7 Figure Travel Gear Site From Scratch

The below email is the first of a new newsletter I am starting called the Brand Report. Every week we dive into a new content brand that is doing well to see exactly what they’re doing right.

This week we take a look at Packhacker, which is one of my favourite content sites. In future, these Brand Reports won’t be sent to this list. Makes sure to sign up for the Brand Report Newsletter if you enjoy this!

Packhacker has to be one of my favorite content sites out there. It’s the perfect example of someone turning their passion and experience into a 7 figure business.

Packhacker In A Nutshell:

• Started by sharing information he learned by spending time in the niche himself

• Over 200,000 Monthly visitors

• Now generates $1.9 Million and Employees 8 People

• Built a community of like-minded travelers and monetized through multiple channels

Tom Wahlin founded packhacker.com in 2017, while he was working and traveling remotely.

After testing a bunch of gear for his own travels, he shared his first article “Everything You Need To Travel The World In One Backpack” on Medium where it took off!

This sparked the idea for Packhacker where Tom started reviewing more travel gear. Since then, the site has grown from just Tom to a team of contributors who create content for the site.

Let’s take a look at the stats and growth trajectory of the site from 2017!

PackHacker Overview

Estimated Traffic: 1.2 Million Monthly
Estimated Organic Traffic: 600k Monthly Visitors
DR: 53
Founded: June 2017
Pages: 3,480 Active Pages

Branding

The branding and design on PackHacker are top-class. They have a custom built website which is built to give the reader more value. On the site they have 3 main page types:

• Review Page

• Packing List

• Guide Page

Review Page

Packhacker has amazing review pages. They start with a quick product summary and buy button just below the title.

Video Review - Essentially every product on their site has a video review. This is above and beyond what their competition is doing and it shows in their rankings. What is interesting is that all these videos are not posted on their Youtube channel. We’ll take a deeper look at this later in the report but I think it’s a smart play.

Summary - Next up we have a summary section, giving the product a score and rating it on multiple different factors. They then have a standard Pros and Cons table like most product review sites alongside a product specification chart.

While packhacker seems to have a custom solution, you can use a tool like Lasso to create these product summaries on your own site.

Product Imagery - Packhacker are actually reviewing every product by hand. It’s evident as soon as a reader hits the page. They have 10 - 15 custom images for each product. Not just product images pulled from a brands product page.

Not only does this provide the reader with trust that the person has actually used the item but it’s undeniable proof to Google that this brand is an expert when it comes to product reviews.

The Review - We then get into the review itself. For this small backpack, they provide a comprehensive 1000 word review. They cover all the main points a potential buyer wants to know, right down to the fit.

Continued Review Updates - This is another spot where packhacker stands out from the competition. They continue to provide updates on the product over time. There are plenty of times when a product is great out of the box, but as a reader I want to know how it holds up over a month, 6 months etc.

I could go on and on about their pages but I’m just going to let you check them out for yourself.

• Guide Page

• Packing List

Each page has a custom template that fits the objective of that piece of content. As site owners, I think this is something we can focus much more on. If you have a “type” of content you regularly create, think about getting a developer to create a custom page type specifically for your brand.

It might cost a little extra, but it’s stuff like this that separates your brand from the competition.

Content Strategy

Silos

The pack hacker site has four main categories:

• Packing Lists

• Guides

• Reviews

• Travel Stories, Tips & Tricks

While diving into the waybackmachine it looks like Tom started Packhacker with mostly review content based around “Light travel gear” while also mixing in travel & remote work articles. A lot of these seemed to be interviews at the time.

It is likely Tom used his existing network of Nomads he was traveling with to get more travel tips and tricks to share with his audience. In these interviews, we see questions like “What are three items you can’t travel without”. These then link out to affiliate links. This is an interesting strategy to get more affiliate clicks while having unique content on your site.

Since then the site has expanded into two new silos; Packing Lists and Guides.

Packing Lists

Packing lists are an article type that allows for multiple article variations. Packing lists for; hostels, vacation, skiing, hiking, country etc. Packhacker has created a tool that allows users to create their own packing list.

This is a great way to generate community-created content. Each item links back to their review of the item if there is one and also out to their affiliate partners helping to generate more revenue.

Guides

Let’s talk about product roundups. While most affiliate sites are creating chatGPT summaries with a few bullet points, pack hacker

really goes above and beyond here.

It’s clear as day why these pages rank highly compared to the competition.

Check out this guide for “Best Laptop Bags”.

It is a 9000-word piece. That’s insane. However, they have actually previously reviewed every one of these bags on their site. This is a perfect interlinking strategy to link to and from this article.

It also allows them to simply summarise the review they have already written in the guide article. While it might be 9000 words, much of that writing has already been done previously.

At the top of the article, they have a massive section on what you should consider when purchasing a laptop bag before they get into the options.

Just go take a look at this page to see what you need to do to compete for these highly competitive terms.

Video Strategy

Packhacker has an interesting video strategy. Every product they review has a custom high-quality video for the product. However, these reviews don’t appear on their Youtube channel.

They are hosted on a private video hosting company called JWPlayer and only showcased on their review pages.

But Packhacker also has a very successful Youtube channel with over 200k subscribers.

Years ago they used to post these review videos to the channel, but they have now adopted a different strategy. These reviews likely do okay on Youtube from a search perspective but they won’t get pushed by the algorithm in Discovery.

Their latest videos have a much more “Viral” feel to them. Top 10 Lists and Round Ups. These types of videos are appealing to a much larger, broader audience than a product-specific review.

Keeping the product-specific reviews off the channel allows Packhacker to have a back catalog of binge-watchable videos, helping their channel perform better overall.

What they have done, is create a second Youtube channel specifically for reviews.

This allows them to garner more traffic and brand awareness from Youtube Search through this channel, without having to worry about messing up the algorithm on their main channel.

Social Channels

Packhacker is not just a Google Search-driven brand. While it is a large part of their strategy, they are also pushing on other social platforms such as Instagram and Twitter.

As their site and Youtube channel are their main revenue driver they are using linkin.bio to direct people from Instagram to their website.

This tool allows you to give every post on your feed a link. In each post caption, they tell people to click the link in the bio for a full review. This leads to the page below.

You can then click on the post you were watching and it will direct you to Youtube or the review on the Packhacker site.

This is a great way to generate traffic from Instagram.

Email Strategy

While many brands find it hard to incorporate email marketing, Packhacker has done it seamlessly. They are using a welcome sequence to indoctrinate readers into fans.

They have a simple lead magnet on their site “5 Minimalist Travel Hacks”. When you sign up you will receive 1 tip every day for 5 days.

Each Tip leads back to a page on the Packhacker site boosting pageviews per user, which in turn increases ad revenue.

While each email is helpful, it is also a sales pitch in disguise. Hack #1 is finding the perfect bag which leads to their choosing the right backpack guide, which recommends multiple backpacks through affiliate links.

Further down the funnel, they start to recommend items such as gear and clothing.

I haven’t been on the list long enough yet, but I imagine they email out at least once a week showcasing their latest reviews, etc helping to generate more revenue through email.

Link Building

Let’s talk about links.

The first thing I noticed was in the early days, Tom contributed to other publications in his niche. This provided him with links back to PackHacker. In the early days, this was likely one of the easiest ways to pick up links.

You can see below he was a contributor on Carryology (Another large travel gear blog) back in 2018.

If you are a niche expert in your Niche, it would be worthwhile reaching out to other blogs in your niche about having a story featured if you have value to provide.

Packhacker has received a lot of notable links from nytimes, HuffPost, Buzzfeed and more.

Obviously having content as good as Packhacker has, will attract links naturally. A lot of links they have received seem to be bigger publications summarising/taking quotes from Packhackers reviews.

This may also be from some HARO outreach that Packhacker is taking on.

EEAT/Authority

Google claims to be putting a bigger emphasis on EEAT than ever.

How are Packhacker combating this? Well, when you actually do the things you write about, and actually use the products you review, EEAT becomes a whole lot easier.

Tom has experience in traveling light and it shows in his reviews. When you enter the blog it’s clear from the video, custom images, updates after X amount of use that this blog has expertise in the area they are talking about.

If we go to the Team page on their site we can see their team. Each member has an image, bio and where possible include social links as well.

This is just giving readers and google an undeniable amount of evidence that the site is a trustworthy source for information in its niche.

Monetization

In an interview, Tom said that 1 year into the site it was making around $1200/month profit.

We haven’t got any hard numbers from the founder recently but AHREFS estimates the site makes $97,000 per month currently.

These numbers usually aren’t very accurate but I would estimate this site makes at least $50,000 per month from ads and affiliates alone. There’s no doubt the site is worth 7 figures. All coming from a quick post Tom made on Medium. Crazy!

They have 3 main sources of revenue on the site.

Affiliate - Of course, having a review blog means making money through affiliates. This is likely the largest portion of their revenue.

Ads - Packhacker also runs display ads on the site. It looks like they are on the ad thrive network. As most of their content is product-focused they are likely to see higher RPMs than a straight info-based site.

Packhacker Pro - For $60 per year you can become a Pack Hacker pro member which gets you access to exclusive content, early access to deals, ad-free browsing, and more.

I would be interested to know how well this actually performs. If anyone a member and wants to share how many are inside, reply to this email!

Wrapping Up

Hopefully, you enjoyed our first report. If you found it valuable make sure to share the Brand Report with your friends and colleagues. We are going to be producing one Brand Report per week for now.

If there’s any brands you think we should take a look at, let us know.

Want more of these case studies? Make sure to Subscribe to the Brand Report Newsletter! In the future, the Brand reports will not be sent to this list.