We were lucky to catch up with Taylor Deer recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Taylor thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

My blog name is Brown Eyed Flower Child and my mission is to help people see the world through my eyes. Even though travel is different for everyone, social media has promoted over tourism, traveling to certain destinations for social media clout and not truly experiencing a country’s culture. I am someone who enjoys traveling to get a taste of a culture that is different than mine, to try different foods, to learn about a specific country’s history and to also interact with locals. On my blog, I promote authentic travel in a luxurious and adventurous way.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers?

I graduated from college in May 2013 with a communications degree, specializing in public relations. I worked in the public relations industry when I first graduated university and then made my way into corporate marketing, which I did for the remaining years that led up to my entrepreneurial journey.

As I was working in Corporate America, I was unfulfilled in my career and yearning for a change. In my mid 20s, I went through a bad “quarter life crisis” and started getting into yoga and meditation to help clear my mind. It was during that time that I realized I was trying too hard to fit into a mold that wasn’t for me. I needed to tune back into the things that truly made me happy.

During my college’s Maymester in 2012, I was a junior going into my senior year and I decided to do a study abroad program in Salamanca, Spain. They say that if there is something you truly want and you know it’s going to make you happy, it is best to take that risk. Well, I definitely took a risk and went out of my comfort zone by studying abroad. It was the first time I was ever on a plane by myself and it was also the first time I traveled out of the United States. My experience studying abroad opened my eyes to international travel and my life was never the same from there. I have to give credit to this study abroad program because if I hadn’t hopped on that plane and spent two months in Spain, I probably wouldn’t be a travel blogger right now.

Fast forward to 2016, I went on my first trip back to Europe since 2012 to the Greek Islands and that was when I began to travel avidly. In 2017, my cousins, who own a luxury travel agency in Florida, saw that I was traveling a lot and introduced me to the blogging world. I saw travel bloggers like The Blonde Abroad and Nomadic Matt making a wonderful living for themselves by traveling the world and sharing their experiences. From there, I started my blogging journey by writing for my cousin’s website. I loved it so much that only a few months later, I started my own blog called Travels with Taylor, at the time.

It wasn’t until March 2018 that I decided it was a good time for me to say goodbye to the cubicle and start travel blogging full time. From the moment I left my corporate job, I started treating my blog and Instagram account like a business! I rebranded to Brown Eyed Flower Child; educated myself on the business behind being an Instagram influencer; hired a website designer to redesign and rebrand my blog; learned SEO and affiliate marketing and discovered the ins and outs of using Pinterest for my blog.

One thing to note about being a blogger is that it is not easy and money doesn’t come quickly. It takes a lot of patience, consistency and engagement before you start seeing results and financial success. After going full time with my blog and Instagram in March 2018, I reached my first Instagram milestone in November 2018; landed my first big paid brand collaboration in January 2019; landed my first sponsored press trip in June 2019; reached my first major blog milestone in January 2020; got featured in my first publication in February 2020 and had my first five-figured month in June 2021. Mind you, I did freelance work on the side during my first year of blogging before I started to earn a steady income.

I still have a lot of big goals I’m working on reaching, but what I learned is that the only way you fail is if you give up and that every setback is followed by a major come back! Even though I decided to become a travel blogger a little before a global pandemic started, I worked hard and continued pushing forward during the tougher times.

Nowadays, I earn an income through a variety of revenue streams. I earn passive income on my blog through ads and affiliate links. I also work with brands to do dedicated travel articles, social media partnerships, content creation, brand ambassadorships, destination marketing campaigns and media events.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

One of the top things I wish I would’ve known sooner is to not solely rely on social media for your business. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, etc. can vanish at any point and it’s important to always have a back up like a blog or a YouTube channel. For instance, my blog is something I OWN. Even though I don’t think anything will ever happen to Instagram (at least not soon), I am able to sleep at night, knowing that I have my blog, which I can always rely on.

In the beginning stages of my blogging journey, I kept thinking that being “Insta famous” was the key to being a successful blogger. Even though having a lot of followers can help you out a lot, it is more important to create an engaged platform amongst those who are following you. Even though I’m just barely reaching 40,000 followers vs. 100,000 followers, I’m grateful I have my core tribe that closely sticks around and comes along with me through my journeys.

The biggest eye opener for me was in 2019. I was growing on Instagram so quickly until a large chuck of us influencers got “shadow banned” for no reason. On the day I got “shadow banned” in spring 2019, I lost a large chunk of my in-feed photos and was then hidden through hashtags, which, at the time, helped influencers get their content out there and grow. At first I thought I was hacked, but my photos, thankfully came back. I also was hidden from all hashtags for a full month, which resulted in me loosing over 2,000 followers! Even though everything ended up being okay in the end, it showed that I could never fully rely on social media for my business ever again. In fact, it was a big wakeup call for a lot of creators who were affected by the big shadow ban that year.

I also wish I started learning about SEO much sooner in my blogging journey. Major search engines like Google value established and older sites, so it takes most blogs around a year or so to even start ranking. Now that I am familiar with search engine optimization, I am still going through older blog posts and optimizing them. When an article is optimized, it is more likely to land on the first page of Google. When an article is on the first page of Google, it will attract a lot of traffic to a blog or website. The higher your monthly blog traffic is, the more money you make through ads, affiliate income, products and services you sell and I can go on.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

One of the top things that helped me build a good reputation within my market was being my authentic self. Authenticity is HUGE when it comes to building a digital career. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok make someone’s life seem more glamorous than what it really is. For instance, a lot of people see me traveling all the time, but what they don’t see is the amount of hours I put into my blog, the stress I deal with from managing time to budgeting and everything else that goes on in my personal life.

Even though a lot of people want to separate their business from their personal life, I believe that if you have a major online presence, it is important to share with people the highs and lows. Obviously, you can share whatever you feel comfortable with, but by getting personal, people connect with you on a deeper level and it helps you gain more respect. It’s also a way to build a more engaged audience because then people think “Oh wow, he or she is just like me. We’re both dealing with the same thing and I enjoy seeing how they approach this situation.”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://browneyedflowerchild.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brown.eyed.flower.child/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brown.eyed.flower.child/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylordeer/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/taylor_deer