Life & Work with Dan and Mikkel Woodruff

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dan and Mikkel Woodruff. 

Hi Dan and Mikkel, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Our couples travel blog started back in 2016 when we began to travel the world together. It’s called “Sometimes Home” because we’re usually on the road (whether domestically in the US, as close to home as Raleigh or as far as California, or abroad in Europe or Asia). 

In 2020, in the middle of a pandemic and a “no sail order” for cruise lines, we decided to start a niche site focusing on small format cruises, another passion of ours. Call us crazy, but we thought, “No risk, no reward!” 

We both own our own businesses separately as well as run Sometimes Home and Sometimes Sailing. (Dan’s a brand strategy expert and owns his own company, called Odin (OdinBrandStrategy.com), and Mikkel’s been a professional photographer for over 13 years, specializing in weddings and family sessions, at mikkelpaige.com.) We’ve gotten to where we are today – as pro travel writers and content creators, as well as independent small business owners – through hard work. 

Blogging as a business is very hard work if you want it to take off. But it’s also very rewarding if you’re willing to put time, money, and energy into it. 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s not that our road has been rough, by any means. But there’s a learning curve when it comes to blogging, as a business. 

You learn what works and doesn’t work over years of experience. This includes always increasing your knowledge in regards to SEO best practices, how to research topics you may want to write about, the best companies to partner with as well as learning who you want to work with, and different ways to network within the industry. With any profession, you learn and improve over time. 

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
One of our strengths on the front end is our photography and our blog content. A lot of content creators focus on their social media following but our main focus is on long-form articles on our blog that will be organically found (mostly via Google when someone searches for a specific topic). 

We create the blog posts in hopes that the articles we write will inspire people to book their next trip. Or, at the very least, inspires them to dream about their next trip and start to feel the wheels turn in their heads for how they’ll take steps to make that dream a reality. 

On the backend (as in things that the readers don’t see and aren’t aware of but are nonetheless vital to our business), we are really proud of the follow-through we have when we partner with destinations. Additionally, the marketing we think of (Dan’s the marketing guru!) and ways we brainstorm with companies is a strength. 

What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
We are Raleigh residents by choice! We grew up in different areas of New York (Dan’s from Buffalo and Mikkel’s from Long Island) but we chose to live in Raleigh. We love the city and North Carolina. 

We also moved from different cities (Dan moved to Raleigh from San Diego and Mikkel from NYC) and have lived in too many cities to list over time. Yet we have chosen to stay in Raleigh (in the same apartment, downtown, for 7+ years) because we love coming back to the city after we travel. 

Downtown Raleigh is always changing and there’s always something new and exciting happening. We’ve seen it change so much since we moved to the City of Oaks in 2014 (we met a year later) but it’s always been great progress. 

We love the people, the restaurants, how welcoming the city is to new residents overall, and that downtown is very walkable. The seasons are great (and the fact that there’s barely snow but it does get a bit chilly during winter is a plus!) and there’s always an easy and wonderful road trip nearby if you have the time and desire to explore. We also appreciate that RDU airport is easily accessible and has good flights that go to major destinations. 

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: https://sometimeshome.com and https://sometimessailing.com
• Instagram: @sometimeshome & @sometimessailing
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/sometimeshome & https://facebook.com/sometimessailing
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/sometimeshome & https://twitter.com/sometimessail
• Other: https://pinterest.com/sometimeshomeMD & https://pinterest.com/sometimessailing
• Tiktok: @sometimeshome

Image Credits
Mikkel Paige Photography