Amateur Traveler

Amateur Traveler is an independent travel media property owned and operated by Chris Christensen through A Sense of Place, Inc. The project began with the first Amateur Traveler podcast episode on July 2, 2005, making it one of the longest-running destination-focused travel podcasts still operating. Christensen originally created the show after recognizing that travel stories were consistently the most engaging conversations among friends. The podcast later developed into a broader website containing more than 2,000 blog posts, destination archives, practical travel resources, videos, photography, product reviews, and region-specific sections. Christensen also operates related properties including California Travel and Hotel Scoop.

The core editorial proposition is straightforward: Amateur Traveler functions as an audio and written guidebook for real travelers. Its podcast generally presents a 30-to-50-minute, one-on-one interview with a local, historian, guide, travel writer, or experienced visitor who can explain how to spend approximately a week in a destination. The editorial emphasis is on places people can realistically visit, with useful context about history, culture, transportation, activities, food, neighborhoods, and itinerary planning. The intended listener is primarily a North American traveler with one or two weeks of annual vacation, although the audience is international. The site also covers Travel 101 topics, saving money, family travel, budget travel, solo travel, adventure travel, volunteer travel, cruises, accommodation planning, and travel equipment.

The editorial model is strongly personality-led rather than newsroom-led. Chris Christensen is the central editor, host, publisher, and gatekeeper, and the site openly identifies itself as his creation. That gives Amateur Traveler a recognizable voice and a relatively clear point of view. The site favors firsthand experience, specificity, destination knowledge, and practical usefulness over generic listicles or promotional tourism copy. Its podcast pitching rules explicitly request destination-led ideas, timeless subjects, recently experienced guests, and itineraries that would appeal to independent or small-group travelers. The rules also discourage tourism-board representatives as guests when they are simply paid to promote a destination, and they reject pitches centered on books, apps, websites, resorts, or undifferentiated travel products.

The website has an unusually durable archive. Its pitch guidance emphasizes evergreen content because episodes from 2005 continue to receive downloads. This long-tail structure creates value for destinations and brands that can contribute genuinely useful information rather than short-lived news. A notable franchise is the destination podcast itself, which is organized by country, continent, and region and supported by an episode map. The site also maintains practical guide sections such as Getting Started Traveling, round-the-world ticket guidance, accommodation booking resources, cruise-planning advice, Airbnb information, and packing recommendations. The combination of audio, transcripts or supporting articles, destination categorization, photography, video, and evergreen search content gives campaigns multiple possible formats.

Amateur Traveler has meaningful industry credibility. Christensen’s published biography cites awards and recognition from Travel+Leisure, the Society of American Travel Writers, the North American Travel Journalism Association, TBEX, and the Podcasting Hall of Fame. The 2025 media kit states that the podcast generated 1.98 million downloads in 2025, with more than 165,000 monthly downloads, and describes the show as ranking in the top 1% of podcasts. The site media kit also reports more than 34,000 monthly page views for AmateurTraveler.com. Independent SEO metrics supplied for this assessment show Moz DA 52, Moz PA 52, Ahrefs DR 59, approximately 61,040 backlinks from 2,320 referring domains, 34,513.8 monthly organic visits, and approximately 4,980 ranking keywords. Its Spam Score is reported as 0. These figures indicate a legitimate, established niche publisher with a substantial historical link profile, but not a mass-market travel publisher comparable to Lonely Planet, Condé Nast Traveler, or Travel + Leisure.

For digital PR professionals, the site is most valuable when a campaign has a destination, travel behavior, cultural, historical, or itinerary angle. A destination with an unusual story, a strong local expert, a distinctive travel route, or useful new visitor information could be relevant. The site is less suitable for general corporate announcements, generic product launches, tourism-board messaging, or news-driven press releases. Expert commentary is possible when the expert is genuinely connected to a destination and can provide specific guidance. Brand mentions are also possible in travel-product reviews, gear coverage, accommodation discussions, affiliate content, and destination stories, but the editorial context must be useful to travelers.

The site has a clearly documented but selective guest contribution program. It accepts guest posts from travel bloggers, travel journalists, and travelers, but generally does not accept submissions from companies or offshore SEO teams. Articles should normally exceed 2,000 words, have an approved topic, be based on a destination the writer personally visited, include at least ten original photographs, and be unpublished elsewhere. The site allows one do-follow link per thousand words for bloggers and one link for companies, while explicitly rejecting casino, gambling, marijuana, and essay-writing-service links. It also requires the pitch password “I can follow instructions,” which is an important qualification filter. This makes genuine editorial contribution possible, but makes routine commercial guest-posting or scaled link acquisition unsuitable.

Commercially, Amateur Traveler uses Mediavine for website advertising and has an exclusive podcast advertising relationship with Glassbox Media. It does not accept sponsored posts on the website, although it offers podcast sponsorship, web advertising, selected press-trip or FAM-trip arrangements, occasional gear reviews, and custom or white-labeled podcast production. The site also uses affiliate links, including Amazon affiliate links, and states that readers should assume links may be affiliate links. No major controversy or adverse editorial dispute was identified in the reviewed sources. The most notable editorial stance is its emphasis on authenticity, firsthand experience, sustainability, cultural connection, and resistance to generic promotional pitches.

Compared with large travel publishers, Amateur Traveler has less scale but more direct access to a recognizable editor and host. Compared with broad travel blogs, it has a stronger podcast franchise, deeper archive, clearer destination specialization, and higher editorial selectivity. Compared with travel-podcast competitors, its combination of destination interviews, written planning resources, episode mapping, and long-term search visibility is a differentiator. Its primary limitation is capacity: the project is owner-led, receives a very high volume of pitches, and appears to publish selectively. For link building, it should be approached as a genuine editorial and digital PR opportunity, not as a link-insertion inventory source.