This is just a quick story to show how easy it is to fund a trip. I did this almost by accident as a means to an end. I never thought of it as “hacking” my trip, I just really wanted to go somewhere and did anything I could to make it happen!

Before I go any further, I have to admit that I’m a lifelong wrestling fan. I’m a total dork for it. So a few friends and I were discussing where to go on vacation one day and then we heard that Wrestlemania was going to take place in New Orleans. Perfect! We could soak in the area for a week and then spend a whole day geeking out on wrasslin’. The problem was, it seemed, that the trip was going to be pricey so we had to get creative.

I’ll spare the exact details here to keep this post from becoming a book on its own, but we all found ways of coming up with the extra funds. If you are interested in the stats and exact dollar figures, I’ll be sharing this as a case study with those who have subscribed to the newseltter. It’s all totally free and only takes a second to sign up. Anyway, back to the story!

So it was definitely a month of insane work. Funding a trip like that takes hard work, but is totally worth it. It helped that we were a group and kept each other motivated, but I’ve gone through this alone before. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I started with the fact that wrestling was a part of this trip and something I’m interested in. So since I would be thinking about it on a regular basis, then I shouldn’t have too much trouble writing about it every now and then. I started a wrestling blog, totally from scratch, and made sure to update it every few days. The blog developed a great following right away and I made sure to stay active with the community. Then, through online forums, I reached out to local martial artists in New Orleans and started a dialogue with them. I explained that I’m a martial arts teacher and would love to host a small workshop while I was in town. Right away, a few people agreed to meet me for some training. I probably could have arranged for payment ahead of time, but I opted instead to work that out with them in person.

The question I get a lot is “how did you monetize the blog?”. There are many many ways of doing that, but I kept it really simple for this venture. I told everyone reading exactly what I was planning to do (the trip to see ‘Mania) and told them I wouldn’t be able to do it without some support. I set up a donation page and promised detailed articles, pictures and videos of the entire trip. I wanted to wrestling portion of the trip to be like work and many of them loved the idea. Once I knew that I would be documenting everything, I started reaching out to companies and websites to sponsor the articles and videos. I promised each would get a couple of thousand views and I’d include live links to their site. A few agreed right away and we were all set!

These extra sources of income were great, but I was still just a little short of my goal. There are 2 fundamental steps to getting a trip funded: 1-extra income dedicated solely for this trip and 2-cutting costs absolutely everywhere you can. A friend and I sat down and spent almost 72 hours straight searching online. In the end, we saved about 20% on our flights and 40% (!) on our accommodations! We now had a beautiful (and enormous) apartment right in the hear of the French Quarter. Pretty sweet.

Finally, as an extra effort to really make sure that I covered all my costs, I got one last idea. I decided to participate in a charity exhibition wrestling match. Since I’m a lifelong jujitsu practitioner and now have a wrestling blog, I figured I could combine the audience from the wrestling blog and my personal martial arts blog. I volunteer with a youth group, so I asked them if it was ok to use their name and then give them 70% of the proceeds. They agreed right away and I started rallying all my facebook and twitter friends to get on board. The idea proved to be a huge hit with everyone and I posted the fight to YouTube right away. Overall, between the personal donations and the extra sponsors, that last minute idea proved to be a great success.

Then, after the longest month and a half of my life, I went to New Orleans.

Everyone can go on one free trip a year.

Like I said I’ll included all the exact dollar amounts, websites, resources and general stats for all this in the newsletter. Also, two other friends who went on this trip managed to get funding in completely different ways, which I’ll also discuss in the newsletter. It’s free and totally worth it you should check it out by clicking here!