Today we’d like to introduce you to Monet Hambrick.
Monet, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
In 2016 at the suggestion of my friend Paula I started our Instagram account, The Traveling Child, which would later turn into my full-time business and a dream career. Paula had come to visit a few days before me traveling to Cartagena, Colombia, with my ten-week newborn and a 22-month-old. She thought I should share my experiences traveling with my kids. Funny enough, I didn’t want to; I told her it was a dumb idea and it would be seen as vain posting about our travels. That people would assume we were just trying to show off; however, she pushed me to see that it wasn’t vain and that it would be empowering.
There are tons of articles that push the narrative of women having to travel before they have kids, stating that life is typical over once you start a family and you won’t be able to travel anymore. It was something I heard throughout my pregnancy from friends and strangers alike. Paula didn’t have any kids but she’d seen me travel with my the 22-month-old since birth and felt it would be just what some parents, and those looking to be parents in the future, needed. To see someone else making it happen and know it is possible. Thinking about this, I decided my friend was right. I started our Instagram account before that trip to Colombia to inspire parents to travel the world with their kids while providing tips to make it easier and affordable.
We share how we get our flight deals like our $49RT trip to Denver, $200RT to Amsterdam, $340RT to Brazil, $480RT to Kenya and $580RT to Australia. We also provide the itinerary for every trip we’ve been on with all the details so it’s seamless for you to recreate our experiences; these are accessible for free on our website. Other tips include how to survive flights and road trips with kids, hotel reviews
As someone who vowed to never lose myself in motherhood, in addition to sharing our family’s travel, I share my experiences with taking solo trips, baecations and girlfriend getaways. Sometimes as moms, we just need that push to know it’s okay to leave our kids for a few days and that they will survive so we can enjoy time to ourselves, with significant others and friends, and other trip planning tips.
Since 2016 The Traveling Child has turned into so much more than an Instagram account and my daughters have been to 6 continents, 25 countries and 12 states. I still pinch myself that I’m living my ultimate dream, being able to leave my career in Corporate American to make a living traveling the world. I now have the work/life balance I’ve always dreamed of, getting to spend more time with my children and truly make a positive impact on others.
Has it been a smooth road?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road. When I started my Instagram and then website, it was 100% as a hobby just to share my family’s experiences. I actually had no idea people made money blogging and it wasn’t set up as a business. This cost me a lot of time and money down the line with having to completely recode my website, resizing and renaming images in over 100 articles and transferring my website to a proper CMS.
I also didn’t understand contracts and as a small business who wasn’t profitable at first, I signed our rights away in a few deals I thought were great but not understanding a brand would own parts of my content in perpetuity, basically for free. Since then, I have learned so many facets of the actual business of blogging, which has made a tremendous positive impact on my family.
At first, my business wasn’t set up at one, since it was just a hobby. This means early on I was missing out on certain small business benefits and just had a lot of back work to do to get things smooth like they are today. I’m big on mentoring and wanting others to avoid the mistakes they made while growing their blogging business so I now offer The Business of Blogging Consultation sessions. Depending on where you are are in your blogging journey, these can be booked individually as one-offs to discuss a specific topic or as a 4-5 week customized course where we discuss the main topics needed to be successful in this industry like content creation, social media strategies, SEO, affiliate marketing, how to monetize your brand without a large following, and working with brands.
We’d love to hear more about The Traveling Child.
Today my business has many facets. We’re known as a family travel bloggers/content creators but it entails many different things. We work with travel brands and destinations to promote their location as a great place for to visit. This means we provide advertising from them through our platforms (website, Instagram, Facebook), including producing videos and photos for the brands to use on their own. We also serve as talent in print and commercials for brands and destinations like the TN Vacation Kid Reviewed campaign, which aired on TV in several southeast cities/states.
I’m also a freelance travel journalist haven written or contributed to articles for The Points Guy, Essence, Ebony, Trivago Magazine and Motherly. The part of my business I’m most proud of is having become a children’s book author. I wrote my first book, The Traveling Child Goes to Rio de Janeiro in 2019 and it’s the start of our series The Traveling Child Goes to. Throughout my career, I noticed if you type in family travel in google images, you’ll see a trend and what you’ll notice is family’s that look like mine are missing.
So instead of complaining about it and letting Google images dictate the norm, I decided I wanted to take our positive images off the internet and into homes. To help diversify the bookshelves of all families regardless of race but to also let little black girls and little black boys know the world is theirs and they can go every and anywhere they choose. The book is based on our 2018 trip to Brazil and all the books in the series are/will be told from the viewpoint of my daughters Jordyn and Kennedy.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Our city is a great place to start a business like mine. Even in these times of social distancing, there are tons of local adventures you can have to write about. There are also several travel bloggers who only write about their local destination and you could become the go-to Miami/South Florida blogger who shares everything there is to do here, including special events. We’re a city that gets so many tourists that it’s a great opportunity to capitalize on.
Pricing:
- The Traveling Child Goes to Rio de Janeiro paperback book $10.99
- The Traveling Child Goes to Rio de Janeiro Kindle book $3.99
- The Business of Blogging 1 hour Consultation Session $100
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.thetravelingchild.co
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetravelingchild
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetravelingchild
- Other: https://www.amazon.com/TRAVELING-CHILD-GOES-Rio-Janeiro/dp/1733008209
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