Howdy folks. I said I would do a post on Drew Binsky a little while ago now, and I’m true to my word – here it is! Drew is a 29 year old American travel blogger, who set off a few years back now with his goal to visit every country in the world. He announced earlier this year he was around five or six countries short of reaching his goal, they included Venezuela and Jamaica amongst a few others, and he was set to reach his goal this year. Then the pandemic struck and he has been sidelined for most of the year. Recently he headed to Mexico, where he’d already been, but he’s yet to take to his final few countries.

Drew’s views are as high as I’ve seen for a travel blogger, regularly getting well over a million views per video and some getting far more. Although he has less subscribers than say ‘Bald and Bankrupt’ – who has recently dropped a few new videos after nothing for months by the way – his videos seems to really rack up the views.

He’s so successful that he’s just dropped a video looking for someone working remotely to edit his videos, and yes he’s going to pay them! He uses some pretty swanky gear, as you’ll see in his video below from Central African Republic where he takes a boat close to the other side of the river where DRC sits with, as he says, over $10,000 of equipment in his backpack. To me that is simply mindboggling!

I am going to be completely honest about a couple of things – firstly, I can’t really nail the exact reason but I don’t like him that much. Is it jealousy? Well, that’s my other confession, I am definitely jealous. The guy is EXTREMELY successful, he’s hit a formula – interestingly his videos are rarely longer than 10 minutes – which works. His videos are extremely slick and well put together. Considering the equipment he uses, you’d expect that. He’s been a journalist I think before which helps. I’m sure I heard him say that. But I’m more jealous of all the places he’s been! But somehow his personality grates on me somewhat.

But at the end of the day, he’s successful. This is his life, this is how he lives and this is how he makes money. And I don’t begrudge him that at all. I do feel he puts himself in some silly situations though and comes across as a bit naive. Hence the next two videos I’m sharing today. Firstly he journeys to Cameroon, this is 2018, and knowing there is a civil war happening there in the English speaking part of the country, he goes there and interviews people. I think at the same time it’s great that SOMEONE is acknowledging what is happening in Cameroon, because it’s been so widely ignored in the West. Perhaps his ‘inner journalist’ popped out. But also putting himself in danger puts the people who help him out in danger too. All in all I think though it’s a GOOD thing he made the following video:

Having said that, the video title – ‘I’m caught in a Civil War’ makes it sound like the conflict broke out around him with no warning, whereas he deliberately chose to go to places where there had been conflict.

Also, the following video is from Chad, a northern/central African country not a lot of people visited and he only went because he’s trying to visit every country in the world. He then tries to make out he nearly died, which frankly he didn’t from his story, and he’s angry at the response of the locals when he took a photo of a kid without permission which in West Africa is a no-no.

As you can see, his thumbnails always include a picture of himself. Interesting I think – but hey he’s better looking than I am. His website lists all his numbers. I guess this is just the modern thing with the interweb these days. He’s obviously been great at promoting himself over the years and having a stated goal (To Visit Every Country) and being able to show how popular he’s been with numbers – views, subscribers, followers on Instagram, Facebook, Snap Chat etc impresses because he has serious reach.

It’s something for ‘digital nomads’ to aspire too. Personally it’s so far in excess of my miserly numbers I can barely imagine how he got there, and congrats to Drew because he’s building himself a very successful empire. Take a look at his videos and tell me what your impressions are. I’m sure many of you know him already. So please do comment!

And naturally, May the Journey Never End!