Earning money while you travel sounds like a dream to many of us – so how hard is it to make the dream a reality? Travel content creators Dane and Stacey joined Kiwibank’s This is Kiwi podcast to talk about documenting their adventures online, and remembering to sometimes put the camera down and take it all in.

In 2016, Dane and Stacey sold all their stuff and booked one way tickets to Thailand. As they departed New Zealand, many of their family members scratched their heads and thought “Are they crazy?”

From there the pair launched into full time remote work and full time travel. They used their backgrounds in media, digital marketing, advertising and design to find gigs they could do from anywhere. While many of those same family members thought they were on holiday, they were actually hustling. Hard. Many long nights on laptops were required to make the dream work.

Eight years on though, Dane and Stacey have managed to find balance, in life and work. They’ve moved away from their day jobs and into travel influencer work. Their online audience is over 200,000. But they didn’t plan things this way. By providing valuable travel insights and bringing their personalities to their page, Dane and Stacey found a niche that has turned into full time mahi.

These days, the couple spends half their time in New Zealand and half their time overseas. They’ve recently gotten married and pretty much spend all their time together. Dane and Stacey live, work and travel with one another and have learned a lot along the way. They joined Jane Yee on This is Kiwi, a Kiwibank series in collaboration with The Spinoff Podcast Network. Read an excerpt from the full interview below.

Jane: How did you both decide to chuck it all in and sell everything?

Stacey: I like to tell people Dane brainwashed me. Everything terrifies me. I didn’t even like going to Australia. I had to come home from sleepovers.

Dane: I had been working in media and doing a few stints working on super yachts and travelling overseas. I came home at one point and we met on Tinder. So life took a turn and I went back into media work but I was missing travel. We would save, travel and then save, travel again. Then I stumbled upon digital nomad life and it intrigued me. So I started trying to convince Stacey we could do it too.

So you book one way tickets to Thailand. How did you make money once you got there?

Stacey: When we started travelling full time I was doing freelance design work and Dane was working in e-commerce. We didn’t set out to have a YouTube channel. But when we moved to Thailand our families had a lot of questions. Where are you going to live? What are you going to eat? So we started making videos to show them what we were up to. Then we started making videos about the lifestyle, how much it all cost. Digital nomad life wasn’t that common yet so people were very curious.

At what point did you decide to really focus on making videos?

Dane: We were working 9-to-5 jobs. I was working on my laptop, on Shopify, on e-commerce websites, platforms, drop shipping, all sorts of stuff. I’d come home, cook dinner, then go and sit on the laptop until 3am. We really hustled to make it happen. At some point this became work again. It didn’t give me that excitement. And then somebody asked if we wanted to come and do some filming at their zip lining place in Chiang Mai. There’s gibbons up there. That sounded fascinating, you know? We thought, what if we lean into this a little more?

So why did you two take off? Lots of people try to make money online and never do.

Stacey: I would say the difference with our content is that we went into it with the intention of helping people either plan their travels or do something similar to us. We wanted to fill that gap in the market to help people, because for me, I found it quite difficult to make this transition because it was so unknown.

Dane: We would always talk about pricing and how much a meal cost, and how we were budgeting to make this lifestyle happen. So we made our videos helpful and insightful. But then, how do you build an audience? Because you’re providing value, like that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re connecting with a person.

How did you grow the audience?

Stacey: We slowly had to introduce our personalities, Which was hard for us. I don’t know, maybe it’s a New Zealander thing. Maybe it’s just like being scared of being vulnerable. If you go back and watch the first videos, I don’t say a word. I’m just silent because it’s scary, yeah. Slowly but surely, we sort of opened up a bit and definitely started connecting with people.

What did your friends and family think?

Dane: They had a lot of thoughts.

Stacey: I think a lot of them thought we were crazy. We weren’t running away from anything. We had really great lives here. We had amazing jobs, awesome friends and family. So I think it was hard for them to make sense of this move. They were like, “Why are you leaving? Why are you doing this?”

How do you stay in the moment while trying to document everything for social media as you go?

Dane: It is very tough. But I think that we are somewhat of a well-oiled machine now. We try and capture something as quickly as possible, so that it feels real and in that moment. And then we try and have times where we go camera-down. We just sort of go, “Hey, just me and you for a second.” We put the cameras down for a bit, hold hands or just cuddle, breathe and take it in. You’ve travelled here, just stop for a moment. Just try to be present.

You have a really cute dog, how does that work?

Dane: That was a big decision, obviously. It was a sit down with Stacey’s parents and saying, “We want a dog – do you also want a portion of a dog?” We would never have gotten Nalu otherwise. Now Stacey’s parents are like, “When are you going away again?!” They want us to go so Nalu can go and stay with them.

Biggest travel disaster you’ve had?

Dane: I came off my bike on Death Road in Bolivia. My knee blew up like a cricket ball. I did not go and get it seen.

What was the first time you made money while travelling?

Dane: We made $1.30 on YouTube. It took a very long time. But it was proof. It’s possible. A start.

Stacey: Our goal was to make $500 a month from YouTube. It was not a transition to a baller lifestyle right off the bat. We had to just keep working on growing our audience over time.

So how do you make enough money now to have this lifestyle?

Dane: We’ve actually got six revenue streams: Stacey’s design work; YouTube which pays our mortgage; sponsorships; affiliate marketing; footage, licensing, photography; and the digital guides we make and sell. We knew from the start we couldn’t focus on one source because a simple change of the algorithm and the whole thing could fall apart.

Has your relationship with the natural world changed through your work?

Dane: When we came back to New Zealand in 2019 we rediscovered how beautiful it is. Stunning. We were the people who would book overseas trips in a heartbeat but then we started to look inward and travel here.

Stacey: The Abel Tasman great walk is one of the most beautiful things we’ve ever done. We seek out different adventures in nature now.

If you could sum up the experiences leading to your success in one word what would it be?

Both: Hustle.

Quickfire questions

• What are you saving for? A new kitchen. We don’t have an oven right now.
• First big purchase? Our tech. Laptops, cameras. A one way ticket to Thailand.
• What is your go-to treat? Pizza, doughnuts, beer.
• What brings you joy? Each other! Our dog.
• Last splurge? Our wedding.