How Travel Influencers Ruined Traveling

Or, why I stopped trying to become part of this out-of-touch group

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Imagine if you could make money from traveling the world full-time. For a suburbanite like me, that was the dream. My time in high school watching the inspired me to get a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certificate, allowing me to live and work in Japan.

Travel blogs were going the way of the dinosaur, but with the rise of people filming their travels on YouTube, I, too, wanted to get in on the action.

When I joined my husband in Fukuoka in late 2021, we officially launched our channel. Every week, we’d hit up multiple restaurants after work. Eventually, we expanded the budget to travel to different prefectures. Our niche was traditional Japanese inns, or ryōkan, and local restaurants.

In total, we spent about a year and not an insignificant chunk of our savings on our travels. Like many aspiring YouTubers, we never reached monetization. Still, that wasn’t the reason we gave up.

While we had enjoyed getting to see much of southern Japan, my husband and I found ourselves resenting the camera’s presence. Between having to fake a smile à la as I ate lackluster curry and going everywhere early so we could film without crowds, it…