It’s a man’s world out there, but you wouldn’t know it if you watched it from Alyssa Ramos’ My Life’s a Movie website. Labeled one of America’s favorite solo female travelers, the 29-year-old is a self-made digital travel blogger and social media influencer who wanted to see the world, so she went.
Several years ago, she turned her dream into a full-time career. And while many other solo female travel bloggers like to take credit for being at the top of that list, Ramos has racked up over 200,000 followers across her platforms and gets paid handsomely for her travels.
But Ramos’ life was not always a moving pictures sensation. The Cuban-American was raised by a single mom with four children. She started working at 14 as a waitress in her hometown of West Palm Beach, and though she aspired to be a veterinary technician, the thought of being cooped up in an office and working 9 to 5 had her booking the first flight out of West Palm Beach International Airport to LAX.
Never one to let something like money —or lack thereof —stop her in her tracks, once she was living in Los Angeles permanently, Ramos traded her green scrubs for Craigslist and lined up a series of new jobs: content writer, blogger, social marketer, ghostwriter—anything she could do from her laptop. At first, she faked it until she made it. Google became her master's program, where she learned terms she didn’t know, like SEO.
She applied and applied, and lo and behold, she landed jobs and acquired the training she needed to make her dream of traveling the world come true. That was only three years ago, about the time she created the slogan, “Dreams don’t work unless you do.”
Today, the 30-something looks back, recalling when she thought she would be too poor to travel anywhere. And that thought scared her. Until that slogan became her mantra. “That stemmed from the early idea that I never wanted to ever have to rely on anyone for money, especially seeing how hard my mom struggled to support four kids on a $30k salary,” she said.
Facing her fears, Ramos went out into the world chasing her dreams. According to her, millennials today have the cash, but not always the motivation to go travel, especially solo, so she set off to show how it can be done.
A few years ago, she completed a three-week charity rally through five African countries where she donated over 2000 pairs of “the growable shoe” to kids in need. She also co-hosted her first-ever Blogger Bootcamp in Bali, teaching 14 aspiring digital nomads how to build a brand and gain an audience. Inside Edition, USA Today, and MSN in addition to her viral articles all featured on Huffington Post including: “Yes I’m Pretty and I’m Traveling Alone”; “How Growing Up Poor Influenced Me To Travel” and “How Traveling Solo Destroyed My Dating Life”.
Her guest speaking credentials include well-known conferences such as World Tourism Forum, Women’s Travel Fest, and Experience Bucharest. Ramos has visited all seven world wonders, seven wonders of nature, 70 countries, and counting.
During one of her stops in West Palm Beach, we caught up with her to chat about her life as a movie.
The Interview
MC: Tell me when you got the idea of becoming a travel blogger.
AR: I was working as a content writer and ghostwriter, doing social media marketing for other people just because I was good at it. And then, I started traveling and loved it. But it was a good friend (and former literary agent) who said to me, “Why are you working so hard for other people who barely pay you enough to make rent? You have an interesting life, and you write well; you should start a blog.”
MC: And, obviously you did.
AR: I did. And I used all the experience and self-taught knowledge I gained working for other people to put into my own work. It didn't turn into a travel blog until I traveled solo internationally for the first time ever, but after that trip, I knew that all I wanted to do was write about travel. So, I grew a following on Instagram. Right now I have over 131,000 followers, and my blog gets about 90,000 page hits a month, which is good for a solo traveler blogger.
MC: How did you figure out your blog’s business model?
AR: The main thing is figuring out the advertising. When the big social media boom happened, it was a struggle at first because nobody knew what we were talking about. Now it’s very lucrative for a lot of companies, especially destination companies, which is what I specialize in. I’m now at a point where I’m getting booked on back-to-back projects and getting paid a lot of money for all the publicity projects.
MC: And what are some of those projects?
AR: Most of the time it is travel-related projects. For example, I worked with Hilton Caribbean. They wanted to launch a solo female traveler campaign, where they’re creating a program that caters to solo female travelers so they can have “me” time or be set up to meet other female solo travelers.
Since my niche is “solo female traveler,” they paid me to visit two Hilton properties in the Caribbean, including all expenses, and they also paid me a package rate for publicity. I do a certain amount of Instagram and Twitter posts. If I do a video, that’s even more.
MC: Why?
AR: Because it takes more time to set up. I’m getting a lot of requests for video these days. So, that’s one package deal.
MC. What are other deals that you often get?
AR: Half of it comes from destinations with either a tour or hotel company. The other half of it is products. So, when I travel on my own dime between trips, I always make sure I have product sponsors.
At the time, they weren't requesting me, but now I have a business manager and assistant who reach out to product companies that would like to be part of my trip. For instance, I’m planning my trip to Antarctica. So I ask my assistant to find all the women’s and men’s outerwear designed for the climate and see who wants to pay for a big campaign in Antarctica. That’s a huge trip! So, I’m charging double for one post.
MC: And what percentage of your income is that?
AR: About 40%. Skype was my first five-digit deal over four days. That was really exciting! And very lucrative. You do a good job, and you’re honest with your work…
MC: I read that you traveled to Cuba. How did that happen?
AR: A travel magazine I was writing for mentioned they wanted to go to Cuba but couldn't get a visa. Since I'm third-generation Cuban with family still there, I offered to take them [so they would take me] on my family-visit visa. The magazine said yes, and they bought my article.
MC: Some of your articles have gained quite a following, like your Huffington Post story, “Yes, I’m Pretty, and I’m Traveling Alone.” What led you to write that very controversial story?
AR: Well, I wanted to share my story, and I was really sick and tired of explaining why and how I could travel alone.
MC: One of my favorite parts is your #2 point: “No, I’m Not Recovering From A Breakup,” when you say, “While traveling solo to get over a bad breakup is a genius idea, it’s typically not the reason why I travel alone. And by “typically not,” I mean, “it’s not.” I don’t expect every random human I come in contact with to automatically know my relationship status or extreme love of traveling, but don’t automatically assume the reason why I’m alone is that my relationship just failed and poor little helpless me needs something awesome to distract me from it. I get it, a lot of people think a 27-year-old girl should be in a committed relationship. Well, it’s 20-f*cking-15, and the only commitment I have at the moment is traveling the world, and I think I’m doing a pretty damn good job at it by myself.”
AR: Yeah. But, you know, I always remember that story, because the day my grandpa died two years ago, that’s the day my story went viral. I had overnight followers, and the media, producers, and TV news stations wanted to know more about me. It was a really hard time for me. I was sitting on my grandpa's deathbed, feeling painfully sad (my grandpa was my only father figure).
MC: I read that you thought it was going to ruin your career.
AR: Yes, it was very controversial.
MC: But it didn’t ruin your career.
AR: No, it didn’t.
MC: Now tell me about your followers. There’s so much controversy about what’s real and what’s fake out there. So, how hard is it these days to know if your followers are real or not?
AR: Very hard, actually. Because it’s easy to fake, and some people are just not honest. But for me, once you have real influence, you start getting huge deals, and it becomes a very lucrative business.
MC: There are a lot of bloggers out there traveling around the world and filling people’s Instagram feed with gorgeous destination photos, but they’re not as successful as you are. What’s your secret?
AR: I'm really good at being a blogger. I’ve also built a recognizable brand, creating the best content in my niche and portraying travel in a way that makes it relatable and doable. I am very professional in my projects, which leads to more projects.
MC: And how do you feel about the constant competition?
AR: I started doing it early on, but I see so many people now on Instagram trying to do the same thing, but doing all the shortcuts so that they get high numbers of followers, and they’re not necessarily real.
MC: How do they do that?
AR: Well, they have all these “Giveaways” on Instagram. Like, you have to follow thirty accounts to win an iPhone. And it’s usually fake followers. I know about this person who gained about 200,000 followers by doing iPhone loops once a week. And I saw this, and I was like, “You’re making my life so much harder because these are not real numbers, but of course, the brands don’t know that.”
MC: As a solo adventure traveler and entrepreneur, what are some of your favorite companies to work with?
AR: Of course I’m going to say the big brands because they pay really well and they are very professional.
MC: Like who?
AR: Skype. They’re very on point. They give me a set amount of deliverables, as they’ll tell me: I want this on this day, I want that on that day… Place this on Twitter on this day, post that on Instagram on that day, etc. They give me the entire style post sheet. Their PR team, which is a separate company, is amazing. They’re on top of everything, and they’re with me every step of the way. I’m constantly getting the content approved, so the client is happy because they know what I am doing. Afterward, I don’t have to worry about anything. I write down all of my insights: my reach on every single post, my total views, my total comments, and likes. It’s a lot of work, but that’s what they’re paying me for.
MC: And is all of this on your website, Instagram, and Twitter accounts, or do you also post on theirs as well?
AR: They pay extra for me to take over their account. So how I am very beneficial to them is, since I have a strong following and I’m a personality, I say to my followers, “Hey, come and support me, come see my photos on Instagram.” I post my photos and get all the engagement on my account. It’s beneficial for them that I have such a strong following.
MC: Alyssa, about a year ago or so, you were interviewed by USA Today, and they asked you how you handle yourself as a solo traveler in various countries. I mean, many of them are not accustomed to seeing a young, beautiful woman like yourself traveling alone.
AR: I think I answered by saying that I travel with a “walking bitch face.”
MC: And what does that look like exactly?
AR: I don’t attract attention to myself. Like I’m not going to lower my standards of not wearing makeup or not doing my hair or dress like I want to dress, but I dress appropriately.
I’m modest, and I’m not going to be smiley. I’m not going to go out and drink in public places by myself, unless it’s wine at lunch. I think I do a good job at not attracting attention to myself. Just walking with confidence and acting like I’m in my world and I know what I’m doing. It really does lure men away.
And if somebody does try to get close to me, I’m very good about having my Alyssa bitch face that says, “Don’t mess with me.” And they don’t. They don’t want any interest in a girl who gives them an attitude.
MC: You’re a solo traveler, so who takes your photos and videos?
AR: I do all of my own work. I do the strategic “Selfie.” I’m a one-woman show. I started taking photos with a selfie stick. A lot of people made fun of me when I started doing all of this. And people still tease me when they see me with my selfie stick. And then I say, “Ha, ha, ha, guess how much I’m getting paid to use this selfie stick!”
MC: That shuts them up pretty quick, huh?
AR: Oh, yeah. My selfie stick has an adjustable tripod, so you can take it on and off. You easily put the selfie stick on the tripod, and then I have the remote on my phone—the GoPro. I have an app that sends the photos to my phone. So, usually you see me posing backward with one hand in front of me, and that’s because I’m looking at my phone so I can frame the picture and take the shot!
MC: Very clever. You’ve traveled solo to 70 countries thus far. Is there any time when you wished you were traveling with somebody else to share the fun and the experience?
AR: Oh, sure. And whenever I find a group or a tour, I travel with them. So, it’s actually finding that tour or someone.
MC: Is your audience predominantly female?
AR: No, actually my audience is an even 50/50 male to female.
MC: Have you done a girls group trip?
AR: No, I have a great grasp of male adventure travel followers, which is the reason I have that 50/50 male/female audience. I did a trip to Iceland and also a bootcamp in Bali with another big blogger, and it went really well. And now my biggest one yet is the trip to Antarctica.
I have now found five millennials to book a trip to Antarctica, which is a huge deal. Because even the companies have said, “(A), We’ve never had a group of millennials pay up front to go to Antarctica and (B) we’ve never had an influencer, especially a solo female traveler influencer, be able to get five of her followers to go to Antarctica with her.” So, that is a big deal.
MC: And do you plan the trip or do they [the followers]?
AR: Well, if I plan the trip, I’m going to charge for it. It’s easier if they do it. What I do is use my influence to get discounts for the group, and whatever the discount is, I only take it from what they would have paid at full price. So, they’re still getting a discount. For example, I got them 40% off plus charter flights for a trip to Antarctica, which is huge! I’m not taking a cut from them for the trip, but if I were, I would have charged the full amount, minus the discount, and taken the discount this company is giving me from them, so that I would profit.
MC: And how does it work with hotels?
AR: I tell them, I’ll do your publicity for free if you give me a discount for my group. So it balances out.
MC: With all the traveling you do, isn’t your career hard on your social life?
AR: Yes, my social life has taken a hard hit. But it’s the career that I’ve chosen, and it’s still growing. I haven’t seen any of my friends since I’ve been in town. I haven’t had an apartment in my life, because today I’m here but tomorrow I’m on the go. And it's been like this for the past sixteen months. I usually base myself in L.A., but my mom is here, and my dog is with my mom. So, now when I’m not traveling, I tend to come here. I miss seeing them.
MC: On your travels, and as you post your photos of all the places you’ve been, what are some of the questions your followers ask you?
AR: [laughs] Once a day, I get this question: “I want to do what you do. How can I start a travel blog?” Or, “I’m a new travel blogger, can you tell me how to gain followers?”
MC: And how do you respond?
AR: I have to keep my mouth shut sometimes because I want to snap back and say, “Do you really want me to tell you my secret? It’s taken me three years and my entire life, time and dedication to do what I do. I’m constantly working. I work 12 hours a day. I can’t just take an hour of my life to tell you how to become successful.” So, it’s very frustrating when I read that. Especially since my life is all there on my blog. And people don’t take the time to read what I’ve written or research it.
Like, “Hey, I’m going to Bali, can you tell me where I should go and where I should stay?” And, I’m like, “I’ve spent four days researching and writing all of this on my blog and written an article about this; can you please just go to my site and look at it?” Like, that’s offensive to me.
MC: So, what are they looking at, just your pictures?
AR: Oh, yeah. And they see, oh, she travels. Let’s ask her. But it’s a lot more than that. That’s frustrating when I read those comments.
MC: Do you answer all the comments on your social media accounts?
AR: Yes, I’m known for replying to all my comments. Even if I’ve written their answers in my photo captions, I say, “Like it says in the caption, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…”
MC: You’re traveling all the time, so when do you have time to connect with your followers as you do?
AR: For Instagram, I try to dedicate two hours a day. I have a peak time that I know when my followers are looking for my posts—9 am Pacific Time. So I post then, then again at 12 pm, and I engage back and forth because I know the algorithm requires a certain number of likes and comments for your posts to be bumped up.
So, I take an hour of my life every day to post my own pictures and comment back and forth. And throughout the day, I try to answer questions. I have a separate account; I have too much. It’s all video, where I post the behind-the-scenes stuff. So, it’s two hours of what you see, and for a blog post it's about five hours or more to write one post. And the rest of it is all admin stuff—emails, marketing, and doing cross-projects, lining up jobs…
MC: Do you self-edit your writing?
AR: Yes, I self-edit. I do all my own blog posts, and I make all the graphics. I just got my own intern, from the college that I went to, which is awesome! The college approved it, and I’m training her now to do some graphics. So that will be a load off my plate. And I have a business manager, so she takes some of that off my plate as well. Because I was doing all of that by myself before, and it was just too much.
MC: It’s interesting that you were a Pre-Med student and now you travel for a living. As you look back, would you change anything?
AR: No, I learned so much from working hard for those grades, and even though I don’t use it, it made me exercise my brain; it made me who I am. When I worked in marketing, I learned a lot of what I use now, but I also taught myself from Google.
And I did that because I would go on Craigslist and look for jobs I could do from my computer. Even if I didn’t have the skills or the requirements they were asking for, I would sit there and Google what they were. I didn’t know what SEO stood for, so I Googled it. Then, I taught myself, and then I would apply for the job. It was kind of, “Fake it until you can make it,” but it worked!
MC: Looking forward, do you see a point when you will actually look back and say, “This is an incredible ride, but…”
AR: Honestly, the only buts that I would say…it’s taken so much work and sacrifices. You know, it’s kind of hard to tell people, “Yeah, this is my dream career.”
Because there are only a handful of us getting paid a substantial amount to live on from what we do. And it’s never certain. Like last month, I made $12,000; next month I’ll make $9,000. But for November, I don’t have anything booked. So I have to start worrying about that now to maintain the money I’m making.
And as I said before, it’s hard to date someone because I don’t even have a place of my own, always going from one trip to another. And what I’m realizing now is that a lot of my family and friends can’t take off of work to come with me. Like, they’ll say, “I can’t take off of work to come to Paris with you.” And I’m like, this is Paris!
MC: I’ll go with you!
AR: Right! All I ask is that you hold the selfie stick! It’s all I ask.
MC: What’s your favorite country?
AR: That’s such a hard question. I always think of where I would like to live. Bali is so pretty. And I know that’s such a cliché because every millennial I know wants to live there. But right now I’m thinking of staying in Paris for a couple of weeks just to see how life is there, and then Italy.
MC: So what plans do you have for the new year?
AR: Next year I plan to start working on a book.
MC: You have so much material…
AR: 70 countries.
MC: You can actually have a series of books…
AR: Yes, that’s exactly what I want to do. I want to start with the first year that I went abroad. I’m going to call it The Adult Gap Year. Then I'll break it down into different ones, like The Seven Wonders of Nature or the Seven Continents. That and two coffee table books. And I’m actually working with a producer in L.A. who’s trying to pitch me to TV shows. I always hear that they don’t want any more pretty blondes, and I say, “Listen, pretty blondes? Look at all the stuff that I’ve done.”
MC: So you’ve taken all the baby steps…
AR: “Now, what’s the next big thing?” I say.
MC: What would you like to share with the people here in West Palm Beach?
AR: Glad you’re asking me that. Since I’ve been back here, a week ago actually, I’ve had a good handful of people [all women] say to me, “It’s so inspirational to see someone from our town go off into the world and start a career.” And all I want to say is, “it is possible.”
And I get it; I mean, I came from what was seemingly a small town [at the time]. At first, you want the career, the husband, the kids… and settle down. But, for me, it was always… “But I want more.” So, I went, and I did more. And now I see so many people that have started their own companies here. Like a girl I know that started her own clothes line here, and we were chatting, and I told her, “Yeah, I’m from here too.”
MC: So, when you were coming back, did you ever stop to think, “What am I going to find here in WPB?”
AR: Oh, my God! That’s exactly what I felt.
MC: I was there three years ago.
AR: Yes, that’s kind of how I felt at first. Like, what you said… what am I going to find here in WPB? Especially when I was living in L.A. I didn’t want to come back because I didn’t want to get stuck doing what I was doing before. And I had a fear of settling. And what if I can’t leave again? But now, I’m to the point, especially since I’ve traveled so much…
MC: Do you now see things differently?
AR: Yes! I’m like, “Oh, my God, I want to go and take pictures on Palm Beach Island!” I want to ride my bike to Palm Beach and learn all these new things… It’s an eye-opener, and it’s definitely a game-changer. I don’t mind being here. It’s interesting how your vision changes once you’ve traveled the world. And I think social media helps a lot because I’m here, but I can still be in close contact in the morning when I’m walking my dog… I now look and say, “Palm Beach is so pretty.” Isn’t it cool that you can just walk to the water? Social Media forces you to see things differently. And we capture it all with words and pictures. I love the island. I want to get to know it better.
From mylifesatravelmovie
Paris Trip, posted on October 26, 2017 by Alyssa Ramos
You may be wondering why it’s such a big deal to have a millennials-only river cruise in Paris? I can definitely answer that for you, since I know firsthand that the typical demographic of river cruises is around fifty and over! Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s just that there’s a very different preference in the way Baby Boomers travel versus Millennials, and until now, most river cruises only catered to the former.
This is why there has been such a lack of Millennials on river cruises in Paris (I would know, since I was the only one aboard one last year), and why it’s been so hard to promote reasons why they should get onboard. [Read more: http://mylifesamovie.com/paris-millennials-only-river-cruise/]