travel insurance masterGet to know our Travel Insurance Master Affiliates, Mikkel and Dan, of sometimeshome.com and sometimessailing.com. When they aren't on the road, they're located in either North Carolina or Florida but they admit, they’re usually traveling!
Blog, Website, and/or Social:
- https://sometimeshome.com - @sometimeshome
- https://sometimessailing.com - FB/IG: @sometimessailing • Twitter: @sometimessail
When did you start your blog?
Sometimes Home was started in 2015, but we didn’t get serious about it until a year or two later. It focuses on couples travel around the world and home tips for travelers.
Sometimes Sailing was started in 2020. It’s a niche site that focuses on small ship cruises, so it was a brave move to start it during a no-sail order in the pandemic. But no guts, no glory! It’s been fun to see both sites grow as a result of hard work.
Walk me through how or why you started?
Our original site, Sometimes Home, resulted from Mikkel traveling a lot surrounding destination weddings. (Wedding photography was her primary business then.) She would blog about the experiences and the cities and countries she was visiting.
But then she had an idea to break it off into its own travel website. When people would ask her schedule and she would recite her upcoming travel they would inevitably reply with, “Are you ever home?” She would say, “I’m sometimes home.” A light bulb went off and all the social media handles and domain was available so she grabbed them all!
But after meeting Dan and a fun trip to Europe, where we met other professional travel writers and bloggers, we realized we could do this more seriously. So we focused on couples travel and have been running our blog(s) together ever since.
Do you feature a specific type of travel or area?
Yes! Couples travel and home info for travelers on Sometimes Home, and Sometimes Sailing focuses primarily on small ship cruises, including the ports and cities they stop at.
We write a bit about bigger cruises too, in the context of special experiences onboard and ship-within-a-ship cruises. A good example of that is Celebrity Cruises’ “The Retreat.”
What is your favorite part about being a blogger?
It’s great to see direct results of things you do or don’t do. It’s very easy to track your progress on Google Analytics and with affiliate tracking tools.
Another fun part of being travel bloggers, specifically, is when we get comments on blog posts from our audience who tell us they booked a trip after they read a piece of our content. Our goal is to motivate people to book trips, so they explore the world. And when they tell us we’ve done that, we’re thrilled!
What is your favorite or dream destination?
We absolutely love Norway, and we’re excited to go to Japan this year! For Mikkel, it’s a return to Japan but exploring new places, and for Dan, it’s a totally new place he’s never been. We also love Spain. (And we wouldn’t dream of traveling without travel insurance these days, by the way.)
What is your favorite travel tip?
We were recently turned on to compression packing cubes. Packing cubes are great, but compression packing cubes are {*chef’s kiss*} amazing! Another tip: don’t delay your dream trip for “another time.” Book when you’re inspired and feel motivated if you need that extra push, not for when you think flights or hotels might be $50 cheaper.
Carpe diem.
What other suggestions do you have for travelers?
We travel in a mid-size to luxury budget range. But despite this we still believe one of the best ways to travel in a lot of countries is public transportation, particularly trains. They can often get you somewhere faster than a car because of traffic. Trains in most countries are incredibly efficient and clean. And we love that.
Don’t be afraid to use public transportation!
What suggestions do you have for bloggers or what has been the biggest obstacle you have had to overcome with your blog?
If you’re wondering when the best time to add affiliate links to your site is, do it sooner rather than later. We wish we did. Sure, some programs need to see making money from their links and you need traffic to do that. But a lot don’t. We wish we focused on affiliate marketing sooner, but we’re glad we do it now. If you truly believe in a product, why not make a little commission for recommending it?
Secondly, don’t be afraid to smartly spend money to make money. People often say they don’t have money to spend on their blogs, especially in the beginning stages. And we understand that firsthand. We’ve been there.
But at some point, you need to spend money on your site to make money and for it to grow, whether it’s with better website hosting, hiring a virtual assistant (VA), hiring writers or editors, etc.
How can our readers follow your travels?
The best place is truly our websites because blogging is our focus. But the second best place is Instagram. We are @sometimeshome and @sometimessailing.
Anything else you would like to share?
We love how you can compare plans on Travel Insurance Master. It’s one of the reasons we recommend it to our readers. And like we mentioned earlier, we don’t travel without travel insurance these days!
Be sure to follow Mikkel and Dan's travels and check out sometimeshome.com and sometimessailing.com!
