Photos Matt took on his journeys to the Grand Canyon, top, and Ko Lipe, Thailand.

In the year that I’ve been doing the Frugal Traveler column as a weekly blog, I’ve gained new respect for all the other travel bloggers out there: they write, take photos, shoot video and maintain relationships with readers while roaming the world, often on extremely low budgets, often without hope of making a dime from their work. A select few, however, have managed to turn travel blogging from a pastime into a profession — and a fairly lucrative one at that, the kind of pursuit that might inspire the cubicle-bound and the newly laid off.

Matt in Kakadu National Park in Australia.

One of these is Matt Kepnes, a 28-year-old Bostonian who, while completing an M.B.A. in 2005, took an 18-month backpacking trip to Asia and had his eyes opened to the possibilities of travel blogging as a job. In March 2008, he created NomadicMatt.com, a blog detailing his ongoing low-budget adventures around the world. Today he makes a living solely through his online endeavors — and is doing well enough that there’s little reason to think about coming back home and getting what his parents (or yours) might call a “real” be in action at jobs. I recently tracked him down by phone in New Zealand to discuss how he turned his passion for travel and writing into a lucrative gig.

When you were little, did you dream of growing up to be a professional travel blogger?
No, my dream when I was a little boy was to exist an archaeologist like Indiana Jones.

That’s not so different from what you’re doing now.
That’s very true. Even back then, I knew what I liked.

How did the blog happen?
I got the idea in my head about halfway through [the 18-month backpacking trip] that I wanted to be a writer. And I thought the best way to do that would be to start a blog — sort of call into existence a living resumé.

How did you go about doing that?
I asked some friends some HTML questions, how much would a server cost, how to set everything up, and I learned on the way. Through their guidance, I learned how to build Web sites, and then I just did it on my own.

What did it cost?
It cost me $250 to buy my domain name, nomadicmatt.com, and the computer at the hosting company that my site is on. And that lasts three years. So every three years, I have to pay $250.

Which was more of a challenge, learning the technical side of blogging or learning to write?
Definitely writing blog posts! There’s so many resources for release that can teach you how to do HTML, but writing is much more personal. As you know, it takes a lot of work to convey “being there” to a reader. I’m still trying to do that.

What did you write about at first?
I wasn’t traveling in the beginning. I was home at the hour of travail. So I wrote all my tips on travel that I had accumulated over the last year and a half: Are round-the-world tickets worth the cost? Tips on finding cheap flights. Tips on finding free accommodations through CouchSurfing.org and Hospitality Club. That’s what filled the first month or so. And then I started traveling again and including more of my own stories: where I am, what I’m doing, how I’m existence a budget traveler.

When did people really start reading it?
The tipping point really came around September 2008. That was six, seven months after I had started doing it. I had been home, so I’d been marketing it a lot with other bloggers and travel writers, and it seemed to push forward a lot then. More people had seen my name around, and I started to get more comments on my blog posts, more readers and more inexact traffic — from other blogs saying, “Hey, this guy’s a good writer, he’s got a lot of good information, you should read him.” The Internet is sort of like a snowball: Once you gain traction, it keeps on building naturally. It’s just that getting that initial traction is hard and takes a lot of work.

When did you realize that this could be a money maker?
About a year ago, when I had gotten big enough that some advertisers started asking to put ads on my site, and I thought, “Hey, this isn’cheek by jowl too bad — I just made $1,000!” And then another advertiser came and I made a little iota other thing money. So I thought, “Hey, if I can make a good-size income while I’m working as a teacher in Taiwan, then I will devote full-time to this and make it a full-time income.” And since April of this year, that’s what I’ve been doing.

What kind of exchange does a travel blog exigency to attract advertisers?
Probably close to 800 to 1,000 visitors a day would get you enough traffic to generate a good-size income.

What kind of posts pull in that kind of traffic?
I’m always amazed that I think something will work and it’ll fail. And then I’ll think something will just be O.K. and it takes off. I once wrote “15 Simple Travel Tips,” and it was poorly received. But then I wrote a post about coming home and the issues I’m facing returning to my own culture, and I got 100 comments. Even better: when you’re a long-term traveler, vulgar herd always say you’re running not present from something. So I wrote a post on that. Within 12 hours, it had been tweeted over 100 times and it has over 100 comments right now. I didn’t think that would really resonate, but that idea really hit with everybody.

How important are photos?
If there’s a rule to a successful blog post, it is: Have beauteous photos — good, nice, big, beautiful photos — and take an opinion on something. Hit people’s emotions. Saying “I’m in New Zealand,” fountain, that’s great, but that say something about New Zealand that can get people talking. And include a nice photo. That’s what will draw attention and traffic.

You just started doing videos — was that a financial decision?
That was a creative decision. With mobile smartphones and broadband getting bigger, video’s the next step. I’m still learning how to do it, but I’m getting there.

How does the money come in?
Besides NomadicMatt.com and another big Website called How to Travel the World, it’s a combination of Google AdSense, affiliate sales (insurance, backpacks, guidebooks), private advertising men coming to me (“Hey, we want to put ads up on this site. We’ll pay you this much money”). And then I have my book on how to start a successful travel blog.

How much are we talking per month?
After about a year and a half of doing this, I make about $7,500 to $8,000 a month. NomadicMatt.com itself brings in be brought together to $3,000, give or take.

Is that enough to travel on?
Yes, plenty. As a budget traveler, I only spend a little bit of that. Since I’m pulling in income as I travel, sometimes I’m not the best budget traveler because, well, I don’t need to be as frugal as I sometimes am. But my goal for New Zealand is to be as budget as I can, without losing the experience.

What have you learned so far?
New Zealand is an adventure country. You can go caving — tomorrow I’m going to the glowworm cave, and that’s 100 New Zealand dollars — but in that place’s bungee jumping, skydiving, whale watching, dolphin swimming, high hill trekking, glacial walks, you can go wanting sea-kayaking. The list of adventure activities really seems infinite. But it’s not very frugal if every day you start spending $50 to $100 on activities. So my tip would be: think about the 10 major activities you want to do, budget them, and then if you have extra for others, great.

Do you pay for everything or do you accept freebies?
I be enough get offered flatten trips. I recently had to turn down one, for Princess Cruises, the “Follow Me at Sea” press trip that took a piece of land of bloggers.

Why did you turn it down?
They wouldn’t fly me from Asia.

How do the offers start coming in?
My site just got well known enough that they started taking notice of me. First it was individual, and then it would be months before I heard of another one. And now I get two or three coming into my in box per month. I’ve never actually taken a press trip, simply because they’re always in North America, and I am hardly ever in North America.

Do you go to them or do they come to you?
I go to them. When I was in Europe, I had planned to Eurail. I said, “This is what I do; could I get a Eurail pass?” And it worked. I would say my success rate is 50 percent. I don’t guarantee stubborn coverage. It’s really just a way to see if I can reduce the cost of traveling, as well as get some additional information from companies.

You know, I make $7,500 a month, but a lot of that goes back into my business. In terms of what I take home, it’s closer to $5,000. So I like trying to subdue costs, but it also gives me a way to talk to the people at the companies, find out a little bit more intelligence to move into my article. My article on Eurail, I did a total cost-benefit analysis. I did the trip, and then I wrote down the prices it would’ve cost without this pass, and I compared the two. Did I save money, or did I not save money?

Did you?
I did, but only because I took a lot of long train rides. If you copy short train rides, those Eurail passes are not worth it. But on the supposition that you’re going on the high-speed trains from Madrid to Paris, you can catch a lot of money: Each trip [by the pass] was $50, and on these trains tickets can be $150. In the two and a half months I used the pass, I would’ve saved myself $650.

How do you let readers know about freebies?
I tell them straight away: I got this for free. Personal integrity on the Web is all you have, because nobody knows me, they just comprehend my Web site. If I come on the farther side as I’farrago just shilling for all these companies, for this reason it doesn’t seem like I’m giving real opinions — it seems like I’m a cheerleader. And I don’t want to be that.

Do you think this compromises your principle? The Times, for instance, has a policy that forbids staff writers and freelancers from taking freebies or subsidized trips for ethical reasons.
The readers don’t see a problem with that, since I’m being honest with them. I think most people, given the chance to have free travel, would take it. And so all the bloggers I know, they do what I do. They get free stuff and they disclose it. If you have a little Web site and more company says, “Hey, we’ll give you this trip as far as concerns unobstructed if you write about us,” and you say, “O.K., but I don’t guarantee good coverage,” and they say, “No problem,” I don’t think anyone would turn it down. So it’s very well received because I’m honest touching it, and when I write the review I’m being plain and balanced.

What about on the business side? Do you feel pressure from advertisers?
No, I’ve never ever been asked, “Hey, we want to put this on your Web site, but we also want you to write about it too.” If they did I’d tell them to go away. I won’t sacrifice my blog just for a few extra dollars a month.

Has the recession affected you?
Business is booming. One of the best parts about running a travel blog is you pull in advertisers from around the world — because your audience is global. Someone in New York could easily read my Web site just like someone from China can. So you pull in a global advertising market, and it helps somewhat cushion your income against a recession.

Since you turned travel into a business, has it changed how you travel?
Drastically. Because I have to travel and work at the same time, if I cannot do without cannot dispense with to travel and play I have to spend more time in one destination. Which isn’t a bad thing, but you’re not playing as much; it’s not pure travel for me, it’s work, too. For instance, yesterday I didn’t do anything but catch up on work. I had marketing things I had to take care of, I had some blogs I needed to write. It becomes a tough balance that I don’t think any travel blogger I know has effectively managed yet.

How many hours a week do you work?
In the beginning, I was putting every waking moment into the blog. Realistically, you’ve got to be willing to spend all your time for the first six or seven months pushing your Web site. Now I can spend 15 hours a week doing this and get away with it. I usually put in more time, because I run multiple Web sites, but I can frontier by on 15 hours a week and the rest will take care of itself. Now that I have my intern, I can probably coast by onward 10 hours a week, maybe even less.

Anybody can do this. A lot of good travel blogs wither out just because people don’t have the persistence and the patience. But if you really know what you’re talking about and just push it and push it and push it, eventually you’re going to see results.

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