250 we12travel blogs: keep calm & blog on!

Hurrah!!! This is our 250th blogpost on we12travel!  A blog that we started more than a decade ago as a picture website and turned into an actual blog about 2 years ago. Since then, we wrote exactly 250 entries, first in Dutch, later in English and now in both languages.

Never would I have thought that I’d ever write 250 posts (more or less, Martijn also wrote some of them) about travel and anything travel related. Or that I’d enjoy spreading the travel virus around the interwebs by writing and sharing our love for the outdoors on a webpage…

Even though it’s not a Sunday (when we normally do our Sunday Social Travel Talk) and I just returned from a 2 week blogging break because I just didn’t feel like writing and sitting behind a laptop at all, I still thought it would be nice to write down some reasons why blogging actually makes me happy and why I’m hoping that I can do at least 250 more posts! Or 2.500 …

1. Meeting so many nice people
I never thought I’d meet so many great people from all over the globe. Because basically, there are travel bloggers all over the world. No matter where you go, there will most likely always be a blogger around, which is not that hard with approximately 10.000 travel bloggers around. Within The Netherlands there are so many great bloggers who I occasionally meet during workshops, events or just randomly anywhere in the country for a drink or two. It’s a great thing to just talk about a shared passion without having to feel guilty that you are going to travel again …  During various (press) trips over the past year, I met many awesome foreign bloggers and it’s great to know that there’s always someone to meet up with, no matter where you go…

2. Getting paid opportunities
Never would I have imagined I’d actually get to do free travel (other than for my office job) and that my work would be good enough to actually invite me on a trip. In 2014 I did 4 press trips and for this year, Martijn already did 1 (Finland) and we have at least 2 more coming up. Those trips have enabled us to experience some amazing things, such as gazing at the Northern Lights in Lapland, swimming with dolphins in Curaçao and climbing to the top of Monte Paterno in Italy, just to name a few …

3. Having my own company
If you asked me 2 years ago if I’d ever want to own a company, I’d have said “no way!” Too much hassle, too much work and too much administration. However, now that I’ve discovered something I really like, no LOVE doing, I don’t mind. As the number of paid opportunities was rising, I finally decided to register we12travel as my own company. Sounds more exciting than it really is, but still it was a good opportunity to crack open a bottle of bubbles back in November…

4. Trying the best outdoor gear
Trying some really great outdoor gear was not something I had imagined I’d be able to do. I tested the Fjallräven Eco Trail jacket as a blogger (and until today, it’s still one of the most read articles on we12travel) and more recently I tried a Columbia Shimmer down jacket. Full report on that is about to come, I couldn’t publish it before since this is supposed to be my 250 post (and not a post about a jacket…).

5. Making (a wee bit) of money doing what I love most
OK, it’s a tiny tiny tiny bit of money but still … making money with what I love doing most (writing about travel) makes me grin from ear to ear every day. The money I made in 2014 was about enough to pay for my new iPhone and some other electronics I figured would come in handy as a blogger … However my aim is NOT to make money (that’s what I’ve got my office job for) but to inspire others to travel and become more adventurous. Making a (tiny tiny tiny) bit of money with that is a nice bonus and makes life just a little bit easier. 

So – how about that giveaway that many bloggers do because they have a reason to celebrate? Well, we don’t do them. I seriously don’t see the fun in attracting hundreds, maybe thousands of visitors just by giving something away. We truly believe in gathering visitors by our stories and not by giving away stuff for free. However, if you happen to run into either of us during the upcoming year, the first round will be on us!

And in case you are wondering, what did we do to celebrate? Well, we did two things. First, we decided it was about time to start planning our next overseas trip and to start crossing things off from our bucketlist. There for, we are in the process of booking our trek to Everest Base Camp in Nepal! More on that is to come, but for now we can say that we’re beyond excited we are finally going to see the mightiest mountains in the world! Secondly, we finally decided to hire a cleaner. Yes, you read that right, we are going to pay somebody to clean our house. With a spring full of travel coming up (we’ll be traveling about 2/3 of the weekends at least until June, my friends and family are going to hate me!) it’s just impossible to keep a house with 3 floors, 2 gardens and a massive garage clean and tidy. Best decision ever, I’m sure.

For now, all there’s left to say is:

Thanks for sharing!