two, but to completely hand the reins over? Not on my watch.

But back to the love-hate relationship with content creation, I'll just say that the posts which are perhaps the most fun to write are those in which I am regaling readers with my own experience, solidifying my own thoughts and reactions. The various travelogues I’ve done over the years — covering, for example, trips to Israel, Iceland, and Ireland (see what I did there?) — can be enormously fun, if not daunting, to churn out.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have posts that require in-depth information gathering, which can be tedious and time-consuming. Examples of these would include my writeup on frugality in terms of traveling to Greenland and my all-encompassing three-part series on one thing to see or do in all 83 of Michigan’s counties.

2. Recognizing When to Put the Phone Down

Despite the little voice in the back of my mind screaming “content! content! content!”, I’ve also learned there are travel moments that simply shouldn’t be disturbed by technology. If you’re sitting down for a meal with the crew, taking in some historic site, or participating in any kind of immersive activity, you don’t want to be the one sitting there on your phone like a dolt. Grabbing photos or a video is one thing, but save the note-taking for later when you have down time.

That’s it. That’s the tweet whole point. (Don’t worry, the next couple items are much longer.)

April 2022: Photo opp. in Sint Maarten’s Simpson Bay

3. Not All Blog Posts Go to Heaven

As Kenan Thompson explained in the now-infamous David S. Pumpkins SNL sketch, when you’re dealing with a large collection of things, “…they’re not all gonna be winners!” Chalk it up to the law of averages or whatever you want; it’s just a fact. However, there are little tips and tricks that are designed to help drive engagement. Outside of the bland advice to use “catchy headlines” and create “high-quality content”, some specific ditties I’ve picked up over time are readers’ affinity for lists, odd numbers, actionable information, and the occasional oddity.

If we were to look over some winners and losers, what might we find? Well, let’s give it a try, hey? To date, these are the all-time top three posts on All Things Wanderful:

So, what can we deduce here? Two of these posts are lists, so perhaps that helped them climb to the top of the heap. The other is about an odd destination in Minnesota, which may have helped boost it to the very top spot. Those are two of the audience magnets I mentioned above coming into play, but of course the actual content of a post has a lot to do with how well it performs with readers, too. My Michigan-focused content has always seemed to have a leg up, which makes sense because it’s the state I grew up in and lived in until 2020/2021. But it doesn’t always do the trick.

One other thing you may notice about all three of those posts is that a question is included in the title. Did that have anything to do with the amount of clicks they brought in? It’s hard to say. People are certainly always on the hunt for answers, and if you pose a question that was already on their mind or that they maybe never even thought to ask, and then provide a satisfactory-enough answer, perhaps that is enough.

All right, while you sit with those thoughts for a moment, let’s point and laugh at some of the poorer-performing posts from over the years. These are not the absolute bottom feeders, mind you. They’re simply examples of posts that landed with a much louder thud than I might have expected:

Now isn’t that interesting? Two posts about Michigan and a listicle that all failed to live up to expectations? What could be the explanation there? Maybe people just aren’t interested in tiny diners in Grand Rapids or the place where Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio meet. Maybe they don’t give a rat’s behind about road trip movies. Or, maybe I did a poor job with SEO (search engine optimization) or social promotion. It’s not always clear what caused something to succeed and what caused something else to bomb — other than that pesky law of averages *insert shrug emoji.

June 2023: White water rafting near Gatlinburg, Tennessee

4. Blog Burnout is Real

There was a time when I challenged myself to write five — five! — posts every month. Perhaps that doesn’t sound crazy, but when you consider the logistics of it, you’ll understand right quick. If, for the purposes of our calculations here, we consider a month to be 30 days and the goal in those 30 days is to write and publish five blog posts, we’re looking at a new post needing to go live every six days. When you’re just blogging for the fun of it (see No. 10 below), that is a boatload of content to have on your plate.

To better conceptualize this, let’s take a look back at annual output numbers from over the years. Excluding year-enders and guest posts, here is the amount of original content I have published on the blog over time (broken down into the various “eras” we’ve gone through):

The “What Even Is This?” Era

  • 2016 — 34 posts

  • 2017 (Jan.-March) — 7 posts (only one travel-related)

Logan’s Run …at Travel Blogging

  • 2017 (April-Dec.) — 47 posts

  • 2018 — 53 posts

  • 2019 — 41 posts

Introduce: All Things Wanderful

  • 2020 — 29 posts

  • 2021 — 18 posts

  • 2022 — 12 posts

  • 2023 — 9 posts

  • 2024 — 15 posts

  • 2025 — 10 posts

As you can see, those first four years were pretty insane. From 2016 to 2019, I authored 182 original blog posts at a clip of 45.5 posts per year. That. Is. Crazy. From 2020 through 2025, we’re looking at a whopping total of just 93 such posts, or a rate of 15.5 posts per year.

So what the heck happened? Well, if you would like to redirect yourself to the title of this particular section of this particular post, you’ll see the answer right there: I burned myself out writing so much, so often. As I sit here now, in the world of 2026, I cannot even fathom how I managed to keep up that breakneck pace in the early years of this site. What I do recall is stressing over my self-imposed content goals on the regular — so much so, that I even stepped back from publishing content over the final two months of 2019.

When the blog rose again from the dead of that brief winter, it was no longer “Logan’s Run”. It had been born again as “All Things Wanderful”, which, evidently, is an incarnation that doesn’t worry so much about quantity but focuses more on quality, not to mention peace of mind for yours truly. My standard goal these days is to hit a dozen original posts each year. It doesn’t always happen (see: 2023 and 2025), but you know what? I’m not gonna stress over it.

December 2023: Checking out Pike Place Market in Seattle

5. Social Media is the Bane of Existence

It is no wonder that companies now hire people whose entire job is managing their social media accounts. That crap takes so much time. You go through the whole rigmarole of coming up with a post idea, shaping and refining it, adding photos and links, throwing in tags and making sure it’s all categorized correctly — and then you still gotta blast it out to various sites, ideally catering to the parameters of each platform as needed. It can be exhausting, and I have certainly let it get the better of me lately.

Recently, I’ve only been sharing new posts to Facebook, AKA your parents’ favorite social media site, with the occasional push to the blogging site Medium, if it’s something I really want to get out there. Instagram, LinkedIn, and Snapchat have all but gone by the wayside in recent months and years, but I should probably get back on the ‘gram, at the very least. Of course, TikTok is also out there, but — and here’s a “tell me you’re old without telling me you’re old” moment — there is a learning curve I still need to get over. I have an account but have never posted a single thing.

Speaking of Instagram and TikTok, though, I realize that things are moving in a much more visual direction these days and I really do need to delve more into video content. I mean, if you are even reading these words right now, which sit in the middle of this incredibly long post, I would almost be stunned.

Look, I’ll try to be better on both of those fronts — posting to social and producing more video content — but if it doesn’t happen on your schedule, all I’ve got to say is… #sorrynotsorry.

6. An Expansive Definition of What Counts as “Travel”

If you want to be snooty about what counts as travel, you are surely welcome to do so; just be prepared to make some enemies along the way. The debate can break several ways, honestly, but one of the first examples that comes to mind is the distinction between a “traveler” versus a “tourist” — with the latter being used in a derogatory way. Behaving like a tourist, in the estimation of these highfalutin travelers, is major cringe, marked by the tell-tale signs of, say, only traveling to hot spots or falling easily, if not happily, for “tourist traps”. I like to be pretend-pompous in this way at times, but when it comes down to it, who the hell really cares? If you want to go out and do something, go someplace, why should it matter if lots of other people think that thing or place is worthy of their time and attention, as well? You do you, dear reader.

Another debate in this realm is how far from home you have to roam for something to be counted as “travel”. And here again I am taking the expansive view: if a walk in the woods behind your house has the ability to transport you to a different headspace, why should that not be considered travel? I used to bristle at the thought of producing content focused on my hometown or wherever I happened to be living at the time, because that feeling of being so close to home made it feel less worthy to me somehow. I now believe that is nonsense. Whether you’re flying halfway across the world or just strolling down your street and noticing things for the first or the hundredth time, “travel” is whatever you make it.

April 2024: Outside the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, Ireland

7. Yes, You Should Plan, But Also Leave Room for Spontaneity

If you’ve followed this blog for any amount of time, you perhaps know I have a penchant for winging it in terms of travel planning. My typical process when putting a trip together goes something like this:

  1. Book flights

  2. Find a place, or places, to stay

  3. Book one or two primary excursions

  4. Forget about the whole thing for a while

  5. Maybe book a couple more excursions/things to do with the clock heading toward midnight

Even if I don’t book a ton of things, I usually have certain sights and sounds in mind when heading to certain destinations. Do I always get to those things? Not necessarily. And that’s because I like to leave room to be surprised. You cannot know what kinds of situations or people or places you will come across until you are there, so it’s generally best to leave room to allow a little travel magic to happen. In other words: don’t sit on your hands and plan nothing, but don’t over plan either.

8. Travel Mishaps Can Make for the Best Stories

Speaking of planning, the best travel moments are sometimes borne out of in-the-moment mishaps or setbacks. The craziest example I have of this dates to a time before this blog existed, but which I have reflected upon a time or two over the years.

It was early April 2013. Five of us were packed into my tiny silver Ford Focus, headed from Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Atlanta, Georgia, where the University of Michigan men’s basketball team was set to take part in that year’s Final Four — their first trip to the sport’s national semifinals in two decades. Things were hunky-dory until we got to Tennessee. There, near the town of Loudon, a beat-up white sedan rammed into us and knocked the Focus right off the freeway. We sailed into the ditch. Air bags deployed. Glass cracked and flew. The ringing in my ears would not dissipate until the next day.

My car was totaled, but none of us were hurt, thankfully. As we walked up the embankment to get a look at the car that had collided with us, the driver of that other vehicle gunned it. Just took off. They were never caught, as far as I know.

Far from home and equally far from our destination, what were four college freshmen and a junior in high school to do without a car to get us the rest of the way? As we relayed everything to the authorities that showed up sometime later, the universe sent an answer. Dressed in our Michigan gear, we caught the attention of two gentlemen that were also on their way to the Final Four. They pulled up in a monster RV, got out, and asked if we needed a ride. We didn’t know them. They didn’t know us. The cops asked if we were sure about all this. Of course, there was no way to be sure about it, but we were determined to get to Atlanta and there were five of us and only two of them. Against our better judgment, we climbed aboard the RV.

As it turned out, we wound up cancelling our hotel stay in Atlanta and bunking in the RV with our newfound friends. When it was all over and Michigan had sadly lost to the Louisville Cardinals in Monday night’s title game (a victory that was later vacated due to NCAA violations), Ken and Rick not only piloted us all back to Michigan, but right to the doorstep of my friend’s dorm building. The whole story even made it on the local news.

Do I recommend being on the wrong side of a hit-and-run? Of course not, but the events of those days are something I will remember forever just for the sheer craziness and unbelievability of it all. That incident is just one example of the way in which a potentially harrowing situation can produce an unexpected result. These are a few others I’ve written about on the blog over the last decade:

July 2025: With my Mini Me at Santa Monica Pier

9. Inspiration Abounds (If You Know Where to Look)

Unless you’ve somehow managed to turn travel blogging into a full-time gig, you’re not always going to be on the road. Thus, you’re not always going to have some trip to squeeze content out of. What to do then? Brainstorming ideas when you’re not actually on the go can be fun, or it can be a mental obstacle you’d rather avoid. Sometimes, it requires a little out-of-the-box thinking. Maybe a little trip down the interweb highway. Perhaps some Wikipedia rabbit-holing.

When you’ve been a blogger for long enough, you develop a long list of go-to sources when in need of inspiration. Some of mine include travel sites like Lonely Planet, TripAdvisor, and Expedia; fellow travel bloggers, such as World Nate, Nomadic Matt, and Intrepid Introvert; and other sources of media, including things like GQ, The New York Times, and National Geographic.

Occasionally, however, I just fire up the Google Flights machine, look at any travel deals they may be promoting via the explore option, and let my mind wander all over the globe. In that same vein, one of my favorite pastimes is finding some far-flung destination and then working out all the steps it would take to get there logistically. The very first post I published upon transitioning to all travel content all the time, in fact, was borne out of just such an exercise. I don’t remember how I latched onto the Pitcairn Islands, but once I knew they existed, finding out how to travel to one of the most remote island chains in the entire world took hold of me.

Other good examples of the “find a remote destination and then figure out how to get there” variety include:

10. No Shame in Doing It for the Love of the Game

When I started out, all the way back in March 2016, I might have had visions of sugar plum fairies carrying large bags of cash in my head. It’s possible I thought I was at the precipice of a new frontier, one that would help me bring in a little income on the side, if I could just rack up some views, build a following, sprinkle in some sponsored content, the whole nine yards. A decade down the road, I have made modest gains on those fronts, but 98% of this enterprise is still just me doing it all for the fun of it.

The remaining 2%, give or take, represents the isolated incidents in which I either received cash money heroes in some way, shape, or form for posting certain content or otherwise benefited from covering some travel-related ditty. And when I say these have been isolated incidents, you’ll know I’m telling the truth when I say there are only three examples in the history of the blog that even come to mind.

The first was a short piece on a company offering discounted tours of various sites in Israel via a website called Dealspotr. In exchange for promoting the tour company, I got an Amazon gift card (the value of which I no longer recall). These days, it appears Dealspotr no longer works in such a fashion; rather, it seems they simply cobble together various discount codes for use by savvy online shoppers.

The second instance materialized after I wrote a preview post about a unique music festival which takes place every summer on the largest island in Lake Michigan. My writeup on the Beaver Island Music Festival, published in April 2019, somehow made its way to the woman who runs the whole dang thing. She subsequently reached out and invited me to come to the festival for free in exchange for an article detailing my experience. You gotta know I jumped on that ish immediately. It remains a mystery to me if that eventual article was shared anywhere other than on this very blog, but if you’d like to check it out, just head over here: Beaver Island Music Festival: 3 Melodious Days in the Middle of Lake Michigan.

Last on the list is a more recent ditty concerning another company that offers tours in various cities. These ones, however, are of a spookier nature. In exchange for publishing a guest post — U.S. Ghost Adventures' Best Haunted Cities to Visit Across the Country — the folks over there offered me a free tour in any of the cities in which they operate. That portfolio includes over 100 cities all across these here United States.

So that’s it. Those are the three specific instances in which I received some kind of payment or benefit for the “work” I do here on All Things Wanderful. And you know what? I’m fine with it. I’ll always consider opportunities like the aforementioned when they present themselves, but if they don’t? No big deal.

-LTH

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