On their own - Vitalik and Lisa - all the most interesting videos on this topic! About us Traveling on your own Vitalik and Lisa.

There are many myths about making money online. Some people think that such an income cannot be high, while others associate freelancing with network marketing and fraud. But there are other people. Some of them are Vitaly Ichin and Lisa Gracheva. This couple is young entrepreneurs, video bloggers and information businessmen. In just 4.5 years of hard work, the guys managed to rise to the top of the freelance Olympus. Now young travelers have their own multi-thousand channel on YouTube and have a network of well-promoted accounts on Instagram and VK. The guys’ story is a powerful motivator for ambitious young people who don’t want to spend their best years in an office.

St. Petersburg residents Vitaly Ichin, 29, and Lisa Gracheva, 27, are the authors and founders of the travel project “On Your Own.” This young couple has left boring offline jobs, Russian cold and routine far behind. And for 4.5 years now, Russian freelancers have been traveling and traveling around exotic hot countries.

The guys are incredibly positive YouTube bloggers with almost worldwide fame. They do not consider themselves either millionaires or cool businessmen. Young people have visited 34 countries of the world, purchased real estate in Russia, have accounts in large banks, which already contain savings. In the interview, Vitalik and Lisa openly say that interest on deposits is another source of monthly, albeit small, income.

When communicating with subscribers on Periscope, the guys easily share life hacks and give useful tips on making money online. They talk about their constantly growing income from advertising on VK and Instagram, and they also have affiliate programs, paid video courses, aerial shooting with a quadcopter and many other ways to earn money.

- How it all began? How did you get into freelancing?

Vitaly: In 2011, I returned to St. Petersburg from the army and got a dull job as a security guard at an amusement park. The gray realities of St. Petersburg were not at all pleasing. The work brought in 18 thousand rubles, but I even managed to save it. In my free time, I worked on a group on VK, made beautiful pictures for posts, mastered Photoshop and other editors. After some time, I realized that you can make real money from the group. By that time, working as a security guard, I had saved up about 30 thousand rubles. I took a risk and invested it in promoting the “Diary of Success” group. The project took off. The first 100,000 subscribers were collected in just a month. The first money came from advertising. They could order up to 10 advertising posts from me per day. One post then cost 500-700 rubles.

Vitaly: After some time, the audience of the “Success Diary” group grew to 800,000 subscribers. Advertising prices also increased in proportion to traffic. For one post they easily paid 1000-1500 rubles. It was at this time that I met Lisa. She became my muse and ideological inspirer. Using advertising revenue, we went on vacation to Turkey (Marmaris), and then went to Thailand for the winter.

Lisa: The group now has almost 950,000 subscribers. We exchanged posts in partner groups, thereby expanding our audience. Such mutual PR is one of the main strategies for the development of groups and publics in VK. They bought advertising from us quite often. Vitalik and I thought that it would always be like this.

– Have you ever had any failures? Or is your life a complete rainbow movie?

Vitaly: Of course there were. And more than once. I’ll now tell you about the most powerful thrash that happened to us at the end of 2014. At that time, a crisis came to Russia, and with it the solvency of advertisers, those who ordered commercial posts in our group, fell. That dark day has arrived. We lived in Bali then. Suddenly, the demand for advertising dropped to 1-2 orders per week. The last 15 thousand rubles remained on our cards. Happy days are behind us. There is uncertainty ahead. We didn't even have money to buy tickets to Russia and return home.

Strategic Mistake #2: “We went on a spree and spent ALL our money without thinking about the future.” I didn't think about tomorrow. Lived here and now. Lisa and I had fun traveling. We thought that such a chocolate life would never end. We were wrong. But now we know for sure: you need to think about where you will be in a month and in a year.

– How did you get out of the crisis? What did you do?

Vitaly: On a warm Balinese evening we sat by the sea and talked. We made plans. We dreamed. Speaking of dreams: we never lost heart for a moment...

We heard about a new and still incomprehensible service for Russians - Instagram. This topic interested us greatly. And no wonder. According to Instagram guys, you can charge up to 10,000 rubles for one advertising post in an account promoted to 100 thousand subscribers.

We borrowed 200,000 rubles from relatives and invested in the promotion of two communities on Instagram: books and horoscopes. Promotion took a lot of time - as much as 3 months. All this time we worked almost 20 hours a day and lived in the cheapest room in Bali. We worked according to Moscow time - this was required by the promotion strategy. After 90 days of hard work, our Instagram profiles had 100,000 subscribers each. We started providing paid advertising. And, lo and behold, our hopes were justified - this is a mega-demand segment. Now we have a network of 18 accounts, and our personal popular page on Instagram. The total audience on Instagram from all accounts exceeds 2 million people. When we started, there was little competition, prices were high, and advertising was bought frequently. Now the market is filled with many pages with the same topics, competition has become very high, and, accordingly, advertising earnings have fallen by about 3 times. We feel that days of uncertainty will soon come again. But this time we are ready for such a turn, since there are already outlines for new projects that we are starting to develop now.

Now we have a network of 18 accounts, and our personal popular page on Instagram. The total audience on Instagram from all accounts exceeds 2 million people.

– Guys, tell us about your YouTube channel. How much income do you make from videos?

Lisa: Our video blog “At our own pace” is our whole life. A brainchild that we have just begun to develop at a decent level. This entire project rests on the pure enthusiasm of two people, that is, ourselves. We love making videos and sharing them. Previously, we shot more amateur films while traveling – just for memory. Then we decided to create a channel about travel, and now this is a whole video blog with a three-year history and a huge amount of useful information. Youtube is another very profitable niche, but becoming popular and getting millions of views is very difficult. We are still at the development stage, and the income from the channel is very small - $200-300 per month. We have several cameras, a quadcopter for aerial filming, stabilizers, microphones and other gadgets necessary for filming; we shoot very high-quality videos and spend 80% of our time on video, so we hope that our efforts will be justified and the channel will truly become popular.

Strategic mistake No. 3: you can earn A LOT on YouTube and NOT on Google Adsense. For a long time, we filmed and posted travel videos more for the soul than for earning money. But in reality, the YouTube channel is a goldmine. The audience is more than loyal, you can sell information. Many bloggers earn hundreds of thousands of rubles a month by selling courses through affiliate programs.

– What do you expect from the promotion of the YouTube channel “On Your Own”?

Vitaly: The video blog does not bring in a lot of money yet, but this income can be considered one of the most stable. This is my dream job. You don't owe anyone anything, you shoot for your own pleasure. You are truly free. Friends, there is nothing more valuable than freedom!

Now we are actively making money on affiliate programs, and yes, this brings us up to 25% of our total freelance income. We traveled far and wide throughout Thailand, Bali, Indonesia and the Philippines. We visited the Maldives and shot a series of videos for our subscribers. We do not advertise cool hotels and places where millionaires “live”. It's boring. Our videos feature real adventures, countries and cities through the eyes of ordinary tourists. This is why our channel is popular.

– Why do you rent budget hotels and eat at street eateries in every new country? Why don't you choose a more expensive type of tourism?

Vitaly: Who needs all this show off? Our audience is the same freelance guys as ourselves. We have many things in common: a thirst for adventure, a passion for travel, FREEDOM from stereotypes, working “for someone else” and domestic realities. Therefore, when we arrive in a new country, we check into ordinary hotels, show ordinary restaurants and cafes - places where locals and tourists with an average income go. And that's cool! We chose a different path - the path of free life where we want, that is, somewhere warm. Our approximate monthly expenses are $1000 for two, which is quite a bit. And for us it’s better to live somewhere in a budget hotel in Bali than in rainy St. Petersburg.

– Guys, tell us about your plans for the future.

Lisa: Work, work and more work. Development of new accounts on Instagram, increasing the client base - advertising buyers, paid shooting of clips from a quadcopter (we also make money from this), self-realization. We will visit new countries and show videos of the most unusual corners of the planet. Nothing is holding us back. We are free and determined. Our thirst for adventure will never dry up!

Vitaly: My biggest dream, which is also my immediate plan, is to travel around the USA in a cozy trailer. Lisa and I also want to travel all over South America and shoot a bunch of videos for our regular subscribers. The most important thing is that the Internet does not let you down. For example, in Singapore and Thailand there are no problems with this. There are Wi-Fi points on almost every corner. And in the Philippines and Vietnam, the Internet is only via very, very slow 3G. The hardest part is filling the rollers. It’s a shame when you start uploading a video to YouTube, a day passes, the screen says “99% loading”, and then the video crashes, you have to start from scratch.

My biggest dream, which is also my immediate plan, is to travel around the USA in a cozy trailer. Lisa and I also want to travel all over South America and shoot a bunch of videos for our regular subscribers.

– Which place on earth seems to you the best?

On this page we wrote the history of the origins of the project “At our own pace”, each on our own. You will be able to briefly get to know us and find out how our life was BEFORE the trip, how we met and how we began to discover the world together!

“I was born and raised in one of the most beautiful Russian cities - my beloved St. Petersburg. Until 2011, the words remote work, travel and islands were familiar to me only by hearsay. I saw the sea only a few times in Crimea, and I was only passing through several cities in Russia.

“I spent all my childhood and student years in the small town of Kirovsk. Not far from St. Petersburg. Kindergarten, school, technical school... Nothing unusual. The St. Petersburg Technical College of Railway Transport was supposed to make me a specialist in Automated Control Systems (ACS), but somehow things didn’t work out in the 3rd year.

Elizaveta Gracheva

Vitaly Ichin

We will be very glad if you respond write a story about yourself, even if small.

We are preparing a big project to make money on the Internet. And we hope that your story will help not only us in creating the project, but also you to find or create your own remote job, thanks to which you can freely travel around the world and not be tied to a specific place. We all have cool interests and hobbies. But by and large they do not generate income and the opportunity to travel. We want to fix this!

If you liked this material, please leave a comment at the bottom. Click on the button from vkontakte, facebook, twitter, classmates, etc. (located below) and share with your friends so that other people know about it. We will be very grateful to you!

If you have any questions for us personally or about the project as a whole, ask them in the comments. We will not leave any issue unattended. Add as a friend at in social networks, subscribe to our channel on your own and be happy!

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