How Jessie Festa’s Travel Blog Earns 6-Figures/Year Thanks to SEO

Although Jessie Festa has always enjoyed traveling, there was a pivotal moment when everything changed. When she was planning a major trip with her girlfriends, they all bailed on her. Rather than miss the opportunity to travel, she went alone.

This inspired her to start a travel blog, Jessie on a Journey, back when travel blogging wasn’t really “a thing” yet. Twelve years later, Jessie has turned her passion for travel into a 6-figure blogging business with multiple creative income streams. And she’s still growing.

Keep reading to find out:

• What happened when she started her blog
• Her strategy for building a 6-figure business
• Where her income comes from
• How much she works on her business
• Her thoughts on SEO
• How she markets her blog
• The process she uses to create content
• How she grows her email list
• Her favorite tools and resources
• Her biggest challenge
• Her greatest accomplishment
• Her advice for other entrepreneurs

Meet Jessie Festa

My name is Jessie and I’m a solo female travel blogger and blogging educator.

I’ve always loved to travel. That being said, while I grew up going on Caribbean cruises and road-tripping to amusement parks with my family, my passion for travel was ultimately born when I studied abroad in Australia. 

Being on my own on the other side of the world in a place that was so unfamiliar really ignited my curiosity and made me realize how much there was to explore. It made me really want to make travel a big part of my life.

My passion for solo female travel came after my friends bailed on a summer backpacking trip through Europe that we—or really I—had been planning for months.

Once they told me they could no longer go, I had to make a decision: give up on the hours of research I’d done and ignore the excitement I felt, or go on my own and have what could potentially be a memorable adventure.

I decided to do the latter, and the rest is history!

Why She Created Her Travel Blog

While planning the European backpacking trip mentioned above, I realized there weren’t many resources for women traveling on their own. Keep in mind, I was planning this trip in 2010, before travel blogging was really a thing. 

So, I decided to create a resource for women who wanted to stop waiting for others to be available to travel and start planning solo trips that allowed them to see the world.

And while my goal is still to help women confidently travel solo, my blogging business has changed dramatically over the years.

When I first launched Jessie on a Journey in 2011, I honestly didn’t really have a plan. I knew who I wanted to help; however, I didn’t really have a profit plan. Instead, I made money through a bit of affiliate marketing, the occasional sponsored posts, and a lot of freelance travel writing.

During those early days, I never really felt like my income was consistent. I made just enough to live, but not enough to really feel like I was running a sustainable business.

The thing that really changed everything and set me on the path to 6 figures was creating a profit plan. I became very intentional about the revenue streams I implemented and the strategies I used to grow them. 

It’s also worth noting that the landscape for bloggers is completely different now than it was back in 2011. There are so many more opportunities nowadays, and content creators are taken much more seriously. 

For instance, it’s much easier to land paid brand collaborations and even paid press trips, the latter of which wasn’t really a thing in 2011.

How Much Money She’s Currently Making

Jessie on a Journey is a 6-figure blogging business that has continued to grow year after year (outside of 2020, as people weren’t exactly searching about travel during this time).

The main ways I monetize this business, with approximate income percentages, include:

• Course sales, including my blogging courses, Travel Blog Prosperity membership, and one-on-one blog consulting (27%)
  • Note: New Travel Blog Prosperity members get their first month for just $9 with code “NICHEPURSUITSS9”
• Mediavine display ads (26%)
• NYC photo tour sales (23%)
• Affiliate marketing (13%)
• Paid brand/tourism board campaigns (6%)
• Speaking (5%)

Funny enough, if you would have asked me earlier in my career what my biggest money-maker was, it would have been working with brands; however, I’ve really scaled back on this in exchange for more passive and streamlined revenue streams.

Because I travel a lot, I tend to work very hard when I’m home so that I can actually enjoy the trips I go on.

Typically, this means I work full days Monday o Friday, about 8 to 10 hours per day, and then when I’m traveling I focus on capturing content to cull, edit, organize, and share once I’m back home. 

Along with my regular trips, I also make sure to schedule time for fun and enjoyment at home in NYC. In my opinion, it’s important to work hard but also make time to play hard so you’re actually enjoying your life!

The Importance of SEO

SEO is possibly the most important strategy I use in my business. It’s how I:

• am able to get over 100k monthly visitors to my website
• am able to earn thousands of dollars every month in passive Mediavine income
• get most of my NYC photo tour bookings
• have grown an engaged email list – which is the main way I market my courses and membership
• increase my passive affiliate income
• get found for opportunities like paid press trips and speaking gigs

My SEO process is pretty in-depth, though a few strategies that have really helped me include:

a) Consistently writing about the same topic. This makes it easier for your audience and Google to understand what you’re an expert on. Moreover, the more you write about a topic, the easier it will be to stand out as *the* expert on it, especially compared to other blogs that don’t cover it as much.

b) Create silo pages for each of my main topics. This gets into creating an SEO-friendly site structure, but basically these act as link magnets, as I then link all of my related blog posts to them. Additionally, these pages are linked in my main menu in order to get all of my blog post links closer to the homepage.

c) Building internal and external backlinks. Whenever I publish a new post, I spend time linking it to the relevant silo page(s) as well as any relevant blog posts. I’ll also spend a considerable amount of time building backlinks to Jessie on a Journey from other websites.

Jessie’s Top Marketing Strategy

Realistically, creating SEO-optimized content with strong calls to action is my main marketing strategy.

In terms of what tools I use for this, KeySearch is my favorite. It’s a robust yet budget-friendly keyword research tool that provides loads of data you can use to choose and optimize for high-traffic potential keywords.

I also check my most popular blog posts once per month to make sure they include proper affiliate links and an opt-in freebie to grow my email list and get people into my sales funnels. 

On a more creative note, I do a lot of collaborations with other bloggers and affiliate partners to increase my visibility and income. 

For example, I’ll often work with other bloggers to swap guest emails where we promote our opt-in freebies to each other's audience. 

Additionally, I’ve also worked with affiliate partners to have them teach a free webinar to my audience that pitches their product at the end—with my affiliate link!

Her Content Creation Process

The foundation of my process is creating content that relates to my mission, serves my audience, is SEO-optimized, and includes strong calls to action.

Before committing to a topic, I do keyword research to find keywords I can truly rank for. I actually have a running list ready to go, which I either cover myself or assign to my writers.

I like to organize these blog posts by:

• How easy they would be to rank for, so that I can see traffic boosts more quickly
• Seasonality, so that they’re ranking in Google *before* people begin researching a seasonal topic
• Profitability, as I like to make sure I’m regularly optimizing content for buyer-intent keywords within my content plan

When actually creating the content, my goal is always to publish something that is better, clearer, and more in-depth than what is already ranking for my intended keyword. This means I actually look at the posts already ranking to create a more robust outline. 

By the way, this goes for my blog posts as well as episodes of my Profitable Travel Blogger Podcast. Along with promoting episodes to my email list and on social media, I’ll create an SEO-optimized “show notes” blog post to pair with each episode, which helps get new eyes on the content!

Her Email List

Along with creating SEO-optimized blog posts, email marketing is the other main way I bring in revenue. 

I’ve grown my list to over 13k subscribers, mainly by creating opt-in freebies that help my audience solve a problem in some way. These freebies also place people into my marketing funnels, where they will eventually be pitched a product that solves the same problem, but at a more premium level.

Beyond that, I send out weekly emails that share relevant tips, strategies, and resources so that my community really feels like they’re getting value out of being on my list (whether they purchase a product or not).

Her Favorite Resources

Learning SEO is one of the best skills to master when building a profitable blog. Two of my favorite YouTube channels for this are Brian Dean and Stupid Simple SEO.

Her Top Tools

My go-to tools are:

KeySearch: This is the tool I use to do all of my keyword research and grow my traffic. I truly would not be where I am today without it.

Google Search Console: I also love Google Analytics, though I spend much more time in Google Search Console pulling data that can help me update my blog posts for new traffic as well as fix errors that can hurt my site's health.

Teachable: This is the platform I use to sell my membership and courses and create my affiliate program. If you sell coaching or digital downloads, it can help with this too. 

Her Biggest Challenge

That would have to be time management. When you own your own business, it’s easy to feel like there is always something pressing that needs to get done. 

Plus, as a content creator, I always have ideas for new blog posts that can help increase my traffic or new products to launch. 

What has helped me with this is really being intentional about scheduling downtime and fun activities in pen, not pencil, which has helped me become okay with stepping away from my work. 

The other thing that has helped is setting up passive income streams so that even if I go on a long trip or take a break, my business is still bringing in money through display ads, affiliate links, and sales funnels.

Jessie’s Greatest Accomplishment

Honestly, just thinking back to where I started—which was having zero eyes on my content and zero dollars coming in—to running a 6-figure business that allows me to be my own boss, get paid to be creative, and travel the world.

It’s rewarding knowing that what you’re putting out into the world has meaning. 

Actually, here is a quick tip: make sure to save the positive reviews, emails, comments, etc that you receive from your audience and customers. 

I have a Google Drive folder of these, and they can be really helpful to look back on if you’re ever needing a pick-me-up or a reminder of why you’re doing what you’re doing. 

What She Wishes She Knew When She Started

Don’t put off learning SEO. 

For many creatives, it’s the not-so-fun part of creating content or running a business; however, once you get the hang of it, it can really be *the thing* that drives consistent traffic to your website.

This means more eyes on your incredible content, inspiring messaging, and amazing products. 

Her Main Mistake

At the beginning of my journey as a content creator, I really thought that the more I published, the faster the money would come in. 

The problem? I didn’t have an actual plan for earning said money!

Yes, your content can—and should—be profitable; but, you also need to understand how to make this happen. 

Her Advice for Other Entrepreneurs

Also, try to streamline where possible. One exercise is to write out all of your yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily tasks, and think about what can be nixed, combined, automated, or streamlined. 

For instance, you can repurpose content you create across platforms. If you write a blog post sharing 10 tips, turn those tips into 10 social media posts. If you create a vertical video for Instagram, share it on your other social networks too with a few tweaks. 

Finally, break big projects up into milestones. Having “launch a membership” on your to-do list is daunting; however, if you break up the journey toward launching the membership into smaller tasks, it becomes much more manageable. 

Related Posts

How Ali Van Straten’s Fitness and Recipe Blog Earns $5k+/Month from SEO and Ads

How Aaron and Susan Von Frank’s Gardening & Homestead Blog Earns $7k/Month From SEO

How Cristina Ehm’s Fashion Blog Earns $17k+ Per Month Through SEO and Pinterest

How Nick English’s Footwear Site Earns 5 Figures Per Month From SEO and Link Building

How Ofer Tirosh Built One of His Country’s Fastest Growing Companies of 2023 with 95k+ Customers