Good afternoon everyone, I have some very excited news to share. Starting today, Travel with Grant is moving to the Boarding Area home page, permanently! Do you see the new Boarding Area banner at the top of the page? It’s official!
For those that don’t know, Travel with Grant was born on May 1, 2013. The idea of starting a travel blog came to me as I was reading The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau (Amazon) on my way home from FTU DC (the first FTU DC in Tysons Corner, Virginia). Travel with Grant was the first blog I ever created and I had never touched WordPress before then.
Fast forward 21 months later and here I am… on the home page of Boarding Area!
In my first month of blogging, I received 3,314 total page views. Nowadays, I receive that many page views in a single day. My next goal is to break the 100,000 page views mark in a single month. February is going to be tough since there are only 28 days this month.
I thought it would be fun to document some of the interesting things that have happened over the last 21 months. Does anyone remember my first rotating gif banner?
I then had a friend created Travel with Grant logo 1.0, which was printed on a few custom t-shirts from Vista Print (I still wear these shirt to meetups and travel conferences).
Then a few months ago, a reader created Travel with Grant logo 2.0 and I couldn’t be happier. It is much cleaner and more elegant than I thought possible.
Ok, enough with the banners, let’s get to some interesting stats:
- On May 20, 2013, I wrote about Google Wallet and started sending pennies to people through Google Wallet (I received lots of traffic from Frequent Miler’s site that day).
- On July 2, 2013, I wrote $500 Visa Gift Cards are Back at Office Depot! which received a lot of attention, but that deal lasted less than 24 hours, then Office Depot switched to cash only for $500 Visa gift cards.
- On July 4, 2013, I was interview by Million Mile Secrets and my post If this 23 year old “without a real job” can travel the world, there is no excuse for you not to travel too! generated a lot of traffic.
- On July 22, 2013, I wrote about Loading Vanilla Reload Cards which is my most read article and has received over 43,000 total page views.
- As you can see from the chart below, July 2013 was a very good month for me. That jump-started my blogging career and I slowly continued to build my traffic month by month.
- A year later on July 2, 2014, I wrote Travel with Grant Joins Prior2Boarding (BoardingArea’s Sister Site) which was the start of my Boarding Area relationship with Randy Peterson and the House of Miles team.
- On September 19, 2014, I attended BACon (Boarding Area Conference) in Las Vegas with 80 other Boarding Area and Prior2Boarding bloggers and got a change to meet all the other bloggers who are a part of the Boarding Area family.
- On September 29, 2014, I was the featured blogger on Boarding Area that week and wrote Look Mom, I’m on the Home Page of Boarding Area and my Chicago FTU Advanced Review. My brief appearance on Boarding Area resulted in a 34% increase in traffic for October. I did not want my week-long appearance on Boarding Area to be over, but when it finally ended, I vowed to get back as soon as possible.
- On January 7, 2015, I visited Randy Peterson and the entire House of Miles team in Colorado for a short day of learning and brainstorming. The Manufactured Spending category on Boarding Area was born after my visit.
- A week later on January 15, 2015, I moved from the BlueHost server to the Boarding Area server since BlueHost was experiencing major technical issues and I have been very happy with my new home (my virtual spot on the server is nestled between Frequent Miler and View from the Wing).
- Last but not least, today is February 9, 2015 and I am finally on the Boarding Area home page! My goal from the very beginning was to make it “big” and become a part of Boarding Area. My next goal is to break 100,000 page views in a single month, then to break 150,000 page views in a single month, which should qualify me for the Boarding Area 5K Club (I need to receive at least 5,000 page views in a 7 consecutive day period).
Enough about me though. I want to thank each and every one of you for your comments, questions, emails, tweets, and the occasional Facebook message. You guys keep me going, day in and day out. Thank you and keep up the great work, I’m counting on you all!
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below. Have a great day everyone!
Congrats on the promotion!
Thank you Omar, I’m looking forward to seeing you at TravelCon in a few weeks :)
Great work and congrats! Just yesterday I saw Doctor of Credit link to your page and thought how cool it was that you were making it big! Congrats on your success.
Thank you Seth, I talked to Will (DOC) last night about that too.
Congrats Grant :)
Thank you!
Congratulations Grant. I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner. Well deserved!
Thank you Shawn, I’m catching up to you!
Congratulations buddy on moving on up to BoardingArea!
Thank you Joey!
Way to go! Congrats & best wishes for much more success.
Thank you Lauren, I’ll do my best!
congrats! thanks for all the help too
Thank you, I enjoy reading your travel posts.
Outstanding. Great work Grant
Thank you Mr. Vu, cya in Irvine in a few weeks.
Congrats, Grant! Can’t wait to see what happens to your numbers now that you are on the BA page!
Thank you Charlie, I will let at my stats next Monday and post an update on my first week on Boarding Area.
So happy for you!! And I was one of your first readers back then :-) Keep rocking!
Thank you Katrina, I’m glad you have been following my blog from the beginning.
Well Deserved Grant. Glad we got to meet in Chicago and hope to see you again this year.
Thank you Rick, I really enjoyed the Chicago Seminars and will be back again this year. Have a great day!
Congratulations! Well deserved!
Thank you Jocelym!
Contratulations!!!! All your hard work paid off!!
Indeed it has, thank you Poptarts!
Congrats Grant.
Thanks Manhar!
Congratulations Grant on your promotion! Look forward to reading more great content.
Thank you Hank, let me know if you are ever in the Bay Area.
Well deserved. Content is always fantastic and you are very reasonable with your ads, not going overboard. Best blog and I read them all…and comment on most of them. That said, MS is my interest and you deliver.
Thank you Kent, I always find interesting MS topics to cover. I’m glad you like reading my blog.
Awesome Grant! Your hard work has paid off. Onward and upward.
Thanks Jeff, will you be at any upcoming travel conferences?
Yes Grant. I’m headed to San Diego next month…can’t wait to get some Sun!! Glad to hear you’ve been having successful meetups in the Bay area.
I’ll see you in San Diego then. Hopefully you get some sunshine between now and then :)
Congrats Grant! Keep up the good work.
Thanks Chuck, great work at DOC as well!
Congrats. I like your content but you may want to spend a little more time proofreading. There’s a couple typos in this post
Thank you for the feedback. I do my best to catch typos, but sometimes some slip by. There is always room for improvement though!
You should add a comma to your title, otherwise it sounds like you want to fly economy. :-)
Haha, I realized that when I read it too. It kind of works, right?
Nice work, Grant! Congrats!
Thank you Josh!
Congrats!
Thank you Elaine, will I see you at any upcoming travel conferences?
Well done! Couldn’t have happened to a nicer and more genuine person. I hope things continue to keep improving for you.
Thank you Will, I owe you a big thanks for being so supportive and helpful over the years.
Congrats, Grant!
Thank you very much!
Congrats!!!! Thank you for all you do for us
Thanks Sammy!
well deserved.. I think I was one of the first to ask questions on your original site… I think it was about using avios for hawaii…
Thank you Victor, I am glad you have followed my blog for such a long time. If you need help with BA Avios, let me know :)
Congrats on the milestone, Grant! Well deserved.
Your Amtrak train series was amazing…Am trying to save miles for that trip. Hopefully, soon.
Thank you, I am glad you liked the post. I might be doing a similar post on free rental cars soon.
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Congrats Grant! i do think you deserve it! And I noticed that you’ve got your credit card sign-up links for AMEX, Chase etc. back as well…… Does that mean you’re giving up looking for a ‘real’ job?
I’m still looking for a real job, the credit card affiliate payout are few and far between. If I started to earn more income that was consistent, then I would probably become a full time blogger. Thanks for reading, Paul!
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