This Travel Blogger Got Into Mediavine in 1 Year

Want to get your blog on Mediavine in under a year?

Kylie Lang is proof that it’s possible post-Helpful Content Update.

Kylie Lang began her blog as a creative outlet, sharing her adventures and insights into rural France’s lifestyle in October 2022. Initially, her approach was more about sharing personal stories and experiences without a strong focus on SEO.

In January 2023, Kylie began focusing on SEO and less than a year later, she got her blog into Mediavine!

Kylie shares her tips for growing an engaged email list, how many posts she wrote to get into Mediavine, and how she plans to scale her site with non-Google traffic drivers.

We cover it all in this great interview. Get ready to be inspired to start your own list!

Topics Covered

• Getting her blog on Mediavine in less than 1 year
• Segmenting her work on money posts, traffic posts, and “Kylie” posts for fun
• Using the blog for work trips to Paris
• Finding keyword ideas with Keysearch
• Balancing work with living life in rural France
• How often to check your analytics
• How she fared during the Helpful Content Update
• The aftermath of me brutally reviewing her website
• Migrating her theme from Elementor to Kadence
• Changing blog hosts
• How she scaled to a blog post a day for two months
• Using templates to speed up the writing process
• The element of her writing that gets Kylie the most compliments
• Starting an email list
• The best freebies for travel blogs
• Kylie’s best tip to get people to respond to your welcome sequence
• Pivoting to not be reliant on Google
• Using a Google doc to curb shiny object syndrome

Link and Resources

• Life in Rural France
• Find the ideal place for you to visit in France in Kylie’s quiz
• Profitable Part-Time Blogger
• Keysearch (Get 30% off with code “sheknowsseo”)
• Off Menu
• Kadence
• Lyrical (Get 10% off with code “sheknowsseo”)
• My blog post templates
• One More Croissant for the Road by Felicity Cloake
• Liz Wilcox’s free welcome sequence
• Get Paid to Travel: Becoming Travel Media Course
• Nina’s quiz software

Watch the Interview

Read the Transcript

Nina: Hey, everybody, welcome back. Today I am here with Kylie Lang, who is the author of Life in Rural France. I always say rural, wrong, and I panic every time because I don’t want to say it wrong, it’s really bad. But we are here today to talk all about Kylie’s blog and how she’s been able to grow it, either to media by and post HCU. Hey, Kylie, can you tell people about yourself please?

Kylie: I certainly can. Thank you for that lovely introduction. And so as Nina said, I’m Kylie, I run a blog called Life in Rural France, mainly because I live in Rural France. And when I say rural, it’s really rural. We have sheep for neighbours and the nearest town is 15 kilometers away or village even. So it is really really rural. And prior to starting the blog, I’ve always run my own business. I’ve run my own business now for 25+ years. I was an event manager in a previous life and had that business, sold that, moved to Australia, started The Wedding Academy, which I had for 15 years, and that’s probably the thing that has really helped me when it’s come to blogging, because I already had a very good working knowledge of websites, writing, writing content for a course. But I’ve kind of lost my mojo with my business. 15 years is a long time. And I’m not awfully sure that I was ever in love with the wedding industry in the first place. I was more in love with the business and the marketing side, which I absolutely loved and I enjoyed the writing side.

So I sold the business a couple of years ago and started doing quizzes for clients, working with lots of different types of clients from dating coaches at home to business coaches to all sorts of different people. And whilst I was doing that, I was really enjoying, again, the writing side of it. And I used to get a lot of questions about life in rural France. What’s it like? Do you really eat baguettes every day? Do you, you know, really drink wine all the time? You know, is it really like people say it is?

I thought maybe I should just do this as a creative outlet and so that’s what I did. I started the blog or I started writing for it back in October 2022, not really very seriously and they then launched the blog.

I think it was January 15th in 2023, so last year, so just over a year now, didn’t really know what I was doing, had no clue really about SEO and then I stumbled across you and started to take a little bit more seriously and that’s pretty much where we’re at now so it’s just over a year old.

Nina: Which is amazing to get a blog, Mediavine in that time, especially like Europe is a very competitive niche because I mean, I want to live in rural France, that sounds really lovely. Yeah, it’s really also why you took off because like who doesn’t want that?

Kylie: Well, I must admit if my region maybe I wouldn’t. But there’s been some very, very funny moments. I mean, I moved over here and I didn’t even speak French. I still don’t speak French very well, but I am at least taking lessons now. And I’ve done things like, shove myself into a local line-dancing group where they don’t speak word of English and they only speak French to try and push myself to speak French. Oh, and I don’t line-dance either, so that was another challenge. So it’s, you there’s been moments where think what am I doing? But then there’s other moments where you look around and you’re walking through these picture perfect villages and it is like stepping into the pages of the history book because you’re walking down these villages that are completely untouched by time and the French really preserved stuff and I’ve always been a history girl. I mean I live in England or did, you know I’m British, so we have a lot of history and I’ve always loved that history but then discovering French history has given me a whole different perspective. And it’s like I go down these rabbit holes. You start researching something on a Keysearch and they’re like, oh, and there’s another one, and there’s another one, and I didn’t know about the history of the baguette, or where the croissant came from, or you know, and you start going down these little rabbit holes, and it’s so interesting. And my audience seem to find it very interesting as well, which has been great. And I think that’s being a big driver for me.

I try and split things up into sections. So in my head, I have my money posts, I have my traffic posts and I have my Kylie posts. You know, my Kylie posts are the ones I really love writing. But I’m really strict with myself. I don’t let myself write too many of them. I try and see what people are coming back with, with my emails, to really be led by them. But yeah, if I didn’t have those Kylie posts, it wouldn’t be as much fun. So that’s been a big part of it.

And it’s given me a huge excuse to just travel more of France as well. You know, I can now legitimately say, oh, well, I’m going to Paris on a work trip.

Nina: Yeah. That’s the best part of it. I think that’s why travel is like, it’s why it’s such a competitive niche, but it’s also why it’s kind of one of the coolest. And I have to ask you, there’s one of my favourite podcasts called Off Menu. It’s British. It’s a food podcast and they have an ongoing debate of if you buy a baguette, do you bite the end off before you get home?

Kylie: Absolutely, that’s my mandatory in France. It really threw me off when I first moved over here because why is it that no French people can walk down the road without nibbling the end off their baguette, but it’s it’s almost like law. They can’t help it. The smell is so good. They will eat the end of the baguette whilst they’re walking home. And it’s kind of an unwritten law here. I do it too now.

Nina: It’s one of the things that, like, in North America, like it comes sealed at both ends and you usually can’t do that. But like, it gets brought up on that podcast, probably every other episode. And I’m always like, I wonder if this is like a real thing. So I’m glad I know it’s a real thing.

Kylie: It’s a real thing. And you know the French people, because it’s usually them that will do it. Unless you’ve been living here for a while and you’ve kind of embraced it, which I definitely have. You’ve got to have a look at it.

Nina: So good thing to embrace. I mean, yeah, and then I want to ask you as well, because like France is quite, they’re with slower from what I understand. At least definitely compared to North America. So for you, do you find that impacts like your kind of schedule for yourself because you do get to make your own schedule with the blog and your day job? How do you kind of balance all the time? I guess not pressures, but kind of anti-pressures like to chill a bit more.

Kylie: Yeah, it was definitely hard when I first moved over here and I’ve written a lot about this, too, because people do have this sort of idyllic vision of what it’s like to live in a rural place like this. And France is just like anyway, you know, we still have two hour lunch breaks here. It’s a thing, a big thing. So if you want to go to the bank in your lunch break, forget it, mate, because they’re all at lunch, they’re all having a two hour lunch break because that’s just how France is. And so you, you do have to embrace that whole ethos the French have of enjoying life, life is for living. And that’s very much how it’s become.

But I came from a very fast pace, you know, order something now, get it an hour later, only to come to France where, oh, if you were to order Amazon, you might get there in a week. So you really have to prepare yourself mentally for that. But having said that, I’ve run a business for a long time. So I’m very self-motivated. I’ve just never struggled with it. I am very good at sticking to timelines. I’m very good at not going off at tangents. I didn’t use to be. Every shiny little object that came past me used to be. Oh come here. But I’ve got better at that time quite productive. But I’m strict with myself. With the Mediavine thing, I could have checked my Google analytics every day, but I didn’t because then it becomes an obsession. My focus was very, very much to write good quality consistent content.

And even through the whole HCU thing, I wasn’t hit by it. I’m very very lucky. I don’t know why, not complaining, but I wasn’t hit by it. But I didn’t also want to start worrying about what if I get hit by the next one and because it’s very easy to listen to all the negative Nellys out there and think, oh, and then you just get your whole focus gets diluted and when that happens, you don’t achieve what it is you’ve set out to achieve, because you’re not concentrating on the one thing you should be concentrating on. And I’d set goals for myself.

Back in August, I submitted my site to you on one of your Facebook lives. And you were brutal in a good way.

Nina: This is my favorite thing. I’m like yeah, I am a dick, but in a helpful way. I remember I used to do blog audits a bit more often. And someone said, it’s like she tells me, “my baby’s ugly”, but then she tells me how to fix it. It’s my favorite, I love it.

Kylie: It’s true. You basically told me my baby was like, like, okay, all right, I can go two ways with this. I can either put her face on a dartboard or I can listen and go, “she knows her shit”, sorry, her stuff. So I’m just going to go with it. So I did and I was on an old Elementor website and you basically told me to ditch it. And you were also quite harsh about some other things. So I said, okay, I need to learn. This is the whole point of being on this course and being part of this group.

So during August, I decided I wasn’t gonna write any blog posts at all, which nearly killed me, because everything in me was like, I should be producing some content. And I didn’t, I took, and I, at that time, I think I had about 70 blog posts, so it was quite a big undertaking. And I had to move them all. From Elementor, on to Kadence, and I was very attached to how pretty I thought my blog was – you didn’t think it was, but I didn’t. And so I had to take it and redesign it and it was really basic looking Kadence website. And I really struggled with that. I was backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards, I hate it. You don’t hate it, you like it. And anyway, long story short, a month later, just the beginning of September, new blog launched.

I also changed hosts to Lyrical, who were, by the way, superb. Love their customer service, they’re just so good. And launched the new blog and during September I then set myself a goal to write four blog posts week, which I did, no problem. I did the same thing in October. And then November came, it was like something in me went like I need to move faster, this whole Mediavine thing is getting me, so I went up to a post a day. Nearly killed myself doing it. I did the same in December and stopped around about Christmas Eve. And went you’re going to have a mental breakdown if you don’t stop.

So I did, I took Christmas off and it was that that time, that Mediavine, it just happened and yeah I realised I had enough and I could go for it. But it really was that focus I think that has helped things. That and I don’t know with the will whole Helpful Content Update thing. I have a feeling some of the things I did in the beginning, I think have worked really well.

When I first started, I was very much more focused rather than on travel, on expats wanting to move to France. And so I did probably about 25 interviews with other expats and I think Google liked it. I think it kind of set me in their eyes as somebody who is very genuine, because I had all these other people who were all talking about the same thing. And through those interviews and they were really popular as well. I only really have social media at the time. I had Instagram, still small, but people were reading the blog posts from there, commenting, asking if they could be part of it.

Now, I’m not doing those anymore, but I probably will do it a few more later on. But they really did help to just cement who I was, what I was doing, and I think that was quite a helpful thing, because some of my other blog posts really weren’t all that, and were more self-indulgent than anything else. Which obviously you learned as you go through your courses to what works and what doesn’t. Yeah, I think that was quite a big help.

Nina: That was a lot there, and there’s so many things that I want to ask about.

Kylie: Sorry!

Nina: No, that’s a good thing, it’s definitely good. No, my ADHD was just like, we need to have 10 questions. But I guess my first one is a lot of people always wonder about like how many posts they need to get into Mediavine. So do you like do you know roughly what number you would have been there?

Kylie: Yeah, I was at about a hundred and twenty five. I think, a hundred and twenty five or hundred and thirty. I think I was. At that time. So yeah. And some of those actually I’d also gone through when I redid it the site. I went through your content audit. Even though I hadn’t had the blog up a year, I knew there was some that were probably hurting. The self-indulgent ones. So I, I no indexed those. So, and then some of them I set back to draft. So maybe it was 110. That was actually live.

Nina: Yeah, I mean, travel the average is usually closer to 160. So you’re definitely ahead there, which is amazing. And I went to say the same thing with the helpful content update. Like, I know you have the interviews. I know as well that like, like, you were talking, you went live into, like, immerse yourself in this. ou get that feeling from a lot of your blog posts like you do get the feeling of like I’ve really done this thing and I really care about this thing that you’re obviously really strong writer too. So like I think that comes through, like you do put the authority in the experience pretty I don’t want to say like heavily in like, I don’t know you’re not beating someone over the head with it but sometimes the Google exactly need to do that but you really get that feeling from and I think like that definitely added to your success as well, especially with, yeah, kind of, uh, what’s the word I’m looking for? Yeah, kind of just tying it all together, I guess, because that is an amazing success story, and I’m so proud of you, and like also I just apologize. I, I get kind of dick-ish when I’m doing blog audits, but I really hate Elementor.

Kylie: Oh, no, it was, I mean, I was joking. It’s very good, because it helped. Like, that would have held me back, because I had issues with speed and not just speed of site, but speed of actually the writing parts never in issue for me, but it was the speed of putting the damn things up on the blog because this is taking forever. There was no easy way to do it with Elementor, whereas with Kadence, there’s been things like your templates, for example. So now, if I’m doing an affiliate post, I mean, I’ve now sort of tweaked them to be more me and the things that I do, but it’s so easy because I just, you know, shove in the pattern of the template and then insert all of the information. I mean, I’ll still tell you about three hours if I’m doing an affiliate post. But it’s not six hours like it was before, you know, it’s massively helpful.

I think one of the best compliments I got was somebody had taken my quiz, because naturally I’ve got, that was the first leave my big idea. Yeah, I mean having written quizzes for other people, which she wrote back and she was, I love reading your posts. It’s like I’m listening to a friend talking to me, having a conversation. I was like, that’s exactly what I want to hear. Like, that’s how I want people to feel. I want them to feel like I’m that friend in France, who you can tell anything to, because I’ve done everything stupid there is to do out here that I’m never gonna laugh at you. I’m just gonna tell you all these interesting things. And my mom always laughs at me, she said, because why is it every sentence of yours starts with, “did you know?” So every time I speak to my mom, I’ve usually come up with this new fact about did you know what Marie Antoinette said just before they chopped her head off, all these different things that I’ve found out – by the way, she apologised to her executioner because she stepped on his foot.

All these different things you find out, and I get very excited about them, in my emails and in the blog posts, and I do think that helps people to relate to you a little bit more.

Nina: 100% yeah, no, I think that that’s a really self-aware thing and it’s like, it’s an amazing compliment. Compliments like that are always amazing. And I think that also goes back to the way a blog should be, is that it is you chatting with a friend to some extent, especially for most stuff. Like even She Knows SEO, we’re like, some people are like, “you should be more businessy”, and I’m like, I’m not gonna be.

Kylie: No don’t.

Nina: It’s not gonna happen. I like being really chatty, but I think that’s kind of the nice thing is like, I picture myself sitting down on my couch with whoever my audience avatar is, like having a conversation about it. And I think that does like lend itself to your experience writing, so you kind of know the right tone and things like that, but also like, you can feel your excitement when you talk about France. You can feel your excitement. And I love that because it really does, it’s engaging. I mean, I’ll be honest, like, I’m not super into France. I went to Paris and I got the worst stomach flu in my life. We had to leave early, like it was not. I threw up in front of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. So that was my mark on France. Not great. It was also like, it snowed when we there, but it was really, it was like cursed. It was such a cursed trip.

But so like because of that, I need to go back to France eventually, but not yet. So I don’t care about it that much, but you make me excited for it. And I think that’s a really important part of it is sharing that excitement. The things you would chat with your mom about are great to then like chat on the blog, obviously, within the realm of a SEO.

Kylie: Yeah, I do have still have to reign myself in and I think, not relevant, Kylie, let’s not go there. And so you do, there are times, and you save that more for your email list, I think, you can be a little bit more personal with people because you feel a bit more of a relationship with them. But I think it’s important, it’s that you’ve got to draw them in and they always say, you’ve got a couple of seconds to make that first impression, and it’s exactly the same with your meeting somebody or whether you are trying to draw them into a blog post. You have to make them want to know more about you, read more about what it is that you’re talking about. And even if it’s the most un-sexiest subject in the world, you’ve still got to make them excited about it.

I mean, I was laughing the other day, I said, there’s some super boring posts that I have to write like, is there Uber in France? Is there Amazon in France? Who gives it shit? It’s really not an interesting subject, but both those posts drive a ton of traffic. So you just have to, but even those need to be made, not necessarily amusing, but they still have to draw people in.

And so if you can try and come up with ways of doing that, that work within the context of what you’re talking about and make sense, and don’t look like you’re trying too hard to do that. You’ll find that I think that has been really helpful too and it’s definitely helped with traffic, because that way you can compete with some of the bigger boys.

I’m still amazed at how I managed to outrank people like Solo Sophie, who is way bigger than me with a much bigger DA and not all the time, not by long shot. But there’s quite a few where I’ve really targeted something and gone after it and I thought *gasp*. But again, and it was that moment that I’d have that little celebration, but it is about how you can stand out from other people as well.

Nina: I think that’s a huge part of it to, yes, and I think that’s what people are always terrified sometimes before going after those posts. First of all, I always say boring posts pay my bills, like they are the ones that like.

Kylie: Unfortunately.

Nina: Yeah, and you’re like, But I want to talk about, yeah, eating the top off a baguette – you need to a write up post on that because I do think it’s a very interesting thing. I also don’t know if you’ve ever read Felicity Cloake, who’s a food writer for the Guardian in the UK. She did a book all about cycling around France to find the origin of different like French food. So she want to all the places were certain French foods originated and like would cycle eat them then camp. I think it was just her going around tasting it. It such great book. It’s either called one more croissant for the road or another croissant for the road. It’s really, really good.

But same idea there where it’s like, it’s the fun, interesting things. She definitely had it put in like the basics as well, like how to get to France, especially with the bike. Like I was like, how would you do that? I don’t know. So I think that those pay off really well for sure.

One thing I’m going to bring up was like you have an email list and that’s something especially post-HCU, everyone is like start an email is start an email list – which like for anyone beginner listening yes start an email list however you have a balance, because it is hard.

If you start an email list, it doesn’t magically mean people show up at.

Kylie: No it really doesn’t but I think I’m probably a little bit different from others because I’ve my own business and my email list, the money’s in the list. My email list was everything at the academy. I mean we had 45,000, I think, from the list of the academy. So it was huge. But that’s where we made our money and so I didn’t need convincing.

So actually I was probably the the opposite to a lot of people. I created the blog and then the next thing I did was create my quiz, get it up on the blog. It was up there from the minute I launched, I had an email list. So that to me was always an important thing I didn’t need convincing.

It was more a case of, well, what am I going to do? What it’s obvious, it’s got to be a quiz because I’m not great at creating other things that I find them quite boring, checklists and that type of thing. I’m much more interactive girl. And the good thing is with the quiz, people will, if you know how to do the emails that get them hitting reply to you, which I do, then you get people talking to you. And I probably get one a day where somebody is hit the client ask me a specific question.

I have a little trick with my quizzes. So when I deliver the results to them, obviously, they get the results on the webpage, but they also get it by email. And then half an hour later, I send them another email. With the subject line of, “did you get it?” That’s it. That’s a subject line.

That is the most opened email that I ever send. And most people will respond to that because then within it, I’ll just say, just checking in to make sure you’ve got your quiz results. But I just, would you do me a favor and hit reply? Because then I know that my emails are going to get to your inbox. And they do. They hit reply. I think there’s something extra like, and you’ll be the first person to be on the list when I launch my book. Which, by the way, isn’t happening any time soon. It will, but it’s not yet – not my focus. But people do that because they want to get on the list, they get interested and they help with open rates.

And so things like that work, ask people to, what do you want to know about France? What are the silly things you wouldn’t want to ask anybody else that you can ask me? And so people send me emails like, where did the cross-on originate from? Well, it’s like, oh, great question. I’m going to write a blog post about it, and so I did.

So it’s a really good way as well to find out, what do your audience really want to know? You know, what apart from just using Keysearch, which is the tool I use. It’s also nice to know, what are they really want to know? Other than what’s the best of arrondissements to stay at in Paris and you know, what are the best hotels in Bordeaux, what’s the best wine to try?

What are the other things that people are going to be searching for that they just find fascinating? Because France is one of those countries. So it’s not like I’m just a travel blog. I’m a person that talks about the culture of France, the history of France. You know, all of those other little things that go into making France France, and France is just one of those countries people are fascinated by. I don’t know why. They just are and so that’s very helpful to me because I can create all this content that becomes more than just me talking about hotels, flights, trains, cruises, you know, whatever it is, it becomes more interesting. And that helps keep people stay on my blog because they can’t help but go, ooh, I didn’t know that about Marie Antoinette and oh my goodness, you can do this, and it just, I think it keeps them on there longer and it definitely helps.

So I think if you’re writing about a country that has anything interesting about it, expand on that topic because people want to know.

Nina: I would say the same goes for travel styles, So like I travel with my dog and he’s a service dog. I’m in so many Facebook groups on it where like the same question comes up again and again. First of all they need to trust you to talk about it because there’s many especially with service dogs, there are some people out there who like should not talk about having a service dog. And then like yeah, so it’s like that there’s an interest in it There’s also the passion often and like with France there’s so many different and reasons people are obsessed with that.

I was literally listening to a podcast this morning. It’s called the Off Menu one that I listen to with C-Mat, who I don’t know, but it’s like some sort of, I guess, Irish singer. And they were talking about French food for an hour. And like, it’s the perfect set up to chatting with you. I was like, French, yes, great. But it’s like, but it is, it’s true, people get like quite, I don’t want to say obsessive, but like, very passionate about it. And I think that’s amazing.

I love the trick of like, yeah, did you get an email? I’m definitely gonna go set that up. I do one. Like I always have people reply to me and this came from Liz Wilcox. Where it’s like, are you ready to like change whatever? And then people will look respond. I’m ready.

I also, my sales sequence says, I often ask, I’m like, hey, how are you doing? And that came again from Liz Wilcox. She is almost too good at getting people to respond to you because even my VA was like, whoa, a lot of people and it is like how are you or like what’s it happening in your life or something? People want to talk and that’s lovely but if you can turn it into the questions that then you’re getting market research out of these people.

Kylie: Yeah, it’s great.

Nina: You’re getting engagement and I was actually going to ask next like if you were planning on a digital product because it sounds like with your email list you are so primed. So you’re thinking of down the line?

Kylie: Yeah, I’m actually planning a podcast because I’ve done one before. I did one and the wedding academy and I loved it. I did two things. I did a YouTube channel for the wedding academy and I also did the podcast. And it’s not that I didn’t like the YouTube side of things. I did. I just, it was the whole droll of going to put my face on. I’ve got to get dressed. I’ve got to look good and it’s like, I mean, we’re France. I’m either in my ad boots or I’m in my shorts and flip flops. I don’t want to do that. So I know that about myself, but I loved doing the podcast. So I have been researching what I need to do. I’ve been using my audience to find out what they want me to talk about. And so I should be launching around about the end of this month. I’ve got quite a lot of things sorted now and I’m more or less ready to go.

But I came up with some different ideas what I could do with that, because I thought I don’t want to be reliant on Google. You know, if that helpful content update has shown us anything, it’s that nobody’s safe. It could happen to anybody, just because I didn’t get hit this time doesn’t mean I won’t get hit next year or this year or whatever. So I want to have another way of driving traffic that’s completely unrelated to Google.

And there’s probably about five other really good French podcasts that would talk about a similar thing to me and they’re popular. So there’s not a huge amount of competition. So I’m going to launch that just simply because as you can tell, I like to talk and I’ve got a lot of stories to tell.

And the beautiful thing about that is I’ve gone through all my blog posts, I thought, oh my god, I can turn that into a podcast that I don’t even need to show notes, they’re all done. And when I put something out to the audience, you know, saying, what would you want to hear from me? They were all things like, we want to hear about Mary Antoinette, we want to hear about bread, we want to hear about food festivals, all these different things that I’ve written a ton of stuff on. can just use those and then put in the audio, which will hopefully keep people on the page longer. But it’s done.I can just use the blog post as my basis and then, off I go.

There’s that, and then I realize something else I wanted to do this year was, and this is where your other course comes in handy, talking about getting pay partnerships and sponsorship so I signed up for that. And because I want to work more with the tourist boards over here, I did manage two get to last year, one of them being Bordeaux, which was great. I got three accommodation, food, tours, all sorts of stuff, it’s fantastic. But I’ve never got one since, not that I’ve been working particularly hard to get it.

But the idea I had was to, one of the carrots I wanted to dangle, was the podcast. I thought, what if I did a bonus episode, once a month where I interview somebody from one of the tourist boards at whatever destination I’m trying to hit at that particular time, because they always have an English speaking person within the tourist boards there. So that’s never a drama. So I’ve potentially got Bordeaux on board. They’re already jumping at the idea. What a great way for me to get a backlink. It’s a great way for me to get more exposure. It’s a great way for me to get more of what I the want when I’m approaching the various different tourst boards.

So yeah, I’m quite excited about that. It’s a lot of work, but it’s a fun one. And now I’m at a point with the blog where I think we’re almost at 200 posts now, maybe more. So I can ease off a little bit. I don’t have to go at it quite at the rate I’ve been going.

As you know, I’m taking part at the moment in your writing competition. and that’s just spurred me on no to end. It is ridiculous the amount of words I’ve managed to write. But I’ve realised I can put a day aside for the podcast and Fridays, yeah I’m usually tired on a Friday so I think Friday will be a podcast day because it’s something different.

So I think I’ve got the time to do it. I’ve got the bandwidth, it’ll be a great way to drive traffic that isn’t Google. And yeah I’ve got the ideas for having different guests on who I think will be of interest to people. And my ex-pats as well.

I don’t know if you’ve ever watched a Escape to the Chateau hugely popular program about this couple who bought a chateau as you do and decided to do it up over five years. But so many people love the idea of doing that type of thing and I’ve got two people I know who have done just that in different parts of France. So, going to bring them on to the podcast, they have massive followings of their own which again will help build my audience. So, to me, that’s kind of a natural next step.

And the book I want to do, but that would be more self-indulgent, and I need to be a little bit on firmer ground with mediavine and my affiliates and what have you. I need to be earning more money before I can indulge in the book.

Nina: I do find books as well like it’s kind of it’s our first instinct almost because like we read other ones, stuff like that. But like you see a lot of people launch a book and they are kind of hard-sells. I think because if it’s not either super informative or if you’re not like super super big then there’s that middle ground that’s quite challenging. Like I see a lot of Instagrammers especially launch like a memoir style travel book and you’re like I watched it all happen, so I’m good, or it was more like it’s informative like for me I’m not I don’t plan to go to France super soon, so people tend to wait to purchase where I find like that’s why I love like ad revenue affiliate revenue is it’s much more like passive marketing and you get it along the way. Which is really nice, because yeah, I did write a solo travel book at one point. I mean, I’ve done a lot of failed products.

Kylie: Me too. I mean the amount of things I’ve done where I’ve thought that was an epic fail, but you learn by it. So I don’t think anything is ever a bad thing to do. I think probably for me, the biggest thing has been getting rid of that shiny idea syndrome.

I have no idea who’s a bad idea. So in order to curb myself with it into new ideas, I have a Google Doc. And every idea that I have is allowed to be put on the Google Docs, so it never gets lost. And then twice a year, I have what I call my wine and whiteboard day, where I lock myself away with a bottle of wine and a whiteboard, and I’m allowed to pull out all those ideas.

And I’ll usually have three whiteboards, and all the ideas go on one, and then I start to filter them across where they’ve actually got relevance to what I’m doing. And then there’s ideas that go onto the setboard that make the final cut type thing.

And I think because I’m allowed to do that, it stops me going off at a tangent when these different ideas hit, and that’s been a massive thing for me, is knowing that, understanding that, working that out.

And I think that’s also being a big part of my ability to have been able to get onto Mediavine, is that focus and not letting myself get distracted because it is so easy.

There’s a lot of voices out there and I’ve decided there’s only two voices I’m listening to yours and Laura’s from Scale Your Travel Blog and that is because I think if there’s too many you start all these different ideas because this person told you to and that person told you to and that I think can also be your downfall.

So I think you got to pick your experts, you’ve got to pick people and decide who’s camp you’re going to be in and stay in that camp. Obviously do your research. You know, I know you know your stuff. I know Laura knows her stuff. It’s been proved in what I’ve done in the last year. So I’m staying in those two lanes and not letting myself digress into others.

Now, obviously, I read other things, I see other things. But I try not to get too taken in by too many different opinions because I think that’s when you can do yourself more harm and good. Yeah, that’s something I’ve learned.

Nina: Yes, sometimes you need to limit it. There’s a certain point as well, like you spend too much time listening, you can’t spend enough time enacting. And especially, I don’t know for you, but for me, I can’t write and also be listening to stuff.

Kylie: Oh, god, no, no, no. I can’t even listen to music with words because then I find writing the words in the lyrics.

Nina: So I think that’s the thing. It’s like you’re losing that time to actually put it into action. Like, sure, when you’re formatting, maybe you can listen to a podcast or something, but like, even then, you still want to kind of focus on what you’re doing.

And I find a lot of people get very obsessed with learning everything. Like, I don’t know everything about SEO. I don’t think anyone physically could to be honest, there’s so much. And you’ll see people like obsessed with like, I need to have the perfect schema. My site speed needs to be half a second and you’re like, whoa, we can control those things. But if you’re spending all that time on everything, then you’re not, especially at the beginning, you’re not spending time on the foundation. And I think that’s where you’ve had amazing success, which is epic.

And unfortunately, we’re coming to the end because there’s so many more things I want to ask you. But I think we do need to wrap up that way other people can go work on their sites because they do need to, and so you can go back to yours, but so where can people find you because that’s going to be, I’m sure everyone wants to go check it out now and get on your email list.

Kyle: I’m at LifeInRuralFrance.com and the quiz is LifeInRuralFrance.com/quiz, so really easy, and you’ll see it anyway. And there’s a little pop-up thing in to give the newsletter to, which I think is a grow pop-up thing that comes up. So there’s many ways to be able to see what I’m doing, but it’s literally life at LifeInRuralFrance.com. Very easy.

Nina: I will have that linked in the comment, description, whatever you want to call it. So if anyone wants to just click on it and it will be there for you. We’ll also link the quiz because it is a very fun quiz and you will, yeah, you could get on that email list and start seeing some of the amazing emails that Kylie sends, which I think is kind of some of the best ways to learn from people who are really strong at something. It’s just to like watch them in action. So I highly recommend getting on her list and checking that out.

And I want to say thank you so much, Kylie, for joining us. This has been so awesome.

Kylie: Thank you for having me.

Nina: I love chatting, travel, and SEO. So this is like very indulgent for me. So I hope everybody watching has a great day and is super inspired to get to work on their own site. If you don’t have you should get a quiz. They’re very, very good. If you have an email list, and if you’re not quite at that stage, just file it away for later, but we will definitely chat with you soon, and be back soon with another episode. Bye!

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