Alumna Samantha North (Sociology, 2005) runs Digital Émigré – a blog she founded in 2020 focused on helping people relocate to Europe and seek EU second citizenship. We recently caught up with her to find out more about the blog, her personal journey and discover tips for anyone else looking to use blogging as a source of income.
After graduating from the University of Exeter in 2005 Samantha headed straight to China to teach English, and since then has spent time all over the world, particularly in Europe, and has always felt cosmopolitan. When Brexit happened, the loss of EU rights was a blow for Samantha personally but also the catalyst for Digital Émigré: a website with information and resources for Britons looking to regain EU citizenship and blog entries.
Speaking about why she was motivated to set up this resource Samantha said: “My goaI in setting up the website was to publish information to help Brits regain their EU citizenship. They could achieve this by relocating to a European country, getting residency, and living there long enough to qualify for citizenship. This blog also reflected my personal journey moving from the UK to Portugal in a quest to acquire Portuguese citizenship. I chose Portugal because it has one of the fastest timelines to become eligible for citizenship (five years), plus it allows dual nationality.”
At first, most of the Digital Émigré audience came from the UK. However, as the website gained more and more organic traffic, the audience expanded to include people from all over the world, including the US, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Turkey, Hong Kong, and more. This growth has been exciting for Samantha and has felt rewarding the challenges she experienced along the way in learning new skills to start the blog. It has also financially been fulfilling and we caught up about how she turned it this project from a passion into a business:
“My first big challenge was to learn enough about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) to get the website on the front page of Google for a number of competitive search terms. Now the website gets over 100,000 visitors a month from all over the world, and makes enough money to replace my full-time job. It was also difficult figuring out the best ways to monetise the website, but finally I settled on ads, affiliate marketing platforms and referral partnerships with other businesses. Because of my success with ranking Digital Émigré in organic search, I decided to launch another project (SamanthaNorth.com) to teach SEO skills to entrepreneurs and small business owners. This has now become my main focus, which I find extremely fulfilling. Digital Émigré still hums along nicely in the background (that’s the power of SEO!).”
Samantha is currently living and working remotely in Madeira whilst she waits to regain her EU rights and, whilst she graduated in 2005 when digital marketing was much less sophisticated than it is now, her time at Exeter and her studies did assist her with Digital Émigre. She says that “studying sociology did give me a certain curiosity and drive to understand the world and different groups of people – which played a key role in building the right mindset to create it.”
With more and more people turning to side-hustles to supplement their earnings or to try out new skills, Samantha also offered her tips to other alumni or current students looking to start blogging and turn it into a source of income. She recommends focussing on three key areas:
“Find your niche. The best way to start is by looking for a problem many people have that you’ve solved yourself. Perhaps you could draw on some personal experience or journey that you’ve had, then turn it into the topic for your blog. In terms of organic traffic, you should always start with doing keyword research around your core topic, to see if enough people are actually searching for it, and then decide whether it makes sense to focus your efforts on SEO.
“Research competitors and decide how you’ll monetise. Next, research other blogs targeting similar topics. What are they writing about? How are they monetising? The most common monetisation methods for blogs are ads, affiliate marketing (for example, writing product reviews), referral partnerships (i.e. building relationships with other businesses to send each other leads in areas where you complement each other rather than compete), selling digital products like online courses or ebooks, selling services such as consulting or coaching.
“Start publishing content. To succeed with blogging, you’ll need content, i.e. blog posts. Lots of content, written in a way that’s SEO-friendly, so Google knows which search terms to rank it for. There are lots of SEO tools you can use, like Ahrefs or Semrush, but they’re expensive. To get started easily and for free, just search for one of your core topics in Google, then check the People Also Ask section for a list of associated questions. These questions can make excellent topics for your first blog posts.”
These are all starting points Samantha used herself in 2020 when starting Digital Émigré and fast forward to 2023 she has lots of plans to build on the blog’s growth by planning to grow it to 200,000 users per month this year. She says: “I’d like to publish more comprehensive resources to help entrepreneurs and remote workers get residency in Europe, with a particular focus on the many opportunities available in Portugal. I’d also like to invest in additional websites and build up a portfolio of them.”
On a personal note this year, Samantha is working on improving her Portuguese language skills to make sure she is ready for her citizenship application in early 2025, and looking forward to re-joining the EU as a Portuguese national. During that time, she will be continuing to work on the website and blog to help other remote workers get citizenship in the EU.
To find out more about Samantha’s personal journey and discover more about Digital Émigré you can visit the website.