Meet Lauren
Hi! I’m Lauren and I’m the founder of Never Ending Footsteps. I’m here to help you explore this planet safely, adventurously, and affordably.
It was back in 2011 when I quit my job to travel the world. Fifteen years, 100-odd countries, and one successful travel blog later, I’m still going.
This website is the result of tens of thousands of hours of my own personal, on-the-ground research. I pay for all my travels myself, don’t use AI, and travel anonymously; all to ensure my recommendations are ones you can trust.
I Turned My Travel Blog into a Business
Unexpectedly, that small travel blog — this travel blog — I started six months before my departure date started to make me money.
As I began to make my way around the world, I was contacted by advertisers who wanted to reach my growing audience of readers. At first, I was offered $200 to promote a company to my audience, then $500, then by the sixth month of my trip, I was making $2,000 a month.
Even better: I had just turned up in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where you could rent a modern studio apartment for $300 a month. I stayed for three months, and by the time I moved on, had replenished my savings back to their original level. It was at that moment that I realised if I really worked on this site, I could turn it into a business and never have to go home.
So that’s exactly what I did.
Within a couple of years, this website had evolved into a thriving six-figure business, allowing me to travel extensively for years on end.
The work I do has fluctuated over the years and it’s still evolving now. Diversification is key when you work online, so you have to be cool with change.
In 2026, I fund my travels through two main methods:
Advertising: You’ll see display advertising scattered throughout this website and in the sidebar. I try to keep these ads to a minimum, but they make up a significant portion of my income, so I’m always experimenting with density.
Affiliate sales: The rest of my income comes from affiliate sales on Never Ending Footsteps — if I recommend a hotel, a guidebook, a tour, a backpack, or a travel insurance company and you decide to purchase it through one of the links on my website, I earn commission from that sale at no additional cost to my readers. I love this way of monetising Never Ending Footsteps because it means I can reduce the amount of advertising on the site, I don’t have to resort to taking comps, and I can remain fully independent.
The one thing I’ll never do to fund my life? Any kind of sponsored travel. I don’t take press trips, I don’t have my accommodation or activities covered, and I don’t even accept free products for review. I want to show you how achievable and affordable travel is and I can’t do that if I’m getting everything for free.
I’m basically the anti-influencer.
To reach this point took many years of hard work and lots of trial and error. I made hundreds of mistakes, wasted energy, and squandered time — all so that I could spend the first few years of my travels spending more time staring at a laptop than lying on a beach. I’d say I averaged 90-hour work-weeks for the first three years of my travels. It wasn’t exactly the definition of a work-life balance.
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