I never had the intention to start my own online business. I didn’t even know it was possible with what I’m doing.
The journey to my own online business began in May 2018 when I started using Instagram to share my travel photos. I’ve always been passionate about travel and photography and I love expressing my creativity by editing pictures. From time to time my Instagram account grew more and more. It didn’t take long until I got my first collaboration requests – you know these kinds where brands offered me a discount in return for a feed post. I wasn’t interested and rejected all of them but after some a while I started working for free products that I found useful. As so many other content creators on Instagram I promoted brands completely for free. They didn’t have to pay a single dollar but got a lot exposure. However, for me it was a lot of work to create the content and sometimes I didn’t even use the products at all. I talked to a couple of other creators with the same follower amount and so many of them told me I have the right to charge money for my work.
So that’s what I did. I started seeing the entire Instagram thing from a more professional side, created my own media kit and sent them to every company asking for collaboration. At the beginning, 80% of the answers were rejections. Of course, no one wanted to pay for it.
However, every now and then a company agreed and that’s how everything started. I began pitching companies on my own and the more cooperations I got, the more confident I became.
But Instagram wasn’t enough.
Back in January 2019 I finally launched my travel blog after working on it for months. I knew I’d be able to make even more money with my own blog.
To put it in a nutshell, I’ve been working my ass off since January, writing blog posts, learning everything about affiliate marketing, SEO and Pinterest. Blogging is a lot of fun, but I totally underestimated the hard work and all the time and money I had to invest. As with Instagram, it took some time until the hard work finally payed off. My first big success was a paid invitation on a press trip from a regional tourism board in Austria. When I received that mail I almost cried tears of joy because I knew this was the real beginning of my blogging journey. Some other collaborations followed, I made my first few hundred bucks with affiliate marketing and thanks to Pinterest, I found another source of income: I started working as Pinterest Manager for other bloggers.
I’m still overwhelmed yet super happy I could turn my passions into my own small online business.
Even though I can’t live solely with my own online business – I have another part-time job where I can work remote – I know that I’m on the right way.
Having your own online business requires a lot of time, money and patience but if you’re truly passionate about it than you can’t be anything else than successful! 😊
By Alina Schweiger
Blog: www.worldoflina.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/world.of.lina
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/worldoflinatravel
Facebook: www.facebook.com/worldoflina
Twitter: www.twitter.com/world_of_lina
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