In this podcast @AbhijitKejriwal - the founder of @hostelmatch interviewed @MariellenWard - the founder of BreathedreamGo and India for Beginners on how she monetized her travel content.
Mariellen was one of the first female bloggers who started travel blogging in 2005. After many iterations with her business model and creating a brand that revolves around safety for women and providing the best tour experience for travellers coming to India, Mariellen shares how #contentcreators often forget the end goal for creating content. Listen to this podcast on Youtube.
About Mariellen:
Canadian travel writer and blogger Mariellen Ward runs the award-winning travel site Breathedreamgo.com, inspired by her extensive travels in India. She has been travel blogging since 2005, has been published in leading media outlets worldwide, can be found just about everywhere online as Breathedreamgo, and offers custom tours to India through her company India for Beginners.
In 2019, Mariellen received a National Tourism Award for Best Foreign Travel Journalist & Blogger from the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India.
In 2022, Breathedreamgo was recommended by the Lonely Planet Guide to India (page 1193) as a go-to site for female travellers to India. Though Canadian by birth, Mariellen considers India to be her "soul culture” and she is passionate about encouraging mindful travel. With her travel blog, Breathedreamgo, and her custom travel company, India for Beginners, she tries to encourage and help other female travellers.
About Hostelmatch:
Hostelmatch is a hostel aggregator platform that helps backpackers find the best hostels based on their preferences: SO if you are a female solo traveler looking to find safe and women only hostels, we help you find hostels that match your search criteria.
Learn more about hostelmatch
Sponsors for the event: @hostelmatch @YesTheory Toronto, @tbdc3048 #contentcreator #toronto #youtubers #travel #travelinfluencer #travelvlog
Transcript:
Wanted to start by firstly thanking Mary Ellen. She is taking time out to chat with us. It's, it's an honor to have her at the event with us. Uh, we'll dive more into, uh, what she's done for the community as well. And then if you have questions at the end, we leave some time. For you to ask her questions our video sponsor for today is hostel match hostel match is a hostel aggregator platform that helps Backpackers find the best hostels across the world based on the vibe of the hostel All you need to do is go to hostel match. com select the country you're going to and the city you want to travel to Select the kind of country Traveler you are. So if you're traveling alone, select solo traveler and the vibe that you're going for and input the dates and their matchmaker feature will match you to the hostels that match your preferences.
And then you can dive deeper into details about the hostel, like the activities that are offered by the hostel, get high resolution pictures, and also compare prices between different booking providers. Did I introduce Mary Ellen to everyone? I had the pleasure of meeting her at the collision conference and we connected instantly like.
Her mindset is so positive. You get to kind of learn more about it through this experience. And I'm very grateful for that. So Mary Ellen is actually a Canadian traveler and blogger. She's the, uh, she has an award winning travel site called read dream go, and it's inspired by her extensive travels that she's done in India.
She's been travel blogging since 2005. Travel blogging probably at that time wasn't even a thing. So it wasn't, uh, did not exist. Exactly. So she is the OG of the OGs of travel blogging, when you think about it. And she does custom tours through a company called India for Beginners that we're going to dive a little bit deeper into as we proceed from here.
In 2019, Mary Ellen received a National Tourism Award for the best foreign travel journalist and blogger from the ministry of India, the government of India. And in 2022, Breed Dream Go was recommended by the Lonely Planet, which for any traveler out there, it's one of the biggest travel sites. So being recognized, it is the Bible.
So if you're recommended by them, you are doing something really right. Right. So as a, the go to female traveler site for India, So even though she's Canadian by birth, she resonates very heavily with India and with her travel blog and a custom travel company, she tries to encourage a lot of the other female travelers to go about traveling safely around the world and especially in India.
So welcome Mary Ellen to this conversation. Really excited to have you here. Yeah. Thank you very much. And, um, I really appreciate that you said I have positive energy because I was very attracted to your positive energy. So there you go. Thank you so much. Like really appreciate the kind word as well. So wanted to jump right in.
So you're known for your famous travel site, breathe, dream, go. Can you tell us a little bit about how you started creating content back in 2005 and what kind of led you to building that site up? And the second part of that question is. How did he end up creating India for Big Nodes? Okay, well this is a big question and it's a long story, but I will try to make it short.
Um, about 20 years ago, I was at a point in my life where, um, I was actually at a very low point in my life. Um, and if anybody wants to know more personally, I'm happy to talk about it. But just suffice to say, sometimes in our lives we do hit a very low point. And that's where I was 20 years ago, and I was looking around for some way to get out of that depression and rut.
And I was actually, got very actively involved in yoga, and yoga led me to, um, do yoga teacher training, which led me to meeting a teacher from India who had a very profound effect on me. And I suddenly got this kind of, um, compulsion, you might say, to go to India. Like I felt a kind of a calling, a longing.
It's very hard to put this into words. I've tried. I've written about it a lot. But it's not an easy thing to explain, but when you, when you feel that kind of really strong voice inside you, um, if it's ever happened to you or if it ever does happen to you, you will know. And it's powerful. And my, my personal feeling is if, if it does happen, you really need to listen to it.
Um, and I did. I was nervous. It took me 11 months to pack and save. In December, 2005, I took off for India and it was a six month trip. So I, I had a, I had a return ticket six months later in June, 2006, and I had no idea what was gonna happen. It was literally like throwing myself off a cliff. Um, and I have to say that the blogging was kind of an afterthought and I can't even really remember.
It was literally 19 years ago this month, I got the idea as I was preparing to leave. I got, I thought, oh, I should do a travel blog, and I had no idea where that came from, because it wasn't a thing back then, it just really wasn't. Um, but, you know, I do have a background, um, in writing, I have a degree in journalism, and I worked in, um, Um, marketing, public relations, journalism, like I already was a writer, but I was writing mostly, you know, copywriting, like financial newsletters, nothing, you know, from the heart, nothing creative, but anyway, somehow I got this idea to do a travel blog, and at the time, stand alone travel blogs didn't exist, so I just took out a page on a shared site called travelblog.
org, which still exists, by the way. And I just started blogging very casually, um, on my first trip. I traveled for six months across India. I had an absolutely amazing time. It was literally one of those cliché, life changing in every way experiences. And I, I blogged religiously twice a week. Twice a week I would publish a blog about my travels.
And it started very, very casually, um, to be honest. And, um, but I just, I, I just, It was just such a peak experience. I fell in love with traveling. I fell in love with vlogging. I fell in love with India. And I just was like, okay, I need these three things in my life. How can I make that happen? And, and, and it's, believe me, extremely counterintuitive.
In 2005, in 2006, to think that you could be a blogger. I mean, it's just, it didn't exist. You know, the general age in this room is pretty young, so you may not even remember that, you know, back then there was no social media. Internet was still, people using the internet on a daily basis was still fairly new.
Right? Yeah. Um, so, you can't even imagine, the big leap of faith to travel for six months in India, and the big leap of faith to say I'm going to be a blogger, these were like, way bigger then than they are now, and, but I still maintain, like, if you really feel something is calling you, no matter how illogical or counterintuitive it is, I really do think you should explore it.
So, I want to get that message really strongly. Um, and I'm happy to personally encourage anybody who feels they need a little bit of, a little bit of extra encouragement and maybe there's something brewing that you don't, haven't told anybody. I will be your person, you know, to listen to you because all I can tell you is everything I've done has been illogical and it didn't make any sense but somehow it all worked out.
And it's because honestly I'm a heart centered person and I lead with my heart and if my heart tells me to do something, I do it. And, uh, you know, that's absolutely fantastic. And, you know, taking that leap of faith for six months in India, it's not an easy thing, especially with Western media where India's portrayed in very bad light, when in reality having been someone who's from India, it's not the case.
Like you have the goods, you have the bads, like you have in every, every other country that you can think of. But one of the questions that came to me was as a solo female traveler, travelers often have a lot of concerns around safety in general. So what advice do you have for female travelers who want to travel solo, take that first trip or, you know, even take that trip, especially to a country like India, where the Western media has completely butchered the image of India in terms of safety.
Yeah, that's a, we talked about this earlier. That's a, um, a real soft point with me. Um, I'm very upset about the Western media and the way they portray India. I've traveled solo in India for a total of nine years. And I've met with almost nothing but, uh, friendship, warmth, help. I've met the most wonderful people.
Um, I, I, I mean, I have such a cognitive dissonance between my experience on the ground in India and what I see in the Western media. It just doesn't even make any sense. So I'm in a lot of travel groups and a lot of travel forums where women are afraid to go to India, um, because of all this negative messaging.
And it's, it's, it's a big, um, it's a big dilemma for me, like to find the right, the to tell you, um, yes, women do need to be cautious. They need to use their common sense, um, do their research. I'm a big believer. in doing research on your destination, and that includes India, um, and using cautions and common sense.
But all women already know that. They already know they need to do that. The only difference is you're in a completely foreign place with foreign rules and foreign etiquette and you don't know the lay of the land. And so you're kind of maybe at a more, um, uh, you might say vulnerable place because of that.
Um, but otherwise I don't, I don't personally think. India is more unsafe than most other countries. I don't even know where, where those ideas come from. So I have, you know, I have to say that. I mean, I, I basically, I feel like India saved my life and, uh, I had such an amazing time. I was having such an amazing time there.
Um, but you know, um, but I also have to be responsible and tell women, yeah, you, you know, you do have to do your research and you do. You need to be aware of where you're going and there's certain things you need to learn. That's true. That is all true as well. That's why I started my company Indie for Beginners.
So I have a custom tour company that I started where we help women. Not just women, but we help people travel safely and well in India. And our tagline is, we hold your hand in India. Like, we'll just give you that little bit of extra help, just to, just to make it easier. And it's not because India's unsafe, it's because India's overwhelming.
And there's, I'm sorry to say, there is one negative thing I have to say about India, which is that, There's a lot of, um, con men and scammers and, you know, people who are, will try to charm you out of your money. And, uh, so, um, when you travel with a company like mine, you're really protected from most of those people.
No, that absolutely makes sense. And the need for something like this is very evident, especially in the Western market. So when you look at content creation, you know, you've built two successful companies. Based on creating content, you know, you've turned that into a business 19 years in content creation a lot of us out here Are either aspiring content creators.
A lot of us are already creating content. Uh, What is your advice generally for someone who is trying to kind of dabble into content creation? What should be the intention that someone should have when they're kind of going into it? Okay. Well, the first thing I want to say is that i'm not I'm not We did invite some bloggers to come, and I don't know if they came or not, but, um, but there's a lot of people in the entrepreneurial community here, so I think that you can take what I'm about to say and apply it to content marketing.
So even if you're not seeing yourself as somebody putting themselves out there as a blogger or an influencer or something, whatever business you're going to do, Um, you're probably going to do some content marketing, and if you're not, then I'm going to encourage you to do content marketing, because I, I can tell you from personal experience, it's an extremely powerful method of marketing.
I don't, I would love to, I, I mean, I, I don't know what would be more powerful than content marketing, personally. I can't think of what would be more powerful. Um, so I just want to preface my remarks by saying you can take what I'm about to say and apply it to content marketing. I think that's. Can be more applicable for a lot of people.
No, absolutely agreed with that. And even if you look at the travel industry in general, when you see UGC content, that's something that's really picking up a lot of companies are going towards these micro influencers that do a lot of content on their own, that's really resonating with target audiences.
So completely valid point now coming back to, uh, the point on, you know, really monetizing your content. We had a brief discussion about. You know how you went about your business, but I'd love to share. Uh, I'd love for you to show you what a failure No, but you're succeeding now. So it's it's all about what the end goal is and how you get there.
So in in terms of Monetizing your content. What do you think has worked for you in the past in regards to turning your content into actual money? Yeah, and like what strategies or advice would you give to some of the people in this room? That would really help them go right and do that So I think that's, that's the key.
That's the key point there is just that, um, when I'm about to say applies to businesses as well as content creators, I think, correct. Um, and I wasn't kidding about failing. Uh, yes, I failed. I failed. I failed. I tried a lot of things. I failed a lot. I'm the first person to admit it. Um, and I think there's a famous quote by Thomas Edison who said, it's okay.
If you fail 99 times, you just have to succeed the a hundred times. So I, I'm that person, you know, I'm the, during, during the early days of blogging, no one was making any money, me neither, I was struggling, and I did see some of my blogger friends, um, soar, some of them did really, really well, and in, and I, I struggled for a long time.
I saw other people, believe me, start to make a lot of money a long time before I did. And I, like I said, I'm the first to admit it. Um, but I learned a lot because of it. And I think actually the fact that I didn't just become an instant success has taught me more and has made me a more valuable, um, resource in terms of giving, you know, tips or advice than if I had just become instantly successful because, um, I, you know, I had to learn that kind of the hard way you could say.
and again, I've learned these two things. Um, the hard way, and there's a lot of advice out there on the internet, especially for travel content creators, other content creators. There's lots of courses, lots of advice, and my experience is that they tend to focus on the more sexy. more sexy side of things.
But I personally think these two extremely boring things are the, are the key, are the most important two things that you, you, you need to learn to, to make a success. Um, and they are business model and branding. And now to an entrepreneur, these things may seem obvious, but to a lot of people in the content creation space, there's a lot of people who are doing content marketing.
I don't think, I don't think they are as obvious. And I can tell you again from having many, many years in this space as a content creator, 19 years, um, this is from my own observation, my own experience and my own learning. And, um, so let's talk about business model first. As a content, I can tell you, businesses, if you're an entrepreneur, you're already thinking about your business model.
Um, how am I going to make money? And your business model is going to be obvious to you. But to a lot of content creators, believe me, it's not. They, they just think, okay, if I just, I'm going to make a lot of money, and they never really think about the business model. Um, but, um, I think the problem with that is that you may have short term success, that's possible, but I think if you want to have longevity, and again, I'm sitting here as somebody who has been doing this 19 years, and I'm still here doing it, so if you want to have longevity, if you want to sustain, sustainability.
Then, then I believe that these two things, business model and brand building are the two most important things. So, um, Why is business model important? Well, business model drives your strategy, right? If you don't know how you're going to make money, then you don't know your strategy for how to make money.
Um, and in terms of content creation, I'll just give you an example. Um, a lot of people make money in different ways. So there's no cookie cutter approach to this, by the way. Everybody I know in content creation has a different, um, kind of mix of ways that they make money. But if you don't sit down and think about how you're going to make money and think about your business model and your, your strategy, then it's, it is going to be, um, you may have a feast and famine experience.
You may, you may get lucky. You may have a viral video and suddenly get a pay, a page, a payout, right? Right. But again, in terms of longevity, Figuring out, for example, I'll just give you one example. If, if you've decided, like a lot of people who have websites, for instance, myself included, um, if, if you have a certain number of, um, page views per month, you can, page views per month, you can sign up to an ad network.
So this is a very common strategy amongst content creators who do websites. And um, so if that, if you, if you decide, okay, that's my business model, I'm going to make money from ad network, then you start to think about your strategy. So if you want to make money from an ad network, then your strategy has to be that you need a lot of traffic.
So then when you start thinking about, okay, so my strategy is, I'm going after a traffic, high traffic model. That's going to change a lot of your decisions about the type of content you create, um, and how you're going to do it. For example, you might decide to focus on SEO, search engine optimization, and the high monetized traffic is from the U.
S. So you're, you're, you might start looking at, um, trends, SEO trends in the U. S. And that could be part of your strategy. From there, you'll decide on your tactics, because we all know that strategy drives tactics, right? Do we agree on that? Absolutely. Um, not the other way around, which a lot of people make that mistake.
So, um, this is just, uh, uh, one of the reasons, well, I mean, this is a big topic, but this is, I just want to give you an overview of why I think this is important. Um, you know, having a business model is so important. And the other thing I mentioned was brand building. Um, so, in my case, and I know you're going to ask me questions about this, in my case, He's, I know he's going to ask me what I think I did well and what I think I didn't do well, what I would change.
Thank you for giving it out. Yeah. Yeah. He already told me he's going to ask me this. So I'll just tell you right now. So, so I did one thing really badly and I did one thing really well. So the thing I did really badly was I didn't really have a good sense of what my business model could be or would be or should be.
And I experimented a lot, told you I failed a lot, um, and eventually hit on something that did succeed. But, um, I, I did see other bloggers, there's a, in the travel blogging space there's a very well known blogger named Nomadic Matt. I don't know if anybody knows Nomadic Matt. Uh, he's a friend of mine. I've known him, like, we all started at the same time.
That guy's an MBA and he thought, right from the beginning, how, about his business model. He's actually been a big inspiration to me because of all the different business models out there. Um, the, what I like about his is that he has, like, he created kind of his own ecosystem. He didn't depend on somebody else.
To hire him, for example, like a lot of content creators, they, they want brand deals, they want brands to pay them or, but he, he, he, he just was really smart about it. He created a very high traffic 1 million views a month website. And he made, made his money from his own products and affiliates and things like that.
So he had like his own ecosystem and that really inspired me. Um, so that was the thing I didn't do well. I had to figure that out and it took a long time. But the thing I did do well, because I have a background in, um, uh, marketing and communications, um, and this was something that really set me apart back then.
And actually even still to this day was that I always had this idea that I needed to be. Um, like the go to person in my niche. I needed to develop a niche and I needed to, um, I needed to, um, become an established niche authority, um, which means that niche, um, is part of, it's not the only thing, but I put it as number one as, um, in terms of brand building, your niche is extremely important.
And again, a lot of content creators, I can tell you for sure, never think about niche. Okay. They just travel around or whatever they do, and they, and they don't think about, um, like zeroing in on a niche. And for me it was just, okay, female solo travel in India. I just want to own that niche. That's it. And it can even be something very small.
That's pretty big. It can even be something small, but it's just, You know, become the, if you're the go to person in a small niche, you can have more opportunities than being one of a million different people who create content around budget travel. You know, everybody does that. Correct. Correct. So that's a big part of brand building.
Um, but let's talk a little bit about what a brand is. It's what you stand for. It's a promise. Um, it's based on niche values, expertise, and your story. Seth Godden, who's a well known marketing guru, said a brand is the set of stories, expectations, memories, and relationships that taken together account for a consumer's decision to choose one service or, or product over another.
So it's, it's your identity and it's, it's, um, it's, it's kind of like who you are in the marketplace, you could say. Right, right. And the reason I'm big on branding is because. I think a brand is, has a lot of longevity and I'll, I just want to give you a couple of examples. Um, there's been examples where people build their entire business on a platform.
They might build it on Tik Tok or they might build, use SEO to build a website that has a lot of traffic. Well, Tik Tok got banned in India and there was a lot of people who lost their business. There were TikTok, um, you know, influencers in India who were literally making their money. They're living from it.
And that guy was gone in a day. Um, and the same with SEO in the last, um, year, Google has done these so called helpful content update, which actually killed a lot of logs and their traffic just, just died overnight. And again, those people. You know, their livelihood is gone, literally gone. I know people who lost a million visitors a month to their blog because of Google's update.
But if you have a brand, and your brand kind of transcends your platform, Um, like your brand is much bigger than any one platform. So if it's for me, so female solo travel in India, I'm writing articles, I'm in forums, I'm all over the place talking about my niche. So I'm not depending on any one, any one platform or any one strategy, like the brand is bigger than all of that.
Correct. You know, my, my expertise. It's not dependent on any one, any one platform or strategy. And I think that's a really, you know, a really important point. Absolutely. And brand is by far the biggest thing when you look at recession, right? I think we also had a running joke. Brand is recession proof.
Exactly. Brand is recession proof. So when you think about that. It is one of the biggest things out there. So when you think about content in general, like in today's day and age, there's been a drastic shift towards video form content, right? Like when you started out, it was more written blogs, a lot of books at that time.
What do you see as kind of, um, what do you see as kind of the future of content creation when, when we move forward? And like for any aspiring, um, content creators in the room, like what is your piece of advice to them that they kind of should do in order to, you know, even dabble into this space? Right. Um, you know, it's basically what the two things I've said, you know, know what you know, how you're going to make money and establish yourself as a brand.
Um, those are the two most important things I have to say, but having said that, you know, whenever you do anything, anybody here who's, who's been involved in any, any field for a long time, you see a lot of changes. I mean, when I started as a blogger, I was a professional writer. I was a blogger. I used to write magazine articles, I used to write long form for the Globe and Mail and for the Toronto Star, and when I started blogging, a lot of my travel writer friends were very upset.
Oh my god, it was like, you're selling out, you're working for free. We were the disruptors, right? And then, and then we had our heyday, and then, um, then the influencers started to come up, and they were the disruptors, and nobody, I mean, I never saw that, I never foresaw that there would be. First of all, social media.
When I started, there was no social media, so nobody saw that coming, right? That came, seemed to come out of the blue, and now you've got all these influencers on Instagram and YouTube. Um, so it's really impossible to know. It's a very impossible question to answer, because What I've seen is that things can come out of literally nowhere, or it seems like nowhere.
So we don't know what the, so what, so right now, the influencers now are getting upset because of AI, because AI is now taking over a lot of the influencer space. So, so, so we got upset about the influencers, the travel, traditional travel writers got upset about us, you know, and uh, so it's, it's, it's very, very impossible to predict.
Um, but I think, you know, We get caught up in fads, you know, we get dazzled by fads and technology, but I think what I've learned is actually, you know, go back to the basics, you know, literally. Um, there's just certain business basics that never change, you know, and that's kind of what I've been talking about tonight.
It's old fashioned, it's boring, but these are solid, reliable things that you can count on. We haven't really said how I make money. For sure. We're happy to know your secrets. No, I missed that part of the story, because I talked about how I tried all these different things, and nothing worked until I founded Indie for Beginners.
Correct. So, Breathe Dream Goat is my travel blog, but about five years ago, as I was still experimenting with different, uh, ways to monetize. I, I had met, uh, somebody, uh, who is now my business partner in India, um, and we started just casually offering a few tours. And then we got this idea that we would offer custom tours.
So the small group tours, well, we can't possibly compete with G Adventures and Intrepid, but, um, once we started, I, Once we started offering custom tours, the company was almost instantly successful. All I did was put one page on my travel blog about it, uh, India for Beginners, and I put a, in the sidebar, I put a form.
That's it. And within two months, this business was starting to really, really pick up. I didn't do anything else. That's it. So Brave Dream Go, the travel blog, is the marketing engine for India for Beginners. the custom tour company. And now India for Beginners has completely taken over my life. I barely have time to blog.
And I'm now considering myself a custom tour operator. And it's, yeah, we're doing really well. Well, that's fantastic. And I live in India, but I'm still wanting to take a custom tour by Mary Ellen. So that's going to be a fun one coming up. But thank you so much once again for offering us your guidance.
Telling us about how to turn content and actually monetize that, uh, so again, like opening up the floor to any questions anyone has in regards to wanting to ask Mary Allen, for sure. Abhi, can you get me some water? So I had a question, um, so it's kind of off topic in the sense, like the context is like, I started my DQ business last year, um, but how it relates to the question is because How do you know, you know, as an artist, when I'm putting out content, I think, you know, cause like, viewers like X of my content, like this specific thing, but how do you really know, uh, what, in a, in a big scale, rather than a friend coming and telling you, cause obviously I'm not an initial stage, how do you know Why your most loyal customers are coming?
'cause these days I feel like people are busy. They don't care about the surveys. Like how do you really understand your loyal customer base? Yeah. To understand why you're getting the success and like why they like you versus another company. 'cause like obviously that's very important data, right? To see like, how do you, like what should we do next?
What should we continue investing in? Uh, and stuff like that, because I feel like as loaners, there's a disconnect sometimes between what, why we think consumers are coming to us and why we think we're doing well. Kind of, I guess, the difference between. Yeah, that's such a good question, thank you very much, I wish I had a, I wish I had a, you know, something, you know, ready to, to answer you, I wish there was a ready made answer for that, but unfortunately, I personally think that that's, you know, that time is gonna, sadly, I mean, I wish it could be something that, you know, just happened overnight, in my case it took a really long time, a really long time for me to sort of put all those thoughts together and realize.
Um, you know, why was India for Beginners so successful right from the beginning? You know, um, it seems kind of obvious now looking back, but at the time it wasn't. Um, but now, you know, hindsight is 20 20 and I realize, yeah, well I've been putting myself out in the world for all these years as a, uh, India travel expert.
Of course it makes perfect sense. You know, if everybody sees me that way, and I see myself that way, and that's my passion, which it genuinely is, um, then it just makes sense that I can help other people travel in India. But why did it take me so long to, to, to make those connections? I, I, I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that, um, I think it has to come from you.
Like I said, you know, from the beginning, I think people can, People can detect passion. I think we know, you know, I think we know when somebody is really passionate about something. And, um, I think that experimentation is just, it's going to take experimentation. Uh, I just wish I had a quicker answer for you.
Like, it's a great question. One thing I'd like to add to that actually is, at least from my limited experience being in a startup, a lot of the times when you're kind of looking at your customer base, You focus a lot on what's not working and you try and kind of work towards that. When you're collecting data, like, you know, you're a DJ, I've seen you perform fantastic.
Like I love the mix that you do with Indian and Spanish music. So getting insights like that from your loyal customers would be something that really gives you validation. Okay, these are the two, three things that I do really well. And that's a constant kind of feedback point that you're getting from customers.
So at the end of the day, I would just say like, just listening to your customers, it always boils down to that. Even when you're creating blogs, right? Like you have to kind of see which blogs are working. Like there are specific styles people kind of tinker with, like there are specific ways of doing certain things.
So that's the only point of advice that I would give in that regard to think about. Um, I, I think that, you know, this may not apply to you, but. Um, The feedback I've got was that my, what I'm offering is, is really a gap in the market. There's a gap in the market. If you can find a gap in the market, and I didn't even do that consciously, but that's the feedback I've, I've gotten from people.
People have said to me, I would not, I wouldn't have gone to India if I didn't find your company. I didn't even know this service existed. So what is that famous thing about find a pain point, solve the pain point. And niche down, right? Yeah. As you said. So what's the big pain point with travel in India?
People are nervous and they feel overwhelmed. So solve that. And that's what we do. Um, and again, a lot of this is 2020. You know, and, um, some people are smart enough to strategize this in advance. I am not one of those people. I had to sort of figure it out like a blind person in a dark room, you know, but, but I somehow managed to do it anyway.
So if I can do it, I think anybody can do it. That's that's fantastic. Any other questions in the room? You have a couple. I just want to say I really enjoyed this session. What I wanted to ask you was, you just busted a myth about India that Similarly with hostels, there is a misconception that hostels are really unsafe.
Uh, so I just wanted to ask you, have you ever stayed in a hostel in India? If yes, what was your favorite part about it? I actually know the answer to that one. I actually did a campaign with Zostel. You know Zostel? Yeah. I did a campaign with Zostel. They hired a friend of mine, this crazy tall Texan guy, uh, crazy travel blogger who was in India, and he's a videographer, and they hired him, and he, and then they, we, he hired me, and we worked together, and so we, we did go around and stay in Zostels as they opened, um, and we, we had an amazing time at the Zostel in Pushkar during the Pushkar Camel Festival.
They just opened beautiful Zostel, Gorgeous. And, uh, I, I stay in a private room, okay. You know, that's my thing. I like my private room. But I love the experience of, of hospitals. Hospitals in India are great because they're actually really upscale, right? People don't know. They have no idea. Um, and, uh, so I personally had a good experience and we had a talk about that when I met you.
Didn't we? We did. We did. And I work with a lot of hostels in India itself. So, uh, in my experience, honestly, the hostels in India are way better, like way better than the hostels in North America, and most of them in Europe as well. Like, For ten dollars a night you will get some of the best freaking hostels out there You'll meet the coolest people and then you also have food included for ten dollars like out here You can't even buy a starbucks for ten dollars just to put that into context, right?
So all in all like Completely resonate with that chain of thought. Yeah. There was another question out there.
Thank you so much for your amazing chat today. And I actually have two questions regarding to one that you mentioned towards business model and your branding. So in terms of your business model, how often, like how did it evolve and like, did you change it? Like, how did you change it? And in terms of your branding, like.
Basically you have your own personal brands and you have the brands of your company, so like how they relate and like how you work. Um, yeah, I, I might, I think I am the, I am my brand. It's actually in my case, um, I mean I'm a human being, I'm not a brand, I mean I'm a person, right? But I really do, in my case, I really do, you know, walk, I really do travel a lot in India.
I've been all over India. I've been on trains, buses, you name it. Camels. I Elephants, I'm sorry to say, back before I realized that it was a bad idea. Um, I re I really, I really, um, walked the talk. So, my brand and I are kind of, Um, and I think that's a good question because, um, again, I accidentally did a couple things I think well, which was a lot of people, especially travel bloggers, like they'll, it's like a lot of people call their blog posts.
Their blog after their name, you know, like Adventurous Kate. Um, she's great by the way. I've known her a long time. . Um, but so Rose , but you're, you're, you're getting, but it beca then it's like, it really is about you. But I, mine is called Breathe Dream Go. So it's about something bigger. So I've guessed I have guest authors on my blog.
Um, it's, it's, it's, it's about something bigger than me, right? It's about being an adventurous female solo traveler. And, um, it's a bigger concept than me. You know, but then when I founded India for Beginners, I very deliberately gave it a very separate name. Because I wanted it to be a separate entity.
We're a team. I have a team. I'm just one person. You know, my team is super important to me. And I always say, they do the real work, which is actually true. They do the real work. Because they're the daily operations people. They're the people sitting in Delhi who are doing all the logistics, and itineraries, and bookings, and tour guides, and everything else.
Um, so, it's not an easy question to answer, uh, and I'm probably a particular case, you know, but it's definitely worth thinking about, though. Like I said, I made a very deliberate decision to make India for Beginners a standalone company. It's associated with me, of course it is, and, um, people, a lot of foreigners, a lot of Canadians, you know, they want to travel with me because, you I'm relatable.
Like, they, they can phone me up in Toronto this summer, you know, and talk to me. It's happened quite a few times. Um, and your other question was, uh, yeah, the business model. Oh my God. I, I've got a hilarious business model. The thing that I wrote out that's just, you know, basically kitty litter liner right now because uh, it's, I threw it all out.
Like I tried, I told you I tried a lot of different things and I, I was looking around for what what works in the marketplace. None of it worked for me. Who knows why? I mean, it's a combination Um, My niche, my expertise, how I put myself in the market. Also, what the market, this goes back to your question, what does the market want?
What does the market need? I accidentally, sort of, sort of accidentally, uh, fell on, uh, a company that really does solve a pain point. It really does, it really does meet a gap in the market. And that was, uh, I wish I could say it was strategy. It wasn't. It was experimentation. Um, and, uh, I don't know what else to say except that, you know, what might work for someone else might not work for you, but what might work for you might not work for someone else.
And I don't really know why. Again, I'm sorry to say that, but all I can tell you is that I experimented and then until I hit the thing and I tried so many different things and I tried so many things and tried to make them work and they never worked, but when I hit the thing. It was, honestly, it was, you know, they say, you know, um, It was like falling off a log, like it was some expression about, that it was just like, oh yeah, that's it.
It was just like the light bulb goes off or whatever it is. Like it was almost instant. It was almost instant. And what's that saying about, people talk about an overnight success, but meanwhile they've been working for 10 years, and then everybody goes, oh that person's an overnight success. Yeah, 10 later.
Yeah, that's me. So that absolutely makes sense. So there you have it, like how you monetize your content from Mary Ellen Ward herself. Thank you so, so much, Mary Ellen. It was, it was wonderful speaking with you. I'm sure everyone in the crowd also appreciated all of the wisdom you kind of imparted on us And if any of us are wanting to kind of become content creators, you know who you need to follow right after this Um, so yeah, thank you once again for everything.
I really appreciate it. That's a wonderful experience. so much
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