We recently connected with Sherry Ott and have shared our conversation below.

Sherry, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

I never know what to answer when people ask what I do. Am I a writer, entrepreneur, freelancer, photographer, blogger, or social media influencer? Are these even careers? Even though I’m never really sure how to describe myself, there’s one thing for certain – I am my own brand – the Ottsworld brand. In the world websites and online businesses, a choosing a domain name is very important. URL has now become a part of our vocabulary and if you are doing business online then you know that having the right url is very important.

There are a number of ‘rules’ to follow when you choose a domain name. In general, it should be short, easy to remember, no hyphens or numbers, and have something to do with your product. My url name, Ottsworld actually fits all of that. I’d like to say that it was a well thought out strategy on my part – but like most things in my life it was a complete accident that I had nothing to do with.

When I decided to take a career break I quit my IT job and announced my big travel plans to my team. Surprisingly most were extremely supportive (they were probably happy to get a new boss). I worked in IT leading development teams yet I was no technical whiz myself – but I was good at managing technical projects and keeping people on plan.

When I started preparing to leave, I decided that if I was going to travel around the world for a year that I needed a way to keep in touch with my family and friends so I decided to keep an online travel journal. Yes – in 2006 the term blog wasn’t really part of our everyday vocabulary as it is now! Believe it or not, it’s actually in the dictionary now.

I searched Google for easy online travel journals that I could utilize and came across Bootsnall.com who had a great solution – they were hosting WordPress sites for travelers. It seemed like a perfect solution that even a low tech person like myself could manage.
I set up my travel site, put some initial posts up with pictures about my planning and I was ready to go. When I told my work team about my plans to leave and travel around the world – I also provided them my website url so that they could follow me if they wanted to. It was a long, tedious url with numbers and letters that were automatically generated when I set up the site on Bootsnall. However I didn’t think anything of it since I was simply excited to have my very first website.

A few days before I left, one of my tech leads, Craig, came into my office beaming. He sat down and said, “I got you a going away present.” I immediately told him it wasn’t necessary – after all, I didn’t have room to carry anything else with my on this around the world journey. But he reassured me that it was light. He gave me a piece of paper – on it was the confirmation of the url he had acquired – Ottsworld.com. It was Craig who taught me the lesson of how important a url was – he chose it and I had nothing to do with it. He even set it up for me so that Ottworld.com would redirect to my long, tedious url. He told me that this would be much easier for people to follow and remember.

There you go, my url and subsequent brand name was a gift – I had absolutely nothing to do with choosing it. Like most things in my life, I had to rely on others to teach me. And when you do, good things can happen.

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

I guess I can be considered a pioneer in the emerging world of new media, writing about my travel lifestyle and around the world adventures on Ottsworld.com since 2006. In my 11 years of living nomadically, I circled the globe multiple times visiting all 7 continents.

I got into this blogging and travel writing industry by accident – I was in the right place at the right time. I started my blog in 2006 and wrote about my around the world travels. An entire industry blossomed at that time and I was there, already with an audience and a blog – sometimes timing is everything.

I’m proud of many things, but mostly of my ability to hustle myself into a new emerging industry. Networking was key for me to make connections in this new digital media world. And I’m also proud of some of the travel adventures I’ve accomplished – like driving a totally inappropriate car from London to Mongolia, or driving an autorickshaw across India for 2,000 miles, and walking the Camino de Santiago – 500 miles across Spain. In a world where so many people just follow and recreate what others are doing – I found unique adventures and destinations to do and cover – making me stand out among the crowd.

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

I wish I knew more about Search Engine Optimization when I started out. It’s an essential piece of running a website – however I was slow to work on it. It probably hurt me to put my head in the sand and wish that I could just ignore it. But eventually, I started putting time into it and started seeing the benefits – better late than never!

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

When the pandemic shut down my travels, I decided to focus my time on building up my newsletter audience. After all – a newsletter is the only thing you have that isn’t controlled by some algorithm from Google or social media. I created an ebook that I could give away in order to gain email signups. It ended up being one of the best things I did. I doubled my mailing list and it also gave me something to talk about during the pandemic.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ottsworld.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ottsworld/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OttsworldTravel/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sherryott/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ottsworld