Aspiring Travel Writers of the Week: Jorge and Claudia with Travel drafts
Jorge and Claudia’s website is Travel Drafts and was launched in June 2018, as rebrand of couplertw which was launched in August of 2015.
Bio: We are a Portuguese couple who started a blog while living in Angola. We started to travel and writing about Angola and Southern Africa. Now we are back in Portugal and write about soft adventure travel around the world. The consider themselves travel bloggers or content creators.
Here is Jorge and Claudia’s Q&A About Their Life as a Travel Blogger
Jorge is a full-time Blogger, while Claudia is part-time, for now.
Claudia’s day job is a Physiotherapist. Jorge was an economist, before turning to blogging.
How long have you been blogging? For about 5 years, since creating the first blog.
What is your blogging niche? Travel, soft adventure, and budget travel mostly. We are also starting a Portugal site called Portugal Things.
Where do you call home? Today, Porto, Portugal is our home. We plan to live here 6 months per year and travel the rest of the time.
How many countries have you been to? Israel was our 40th country.
How many continents have you been to? All, except Antarctica. (We really need to go there. All is a much cooler answer)
Top 5 destinations on your travel to do list: Transsiberan, Tanzania, Iran (not gonna happen soon…), Mexico, and Antarctica
Earliest travel memory: Roadtrip from Portugal to Luxembourg with my parents. We were visiting family and did this cool journey where we stopped in several, Spanish and French towns!
Favorite Travel Writer: We really like the Portuguese Gonçalo Cadilhe, mostly because of a book where he follows the course of Ferdinand Magellan. Other than that we don’t really have favorite writers.
Favorite Travel Blogger: It really changed through time. It used to be Adventurous Kate and Nomadic Matt, but we don’t follow them anymore. We prefer quality simple information over storytelling. Now, we are really enjoying Adventure in you, You could travel, and Goats on the Road.
Favorite Travel Photographer: Joel Sartore, though I’m not sure we can consider him a travel photographer.
Favorite Travel Blogs and Websites: Greatescape.co is great for searching flights and seat61 is one of our favorites as we share the love for train travel. Other than that, I believe we answered this above… ops 🙂
Favorite Travel Podcast: I do love the Freakonomics podcast, but it has little to do with traveling.
The trip that turned you from a vacationer to a traveler: Our first slow travel through southeast Asia. We went to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Malaysia. The way we traveled, in the beginning, had nothing to do with the way we ended our trip. In Thailand we were fast and furious, in Malaysia we were are relaxed as a sloth!
The trip that turned you into a travel blogger: Angola! When we went to Angola as expats everything changed. It gave so many things… from financial stability to perspective on life. It also gave us time, to learn about traveling and blogging.
Your first steps to become a travel blogger: We basically didn’t know what we were doing. We started the blog, one day that we were bored to death in our house in Luanda. We thought there wasn’t much info on Angola and decided to start writing about it, then it grew to what it is today.
I am an independent traveler! I am focused on organized media trips. (do you plan your own travel or look for media trips?) We never did media trips and it isn’t in our horizons to do it. Unless it’s something that really interests us.
The social media platform driving the most traffic to my site is: Pinterest if we still consider it a social media platform.
My top tip to use Pinterest for traffic: I don’t think we are the right people to give tips about social media traffic. More than 80% of our traffic comes from SEO. However, Pinterest seems to be the easiest way yo get traffic these days.
My favorite tool/app for social media: Tailwind. It’s great to analyze and post things on Pinterest.
My favorite WordPress plugin: Elementor. It’s so easy to create beautiful pages and it goes well with our theme!
Favorite Travel Blogger Facebook Group: DNW – Making Money From Blogging – it completely changed the way we blog! Also, make traffic happen which I discovered a few months later. Both have almost all the information you need to be successful and are great for networking.
Organizations I belong to: Travel Bloggers PT and we are starting on Perlu. Other than that we are not active in bloggers organizations.
#1 Organization I recommend for new bloggers: The FB groups we referred above.
If only I had the time, I’d do/finish…… : Treating the email list the way we should! We need to start actively collecting emails and send newsletters.
Our top tip for aspiring travel writers and bloggers!
Buy Keysearch (there are other options, but more expensive one) and learn about keywords.
Top tip for travelers: Don’t over plan. The thing that most changed in our trips is the level of planning. We went from planning everything to not even book lodging in some destinations. Just relax and go with the flow.
Connect with Jorge and Claudia!
Website: Traveldrafts.com (and portugalthings.com )
Social: Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest | Instagram
Jorge and Claudia’s article One Perfect Day: What To Do in Panama City, Panama was just featured on 52PerfectDays. Please check it out here: 52perfectdays.com/south-america/what-to-do-in-panama-city-panama/
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More Travel Blogger of the Week Features!
Aspiring Travel Writer of the Week: Maggie McKneely with Pink Caddy Travelogue
Nominate a friend (or yourself!) as our next Aspiring Travel Writer of the Week!
I invite you to be a featured ATW (Aspiring Travel Writer) of the week. As ATW of the week, you will be featured on my travel website, 52Perfectdays.com and the BreakintoTravelWriting.com website! Here are all the details! breakintotravelwriting.com/aspiring-travel-writer-of-the-week-guidelines/
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