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You know that feeling when you’re scrolling through Instagram at 2 AM, stomach churning with envy as you watch someone pose in front of the Eiffel Tower while you’re wondering if you can afford lunch tomorrow? Yeah, you can probably relate. But what if I told you there’s actually a way to turn those travel dreams into a paid reality?

We spoke to Yalalah*, a 28-year-old Nigerian babe who went from counting costs to counting countries, all while her bank account grew fat. And no, her parents didn’t own an oil well, and she didn’t marry a rich man. She cracked the code to getting paid to travel, and we had to investigate for answers.

Six years ago, Yalalah was working a 9-to-5, dreaming about Seychelles during Monday morning meetings at her accounting job, and thinking travel was reserved for trust fund babes and Instagram influencers. Then one day, while she was procrastinating at work (doomscrolling on Instagram), she came across “travel content creation.”

“I laughed so much,” Yalalah said. “I was like, ‘Who in the world is paying people to take pictures of different foods in different countries?’ I showed my colleagues, and we all had a good laugh about it. Jokes on me though, ‘cause that’s literally my life now!” That laugh turned into serious consideration pretty quickly.

“Desperation is a powerful thing, and my annual leave was coming up,” she admits. “I was tired of my boss, tired of Lagos traffic, and honestly? I just wanted to see if the grass was actually greener, or if people were just really good at using filters.”

So here’s the thing about Yalalah. She isn’t just doing one thing. She’s built an entire ecosystem around travelling, and honestly, it’s kind of genius. Brands pay her to feature their products, luggage companies, hotels, tourism boards, and even some Nigerian brands wanting to see their products in exotic locations.

“My first brand deal was for $50, and it was damn near the most exciting thing that had happened to me at the time,” Yalalah reveals. “I know I had less the 10k followers, nothing crazy, but my engagement rate was quite high, which is what the brand said caught their attention. Mind you, I had been tagging them for weeks and encouraging my followers to do the same in the comment section because I had gotten one of their travel backpacks and I was looking for some sort of sponsorship.”

“The collaboration was simple, one post on Instagram and three stories featuring their product. I was also supposed to write about the travel backpack in the post, and I wrote the most dramatic caption ever about how the bag ‘revolutionised’ my travel experience. My friends thought I was doing too much, but omo, that $50 felt like someone had given me millions of Naira.

There’s also affiliate marketing. Those “Where I got this dress” links? Yalalah earns commission every time someone buys through them. “People always ask me, ‘Where did you get that cute suitcase?’ or ‘What camera do you use?’” Yalalah explains. “So I started linking everything. Last month alone, I made $800 just from people clicking my links and booking hotels. I literally made money while sleeping on a beach in Zanzibar. Honestly, six years ago, I would probably think that’s the most insane thing ever!”

But before you quit your job tomorrow and book a one-way ticket to Bali, chill first. Yalalah wants you to know that the first two years were absolutely brutal for her. “I was creating content for free, pitching to brands who would ghost me. I questioned every single life choice that had led me up to that point. My mum was calling me every day to ask when I would get a real job, and I would tell her that I was working… just from a beach in Ghana.”

Yalalah started small, really small. She started with weekend trips within Nigeria, using her iPhone 7, and watching YouTube tutorials at 3AM to learn photography and videography. “My first ‘professional’ photo shoot was in Lekki Conservation Centre”, she shared. “I asked my friend to be my photographer, but she had never used a camera before. Half of the pictures were blurry, and the other half had my head cut off. We were just two confused women trying to figure out how cameras work.”

For Yalalah, the international trips came much later, after about 18 months of consistent posting, engaging with her audience, and sending what felt like a thousand cold emails to brands. “I got rejected so many times,” Yalalah emphasised. “Like, I’m talking 70-80 nos before I got one yes. I had a folder on my laptop labelled ‘Brands That Ghosted Me’ because I’m petty like that. Now some of those same brands are in my DMs asking for rates. The satisfaction I feel is not from here!”

We had to ask Yalalah, is it really all flights and champagne brunches like it seems on social media? And she said, “Definitely not. I’ve cried in so many airport bathrooms, you’d think I was collecting tears for something. I got food poisoning in Morocco and had to shoot content while fighting for my life. I’ve worked 14-hour days editing content in hotel rooms while everyone else was out partying. I missed one of my closest friends’ weddings because I had a campaign deadline in Cape Town.”

Yalalah talked about unglamorous hotel rooms, hours spent waiting at airports, the exhausted no-makeup selfies, the rejected pitches, and the declined credit card while trying to pay for dinner. “There was this one time in Thailand where my flight got cancelled, and I was supposed to shoot content for a hotel the next morning,” she recalled. “I slept in the airport, showed up looking messy, and still had to smile and act like I was living my best life for the camera. Sometimes, the glamour is not true.”

“But the thing is that, even with all the chaos, stress, and uncertainty, I wouldn’t trade this for anything. Yeah, I work hard, yeah, it’s not always fun. But I’ve stood in front of the Northern Lights in Iceland. I’ve eaten pasta in Italy. I’ve made friends in countries I didn’t even know existed six years ago. Getting paid to travel is one hundred percent possible, but it’s certainly not easy. You need to love creating, love the hustle and love travelling more than you love stability.”

Behind every ‘I woke up like this’ post, just know that there’s someone who’s been up since 5 AM editing pictures, answering emails, and figuring out how to make things work.

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