How Wandering Wheatleys scales their commerce content strategy

Wandering Wheatleys is an award-winning travel website founded in 2013 when Nick and Val Wheatley first ventured around the world together. Now visited by over 2 million readers every year, Nick and Val have been able to turn their personal journal into an inspirational travel website for anyone to enjoy.

Skimlinks was given the opportunity to talk to Nick Wheatley about how they cultivate content for their website, the development of their commerce content strategy and scaling their revenue. 

What does your commerce content strategy look like? 

Our blog has matured greatly and we now have a team of writers and editors. We look for opportunities our readership will be interested in and consider buyer intent. 

With SEO, we try to rank for keywords where there is a much smaller audience. When we create content, we like a repeatable process such as “25 best things to do in London” or “A 2-week itinerary for London” and add accompanying merchant links. We try to publish an article a day so 30 articles per month.

How did you start affiliate marketing?

We started by writing about our adventures. It was a passion project turned business driven by my better half. Initially, our audience was our family, but as it’s grown over time, our traffic increased and now we have a valued readership. 

How do you decide which merchants to feature in your articles? 

Most of our audience is based in the United States so, we have to look at what we can really monetize. We choose merchants that are recognizable and trustworthy to make the customer experience as smooth as possible. We also try to match the interests of our readers and stay on trend. This is what guides our merchant choice.

How has your strategy developed from when you first started affiliate marketing till now? 

In our infancy, we were fixated on Amazon but now we’ve seen the value in other trustworthy merchants so our merchant spread has widened. 

Additionally, we were pretty fixated on Instagram when we first got started. However, we soon realised that we were much better at monetizing our website. This was because we could create forever content. Now, we’ve found our strength in crafting a content creation engine alongside our writers, editors and virtual assistants to churn out evergreen content. 

What were you looking for in a partner and why did you choose Skimlinks? 

We use a lot of one-off links and that’s where Skimlinks plays into our strategy. It saves us time rather than having to apply to each merchant individually. Additionally, we work with a lot of writers and it is easier for them to use affiliate links too. Skimlinks helps us manage that process.

How have you seen blogs develop over the years? What direction do you see it going? 

We are in the golden age of blogs as the playing field has levelled. Now, blogs can grow exponentially and become even more popular than editorial publications. I feel that a lot of readers prefer something that feels more local and human.

So how do I feel about blogs? They’re really no longer blogs. It is just like starting a website. Blogs are here to stay and there’s like a huge market opportunity. Always stay honest and have good intentions as your readers are looking to trust you. 

Do you have any tips for anyone who wants to start affiliate marketing?

You have to start to understand what the revenue potential of your website is. And then, make a leap of faith! 

Another key tip I’d say is to not be so focused on SEO. Focus on as much content creation as reasonably possible. There are some core SEO principles that we bake into everything we publish but don’t be consumed by SEO and focus on sharpening your commerce content creation skill. 

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Thank you Nick for your honest words and insight into how Wandering Wheatleys has mastered its commerce content marketing strategy. For anyone looking to get into affiliate marketing or wanting to strengthen their strategy, we hope these tips prove useful.

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