In 2018, we quit our careers as scientists, set off traveling the world and created a travel blog. Now we help millions of people visit new destinations each year, but despite the fact that being self-employed and owning our own online business has been incredibly rewarding and liberating, it’s also come with many unexpected challenges and impacts on our lives. There’s a perception that travel bloggers have a fantasy-like existence, but there’s so much more to it than cafes in Paris, cocktails on the Amalfi Coast and cherry blossoms in Tokyo.
In this guide we’re going to talk about our 10 major disadvantages to having an online business. Now don’t get us wrong, we love this job more than anything, but we thought you’d find it interesting if we shared some personal, anecdotal and sometimes serious examples about the downsides to pursuing this lifestyle. Remember, these are all our own opinions or experiences, and they might not align with yours.
1. Algorithms
If you own an online business and you rely on clicks or traffic from Google, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube or any other search engine, you’ll know that they all rank blog posts, social media posts and videos using supposedly super-smart algorithms. But what happens when algorithms dramatically change their ranking criteria out of the blue? Well, there’s nothing you can do about it, and algorithms are updated all the time. So there’s a perpetual risk of losing everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve, with one click of a button.
We’ve done the best we can to adapt to the changes, but the constant goal-post-moving is by far the most challenging and frustrating part of running our travel blog. One month we get 250,000 page views, the next we get 30,000. That’s a huge drop in revenue. And all because an algorithm has been updated (and not for the better). Diversifying traffic and revenue streams is the only way to succeed with an online business. We hope to grow our portfolio of products and services with the goal of being independent of any algorithm.
2. No SOP’s Or Guidelines
Do you have standard operating procedures or guidelines to follow in your job role? We had plenty of SOP’s to follow back when we were scientists, so we knew exactly how to complete our tasks and had help from documentation or even team mates if something didn’t make sense. But owning an online business means we don’t have any support or helpful guidelines. It’s pure guesswork, trial and error. Part of the thrill is figuring out a new way to be successful, but there’s also a lot of wasted time in the process.
We’ll often wonder if what we’re working on is even going to benefit us or our readers. Will the algorithm reward the last 3 days we’ve spent writing this guide? It’s like throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks. In the last 6 years we must have spent hundreds of hours working on guides that ultimately haven’t reached anyone because the algorithms didn’t like it. Even if we followed the same processes as other guides that did do well. And there are no real guidelines to follow. That’s just the nature of the internet, it really is like the Wild West.
3. Things We Can’t Control
Carrying on the Wild West theme, one of the biggest downsides to having an online business is having no control over things like security, technical issues and plagiarism. If something goes wrong in the backend of our website, we have limited computer engineering skills or programming skills to fix it. And having our content copied is the worst one of all. It happens all the time and there’s nothing we can do.
When we write travel guides, they’re out there on the internet and anyone can just copy and paste it. We’ve seen this happen time and time again. There’s nothing more frustrating than when we visit a place, take our own photos, write an authentic first hand guide, and then have someone copy it when they haven’t even been to that place and yet they rank higher than us on Google or Bing. Copyrighting our work does nothing. And now AI models are effectively scraping the entire internet and dishing out answers without crediting the source.
4. Competition
Blogging and the whole digital nomad content creator industry has exploded since 2019. When we started our blog in 2018, there were very few travel bloggers out there. This meant there was lots of room on Google, Facebook and YouTube for us to grow our business. Then covid happens and everyone wants to start a blog. Fast forward a few years and there are thousands of blogs all competing for the same keywords.
Now, competition is a good thing in the sense that it forces everyone to up their game. And the result should be the best possible content is available for you, and us, as the searchers. But what happens when 100 travel blogs write carbon copies of the same guide on a particular topic like “how to visit The Vatican”? It’s become so oversaturated that it’s hard to get any exposure, especially when we’re already competing against lots of other big publications, brands and forums.
5. Loneliness
Running a blog or online business is an extremely lonely existence. We both worked in big teams back in the laboratory, and Mark even led his company’s sports and social committee for a few years. Working from home (or traveling long term, which is the other side of our job) every day means we don’t engage with others at a professional level. It’s just the two of us, so we have to make all business decisions and try to look at things from as many angles as we can in order to replicate a “normal” working environment, in which different people have different views. It’s not easy!
Another take on competition being a disadvantage when you have an online business in a particular niche is that all of your peers are also your competition. In essence, we are directly competing with the only other people who understand everything we’re going through. At the end of the day, they’re the people taking money out of our bank account and vice versa. So it can be hard to make friends in the online world. One trick that worked for us was reaching out to other bloggers who are in different niches, so we’re not directly competing.
6. Admin Responsibilities
Perhaps the single biggest disadvantage to starting your own online business is having to deal with the admin nightmare that accompanies being self employed in the US. Not only do you have to have to sort out your own healthcare (which is a minefield, especially when one of you comes from the UK and has no idea what’s going on!), but you also have to get an accountant and tax person, deal with the IRS, figure out your own pension, and the list goes on.
You have to be incredibly organized, and fortunately, Kristen is the most organized person on planet Earth. But even Kristen struggles at times with the amount of administration work that goes into things like keeping on top of hundreds of receipts for Quickbooks or trying to find good healthcare, dental plans and vision plans. All this without a home base for 6 years and having to deal with constant issues at all hours of the day or night from abroad.
7. Decision Fatigue
We’re trying to run a successful online business with no real guidelines to follow, we have to figure out all of our own life admin, and we spent 6 years traveling the world with hundreds of hotel bookings and itineraries to plan. Just imagine doing all that by yourself for a moment. Ask anyone who runs a blog full time and they’ll tell you decision fatigue is a real thing!
The truth is, once you’ve done it long enough, decision making becomes autonomous. But there are days when we just don’t want to have to make a decision that’s inevitably going to have an impact on one thing or another down the line. So if you’re thinking about starting an online business by yourself, consider how you’ll feel about constantly making important decisions alone. At least we have each other to bounce ideas off!
8. Unattainable Targets
If you’re a hard worker and you start your own business, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll end up setting yourself unrealistic targets. And what happens is you never reach the ridiculous target you set for your day or week, and then you’ll be frustrated at yourself. When in reality, you could never have done all those things in that time frame anyway.
It’s human nature to push ourselves, but it can become unhealthy when you constantly feel demoralized because you haven’t hit your goals. One of our biggest tips of all for anyone who wants to start an online business is to set achievable targets. It’s taken us a long time, but we’ve finally learned how to manage our workloads more efficiently and set realistic targets. And we feel much better every single day for it.
9. Working Long Hours
This one doesn’t just apply to online businesses. Any self employed business owner will tell you that they work longer hours than they would’ve done at their old 9-5 job. We’re genuinely passionate about what we do, so it almost never feels like “work” to us. But we definitely put in far time more than 40 hours each week. Especially early on in the process of getting our business off the ground we’d work really long days. You get out what you put in when you start a business, so it’s natural to work longer hours.
The beauty of running a travel blog primarily focused on search traffic is that we don’t have any deliverables or deadlines with clients. So we can be completely flexible and we can take any day, week or month off whenever we choose without having to worry about missing a deadline or doing a call. So yes, we work long hours when we’re actually at work, but we know we can make any appointments or events with friends and family. It’s a nice balance and trade-off, but it’s very different to a typical 9-5 job role.
10. Mental Fortitude
There are so many things that can and will go wrong when you set up an online business or blog. It’s all part of the process, the good and the bad. You just have to be thick skinned and have lots of mental fortitude to deal with it when things aren’t going so well. At the time of writing this guide, we’re having the most difficult time since we began our business because Google has drastically changed it’s algorithm and we’ve taken a big hit, but we’re tenacious and we’ll find a new way to help people travel.
You need a strong mental approach and outlook to be a successful blogger, and the same goes for any online business. You’re almost always making high value decisions alone and you have to deal with the consequences whether they’re positive or negative, so it’s important to cut yourself some slack if things don’t work out and focus on the next goal. There’s also so much going on that’s entirely out of your control, and that means you just have to roll with the punches.
More Personal Guides
- 10 things we love about having an online business
- 10 things we love about long term travel
- 10 things we don’t like about long term travel
- 5 reasons we don’t use AI on our travel blog
- Travel tips for expecting moms
Want to learn more about us? Head over to our about Where Are Those Morgans page to meet Mark and Kristen.
We hope you enjoyed our take on the disadvantages to having an online business!
Please let us know if you have any questions or comments below.
Happy Travels,
Mark and Kristen
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Mark and Kristen Morgan are travel, hiking and photography experts. Over the last 6 years traveling full time, they have explored more than 40 countries and 30 US states.
Where Are Those Morgans has been featured in USA Today, Gestalten, Get Your Guide, CityPASS and Condé Nast Traveler along with various other publications. Read more about us.