HOW DO I GET SPONSORED TO TRAVEL (& Other Travel Secrets)

La la la la la. I would like an Arnold Palmer at the omelette parlor. The human torch is denied a bank loan. You hear me? Andy! Good morning. I'm going to attempt to do this Q&A outside. I'm still at my nan's house here in Spain and this feels like a good time to have a chat, test out my new wind cover for my Rode VideoMic and see if this is possible. Let's get going. My question would be about storytelling. How do you come up with the story you want to tell in each vlog before you record the vlog? I generally try and have a sort of theme that the video is going to go along. But really, most of the time I just make it up as I go along. I try and keep in my head what the title will be and what the story will be but the way these vlogs normally work is that I'm just walking around figuring out what's happening as I go. So I try and keep it to a theme and the story in my head but mostly, I don't know, I just make it up. What new country would you like to visit this year? There's so many. There's one that's really up there in my head at the moment and that's South Africa. I'm not sure if I'm going to get a chance to go there or not but I've been wanting to go there for a while and I know it's not going to be in the next few months but I want to sort that and make that happen. How do you meet people when you travel? Both native locals and backpackers. Backpackers is hostels. Hostels and bars is the best way to meet people especially if you go to a hostel on your own then you'll meet people straight away. You're never really on your own. You make friends really quickly. Locals, yeah the same way I guess. Bars. Sometimes people come up to you and it's up to you whether you want to embrace that relationship or not but mostly bars and cafes I guess. It looks like there's a lot of questions here. How did you start? How did you tell everyone you've quit your job and travel the world and want to travel the world? I just said it I guess. I had quite a good job at the time and people were surprised but I really wasn't motivated by money at all so that was my decision. People questioned it I guess. Some friends and family they said how are you going to make money and I didn't really know at the time. I figured I'd figure it out eventually. So yeah as soon as I made that decision there was just no going back so I just told people that's what I was doing. I was leaving on I think it was August 24th 2014. And this is my last ever day at work. And me and my friend just started travelling then and that was it. I said it and I was doing it. What budget did I start with? Back then I think it was about £4000 maybe and that lasted me about 9 months of travel until that ran out and I had to start working on the working holiday visa in Australia to save up money again but I think I've talked about that before. Why do you live my dream? I don't know how to answer that. You can live it too. Just do it! Yesterday you said tomorrow so just do it! Make your dreams come true! Thank you by the way for all these comments but there's like loads and loads of questions so I'm just going to pick out some random ones. How do you decide where you're going next? Usually for me it's just been a spur of the decision thing. I've got some friends I'll let you in on where I'm going next. I've got some friends in Morocco so that was why I decided to go there. I'm going to go see Diego and Gloria from Diego Vista now. They're in Morocco right now so I decided I'm going to go there next week. Other than that now I'm getting some work in different places, sponsored gigs that sort of stuff lined up and that's sort of dictating where I'm going. But before that it was just where's cheap to go to, is it close, what's the cost of living, all those sort of things. If it sounds like a good option then I'd do it. And now for something completely different. How hard is it for you to find decent enough wifi to upload your content? It really depends on the place. The Philippines, when I was there the first time around, it was really difficult. There's an island there called Bohol and I was in a town where there was no wifi at all. Not even at the hotel I was staying at, there was just nothing. It took me three days to upload a vlog just using my data and using a local internet cafe. OK I found a solution. They've let me connect to the ethernet. For the most part, most places are pretty easy. All the places I've been anyway around Asia, you can usually find wifi, there's usually decent wifi in hostels. The Philippines has been the one place where it has been a little bit more difficult. I'm sure as I go more places there's going to be other places that might struggle, but for the most part I think there's internet everywhere now. Alright this is a comment that comes up a lot so I should answer it. I noticed that you have a girlfriend, how do you keep up with her, how do you maintain the relationship and everything. I don't have a relationship anymore, I don't have a girlfriend anymore so let's just move on. What would you recommend as must see places in South East Asia? For me, top two have got to be Indonesia and the Philippines. There's just so much to do in both and they're less touristy than a lot of the other places. Thailand is a great place and I mean I love Thailand but it's really heavily on the tourist trail now. I know parts of Bali and the Philippines are but other than that, Indonesia and the Philippines are a bit less travelled and just as beautiful if not more. So those are two places that I would 100% recommend. When you've been working with brands, do they normally approach you or do you approach them? It's a bit of both. Occasionally, and it's really nice when it does happen, I'll get emails into my inbox saying we like your stuff, we'd like to work with you, we'd like to send you a product or whatever and yeah, that's really good when that does happen and usually when that happens, they've already decided that they want to work with you so it's much easier and you can usually get paid for it as well. Other than that, for things like hotel stays or equipment or whatever, then I also approach companies too, tours and that sort of thing. I approach companies and that's usually just what I've found so far is usually I just get that for free rather than they would pay. It's a bit of learning, I don't know, I'm still figuring all of that side of it out but that's the case for me at the moment, it's a bit of both. How did you learn your cinematography skills? Trial and error, practice, a lot of tutorials, just figuring out what works really. I started filming maybe on this channel a year and a half ago on my previous channel which I've since stopped. I was filming for like a few months before that and it's just been trial and error, figuring out how to make each video better and how to improve and watching YouTube tutorials. I've never had any formal training or guidance, it's all just been from the internet. Will you travel to South America soon? I would love to, I don't know when but yeah, South America, really high on my list. Do you have any interest in hiking on some volcanoes? Yes. What is your favourite thing to see in countries? Mostly just the culture. I know it sounds a bit cheesy but that's the first thing I want to see as soon as I get to a place. I just want to get out of the hostel, get out of the hotel and just walk around and see all the streets, see the food, see the people walking around and that's my favourite part of it, just being lost and having a culture shock and looking around and thinking wow this is new, this is different. All of the sights and that I don't really care that much about. At the end of the day they're normally just different buildings in different places. Whatever happened to my daily vlogging? Yes, I should have addressed this sooner. I did put it out on my social media, I put it on my Facebook and Twitter and stuff that I was stopping from doing daily vlogging because I'd much rather concentrate on making higher quality videos than just getting consistent videos out very quickly that I haven't edited to the best of my ability. I was putting stuff out that I wasn't 100% proud of and I'd much rather take longer to edit something now and be really proud of it and have it there for a long time for people to see and it's something that I was proud of at the time. So that's why I've decided to take longer and create higher quality videos. Speaking of that, my plan for this year or for right now anyway is to do around two videos a week. I'm going to try and do two videos every week. I haven't decided completely on days yet. I think Wednesday and Sunday. Let's decide now. Wednesday and Sunday I'm going to put two videos out a week and that's going to be my schedule. Here's one for you. What do you think you would be doing in life if not this? I have no idea. I've always planned to work for myself. That was always what I wanted to do. Even when I was a kid I used to sell things at school. I used to buy chocolate bars and fizzy drinks and sell them in school. I got in trouble for that. I used to sell things on the internet when I was like 13 or 14. I got in trouble for that. I'll tell you about that another day. But yeah, I guess I've always planned to work for myself. It was just figuring out what I wanted to do and I wanted to make travel a part of that and I guess now I've started to figure out how. I didn't think it was possible maybe five years ago to earn an income from travelling. But that's always I guess what I wanted to do. Hey Bill. How you doing? Come here. This is Billy. Say hello. Hey Bill. What you doing mate? Vlog. Vlog. Vlog. Hello. The life of Bill. Okay, well, alright, see you later. It's one of my nan's dogs. Yeah, so the short answer is I don't know. I've found something I want to do for now and I don't know if this will always be what I want to do but for now it's definitely what I want to do. Right, and with that I'm just going to say goodbye there because I think, ow, because I think I've already answered a lot of questions and I have no idea how long this video has been with the other little bits cut in between it. So, yeah, thanks for watching and this is my life.