How to Become a Travel Vlogger and Make Money Traveling on YouTube — Nadine Sykora Interview

in this video I talk with hey Nadine about her tips for being a travelvlogger how to make money doing it and getting through the ups and downs ofbeing a youtuber coming upHey whats up guys Sean here with video influencers help you build your influence incoming impact with onlinevideo and today I’m on with hey Nadine who's a travel vlogger I make travel videos that show you the worlda vlogger who's been doing all kinds of creative videos comedy skits she's beenin the YouTube world for a long time and she has over two hundred and thirtythousand subscribers over 31 million video viewshey Nadine how are you doing I’m doing great thank you how are you doing I'm doing fantastic thanks so muchfor taking the time to come on and add value to the influencers watching but aswe kick it off for those who may be haven’t been introduced to your contentyet take us back to how you got into online video and travel in the firstplacewell how i got into online video because video came before the travel so I used to do a lot of theatrewhen I was younger lot of creative acting sort of stuff when I went touniversity I had to cut that part of my life because it was a bit too muchuniversity plus i was playing sports and trying to have a social life I i couldn't have I couldn’t make timefor a creative outletmy acting umm just to like express myself that’s when I found YouTube now this is back in2006 YouTube was very not well-known is very smallat the time and I just saw this girl is actually abby girl she was posting avideo just this funny video of her dancing around in a catsuit I know it sounds weirdbut that's literally what it was and I was like wait who is this girl what is shedoing and I found a kind of stumbled through her videos into this world ofvloggers and YouTube and I was like hey she's doing that I can do that andso I started making YouTube videos they started as skits because that's what Iwas used to it’s what I did in theatre and it's just spread of the moment things that I could come upwithand the beauty of YouTube was that I can do it in the bedroom I can't do it on myown time and so when I was in university it was like oh my gosh this is perfectbecause then I had that creative outletso that's why I started it with my online video and then once I graduateduniversity I really wanted to go travel I felt it goes missing out on this wholeworld of travel so I decided to go travel but I didn’t want to stop making videosso i was like well why don't I just make videos of my travels it seemed like thelogical thing to do and so I started doing that and that's how the travel blogs started happeningthat’s amazing now not to go too deep too quick but I watch your draw my lifevideo and you actually mentioned that you kind of hit a hard season of life andkinda isolated you mentioned feeling depress and travel was like this thingthat really transform your life and obviously something you're so passionateabout and you say you always encourage others to do it what was that seasonlike that time in that transition into where you are nowoh well it was a tough time it was a tough time and I can relate to a lot of universitystudents but through lifeI call the American dream that we are told of the American Dream our parentsgeneration kind of grew up with it you you go to school then you go to University thenyou get married you have a kid you buy a house you are you build your careersomewhere in there and then you retire and you go to travel and that’s youAmerican dream that's what life it’s supposed to be so when I graduateduniversity it was my first period in life where I didn't have a plan I don'thave a set schedule like I was like I knew ok high school done everyone goes to highschool and then university that was just logically the next step and then suddenly I wasGraduate University and I was like so what so wait i have to be an adult now and that was a bigchallenge for me because I was kinda iffy on my career and what I actually wanted todo and I was doing YouTube at the time I was making videos at the time and Ikinda ventured into trying to make it full time but then not being able to makeit full timestill this is 2009 this was still a small world in online video wasn't bigit's not a huge like everyday thing that everyone's doing so when when I tried toexplain to my friends what I was doing no one understood it my parents didn’t understand and I just i didn’t have anyone else that I was surrounded by other content creators nothing that Icould kind of work with and so it didn't feel like a proper job so I wascontemplating and debating did I even make the right choice in life like whatam i doing because I'm like this isn’t a job everyone kept telling YouTube is not a jobis not a career when you do it you're just making videos even though I was making moneyat the time wasn’t a lot of money but i was making enough money to like pay my bills and stuff and so that was but whenyou're already confused the university but you throw that on top of okmaybe get a real job I don’t really want to do the real job and I don't think this is right for me at all all this confusionand then just want to get away from it all and travel and that's kind of how Isettled on travel I was like I need to get out of my head and to get out of thisspace I need to just go and just do something different and travel I said it before is something I really wanted to do so I saved up I bookedone way ticket and off to New Zealand I went it was such a great such a great decision and I really like took that time to following afterward to really discover myself was a big big learning curve but that's kind of what happens that’s really amazing and really inspiring and it's cool to see what that decision isled to and and the effects in your life now one question is you mean youmentioned you started you to the 2006 and you're right people weren't eventhinking about online video and and its 2016 ten years later what are some ofthe transitions that you've noticed the difference between then and now and whatare some of your wisdom and you really a veteran when it comes to YouTube thingsthat have definitely change some people say it's you know it's harder now but what kind of wisdom do you have for peoplewho maybe are getting into it now and how things have shifted well we'll startwith how they have shifted and then I'll give you so my wisdom what you can doyou think you're getting in or getting in right now this is hands down one of the biggest things is it'sit's huge now I mean when I when I first join YouTube I’ll put it like this the number one mostsubscribed channel had thirty five thousand subscribersyeah I know right now thirty five thousand subscribers it’s nothing it’s nothing so that was big if if you had over a 1000 subscribers between a 1000 or 5000 subscribers you were in the top100 most subscribed channels on YouTube when I joined in it was small so it wasa lot more intimate it was a lot more private almost you had to be a lot more careful of what you sharehow much you shared what your real name was that’s what a lot of people from back then usedaliases it was never your full name it was all aliases overall user names nicknamesbecause they will use the internet world it was beforeanti-social think about that before Facebook i think MySpace was around but it was before Facebook or Twitter or snapchat blah blah blahliterally all that stuff that we have now that it's so personal so you had to be careful becausestalking was a major issue people hacking into your stuff was a majorissue you had too much information out nowsurprisingly the more public we are with our information the safer it’s actuallybecome in the online world it's kind of a weird counterintuitive thing that'shappened so that thing happen obviously it's bigger it's huge now back then if you hadone successful video one good video boom instantly you’d in top like you’d gain a bunch of subscribers not like hundred subscribers but you’d gain subscribers you’d get notoriety and you can move up veryquickly if you follow certain formulas back then instantly you could jump your way to thetop now you have you can still kind of do itcertain formulas but it takes a lot more time takes a lot more luck you had to be way more calculated or so much more to it now than there was back then you just people posting videoswe were thinking about branding we weren’t thinking about our image we were thinking of anything wasjust pure creative video that was literally all it was it was just pure creativity at its finest back then nowit's far more market it's far more like brand oriented marketing oriented andmoney oriented to business which is a good thing that's exciting because itallows people to have careers like myself in this industry but now for newpeople going into it you have to think of it more as a business along with thecreative the creative is really important but that's the biggest thing too you go into itit's not so much a creative outlet like it was when I joined it’s more business very interesting and you already mention acouple tips but specifically like if someone was starting today what tipscaution advice would you give them for getting in today I would if someone is getting in toYouTube making videos today I would say what find a passion like find somethingthat you are gonna love for me that was travel for me it took a while to getthere and I'm not saying you know right off the bat now it's good to experimentand figure that out but like I'm getting up my 10 year anniversary here this isnot a sprint it's a marathon and you're gonna be doing videos for a long time if you wanna make it here you gonna be doing them frequently that’s another thing you have to keep up withfrequency that wasn't such a big thing back then it is now minimum you have to be posting a video once a week or it’s like you are irrelevant instantly so find something that you really reallylove to do a creative a niche in the YouTube community world whether that begaming or beauty or travel or ASMR videos or I don't know random art videos there are so manydifferent smaller niches that people don't think of that are outyou don't have to hit the big niches there are smaller niches but findsomething that you really connect with don't worry about the views don't worry about the subscribers at first justfocus on the content focus on something that you're excited about creating then when you have thatthen you can bring all the business aspect of it because once you have thatunderlying passion you'll be able to keep going for years and years agosee where im going with that love it loving great that's great advice and let's shift to specifically now andthere's actually video influencers watching that are trying to specificallydo travel vlogs be a travel blogger what are some of the things you've learned inthat space and it would seem i mean the initial impression is that it would seemlike there would be unique challenges to your kind of tips for maybe beginnersare saying okay I'm trying to grow this might and this ships into your traveltips I know you got great videos of course we’re gonna link up your stuff evenhow to save money on travel because if you're trying to bootstrap early on andto YouTube and travel so what would be some of your tips for beginners and thenalso maybe some of the more advanced stuff that you learned as far as being atravel vlogger specifically so first thing that I’ve experience but i bring other vloggers into thetravel world whether it be on trips with me is that travel is quick and it's reallyreally quick it is unknown there are a lot of factors that play that you arenot going to be able to control you are not gonna be able to control lighting you’re not going to be able to control sound you’re not gonna be able to control what if it’s raining the weather you’re not gonna be able to control if you are allowed to film and people around you getting to these locations there are so many factors out there so you need to learnhow to get a shot you need to do and get a quick because a lot of times it's onlygoing to be one shot one time that you get to do thisit’s not scary it’s not a scary thing and if it does come with practice but if you used to having acontrolled environment film in your doing your vlog and you are use to settingeverything up and having the camera perfectly focus and all the stuff it’sgonna be a little bit of a challenge moving into trouble because got it onjust gotta be on your feet and again it comes with time it's something you learning with practice oflearning where the best shot will be how to take how plan a little bit more in advance inyour head even though you can't if that makes any sense so that was that what was the other part of the question when big thing would probably beespecially for trying to figure out this would go into your not gonna monetizeright away nobody should get into trying to even think about founding with no passion oh money yeah moneyright away however travel costs money so what's your perspective for someone andobviously people can travel without logging and so they have to work and hustle yeah youknow your progression into it for those that are trying to work their way in and that tension of trying to fund their travels build their channel those kindsof things well travel does cost money but it doesn't cost much money as you think it costs if youwere going to do this you have to commit the lifestyle is not you're not avacation vlogger you were a travel vlogger there's a big difference if you'rejust thinking of taking a vacation for a week here maybe once or twice Cup timesa year that's not make you a travel vloggerthat gives you travel vlogs it doesn’t make you a travel vlogger travel vloggers all the biggest one ofthe best ones all people they're doing it successfully live and breathe travel isour life that is the life so we'd have cameras or none so you have to first getthat part of your life down pathlearn to me the traveler you can do it with a camera on you there's no fault in that but you need to learnhow to be a traveler and that means you don't make sacrifices for your firstrunning out of money is an issue when you first start out but think about it like this where youlive now are you paying rent do you live with your parents what kind of jobs you can take ajob on the road with you so if you're living somewhere now say you wanna go you want toyou wanna go do your travels long-term travel is going to be exponentially cheaper thanshort-term trouble you just getting startedit's better to playfor a bigger trip like talking three-month-long maybe even 4 5 6even 6 month long travel trip and you don't need that much to do this yes you might have to give upyour place money to move in with your parents and save up save up for it you can spend budget wise on the cheap you can do it for six months $10,000that’s not that bad if you think about it so that's what your house is worth up to what 2000 1500 a month I'm not sure the math but that's all 1500 a month that’s all thatcost for you travel and you can do it trust me there are some cheap placesaround the world depends where you travel but if you're starting out ofyour gonna be hitting the cheap places we won’t talk about the more expensive places yetyou’re hitting the cheap places you budget that so go okay that’s how much i pay for rent plus food plus my car plus this well now If I didn’t had a place i need to rent suddenly i don’t have to pay that toward rent I can pin that toward my travelsok so its figure into mixture figure out how to save up for the best way to makemoney and then also there are ways to make money on the road and to spend thatmoney that you do make really really wisely budgeting in travel is a huge huge topic I can't really go into it toomuch here i have lot’s of videos on it to do but its think of long-term travel that's my biggest tip for peoplejust starting out save for a big trip and really get it done there I love those are some amazing tipswhat are some of your your boots strappers guide to also getting into your bringinga laptop with you and a camera with you and but I'm also curious as a sidequestion have you ever had just some awful thing happened like a laptop wentdown or something like that because the other piece is that some of these sameequipment is kind of expensive and gotta get into that as well you have anythoughts on that as a travel vlogger I promise you this if you're doing this if you weren't looking to dothis as a career there will be a time that your equipment will get damaged it will getbroken and it will get stolen and it will probably get lost in an inevitableit will happens it happens all of us this is one of the things that comes with travel isthat equipment and travel stuff can happen so you know I yes don't get too attached to your equipmentobviously there are a lot of safety precautions you can take only have acouple bad things happen to me but I have stuff happens to me this is travel thisisn't you filming in a controlled area by yourself in a locked room where youcan lock up your stuff and clean it perfectlyyou're in foreign places in foreign countries and you're on the road you'removing to things there are a lot of factors so don't stress out about it do you wanna know my travel mishap orOh yeah what was your worst one my camera bag i had my camera bag stolen oh full stuff so maine camera secondary camera my phone my sisters phone couple cardsyeah wow it's such great advice to develop the mental for suit goinginto it too just to just kind of be prepared and take precautions but toknow you're in the Wild West per se rightspecifically now and you know without getting too specific but for you how isit how does your living breakdown because some people probably there's ofcourse YouTube Adsense but then there's brand deals and we talked aboutall kinds like that on video influencer sometimes affiliate marketing for thefor the person getting into if they're just trying to understand thepossibilities of turning their creativity into a career what advicewould you give when it comes to thatwell obviously as I'm sure other video influencers have mentionsix months to a year couple years before you even see any income unless you willget really really lucky and get some sort of viral video push for your just phenomenal youpick the topic that people haven't touched on your not be making moneyright off the bat I said start with the passion experiment and try to figure outwhat you really love and then get into the business aspect of it so my income breaksdown in a mixture of yes a little bit of adsenseaffiliate marketing branded and sponsor content is huge for memainly because believe it or not the travel industry the travel industry is thesecond-largest industry in the worldWow ya think about that in the worldhotel airline up every single country Tourism Board everything the countrythere are so many countries that sole relay on tourism as their biggest income generator their GPA i think that what they called it your gross domestic producttrying to use some technical terms here travel is the second largest industryhuge huge so there are a lot of brand there are opportunities and there are alot of sponsors another thing that's very specific to travel that doesn'treally apply as much in other categories maybe filmmaking is that you are traveling to theselocations you were not just a youtube or influence are you were also avideographer and you seek and sell your services for video production because videois huge and so all of these companies remember second largest in the world all of thesecompanies are looking for video content so even if don’t have the numbers you can stillproduce video content for the sponsor or the company or whoever is a you'reworking with and that’s worth money so you can make money that way even if you don’t havebig numbers yet wow that's those are really good tips let me it kinda gives me this thought when it comes to YouTube in any of the different needsor niches people could be in it seems like it's crowded but it's what she justmentioned kinda sounds like but would you say but there's still tons ofopportunity there because thingsjust so big that like there's there's still space or there's different ways todifferentiate differentiate who are trying to talk you know standout beunique in travel would you say that like that there's more room to come on forthose who aspire to do that and put in the work put in the hustle becausethere's just so many opportunities in places that would be one video contentand want to work with influencers yes as the industry expand and as video everyeverything today just came with Facebook live video more video everyone everyonevideo everyone wants video so the industry in general this this is a specific the travel every everysingle niche out there there is room for more influencers the difference is youstill have to figure out what makes you specifically you unique little tidbitwhat little cork what is it that makes you specifically unique in thatinfluence or what makes your content different because you're just gonna goand copy other people's content in the same in in the genre niche that you pick that Imean get away with some stuff but that's not going to propel you to be the top isgonna be really really like spend you beyond just another creator tensionthere are opportunities because everyone wants video so a lot of people a lotmore marketing budgets are going toward video now quick question and we'll linkup to your video that I just watched about your gear but what gear do youspecifically used just got a rapid-fire will make sure you've got a great video behind the scenes I go through your whole process incredibly insightfuleverybody you should definitely watch that so we’ll link it upI get up but just got anoverview what's your go-to gear to create these awesome videos you makewell I just bought so i just switch to my new camera so now i film with a Sony A7S2 i only have one lens that I carry around with me now it is a longrange zoom lens it goes from I believe i think 24 to 240 it’s a huge range and that’s what i’ve been experimenting I've experimented with twolenses but what I found it’s a lot easier to have two cameras than two lenses so I have asmaller camera so I have my G7X that’s my blog camera it’s a cannon camera and I tend to do more we're talking withthat I also carry around audio equipment so i have my rode mic I’ve been experimenting with Lapels whichhave been really great but they're the time-consuming remember I told you videoquick travel quick i don’t use tripods even though I usually carry one with me but I don'tregularly use it unless I can specifically plan the shot because again videoquick travel video quick like a guerrilla pod or jobi pod that i can kind of set up with second with things obviously i’ve got action cameras GoPro and i’ve got a bunch of accessories that fit with the GoPro because you weregoing to be using a GoPro a lot in any action scenario really trouble walkingyou need minimum two cameras GoPro and another camera you can get away with a DSLR alone you don't have to get a second blog camera but I highly recommend it because they're alot a lot places you get to more of the sketchier I mean the world is not sketchy but there are a couple of places and times that you’re like I really don’t want to be carrying around the this thousand dollar camera like this to vlog I just want something small and discreet but haven a small secondary camera works butcould also do with the GoPro so that’s kind of my dupe i’ve got some cleaners and some spare batteries and do you use Mac and edit in like aMacBook pro I use Mac Awesome over the last 10 years during this kind of you know you're buildingyour brand of course you want to grow what's been the biggest obstacle thatyou face and how did you overcome obstacles probably personal obstaclesFatigue is an issue i mean i’ve been doing this for ten years I still love what I do I didn’t always love what i do and i always wanna keep loving what I do you are going to go throughups and downs is a rollercoaster every career path to figure out where you fit in and you know it you might sayno this isn't for meI'm gonna quit or you might try truck through it you have to make thosedecisions in your path to video hood and it's figuring out what's best foryou what's the alternativelike for me it involved having to go back to regular job but I like you know whati'm done with YouTube I'm ready to move on to something different I’ll go back to regularregular work jobs and you realize well you know i could take the time I spent workingand I can just put it toward my videos and I could grow more or in its a lot ofinternal struggle but it's a struggle between like figure out what you wanthow much time and hustle and dedication there's a lot of hustle you're nevergoing to be confortable let’s put it like that you're never going to be confortable ‘cause the top creatorsthey’re not comfortable and they get really they go through this as well even the mostsuccessful creators go through this as well so if you think of it the most successful creators they go through this so you have to get comfortable with beinguncomfortable and uncertain because your career in the video world is going to be full of that we’re going to jump into the lightning round the light roundthese are rapid-fire questions but my question for you first is what is aphysical interpretation of what lightning looks like with sound effectsplease demonstratecoffee or tea coffee talking or texting texting one place around the world just one place that you thinkevery influencer watching should visit New Zealand would you rather live tenone hundred-year lives or 1 one thousand-year life wait how does 11 100 lives would look like do i start like ababy and get to live when you reset every time so ten different lives or onereally long life you that’s though one because then you have a choice of you get to do all the differentthings but then you also have your wisdom the one thousand year because getting olderI realised that wisdom is very very valuable and I like knowing things so i don’t thing starting from scratch that we want to dowise answer person you trust most with a secret Myself? last thing you wrap out of the fridge coconut water favorite nickname for yourselfHollywood was a cool one my friends called me Hollywood and i was like oh it sounds like I’m going to achieve something that amazing hashtag heynadine hashtag hollywood movie every influencer should watch I’m not a huge huge movie person I’m more of a TV show person TV show every influencer should watchnarcos i really enjoy narcos it’s really good one becausebilingual Spanish and English and it really makes you appreciate the fact that the worlddoesn't speak all of Englishso the true i don’t really have a favorite of things lately have been into prison break is really it’s kinda cool there you go biggest petpeeve when people cancel on plans last song that you had on repeat killer vd mame grimes grimes cat or dogcats a 100 percent what kind of any kind just all the cats if you could have one thing in a zombie apocalypse oneitem what would it be like a flame thrower like crazy ass torches that's so hot past the answer wegot some unique adds that winds that's awesome that’s the best answers we’ve got some unique answers but that one that’s awesomefavorite YouTube channel that you like watching right now Casey Neistat i feel like a lot of people.



 are probably on him butyeah that's like the only answer to that question lately it seems everybody isjust killing the game right now book you think every influencers should read how to winfriends and influence peoplebest piece of advice you ever received but it's a pretty good one but nothingis ever finite and there are very few things in life that are permanent so youknow make a decision because somebody more indecisive the game like this isthe be all end all there many times in my career that i've this was in theopportunity and I've let it down and i passed it away now everything else isthere are very few things in life that are finite and there are no this is theopportunity is there there are hundreds and hundreds of opportunities so yeah like i don’t know awesome lighting roundlightning round so you are very active across the board and social media likeyour home base is is that for your videos your video content but for anyinfluencer they know today that they need to be a lot of places but that cancome with its overwhelming so much to keep up with some different things whatare your favorite platforms and what kind of your thinking to balance andstay consistent and do quality on the different social platformscan't do them all don't try I don't try but like don't feel that you can’t do itall because you really can't do it all you can’t do it all good my advice is to pick a couple of really enjoy and just kind of work on those the most work on kind of create your fan base for that and built content around that and then then once youfeel more comfortable in those platforms you can kinda built from that add more into yourportfolio that's really great advice and then for you so what it what are your topplatforms in order and whywell not include YouTube correct correctInstagram and works really well travel then I would say is actually snapchat Irather enjoy snapchat right now it's very engaging and it's just really raw andperson then it would be Twitter and Facebook and all the rest those are kind of the main ones that i keep up with ok so for people that want to check out what your doing what kind of projects doyou have coming up and whether the best platforms to check you out of coursewe’ll link him all that but where would you direct people well obviously my youtube channel subscribe heynadine I have a really awesome travel video coming out plus because I’m home for the next couple days well couple of weeks there's a lot of advicecontent more tips and stuff like that coming into playand so that's helpful in getting into trouble so those are the kind of goingthereand then some comedy videos so definitely check out my YouTube channel and my blog HeyNadine ‘cause I do other content that’s not on my YouTubeI do have some big project in the work but they're not quite ready yet but they’re gong to be really awesome once they are yeah but yeah i can quite say but if you follow me on those social networks you'll see well I just want to thank you so much you knowfor taking your time and just for the life that you're living your hugeinspiration to so many peopleyour quality of your content is just incredible your creativity shinesthrough and so really want to affirm and thank you for your shining keep shiningI will don’t worry i will the world is not finish yet so there’s lots more to explore right yes yes and please share maybe a final thought justencouragement or whatever you want to say to influencers watching ok this thisthis is what being a video career thought this what being a video creator is all about there’s going to be down itsfigured out how to deal with the down and enjoying the ups because there'sgonna be like it's a good thing the good thing you're gonna come charges a goodthing and say yes the biggest thing is people saying no to often to things specially with travel they are you get scare scared to get in your head but you have to learn to say yes to things I meanobviously you know but yeshey Nadine thank you so much No problem thanks for having meour struck by lightning well in a building that’s been struck by lightning

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