How we built our website (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ (part 1)
I didn't expect it to grow so much but here we are
I’m not a professional by any stretch, although my job before I was a writer at website builder expert – I had not yet built my own site. I’d dilly-dallied with builders and messed around with them. I definitely gained experience with each website builder as part of my job as a writer to review them. But that wasn’t what led me to creating Nomadic Writers, and it’s not what led to creating a website that more and more people are coming to (last month we hit 3K visits).
It always starts off with a half-joking but semi-serious idea. I think I was messing around with building a website for some time at my writing job when I met Tom. I liked the idea of creating a website that didn’t have pages cluttered with adverts all around the sides or annoying pop-ups.
Me and Tom sparked at the idea of going traveling and it was originally going to be just a portfolio website for our freelance writing as we went about the world. I didn’t really plan to make it a travel website at first and we didn’t expect any traffic.
Funny how things happen when you least expect them to, it’s as if when you try your darndest that the world says “nope not yet” and then when you relax and have fun with it – suddenly the traffic starts pouring in.
Not that we’re all that with 3K views a month, but we’re growing rapidly. When I began writing this article we hit 3K and now we’re looking at potentially over 5K this month! Don’t be fooled though, this is no overnight success story. Instead it’s slow consistent progress towards our goals of writing for ourselves.
In this series there will be absolutely no:
One trick we did to quadruple-double our traffic!!! (͡ ͡° ͜ つ ͡͡°)
I actually wonder if people like that actually just spent a lot of money to get their traffic high so quickly or are they just lying? Either way, ours is a tale of slowly writing content we love like the tortoise in the tortoise in the hare type-tales.
We just made content we love, and we still do. It’s been just under a year and I’m proud to see people on our website. I’m grateful to see each one of you as it means a the world to me. Let’s see if me and Tom are able to push it to 10K soon! I think we will as our growth percentage month on month is an insane +100% – which I have no clue if it will remain like that or drop back down.
But clearly, with the new Google updates, we did something right. And that’s what this series is about. How we got there. A genuine look at what we did as I’m not really into the whole “this is how you boost your growth x1000” bollox.
So if you’re curious about the Nomadic Writers site and how we grew, we’ll share the organic journey from 0 views to now over 3K, how we did it without spending on ad space or anything, I’ll also explore if it’s just dumb luck or really a rigorous process.
The first few steps
It started for me with Squarespace (not sponsored). I mulled around using Wix as that’s also free to use, but ultimately I picked Squarespace as it had a template I liked the look of called Meriden. There was something about the layout I felt could be made into a writing portfolio and it just spoke to me. Something about the bold text title, colour pop, and image on one side said something to me.
Looking back now, maybe I would’ve gone WordPress (although I also hate using that platform so much, so maybe not). Knowing that Tom is a tech wizard and Squarespace has slow-as loading speeds – means it would have been more beneficial to be WordPress but I still prefer to use Squarespace. Even though Squarespace means you need to edit/optimise your images to make them as small as possible and most cool features are behind a paywall that I refuse to pay for.
Beginning the changes
I knew looking at the template above, I wanted specific colours that Squarespace’s template didn’t have. So I used a colour palette tool to find the colours I ended up choosing for my site. I wanted something warm and wholesome, but also a little adventurous. I also wanted colours that represented myself and Tom (he always sported a green hat, and I love orange). As we started to realise that it would be fun to record our travels on the website in a blog format, our site began to take better shape.
It also worked as a double positive as the blog would gain recognition, which would lead to more freelance clients as they saw proof of what we could do. Which helped us keep it advert-free and then substack subscriptions would also help keep that alive for us.
I blocked out orange and green as my main colours as I felt they were energizing, earthy, and warm. It reminded me of grassy roots and the midday sun. I quite liked the background colour for the original template but it felt too punchy, so I softened it a little to make it more inviting.
We could also showcase our own photos we’d taken across the site which has been huge for me in terms of how much I love my own website. It’s like a picture book of our memories that we get to share with the world. We originally didn’t have this Thai temple guardian though (see image later on for original image).
The name
I have no idea how we came up with Nomadic Writers! Not a clue – I think we tossed around a few ideas about writing and travel and landed on Nomadic Writers. I was 100% sure that’d be taken already, as it just sounded too much like a lot of “nomadic” websites I’d heard about. But nothing! We could buy the URL without so much as a blink.
Merch mishap and paid course
When I was in the development phase of the website I got excited by Squarespaces merch pages. I started creating merch pages and a paid content writing course. Which looking back was really bloody eager of someone with 0 people showing up to the website. But after making them I thought what in the world am I doing? I didn’t want to make merchandise that would be made in unknown conditions or make people pay for information I learnt for free.
It seemed like a lame way to make money. I think there’s enough people online trying to get cash out of people. I realised that I wanted my website to be a detox from that mindset of “the grind.” I also didn’t want to be like all the online science bros that love optimizing every inch of their lives, but instead create something lovingly and find a balance of feeling like I’m genuinely helping people and finding ways to make money that doesn’t feel as heartless.
I’m clearly an idealist that’s comfortable with poverty. But I’ll follow my values regardless of cashflow.
The paid course seemed a little entitled too, I’d learnt everything about content myself from YouTube, reading blogs, and work experience – so why would I charge others? I decided to make the content course free for those who came from backgrounds like my own.
It made sense to me as someone who learnt how to become a content writer at home for free, to create a free course. Although it was a lot of work to put together, it felt like inspiring someone to take a risk in something they love. I also owe it to others for my own inspiration like Seth Godin – who wrote a book that helped me turn towards my love of writing.
It’s only a year later after adding loads of free content to Nomadic Writers that we’re here adding our extra insights here for a subscription fee. But I feel the insights in here are something someone would gain after a year making their own website – so it’s like paying for a head start.
Content stage
Many of my later lessons will be on the content stage of our site and how we went about managing, creating, travelling, and filming as two writers against the world of conglomerates. Like a couple of browncoat independents against the alliance’s fleet (I’m obsessed with Firefly).
It took a while to build up our content. The image above is how our blog looks now but who’s to say I won't tweak it in like two months time. It used to have a large image of our time in Pai (for the real ones who’ve been there since day one). I recently hopped on Canva to carve out this new header which I kinda like but I’m not sure if it’s too sterile looking. Let me know in the comments what you think?
I guess where we began with our content was our home page really. It’s gone through some major makeovers to get to the image you see above the previous one. I’ve changed it so many times from template to the image below to the final version you’ll see on Nomadic Writers.
This was where Nomadic Writers' homepage began, with me in a field in Cornwall wearing way too many straps as I didn’t go here for a photoshoot (we never do as that’s too cringe). I just went for a hike with Tom and looked out as some much needed nature and I added it to our homepage – bumped up the colours to match the page although looking back it’s a little too yellow.
The reason I switched to our current image of the Thai temple guardian was two-fold – one the colours of it match better than this one above. And secondly, something about that little guardian resonated with me. He looks like he’s got a lot on his shoulders, as if he’s holding the temple's weight. I found that relatable at the time – not that travelling is some big burden, but what was happening in life was challenging.
Lessons we learnt
Through the iterations of your site you learn lessons, and I’m still learning them each day. The main lessons were those through travelling and how expanding our horizons led to an expanded website almost naturally. Here’s some you can look forward to if you decide to create your own site:
Making great content means focusing more on your readers than what you want them to do
SEO isn’t that big a deal, it literally means make your website accessible, functional, and fun for visitors of all kinds
Create something you believe in enough to sit and create content hours on end, weeks on end, and years on end for
Make it more personal – last thing anyone needs or wants is more corporate crap
Don’t bother with AI (we didn’t), it won’t help you make a good website, only a mediocre one that nobody will care about
Find out who you are, your values, and weave it into your site
It costs money (ours costs about £160/ year) and isn’t a quick return – money isn’t why you should write anyway, I’ll explain that more later
You might not see much money in the first few years *
Don’t do it for the money
* That said, we went the long route with making money on our website. We didn’t go for AdSense as the revenue from that isn’t all that and it just clutters up your website in my opinion. We also have turned down a lot of “linking opportunities” as they were spammy af, and we haven’t done any sponsored posts yet either (we’re waiting for a brand we really care about to come along).
We do have a couple affiliate pages on our website and we’re building up our Substack which offers subscription content like this, but most of our content is free. I just have this crazy notion that I will make money one day without feeling like a sell out.
But rather by building a cool community of people that I relate to on a near-spoopy-spiritual level – who I can hang out with and who appreciate what I create. Where we can start co-collaborating on stuff and chill and play games. I’m happy to spend £160 a year for near no return if I can help even just one person understand who they are a little better and we can grow together.
What do you think?
“I’m a leaf on the wind…” – Wash