Take some time out of your day to check out solo female traveler and serial expat Diana Edelman and her travel blog, d travels ‘round! Prepare to be inspired to venture out into the world with her exciting travel tales of life with the elephants in Thailand and time spent living in Madrid. Now back to the U.S. and using Vegas as her home base, Diana is still traveling to exciting destinations, both domestically and abroad.
Most recently, Diana traveled to beautiful Laguna Beach, CA and of course blogged her experiences, including her stay at an oceanfront hotel. Diana’s posts prove that no matter where you travel in the world, it isn’t hard to appreciate the value of the people and sights that surround you.
Since she began to follow her travel dreams, Diana has been featured in a number of reputable publications like The Huffington Post, Lonely Planet, About.com, and many more. In addition, her stories have been seen in Wanderlust Magazine, Boots n’ All, and Fodor’s. This should come as no surprise to anyone that has read her blog posts!
What inspired you to start a travel blog? Was there a specific reason or an event that made you decide ‘I’m gonna start a travel blog today’?
Croatia inspired me to start a travel blog. After I visited there (it was my first trip abroad in almost 10 years!), I was laying in bed one night thinking about a moment I had there and was “writing” it out in my head. So, instead of thinking I’d remember the next morning, I turned on my light and set up a blog and started writing the story down immediately. I never imagined it would have been the catalyst for where I am today, but turns out it was!
What have been the most challenging and the most rewarding aspects of running your blog and social media presence? Do you keep in touch with your readers?
The most challenging is keeping up with the changing face of SEO/understanding SEO. I started my blog in 2009 when there was a lot less saturation in the market. I was fortunate to emerge at that time and received some fantastic coverage in my site’s early days as I quit my job and traveled solo.
Today, it seems like there is a new travel blog popping up every hour and it’s grown exhausting trying to keep up with the people whose backgrounds happen to be in SEO rather than writing. I also don’t travel as much as I used to, so I’m not creating content for the site as often as I’d like.
In terms of the rewards, there are so many! I have made some of my closest friends thanks to my blog. I also love connecting with readers. Having someone message me and tell me my site helped them or educated them or that they felt like I was echoing some of the challenges they face is incredibly rewarding.
Social media is fun and after having maintained my own pages for so long, it has actually morphed into a side job for me in regards to establishing social media presence for other companies.
I try to keep in touch with some of my readers. Many messages I have received over the years have been one-offs, but there have been a few readers whom I stay in contact with and have met or am planning to meet.
What’s your favorite place that you have visited & what’s a dream destination that you still haven’t conquered?
It’s so hard to narrow down one favorite place. I think it depends on what I’m looking for. If I want something cosmopolitan and enchanting, it’s London; fairytale and seaside, it’s Croatia; exotic and chill, it’s Chiang Mai. Dream destinations? I have so many! Currently, I am dreaming of visiting New Zealand and Cuba.
If you had one piece of advice for people who want to travel throughout the U.S. and around the world but want to stay on budget, what would it be?
Look into the sharing economy. Airbnb, house sitters, and home exchanges all can help keep a budget down. Also, hostels aren’t too pricey if you don’t mind sharing rooms.
