Celebrating 10 Years of Wander-Lush: Reflections on a Decade of Blogging

Exactly ten years ago today, I registered a domain and started building a blog. I had zero expectations, zero skills (aside from writing), and no idea where the project might take me.

A decade later, it’s fair to say that this website has completely changed my life. And in many ways – although I hesitate to admit it – it has become my identity.

Ten years of anything is worth celebrating, so I’ve decided to write a little something to mark the occasion. Here is a short reflection on the origins of Wander-Lush, how far I’ve come since 2015, and where I think I’m headed next.

How it all started

Ask any blogger how they got started and most will tell you the same thing: their site began as a way to document their travels for family and friends.

My story is a bit different.

In August 2015, Ross (then my boyfriend, now my husband) and I decided to leave Australia and move to Thailand. Inspired by my thesis supervisor who had done the same thing years earlier, my plan was to become a digital nomad and try my luck as a freelance writer. I was still working for a publication back home – and I had connections in Chiang Mai – but still, it took all of two months to realise that freelancing probably wasn’t for me. Among other things, I’m terrible at handling rejection.

A few weeks later, I did the thing I had wanted to do for a long time: create my own platform. My previous three or four attempts at blogging had gone by the wayside, but this time I was determined to make it work. Sitting in our Chiang Mai hotel room, it was Ross who came up with the name.

My motivation was selfish, in a way: I wanted an online space that I had complete control over, where I could publish the stories and photos no editor wanted.

So for the first few years, I tried to keep this website a secret. The thought of someone I knew in ‘real life’ reading it absolutely mortified me. I never promoted the site, never tried to monetise it (I thought that would be impossible), never even said the name out loud. It took me years to create social media pages or even consider an email list. Anxiety, fear of judgement, and my own perfectionism held me back.

In the beginning, I enjoyed the creative process. I loved having an outlet to practice my writing, and I was having fun teaching myself how to take photos. But once I started joining online blogging communities and hearing about other people’s successes, I inevitably started comparing my blog to theirs. That threw me into a spin. I started to feel like a failure; like I was investing time and money into something that would lead nowhere; like I just didn’t have the right personality for blogging either. I became disillusioned and almost threw it all away. Once again, it was Ross who inspired me to keep going.

Everything changed for me in March 2017 when we visited Georgia for the first time. I had heard about the country on a podcast and was intrigued – mostly because it was so far away, and so different from Southeast Asia where we had been living for 18 months. Bloggers I really admired – Megan Starr, Kami and the Rest of the World, Kathmandu and Beyond’s Mark and Kirsty, Stephanie Craig (History Fangirl), and Allison Green (Eternal Arrival) – were writing passionately about this part of the world. I wanted to see it for myself.

Right place, right time: my visit coincided with Georgia’s rise in popularity as a travel destination. My writing took a bit of a turn as I identified knowledge gaps and started to focus on practical tips for taking trains, choosing guesthouses, hiking, and the like. All of the sudden, people were actually reading my content. I was floored.

After three months in the region, we seriously contemplated staying in Tbilisi, but I took a job in Vietnam instead. The next big breakthrough came in 2018, near the end of our time in Hanoi, when my website was accepted into an ad network called Mediavine. I know, I know – no one likes ads. But being able to earn money from my blog – however small it was in the beginning – gave me the confidence to start taking it seriously.

After we left Hanoi, Ross and I spent almost a full year travelling from Colombia to Portugal to Bulgaria and overland through the Balkans. My goal was to collect as much material as possible to grow my blog into something meaningful.

At the same time, I was searching for another Georgia: another place I would love as much as Tbilisi, or a country that would inspire me in the same way. But I never found it. Returning to Georgia and Armenia for a few weeks in 2019 felt like coming home.

But we had already made the decision to settle down in Australia. So it was back to Brisbane to try and restart life there. Then I was invited on my first press trip – to Mauritius. Hanging out with like-minded colleagues was a revelation. (Up until that point, I could count the number of bloggers I had met in person on one hand.) That trip convinced me that we should go back to Georgia. I wanted to go all in – more conferences, more press trips, more content, more community. (The first two never eventuated.)

Of course, things didn’t go to plan. Instead of staying in Georgia for six months like we had planned, we never left.

In 2020 and 2021, when most travel blogs stalled, I was just beginning. I was extremely lucky to be in a country where travel was still possible, so I took advantage of the opportunity and worked harder than ever. I knew that travel would rebound eventually, and that there was a good chance Georgia would become even more popular. It paid off, and 2023 and 2024 ended up being my biggest years yet.

Making a home in Georgia

My blog is inextricably linked to my life in Georgia – without one, I couldn’t have the other.

The more I researched and wrote about the country, the more my attachment to it grew. So when the time came to put down roots, it felt natural to invest here. In 2022, we bought our house in Kutaisi – a whole other saga that I promise I’ll write about someday!

Wander-Lush has never been about me. I’ve never felt comfortable being in front of the camera or sharing too much about my personal life. Georgia has become my protagonist, the star of the story. Five years on, my intrigue hasn’t faded in the slightest. My list of places to visit, people to meet, things to do keeps growing, not shrinking – no matter how much I try to squeeze out of each year.

Having a base in Georgia has given us the chance to explore some incredible places further afield as well, from Uzbekistan, Türkiye, Armenia and Azerbaijan to Moldova, Poland, Malta, Lithuania and Greece.

Highs & lows

Blogging has given me some incredible gifts: the flexibility to wake up most mornings and work on whatever I feel most passionate about; the freedom to travel as much as I want; the ability for Ross and I to spend more time together than most couples. But it hasn’t come without big sacrifices.

The past twelve months in particular have been tough. Algorithm updates, the rise of generative AI, plagiarism and copycats – it wears on me. Traffic is down almost 30% so far this year. That’s just the reality of the internet right now. At the end of the day, I’m incredibly grateful to still be here when many of my colleagues have been forced to walk away.

I still get an immense amount of satisfaction every time I hit ‘publish’ on a new blog post. But I also enjoy the part that comes next.

I vividly remember the first email I received from a reader in winter 2020. It caught me completely off guard. Now I get a dozen or more messages every day thanking me for my website.

I am still an anxious introvert, but much to my surprise, I do really enjoy connecting with travellers: inspiring people to visit Georgia, to dig deeper, to venture beyond the obvious. Some people have returned because of things they have seen on my site, and I know that a few have even moved here after discovering the country through my writing.

But the best part of all this has been the people I’ve met here in Georgia. Entrepreneurs, small business owners, guides, drivers – incredibly talented, motivated individuals whose work I’ve been able to shine a light on. I know that we (me, the writer, and you, the visitor) have made a positive impact on a lot of lives.

A decade in numbers

Over the past 10 years, I have published 659 blog posts covering 35 countries.

In 2019, I was averaging around 100,000 page views a month. In 2024, it was closer to 580,000. Considering I focus on what is still quite an obscure corner of the world, I am incredibly proud of that growth.

My Facebook Page is my key community, and a few months ago I was excited to hit the 10K followers mark (now at 10.5K and growing). My relationship with Instagram is very hot and cold (maybe you know what I mean!), and the 15K followers number doesn’t mean much at the end of the day – but still it’s a nice figure.

All of my travel and planning these days revolves around producing my monthly newsletter, which more than 25,000 people have signed up to receive. If you aren’t on the list yet, please do join us!

Looking ahead

I’d love to end this by saying ‘here’s to another 10 years’… But honestly, I’m not sure how realistic that is.

The internet is changing, and blogging as a profession – the kind of blogging I love, where I share in-depth, detailed, long-form content – is becoming less relevant to a lot of audiences.

Last year I asked my Facebook community how I should pivot or diversify. The overwhelming response was simple: keep doing what you’re doing. It’s humbling to know that there are still people out there who value my work.

I am incredibly stubborn and afraid of change, but I also know I need to stay open to new opportunities if I want to keep working in this industry. In the future, you might see me experimenting with new formats or branching out on new tangents. Whatever happens, I will always try to keep the blog at the centre of what I do.

For now, I’m getting ready to mark this 10-year milestone by going back to where it all began – Thailand. From there, Ross and I will be visiting home for the first time in almost six years. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate.

I already know I’ll be looking forward to coming back to Georgia – to another year of adventures, stories, and whatever comes next!

With complete sincerity, thank you for reading and for being part of this journey!

If you’ve been following Wander-Lush for a while, I’d love to know how you first discovered the blog. Was it a Georgia guide, or a story from somewhere further afield? If you’re new here, let me know what kind of content would be most useful for your future travels.