10 years ago, I bought this little space on the internet, and Away With Maja was born.

10 years. A decade. A DECADE of this website.

If you told me back in 2016, when I decided to buy my domain name and hosting, that I’d still be doing this 10 years later, I don’t think I would have believed you.

You see, I’d always dreamed that this blog would ~*be something*~. I’ve always wanted this blog to go places. And while that’s always been a dream, this last year – more than ever before – I feel like that dream has become much closer to reality.

In 2024, I made the most money ever from my blog. In 2025, I secured my first BIG brand collaboration (with Travel Switzerland) on my dream trip, while also being invited on my first ever official press trip (to Malaga with Jet2). 2025 saw my highest ever stats on the blog – over 259k page views for the year, a 43% increase from 2024. My DA is currently 33 – a drop from my highest DA of 37, but still something to be proud of!

In 2016, I had 4,619 page views on my blog for the entire year. 10 years later, and I’m earning a very small, but stable, passive income from this site. Away With Maja has been pivotal in helping me establish my dream career as a freelance travel writer. I’ve continued publishing informative and inspirational travel guides and articles about travel. I’m so proud of this.

If you’d like to celebrate my decade of blogging with a gift, you can use Buy Me a Coffee!

Here are some of my reflections as I celebrate Away With Maja’s 10th birthday.

This blog has been the one constant in my life for the past decade.

When I started this blog in February 2016, I was in a long-distance relationship with the man I’d marry a few weeks later. I was living with my parents in Minneapolis, working multiple hospitality and retails jobs to save money to travel. Today, in 2026, I’m divorced, living in my own flat in York after spending almost 3 years traveling the world full-time. Since I started this blog, I’ve been married and divorced, moved abroad and lived in three different countries, and changed jobs (and careers) more times than I can count. And yet, I’ve still showed up on Away With Maja. No matter what else was happening in my life, or where in the world I was, this blog was the common denominator.

And that is all thanks to you, Dearest Gentle Reader. If I hadn’t had the audience and followers from this blog, I likely wouldn’t have had the motivation to keep going. The support from you all is what has convinced me to keep going.

I’m really proud of myself for keeping at it for 10 years.

10 years is a LONG time. And when I look at the 633 articles on Away With Maja – posts that I have singlehandedly written, edited, loaded into WordPress, sourced images for, and published – I am filled with pride. This blog is my baby. Away With Maja is a one-woman show, and, a decade on, I’m so proud when I look at the result.

I built this. I did this. I kept at it, I kept it going. And I’m so fucking proud of that.

Away With Maja has shown me that I am, at heart, a writer.

While I love taking photos, and I do enjoy creating visual content like short-form video, at my heart of hearts, I am a writer. And 10 years of Away With Maja has proved that to me. What I love, more than anything, is putting words together to tell a story – to help others, to inspire. Above all else, I want to create the words on a page to take the reader on a journey. And that is what my creative freedom on my blog has allowed me to do. While yes, my aim with this blog is to create posts that are useful and will make me some money through ads or affiliates, I have the ability to write about whatever I want on here. Because it is mine. It is my creative outlet, my diary, my baby. And at the core, that’s because I’m a writer.

This blog has connected me with so many wonderful people all over the world, including some of my (now) best friends.

This blog, and especially my Instagram account, has given me so many friendships over the last decade. During my Lap of Australia, I ended up staying with three different people who I only knew from Instagram, two of whom I’d never met before! Some of my Instagram friends have developed into meaningful friendships and become real, lifelong, best friends! This blog has given me friends around the world – no matter where I am or what timezone I’m in, I know I always have a friend somewhere I can message who will be awake. The ability to virtually connect with like-minded people who love travel and adventures is one of the greatest gifts I’ve had as Away With Maja. There are simply too many people to list, but thank you all – I’m honestly so fortunate.

Imposter syndrome is so real.

Am I ever going to be “good” enough? Is Away With Maja ever going to be “big” enough? After 10 years, hundreds of posts, and thousands upon thousands hours, why am I not more “successful”? I’ve struggled with imposter syndrome since I started my blog. And as the years passed, I continued feeling like I wasn’t legit, or serious, based on the benchmarks of other bloggers. I don’t have a big following on Facebook (in fact, it’s stayed almost exactly the same for the last 9 years, lol). I don’t have 10k on Instagram. It took me 9+ years to be invited on my first press trip. 2025, which marked both a career pivot to a freelance writer and my first press trip as a blogger, has helped shift my imposter syndrome. But it’s still very much there.

I am continually plagued with technology woes, which has been the biggest frustration with this blog over the decade.

I don’t particularly consider myself a tech-savvy person, although I’ve been running this online business for 10 years. Over the decade, I’ve faced numerous tech issues – hosting, plugins, statistics, backups, the list goes on – and each time I’m smacked with a new one, I panic. My background isn’t in tech, coding, or any sort of website maintenance – I’m a writer and a content creator. Dealing with these problems uses up a huge portion of my time and energy. I try to outsource when I am financially able to do so, but the vast majority of every issue I have to figure out myself through the university of Google and trial and error. This is the part I hate most about blogging!

AI (and Google) has absolutely decimated blogs.

This is too complex a topic to cover in this post, but it has to be mentioned. Over the past few years, written content online has changed massively, in part due to the rise of AI and Google “Helpful” Content Updates (the quotes are sarcastic, lol) since 2023. This post by Amanda at A Dangerous Business really hits the nail on the head. While I wasn’t hit bad with the first Google update in 2023, I do feel like I’m simply not getting as much traffic to my site as I should, considering the quality posts I have on my site and previous growth predictions. And this is really demoralizing. Why should I keep going, if hard work isn’t rewarded by those important quantitative measures like statistics or income?

I don’t dream of being a full-time blogger anymore. The past few years have shown just how volatile digital content can be. I’d love to continue as a freelance travel writer, with my blog making up a portion of my work and income – but not all of it. I would still hope to rely on other projects and commissions. Which brings me to my next point…

What are my goals for Away With Maja in the next year – and decade – to come?

My overarching goal is to create useful and inspirational content on this blog, while enjoying myself. I don’t want something I love so much to turn into something which gives me only stress. Simply put, I want to have fun. I want to share travel guides and tips that I think might help someone – whether that’s planning a successful trip to a specific city, completing an epic hike, moving abroad to another country, or exploring unconventional travel styles like housesitting or living in a car.

My major career goal right now is a full-time role that will give me some stability (particularly financial stability). So, this blog – alongside all my freelance writing endeavors – will need to go on the backburner. And while I wish that I were earning more money from my blog, I need Away With Maja to be flexible and adapt around my life as my life continually changes and shifts over the years. Perhaps that, combined with my passion, is why this blog is still going strong a decade later.

But TLDR; I intend Away With Maja to still be here in the next year, and hopefully into the next decade, thriving as much as it can and giving me joy in the work I create on this platform!

While I say Away With Maja is a one-woman show, I wouldn’t still be here without you. Whether you’ve been reading since day one, or you joined more recently, thank you for supporting me and this endeavor over the last 10 years. It has been the time of my life. And I can’t wait to see what’s in store for the future.

Here’s to the next decade of Away With Maja!

Thank you for sticking with me on this wild ride and celebrating my 10-year blog-a-versary!