Meet The Blogger – Marinella Yule

In our latest interview series which I like to call “Meet the Blogger”, where I spotlight inspiring creatives on this Blogger Magazine. We caught up with Marinella Yule who runs my open passport blog.

Living the “Outside the Box” Travel Life 

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your Blog?

I started my blog in 2016 as more of a hobby blog. I have always been a traveler as I was fortunate enough to have traveling parents. I always kept a travel journal and thought when I graduated university: why not put it online and perhaps help other people with their travels? My blog started off as a pure travel journal type blog, but as time went on I transformed it as a more travel guide and again another transformation to include other outside the box topics. Traveling puts you outside your comfort zone and outside the box, so why not talk about other things that do the same thing?

2. Describe what inspired you to start your blog?

I always kept a travel journal and thought when I graduated university: why not put it online and perhaps help other people with their travels?

3. How do you motivate yourself to keep the blog up and running?

I love writing. When I feel travel inspired or outside the box inspired, I sit and write as much as I can for when I have those uninspired moments, I have blogs lined up. I also live in a very international city and have many international travel friends. I am grateful to them for inspiring me and motivating me to keep writing!

4. How active are you on a weekly basis? How often do you communicate with your followers?

I post a blog once a week. I also have a youtube channel that I also post once a week. In regards to Pinterest- I post several times a day and I am very active on Instagram. I have a email list, but I send monthly newsletters- so once a month with a list of articles published in that month.

5. What do you think is the best social media strategy for getting more visitors to a blog?

I think the best for a travel blog is Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram. SEO is a great tool, and I do do it, but because the travel industry is very saturated, the best is to show the travel photos and especially as society is going towards more images, social media is better.

6. Would you encourage other people to make their blog?

I highly encourage writing. As an English teacher, I love writing and reading. If you have things to say- start a blog or vblog! Your opinions matter. Of this, depending on your niche, it might be a hard process to live just off your blog. I would just advise people to not expect to make money right off the bat and get affiliate links. I would say start a blog because you are passionate about something and not because of the potential money.

7. A lot of people think that blogging is an easy way to make money online. Do you have some tips for those people who are interested in making money from the blog?

The best advice I can give to those who want to make money online is to follow trends. Stalk other successful blogs and more or less copy their style and coloring. Keep your own branding, but if the style is bright colors, get bright colors. If it’s black and white, do black and white. Next, learn what society is looking for: nowadays: more pictures, more bullet points, simple reading. Pictures need to be filtered and ran through an editing software. Posts need to be generic and applicable to everyone in your target niche.

8. What was the most challenging moment in your blogging journey so far?

As a travel blogger, traveling is essential. When I moved to Montreal for some down time, after a few months, I lost my blogging motivation since I was “settled” here for a bit. But as I got involved with Montreal, I realized there is so much to write. Basically, I was caught up living life that I wasn’t too motivated to be online writing about life.

9. What is your greatest achievement outside of blogging?

Outside of blogging…..well all of my travels and types of travels. I have been to over 40 countries and 48 out of the 50 USA states. I speak 3 languages. These are all from my travels. I have also bicycled around North America- totaling 6k miles or 10k km over 2 bike trips.

10. Who Is Your Blogging Hero And Why?

The biggest Travel Blogger I can think of is Nomadic Matt. He has successfully made his travel blog an international website.

11. What Advice Would You Give To A New Blogger Starting Out?

Blog what you are passionate about and do it because you love writing.

12. Have you collaborate with brands? If yes, name few brands you worked with

I have collaborated with a few hostels I have stayed at, but no big named ones.

13. Finally, what are your thoughts about BloggerMagazine?

Looks interesting, looking at it more.

Follow  Marinella Yule  on her journey at:

myopenpassport.net | instagram.com/myopenpassport
youtube.com/channel/UCq3EFtJva8fSeFLQJQOborQ | pinterest.ca/myopenpassport