Hey there! We’re Tom and Anna.
We are the founders of the Blogging Fast Lane and top travel blog, AdventureInYou.com.
Together with our team, our mission is to Help 10,000 People Profit From Their Passions and Achieve Time Freedom Through Blogging.
Now I know that’s a big mission but we’re a pretty ambitious bunch!
Blogging CHANGED our life and allowed us to go from broke 9-to-5 corporate “yes men” to now being able to live life on our terms.
We want others to have that too.
This is why we are relentless in doing what we do!
The Hard (But Worthwhile) Truth
First things first though, blogging is NOT a get-rich-quick scheme.
It isn’t easy, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a phony or obviously has never started a blog before!
BUT… If you’re willing to put in the work, we show you step-by-step, the ins-and-outs of how to build a profitable blogging business that will give you the TIME FREEDOM to work on the things that you actually love.
Imagine being able to take Mondays off to go to the spa.
Working from home… in your pajamas then watching a movie mid-day (just because you can!)
Spending more time with your family… or even just having the time to enjoy your hobbies.
(Seriously, when was the last time you spent time on a hobby!)
We honestly believe blogging is one of the BEST ways to profit from your passions (plus it doesn’t require a huge upfront cost to get started like other businesses)!
Now… on to our story!
How We Went from Broke Travel Bloggers to Helping People Profit From Their Passions
Before we started making six figures from our blog, before we grew our online tribe and became online educators, we were just two (broke) ordinary people with big dreams.We didn’t have any fancy degrees in digital marketing or journalism.
We weren’t tech-savvy at all, and pretty much knew nothing about the online world.
All we knew was that we no longer wanted to just cruise through life, accepting whatever cards we were dealt with.
We got so tired of having no control over our time and not having the freedom to do the things that we loved.
We wanted to start living life on our own terms.
Where It All Began…
Our story didn’t really begin during our whirlwind romance when we first met in Vietnam in 2014.
Our story begins in Manila, the capital city of the Philippines, because this is where we found ourselves a few months after we fell in love and met.
It was a typical Tuesday. I (Anna) was driving home from work, stuck in the horrendous traffic that Manila is known for. I had been stuck in more or less the same area for almost an hour, with nothing but the heat glaring down at me.
With nothing else to do, my mind started wandering.
How did we get here?
I remember a time when I was so full of passion and life.
Now, here I was feeling stuck in a 9-5 job that I no longer enjoyed, and an everyday routine that left me little or no time to do the things that I actually wanted to do.
I literally felt stuck.
The regimented daily grind, bosses who sucked, traffic (oh my god, the traffic!), and just the soul-sucking feeling of spinning in a hamster wheel with no direction.
To top things off…did I mention that I was also flat broke during this time?
Like seriously down to my last months of savings broke.
I had spent 6 YEARS of my life saving up every penny just so I could afford to travel and a year later, here I was broke, uninspired, and desperate for a change.
Tom, whom I met at the end of my trip, had worked as a waiter in the UK for years just to save up enough money to travel.
Although he still had at least some savings, I knew he was beginning to feel like me.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like we weren’t happy.
We just felt like we were in a neverending rat race where we lived for the weekends, living a mediocre life when we knew there was SO much more out there.
Despite working through a Master’s degree and having tons of teaching experience, I was still making peanuts… barely able to save between paying rent, expenses, and the occasional weekend trip.
Earlier that day, during my lunch break, I was on my phone, mindlessly scrolling down my Facebook feed.
As I was about to close it down, I stumbled upon an article about a travel blogger making $5,000 a month from their blog… all WHILE traveling.
Holy crap! How was that even possible?
At that time, we had no idea people could even make money online…and it was already 2015 at this point!
The more I thought about it while stuck in that traffic jam, the more I was convinced that we should start a blog.
When I finally got home, I rushed into our apartment, yelling Tom’s name and saying: “I’ve got it all figured out. We should start a travel blog.”
Tom looked at me confusedly and said, ”What’s a blog?” #truestory
Our First (FAILED) Attempt at Blogging
Despite not knowing the exact ins-and-outs of how to actually make money from a blog, we decided to start one anyways.
We spent every free moment that we had (which wasn’t a lot) to start our blog, AdventureinYou.com.
At that time, Tom didn’t even own a laptop so he would sit in this dingy internet cafe which was infested with mosquitos, watching YouTube videos on WordPress on how to build a blog.
After many weekends and late nights fuelled by pizza (and wine), despite our 9-to-5 jobs, driving to and from work, and my coursework for my Master’s degree, the very first version of Adventure in You was born.
Because I didn’t know any better, I began writing about anything and everything that came to mind.
Travel, food, our last trip to the beach, how to save money.
Our blog was just a mixture of mismatched content without a clear aim or purpose.
As you can already tell… we weren’t off to the best of starts.
Because we were both overly eager (and admittedly very naive), we quit our jobs, packed our backpacks and set off with the idea that we would support ourselves with our blog.
Honestly…we HAD NO CLUE what we were doing.
All we knew was that we had to pursue our passion and at least try to escape our mundane 9-to-5 life.
We read articles, joined a lot of free Facebook groups, and followed whatever advice was out there.
At that time, I read that I had to consistently publish content so I went on a blog writing frenzy, publishing 2 to 4 articles every week.
I didn’t really know what SEO was so we simply wrote… and wrote… and wrote.
Surely as we write, the readers would just start coming?
After that failed, we started posting more on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and yep we even started… Snapchat!
Although we started seeing some growth,we still weren’t making any money.
We were getting frustrated.
We had both put so much time and effort into this project and honestly felt like we had our backs against a wall. The last thing we wanted was to go back home to jobs we no longer enjoyed.
Out of desperation to keep hustling at our business, we headed to Chiang Mai, Thailand to work on the blog.
From Hobby Blog to Business
It was during our time in Chiang Mai, Thailand that we met tons of people who were crushing it in the online world. Until then, we had only met a few bloggers and travelers who were all struggling and broke — like us.
All of a sudden, our eyes were opened to the power of digital marketing.
We were convinced. If others could do it, so can we!
We pooled together whatever money that we had left and started investing it into our blog and ourselves.
We took courses, joined masterminds, and found mentors who helped transform our business.
In all honesty, we were terrified at the thought of investing the last of our money on courses and masterminds… but we had tried doing it all by ourselves and epicly failed at it!
All of a sudden, instead of just shooting around in the dark, hoping we would make money, we started strategizing and actually taking advice from people who were where we wanted to be.
We created a proper business plan and started testing what was working and what wasn’t.
We surrounded ourselves with people who taught us about SEO, affiliate marketing, email marketing, etc.
After combing our new skills and applying them to our business, we started seeing our blog income grow.
We went from making about $1000 a month, which between two people isn’t a lot, to all of sudden earning $5,000 to $8,000 per month.
We couldn’t believe it.
Did our dream of finally making money from something we were passionate about WHILE having time to do what we wanted, actually come true?
We carried on traveling the world, moving around (working and living) in across different continents.
We continued to work on our blog, applying everything we learned from the courses we took and advice from the mentors we had.
Over time, we developed what is now known as our FAST framework.
Soon, we started earning $10,000, $16,000 and then over $30,000 a month…. just from our blog, Adventure in You.
Best of all, because of the FAST framework that we put into place, we were able to earn money, without being glued to our computers!
You can even read our interview with Foundr!
Why We Created The Blogging Fast Lane
Coming from the Philippines where I had to spend six years just to save up enough money to travel, now, thanks to our blog, I was making more in a month than what I would make in a YEAR as a teacher.
Blogging has changed our lives — which is why we’re so passionate about it.
As our income and blog traffic started to grow, other people started noticing.
Fellow bloggers whom we met on the road were in awe at how quickly we were growing. We met bloggers who have been in the game for 5 to 8 years but were making less than we were after 3 years.
At that time, we were through the moon that we had figured out a way to monetize our blog and truly wanted to help as many people as we could.
We replied to every single message we got from people asking for advice. We got on a lot of Skype calls with people, and just generally tried to help as much as we could.
We soon found ourselves running workshops and coaching people, advising them on the same FAST framework that we were using to grow our blog.
Although we had managed to build a successful blog in under 3 years, we did waste a lot of time trying to “figure it out”.
While I want to save you from all the gory details, the figuring out phase was a difficult period for us.
We constantly felt lost, we were working tirelessly, and I was essentially perpetually broke.
We had no direction and no vision for our blog, and were a few meltdowns away from quitting!
If we can prevent others from going through that, we will be happy!
This was when we decided to create our online course, the Blogging Fast Lane Accelerator, which we first tested out with a beta group.
After working together with our beta group, our students started to see incredible results.
Some of our students had articles that went viral, some started tripling their traffic, some started getting paid press trips, some even eventually quit their jobs as their blog income had now exceeded their 9-5 income
… above all, our students were growing their blogs, making money, and achieving true time freedom.
Our FAST Framework to Profiting from Your Passions
Being an educator at heart, I clearly broke down our FAST framework into clear actionable steps that anyone could implement.
Our students RAVE about the course and how much it covers — it truly is a labor of love!
It is important to know that we also don’t just teach or blog about blogging!
Our own blog, Adventure in You, still continues to receive over half a million pageviews each month. It’s used as the “ground zero” where we test and document all the strategies that we teach in the Fast Lane.
We Aim to Be The Top Resource on Blogging
In order to make sure we deliver the most up-to-date content on blogging, together with our team, we run case studies, experiments, and create content based on actual data on what’s working.
Our team’s mission is to Help 10,000 People Profit From Their Passions and Achieve Time Freedom Through Blogging.
We aim to do this by offering the best blogging products out there.
To make sure we have the best products, we turned out travel blog into our Research and Development Department (sounds fancy-I know).
This way, we are able to consistently test out the blogging strategies that we teach.
Because we know that blogging, just like any industry, is always changing, we are committed to keeping the course up to date, all while providing awesome 24/7 customer service to our students!
Living Our Dream Life
Today, we choose to travel the world, while setting up a home base in a country for 3-6 months at a time.
Although we work hard, we work when we want to and often take 2 to 3 weeks off to travel.
Thanks to our blog, we get to live life on our terms, living everyday the way WE WANT TO.
No more sitting in traffic jams for 3 hours every day. No more working in jobs leave us exhausted and tired.
This means we finally have the freedom to do things that we love.
Watch sunsets, go hiking, read books, and eat good food.
Although we now make more money than we both ever have in our lives, we still live a simple life.
We don’t have a permanent place we call home and both still own one backpack each.
We go on weekly treks, trips to the beach, and will readily go to the middle of nowhere because traveling and exploring will always be our number one passion!
Blogging has allowed us to do this every single day… allowing us to create and live that dream life that we’ve always wanted.
Why We Love What We Do
As mentioned above, our mission with the Blogging Fast Lane is to help 10,000 people profit from their passions and achieve time freedom through blogging!
The awesome part is that our students are doing exactly that, every day.
Real people just like you and me are able to live life on their terms.
Whether it’s making an extra $1000 per month, going on paid press trips around the world, OR even making enough money to quit their full-time jobs.
Our students’ successes are why we do what we do.
If you want to read more testimonials and see exactly how our course can change your life, take a look at our reviews section!
Thanks for reading our story and I hope to welcome YOU to our Fast Lane Family.
– Anna