When Madison Krigbaum launched her travel blog in 2017, she had no strategy, no audience, and absolutely no plans to turn it into a business. She was fresh off a semester abroad in Rome, grinding through an unpaid internship in New York City, and writing mostly to cope with the fact that she wasn't still in Europe.
📌 Side Hustle: Travel Blogging 💰 Revenue: Up to $2,000/month 🗓️ Started: 2017
"It's not flashy. It's not fast. But it's mine. And that makes all the difference."
"I stopped writing only what I wanted to say and started focusing on what people were Googling. That's when things started to shift."
Madison didn't go viral. She didn't quit her job to backpack across continents. She didn't crack the Instagram algorithm or land a brand deal that changed everything overnight. What she did was simpler — and harder. She kept showing up, learned SEO the slow way, and eventually figured out how to write content that both readers and search engines actually wanted. By January 2025, her blog, Madison's Footsteps, hit nearly $2,000 in a single month. Not from a lucky break. From years of quiet, consistent work.
I Thought I Wanted to Work in Fashion
The summer of 2017 was not going the way Madison had planned.
She was interning in New York City — unpaid, exhausted, and completely checked out. Her mind kept drifting back to Rome, to the trattorias and cobblestone streets and the feeling of being somewhere that mattered. The internship was supposed to be the dream. It wasn't.
"I was miserable," she says. "I spent the whole summer daydreaming about the trips I had taken — and wishing I was anywhere else."
So, she started writing. The blog was called Broke, Wild & Traveling, and it was exactly what it sounds like — messy, personal, and made for an audience of roughly one. There was no keyword research. No monetization plan. No niche strategy.
"Honestly, I think the only people reading it were me and maybe my mom."
But something about it clicked anyway. Madison had always loved to write, and travel gave her something worth writing about. Even without readers, even without revenue, she kept going. Not because she had a plan — but because it felt like hers.
I Blogged for Years with Nothing to Show for It
For most of Madison's blogging journey, the numbers were humbling.
From 2017 through early 2024, she posted, experimented, and hoped something would eventually stick. Most months she earned nothing. On a good month, maybe $30. She tried Instagram. She took courses. She posted consistently and waited for traction that never quite came.
"It wasn't a business," she says. "It was just something I did because I liked it."
The Instagram push fizzled out fast. The performance pressure, the aesthetic game, the relentless posting schedule — none of it suited her. "Trying to be an influencer felt fake. It became a chore." So, she stopped forcing it.
The SEO attempts weren't much better, at least at first. She'd taken courses, but the strategies didn't stick. She was still writing what she felt like writing, not what people were actually searching for. The gap between passion and searchability was costing her years.
The turning point came when she invested in a course that finally made SEO click — not just technically, but mentally. She stopped thinking like a writer and started thinking like a reader. What are people Googling? What question does this post answer? What would make someone click, stay, and book something?
That shift changed everything.
Why One Great Post Still Beats Going Viral
In January 2025, Madison had her best month ever — just under $2,000 from her blog alone.
About 80% of that came from affiliate income, primarily through Stay22 for hotel bookings and Viator for tours. The remaining 20% came from display ads. She's starting to experiment with digital products and trip consultation services, but the bulk of her revenue still flows from a small handful of posts that rank well and convert consistently.
Her single highest earner? A guide to traditional Portuguese foods.
"It's not flashy or viral," she says. "But it ranks well, gets consistent traffic, and fits perfectly with my affiliate links. That one post brings in more than any other — just because it solves a specific question that a lot of people are searching for."
The post works because it does everything right: it answers a niche question, features original photos and firsthand experience, and links naturally to useful booking tools. Google rewards it. Readers stay for it. Other top performers follow the same formula — a 4-day Ireland itinerary with a Viator link to the Cliffs of Moher, multi-day guides for Lisbon and Dubrovnik, all built with SEO and affiliate placement baked in from the start.
Madison isn't trying to publish constantly. She's trying to publish smartly.
"One great post, if it ranks well and converts, can earn more than 20 average ones. So, I stopped trying to post constantly and started trying to post smarter."
Travel Blogging in 2026 Is a Whole New Game
If you've been in the blogging world for the last two years, you know things got rocky.
Google's Helpful Content Update in 2023 — and the algorithm shifts that followed — wiped out traffic for thousands of sites overnight. Bloggers who'd built entire businesses on SEO watched their income evaporate. Many are still trying to recover.
Madison wasn't one of them. Mostly.
"I knock on wood every time I say this," she laughs, "but I wasn't hit that hard. I think it's because my blog has always been first-person, story-based, and genuinely helpful. I write from my own experience, and I think that's what Google is prioritizing more now."
Still, the update was a wake-up call. She no longer trusts SEO alone to carry her business.
These days she's diversifying — Pinterest, Flipboard, a growing email list. Not because she loves every platform, but because she's learned what it costs to have all your traffic come from one source you don't control. She's also staying off Instagram, unapologetically. It doesn't bring traffic. It doesn't bring her joy. So, it's gone.
Her focus is simple: write content rooted in real experience, make it genuinely useful, and build direct lines to her audience that no algorithm can sever.
💡 If I Were Starting a Travel Blog in 2025, Here's Exactly What I'd Do
- Pick a niche and go deep. Skip the general travel blog. Choose one audience and build content silos around what they're actually searching for.
- Learn SEO before you publish anything. Understanding search intent from day one will save you years of backtracking and wasted posts.
- Use affiliate tools that run in the background. Stay22 and Viator are beginner-friendly, high-converting, and easy to weave into travel content naturally.
- Write fewer posts — but make them count. One well-optimized, experience-driven post will outperform twenty passion pieces that no one finds.
- Don't force platforms you hate. If Instagram drains you, skip it. Focus on channels that match how you actually like to create — SEO, email, Pinterest, whatever fits.
- Build your email list early. Social platforms change. Algorithms shift. Your list is the one thing you own.
- Don't rush to monetize. Build trust and traffic first. Real income follows when you're genuinely solving problems for real readers.
I Want to Empower Women to Travel — and Get Paid Doing It
Madison's near-term goal is concrete: qualify for Mediavine.
The premium ad network requires at least 50,000 monthly sessions, and she's working her way there. "It would be a huge jump in income," she says. "And it's something I've been working toward for a long time."
But the bigger picture isn't just about ad revenue.
She's expanding her digital products, growing her itinerary planning services — especially for Roatan, a destination she knows deeply — and building an email community around one specific reader: the solo female traveler who's curious, maybe a little nervous, and ready to go anyway.
"As a chronically single woman, I know how scary solo travel can feel at first," she says. "But once you do it, it's life changing. I want more women to feel confident doing it — and maybe even earning from it, too."
There's also a values thread running through everything she creates. She believes the era of fast, high-impact tourism is over — and that travel content has a responsibility to reflect that. She wants her blog to help people travel better. More slowly. More intentionally. More respectfully.
For Madison, this was never just about passive income. It's about building something that actually means something.
Slow Growth Still Counts
Madison Krigbaum didn't build her blog with a shortcut. She built it with years of showing up — through $30 months, failed Instagram experiments, and SEO strategies that took way too long to click.
She didn't go viral. She didn't quit her job dramatically. She just kept writing, kept learning, and kept refining until the work started working for her.
Today, Madison's Footsteps earns up to $2,000 a month. Tomorrow, she's hoping for more. But whether the numbers climb or plateau, the blog is still — above everything else — hers.
And as she said herself: "It's not flashy. It's not fast. But it's mine. And that makes all the difference."
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