If, when I was young, I had told my parents I was going to be a blogger when I grew up, they would have looked at me like I had two heads and one of them would have sworn uncontrollably. And they would have been right to. But it turns out that if you follow your passion, there’s a living to be made in blogging — and a darn good one, too. Just look at the charmed lives of Jack and Lauren.
If you’ve ever dreamed of living a life on the road and making your living in beautiful, exotic locales, you want Jack and Lauren’s lives.
They’re wildly successful travelers, but it wasn’t always that way.
When Jack Morris set out on his first backpacking adventure, he had no idea how travel would take over his life.
But he couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.
Jack, who goes by @doyoutravel on Instagram, visits a new place every month with his girlfriend, Lauren Bullen, who goes by @gypsea_lust on Instagram.
They both post gorgeous pics of their adventures on their accounts, and they’ve turned their travel obsession into a huge success. Lauren has 1.2 million followers, and Jack has 2 million.
They’re popular enough that they can command up to $9,000 from brands and tourism boards for each of their posts.
And in a recent Q&A with his fans, Jack shared some of his and Lauren’s secrets.
Jack spent five years cleaning carpets for a living before he decided one day in 2012 to leave his native Manchester and buy a one-way ticket to Bangkok.
Before that, he was obsessed with skateboarding. He learned a lot about photography and video in his skateboarding days, but eventually he grew out of it.
Although he had less than $4,000 to his name at the time, Jack learned enough in his first few months of traveling to start making money off his Instagram, just as his funds were drying up.
Necessity must have been a good teacher, because Jack has been able to live off of his travel adventures ever since.
Jack lived out of a backpack until 2016, when he met Lauren on a job in Fiji.
On their last night in Fiji, he asked her to come to Bali with him. “She said yes and we’ve been together ever since!” he says .
Although they’re both self-taught when it comes to photography, they’ve been able to make enough money to set up a home base in Bali and continue traveling together.
In just a year together they’ve managed to visit more than 20 countries together. Which begs the question: How?
As with so many Instagrammers, Jack and Lauren take great care with their photo editing.
Jack swears by his Mac for editing his pics.
“I edit all my photos in the same kind of style with my own Lightroom presets,” he says.
Lauren has her own Lightroom presets as well. And no, they don’t sell their presets. They want to keep the look of their photos “unique.”
Looking through their Instagram feeds, you might notice that there aren’t many crowds in their shots. You have to be an early riser to get those scenic pics.
“Most of the time we like to shoot around one hour before sunrise,” he says. “Busy locations don’t tend to be as busy at this time of day.”
Jack says that he still experiments with his pics and tries new things all the time while focusing on Instagram’s layout.
“I also look at the grid and try to plan the next image to make sure it works well with the rest of my recent feed,” he says. Otherwise, Jack and Lauren work like many other vacationers do…
As so many couples would do when traveling, Jack takes pics of Lauren and she takes pics of Jack. “When we’re both in the shot we mostly use a tripod with a timer remote,” he explains.
You might think that two travel influencers might have a hard time deciding who gets to post what, but Lauren says it’s not as hard as you’d expect.
“It’s not at all competitive,” she says , “if… we both want a photo there then we both get one, sometimes one of us [posts] it, other times we both do, and sometimes no-one posts it!”
Of course, their exquisite travel pics are carefully curated. “What people need to remember is that my life on Instagram is less than 5% of my life outside Instagram,” Jack says.
“I would never try to portray something I’m not, but of course I don’t post content from every aspect of my life. Like most people I only portray the happy side of my life.”
And there does seem to be plenty of happiness for both Jack and Lauren to continue posting.
For anybody else wanting to try a similar project, Jack says that “the main thing is to have fun and follow your passion. If you’re enjoying what you do it doesn’t become a chore and you’ll more likely succeed.”
