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- From Nearly Crushed By The Pandemic To Six-Figure Travel Creator
From Nearly Crushed By The Pandemic To Six-Figure Travel Creator
Today’s Deep Dive - How Emma Le Teace’s wildly successful cruise and travel content business works.
Our research time - 9hrs 😅
Your reading time - approx 5 mins 🎁
EMMA CRUISES 🛳️
Since launching her YouTube channel in 2016, Emma Cruises has grown a multi-platform online following of 500K people and is now a well-rounded six-figure business.
Here’s a deep dive into how her content empire works.
The Breakdown:
⚙️ Strategy - The big-picture mechanics of the business
🚀 Traffic - How she generates attention (clicks, reads, views)
💖 Trust - How she nurtures and builds loyalty with her audience
💰 Monetization - How she turns traffic and loyalty into revenue
🧰 Toolbox - Content tools Emma Cruises is using right now
👋 Heads-Up: We’re just fans and not affiliated with Emma Cruises. The data shared here is drawn from publicly available sources.
Let’s dive in.
📖 The Backstory
The “Emma Cruises” blog was launched in 2015 and her YouTube channel the year after.
The main goal?
To tackle common misconceptions and to promote affordable cruising.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing (pun intended).
Travel creators had their businesses decimated by the pandemic.
Emma wasn’t spared.
…But she persisted and was rewarded handsomely as a result.
What started as a simple blog transformed into a multimedia content machine with 8 different revenue streams.
But how exactly does she generate traffic, build so much trust, and generate revenue with her content?
Here’s what we found:
⚙️ The Strategy
Emma Cruises’ business model in 3 steps:
Generate traffic to the brand through Google, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.
Build trust through consistency, an obsession with the niche, and a relatable persona behind the brand.
Turn that traffic and trust into revenue through:
Ads
Affiliate revenue
Membership fees (Patreon and YouTube)
Consultation services
Sponsorships
Cruise bookings through travel agencies she’s partnered with
Let’s dig into the content funnel:
Traffic → Trust → Monetization
🚀 Traffic Breakdown
As of October 2023:
…It’s fascinating how they all mesh together.
Each traffic source serves its own role, like cogs in a large content machine.
Blog:
Main Roles:
To earn through Mediavine ad revenue, affiliate revenue, merchandise, and cruise bookings.
To collect email addresses for her newsletter.
How The Blog Gets Traffic (from SimilarWeb):
Organic Search: 68%
Predominantly from Google
Direct Traffic: 20% (people searching for the URL directly)
Social Traffic: 11%
Breakdown: 91% YouTube, 8% Reddit, 0.63% Facebook
Content:
Reviews of specific cruise ships (often ranking on Google for the brand keyword)
Blog posts answering a specific question keyword to rank on Google (eg. Which Norwegian ships have go karts?)
Blog posts that aren’t targeting a specific keyword but could be labeled “social content”.
These wouldn’t rank on Google but do well when linked to from her social profiles (eg. “I braved 5 of the scariest activities at sea”).
Highlight:
Great headlines: Eg. “I Spent 7 Days Onboard Symphony of The Seas (Full Review, Ship, Food & More)”.
The title makes it clear there’s a real person behind the content and they’ve put in the time. You can’t help but click to find out more.
YouTube:
Main Roles:
Generate YouTube ad revenue.
Upsell a YouTube tiered membership with additional perks
Via links in the video descriptions:
Direct people to lucrative pages on her blog - cruise bookings, affiliate products (mainly insurance), and her own merchandise.
Drive traffic to relevant blog posts and earn ad revenue there.
Build her email list using a lead magnet (a free email cruise course).
Link people directly to a paid course on how to save money on cruises
Content:
Videos are often paired with blog posts, but not always.
Excellent titles and thumbnails designed for engagement and not strictly targeting keywords.
Titles of her most popular videos:
Emma’s knack for intriguing blog post titles probably comes from her experience with YouTube.
TikTok/Instagram:
Main Role: To drive traffic to a “social links” page through her bio. This page has links to:
The blog homepage, YouTube channel, and other social profiles
Patreon membership page
Lucrative pages on the blog (insurance and cruise bookings)
Contact page (brand deals, collaboration requests)
Content:
Quick short-form videos answering common cruise questions or showing interesting bits from her trips.
Her most popular TikTok video - 13 seconds long but has 4.8 million views.
Facebook:
Main Purpose:
To drive traffic to the blog.
…Surprisingly, SocialBlade estimates that only 0.63% of the social traffic to the blog comes from Facebook (compared with 91% from YouTube).
It may mean that while the Facebook posts linking to her blog get likes, they don’t necessarily get clicks.
💖 Building Trust
In order to generate revenue from traffic, you need trust with the audience.
Emma does that in two crucial ways:
Value-Packed Content
Her blog posts are often well over 3000 words and packed with high-quality photographs she’s taken herself.
(Example).
They go into the tiny little details of her experiences:
Blog posts often have YouTube or TikTok videos embedded, while YouTube videos often link to blog posts.
It all creates a memorable multimedia learning experience.
💡 Content Psychology Tip: Emma makes it clear how much effort goes into each piece of content. People value an item more when they believe it costs more to make (whether in time or money).
Authenticity
Whenever you read Emma’s blog posts or watch her videos, it feels as though a friend is giving you recommendations.
This blog post is a good example.
That relatable, chatty approach to content builds trust.
💰 Monetization
A quick recap of the ways Emma Cruises generates revenue:
Blog and YouTube ads
Affiliate revenue - notably travel insurance products
Membership fees (Patreon and YouTube)
Consultation services
Sponsorships
Paid courses
Merchandise
Cruise bookings
Ads and affiliate revenue is going to be substantial here.
But I wanted to focus on the more interesting monetization methods.
Paid Course
Title: “How To Cruise For Less” (link)
Linked to from:
YouTube video descriptions
TikTok and Instagram bio
How to master cruising on a budget - an $89 digital course.
The framing of the course is clever.
It’s clear from the landing page that this course will save you money.
…Suddenly, buying the course feels less like entertainment and more like an investment.
💡 Marketing Psychology Tip: People are more likely to make a purchase if they believe they’re receiving more value than what they’re paying for.
The copywriting and layout of the landing page is great:
Benefits clear - Spend less, travel more, impress others
Social proof - Good reviews from students
Authority - Says Emma’s been mentioned on CNN, BBC, The Guardian.
Trust signals - Money-back guarantee
Merchandise
Emma Cruises has a merchandise shop powered by Shopify.
Linked To From:
Bottom of blog posts
YouTube video descriptions
TikTok and Instagram bio
Branded T-shirts, tote bags, suitcases, and more.
The print-on-demand products are fulfilled by Printify.
Remember - selling merchandise is easier with a YouTube and social media following.
It would be harder if she just had a blog.
Visual content and a personal brand make merchandising more effective.
Cruise Bookings
Emma Cruises books cruises for her audience through two separate travel agencies she’s partnered with.
The cruise booking landing page is linked to from:
Bottom of blog posts
YouTube video descriptions
TikTok and Instagram bio
Emma acts as the middle person between the audience and the travel agencies.
The audience fills in their cruise requirements on Emma’s website and these details are passed on to the travel agency.
Whatever the commission structure may be, the travel agencies are lucky to have access to Emma’s loyal audience.
🧰 Toolbox
Some tools Emma Cruises is using at the time of writing (not affiliate links):
WordPress Theme - Mediavine Trellis
Hosting - Siteground
Blog Ads - Mediavine
Email Marketing - Convertkit
Site Speed - WP Rocket
Contact Forms - WP Forms
Online Shop - Shopify
Merchandise Fulfilment - Printify
Online Courses - Podia
Live Streaming - StreamYard
YouTube Camera - Canon M50
Here’s a blog post where Emma runs through more of her equipment.
📝 Key Takeaways
Observations any content creator could learn from:
🏃 Go The Extra Mile: Emma creates in-depth content that goes into extreme detail.
💰 Diversify Monetization: Emma has 8 different revenue streams and is less vulnerable as a creator because of it.
🔗 Cross-Promote: Wherever possible, interlink different forms of media. Embed videos in blog posts and link to blog posts from video descriptions. It adds value.
🤝 Form Strategic Partnerships: Collaborate with related businesses in your niche for mutual benefit.
What did you find most useful about this breakdown? |
And that’s all for today!
Dilshan And Misya, The Pen Pivot