A Day in the Life of an RV Influencer
If you’ve never gone camping in an RV before, it can feel pretty intimidating. And although we design Heartland products to be easy to use and set up, there’s no comparison to having someone show you the ropes firsthand. That’s where a RV influencer comes in. RV influencers create content about all aspects of the RV lifestyle and share it with their audiences across websites, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and more.
Creating detailed blogs and videos about owning an RV helps demystify RV ownership in an accessible way – it’s almost like having a friend in the room. And thanks to the broad variety of RV influencers out there, any topic you can think of has been covered, whether it’s handling routine maintenance tasks, installing specialized gadgets, or renovating older RVs from the top down.
We reached out to five RV content creators to learn more about their lives. They walked us through a typical day, including their daily routine, how they create content, and what it takes to make a living doing what they do. Our list of experts includes:
- Amanda Bone from The Adventure Bones
- Brandy Gleason from Gleason Family Adventure
- Sandi Falin from TryNSomethingNew
- Melissa Lahr from Lahrs with Latitude
- Trina Sholin from RV Fixer Upper
Here’s how they became professional content creators and influencers, in their own words.
Amanda Bone from The Adventure Bones
The Beginning
Darren and I purchased our fifth wheel in June 2021, so we’ve had just over two years of traveling full-time. Camping with our kids in an old pop-up camper helped us create the best family memories for years. When we decided to upgrade to a fifth wheel, we went with the Heartland Bighorn Traveler 39MB. We made an instructional video when we were packing up the camper to move campsites in August 2021, and it went viral on TikTok. It was only supposed to be for family and friends to give them a view into our life, so its success took us by surprise. I didn’t know anything about content creation at that point and had no idea it could be an income stream. But after some research, I decided to see what might come of it.
Partnering with Brands
Personally, I don’t like to reach out to brands unless there’s a product I really want or need, because I would purchase it anyway. But most of our partnerships come from brands reaching out to me first. For example, we’ll get an email from a brand offering a product in exchange for a video or photos.
I’ll write back and negotiate for payment as well as the product, unless it’s a big ticket item or offer, like eBikes or a free stay at a super nice RV resort. I don’t currently have an assistant, lawyer, or manager, but I can definitely see the benefit of it.
Creating Content
The time it takes to complete a project varies greatly. For example, I spent one hour shooting a short video yesterday for a picnic tablecloth. But a recent project requiring a 1000-word article with multiple photos and a short video took me a few hours to write, another few hours to take photos and video, and another little bit to edit it and do voice-overs.
I try to schedule my projects so they aren’t all due at the same time. On average, I spend 10-15 hours or less per week creating content, because I also have a regular job, and I homeschool our three children.
Daily Schedule
Before I’m a content creator, I’m a mom first. So early to mid-morning, we eat breakfast, do schoolwork, have a snack, and then finish school by lunch. Then, I’ll look at my calendar to see what’s due soon and pick the content I need to create that day. Between lunch and dinner, I film, photograph, edit, or write content. From 6-8:30 p.m., we eat dinner, have family time, and then put the kids to bed. Sometimes I’ll use the quiet time after the kids are in bed to record voice-overs – quiet spaces are hard to find when five people live in less than 500 square feet.
Income
The bulk of our income comes from the regular jobs that Darren and I have. Sometimes we’ll do affiliate marketing with brands if they offer it, and we have an Amazon storefront that doesn’t make us much money. I’m working on getting more into user-generated content (UGC) to create another stream of income that doesn’t require posting to our social channels. (UGC is just when you create content for brands for them to use directly, rather than creating content for brands that lives on your own channels.)
Pros & Cons of Being An Influencer
The money is nice, but the best things about being a creator are getting to have new experiences, like going to a cool resort or being gifted a UTV for the day to ride through a national park. Different experiences allow us to make so many cool memories as a family, and it more than makes up for the work that goes into it.
The downside is that most people don’t realize just how much work goes into filming, editing, posting, and answering comments. It’s not a job you can clock in and out of, and it can be hard to live in the moment when you also have to film the moment and make sure the angles and lighting are great.
Advice for Future Influencers
Create a niche that makes you different from other RVers. Don’t compare yourself and your follower count to other people’s accounts – it’s not your worth. It’s easy to get overly wrapped up in creating content, so try to set boundaries around creating content at specific times or days of the week. Don’t feel like you have to accept a deal with a brand just because they offer. Partner with brands whose values align with your own.
Brandy Gleason from Gleason Family Adventures
The Beginning
I’ve been RVing for more than 15 years at this point. We used to camp in tents when our kids were young, and then I got sick of having to walk multiple kids to the bathroom in the dark at 3 a.m., and an RV seemed like the perfect solution. In 2021, I bought a Heartland Sundance 294BH, the model we have now.
About five years ago, I started creating content around camping and RVing. I was just sharing what I was doing with my kids on a day-to-day basis so family and friends could have a glimpse into our lives. But when people started following my account, I became more intentional and started posting more informational content for campers of all experience levels.
Partnering with Brands
I’m at just about 1 million followers, and I haven’t had to reach out to brands in a while. Typically they find me and reach out to organize a partnership. I make sure to only work with people and brands that align with my values, and that offer something I would buy or use myself. If there’s an item I would pay money for myself, it’s a no-brainer to partner with that brand – it’s an authentic partnership, not just pushing something on my followers to earn some money.
Creating Content
Depending on how many contracts I have and how aggressive the due dates are, I might spend 20 hours or more per week creating content. I love to write, and I can easily create reels and static posts for social media channels.
My content generally is based around a destination. I have to travel there and gather information, drive to locations, take pictures, and shoot B-roll videos. That can take up to two days, depending on what the project is. Then I’ll edit the video and create the finished product.
Multiple hours of research go into each project, and I like to do a lot of hands-on learning. But there might also be hours of driving, and interviews with the brand’s owners or directors to make sure I get the messaging right. Every client is different, and each one has their own contract. They either ask for content pieces a la carte or choose from the packages I offer.
Daily Schedule
I’m not a full-time creator, so I don’t have a set schedule and it varies a lot from week to week. I just fit it in whenever I need to in order to meet deadlines.
Income
In addition to creating content for brands, my day-to-day job is as a freelance writer and social media manager, and I teach companies how to use social media to build their businesses.
Pros & Cons of Being an Influencer
The best things about being an influencer are sharing things that will help other people create lifelong memories, and encouraging people to get out and explore the world more. The downside is that doing things you love as work can start to blur the lines so that they feel more like work and less like passions. I’m making changes to ensure that these kinds of things still stay enjoyable.
I’ve met some amazing people since I’ve been living this lifestyle. I’ll get to host a Heartland RV rally soon and pass on my love of RVing to others in real-time, person-to-person! This is something that has changed my life for the better. I’ve made friendships that will last a lifetime.
Advice for Future Influencers
Only do this if you have something of value to share. While you might get lots of views on social media for dancing or doing crazy stuff, it is just a dance or a silly follow. Provide useful tips. Teach people. Share the good stuff. Give people something to look forward to and they’ll keep coming back for more.
Sandi Falin from TryNSomethingNew
The Beginning
Eight years ago, we lived in a big house. Our kids were in school and we had a successful film business. It looked great on paper, but there was a huge hole inside of us – we were missing a sense of adventure. The daily grind had made us feel numb inside.
For the last eight years, we’ve been living in an RV full-time. Our first RV was a 1999 Winnebago Adventurer, and we deliberately bought an older model so we could revamp the whole thing and add our sense of flair. Now we have a 2024 Heartland Cyclone 4006 and we are OBSESSED.
We started posting videos on YouTube about seven years ago. Since we were already filmmakers, it was natural that we shared our travels with our family and friends. Sharing our adventures helped us gain a super cool relationship with our followers. In the past two years, we’ve really started to grow and it has been amazing. One of the biggest rewards we’ve experienced is learning that we’ve inspired others to try something new and make positive changes in their lives. Truly priceless!
Partnering with Brands
A little over a year ago, we started to take working with brands more seriously. So we reached out to all of the brands that we liked – we felt like that was the most natural way to start. As we grew, our email began blowing up with brands that wanted to work with us. In Q4 of last year, our schedule was bananas. We had opportunities with brands like NASCAR, CVS, Liquid Death, and more.
There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes. We negotiate a rate and the amount of deliverables, and sometimes a deal can take months to finalize. We have a manager now who worries about the details so we don’t have to.
Creating Content
We’re a little crazy with the amount of content we put out, but we love it so it doesn’t feel like work. Depending on how big a project is, it can take from a few hours to a few days. We specialize in family travel content, but RV life in particular.
Brands have different goals. Some are related to specific campaigns to promote a new product or service. Sometimes they want content for a specific platform, like TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube. Sometimes they want content for all three.
Once we sign the contract for a brand deal, we play to the project timeline. If there’s a tight timeline, we send our concept to the brand for pre-approval (if requested), or script out the idea and start shooting. There’s a lot that goes into creating content, and the behind-the-scenes can be pretty hectic. Everything needs to be prepared, from the kids to the dog to the RV and of course, the camera.
To make a great video, you’ve got to know about lighting, capturing audio, and video editing, and have an understanding of different social media channels and how to post on them. We created a course to teach people how to create content full-time with our TryNSomethingNew Creator Academy, just to take the mystery out of it. We have another course for kids who want to be YouTubers. We’ve been filmmakers for a long time, and we love teaching our craft to those who are into it. This is a great life, but it’s a ton of work. Our perspective – if you have to work, you might as well make it fun.
Daily Schedule
A typical day for us starts with making breakfast for the family and getting the kids situated with their learning for the day. Depending on how many projects we are working on, we will either plan our shoot for a brand or create lifestyle content to post throughout the day. If we’re feeling snazzy, we’ll batch shoot to get ahead of the curve, and then edit and schedule out our posts.
We check in with the kids at lunch and continue either filming or taking Zoom calls and handling meetings. When we finish working for the day, we might take our kids somewhere or cook dinner. Throughout the day, we post on all our platforms and try to engage with comments. At night, we typically snuggle with our kids and watch a movie. I wish we were the kind of people to go to bed early but we just aren’t.
Income
We have several different streams of income. We make money from social media platforms, our courses, brand deals, and affiliate marketing. We’ll be selling our own swag here shortly. At the moment brand deals are 60% of our income, 25% from platforms, 13% from courses, and the rest from affiliates.
Pros and Cons of Being an Influencer
One of the best things about being a content creator is when people approach us and want to say hi. Since my mohawk and our RV are pretty noticeable, we have people coming up to us all the time. Many awesome things have happened because we are content creators. We get invited to do cool things, work with awesome brands, and overall just have a lot of fun. Our kids love meeting other kids too, so it’s a win for all of us. We don't have any downsides to what we do. We enjoy it, so it works!
Advice for Future Influencers
If you want to be a content creator, just know it’s not an overnight success kind of thing. Have patience, work hard, and educate yourself so you start with the right tools. Eliminate the fumbling if you can. If you are nervous in front of the camera, practice – it does get easier. I was petrified when we first started, I would turn ten shades of red and start sweating. This can be a very lucrative, amazing life. When we started posting videos on YouTube years ago it was a pipe dream to think of becoming an influencer. Now, this is what we do full time and we love it.
Melissa Lahr from Lahrs With Latitude
The Beginning
We began RVing seven years ago. While we had done tent camping quite a bit as a family, an RV was a new experience for us. In 2016, we bought a Heartland Torque 380, and it’s still what we use to this day. We love it to pieces. When we first got it, we had no clue what we were doing, but we were excited to move into our RV full-time and figure it out.
Three years ago, we started getting more serious about our content creation. We had been casually sharing our RV lifestyle with friends and family up until then. But after some serious experiences, we realized we had things to share that could bring value to the RV community. Our goal was to inspire more families to get out into nature, travel together, and prioritize their dreams.
Partnering with Brands
Luke and I are the whole team. We shoot the photos and videos, do the writing, populate our blog, edit our videos, and reach out to brands for collaborations. There are brands that we reach out to directly because we already love them, and we want to build a long-term relationship working with them. When it comes to choosing which partnerships to take, we prioritize the ones that will bring the most value to our audience. Some brands reach out to us, and we only work with them if we feel aligned. Then we negotiate deals over emails or on a Zoom call.
Creating Content
Content creation is not our primary source of income – we have another business. So we often do our content work in the afternoons. We might capture hours of content as we take our adventures and long-form videos and blogs take much longer to create. For example, longer videos take several days to edit. Blog writing takes about four hours, on average. I would say we put in about 30 hours a week working on content creation. A lot of the work we do is unpaid, but we do it because we feel it brings value to our audience.
We create whatever content a brand might need. We might do anything from creating photos a brand uses for advertising, to posting stories and reels on Instagram, writing blog posts, or shooting long-form videos.
We start with the brand deal, and then plan it out on the calendar so we know what needs to be completed and when. Once we have it scheduled, we carve out time to shoot and get creative with it. The editing often takes longer than the actual shoot. We have to write captions, add hashtags, use tags for the brand, and add appropriate links when necessary.
Daily Schedule
We work about four hours per day on short-form content, writing, pitching, etc. Most of our content is Instagram posts with photos and short-form videos, focusing specifically on RV living and travel itineraries.
Around 7 each morning, we’ll make coffee and take a walk. Next comes planning, some meditation, and breakfast for the kids. From 9 a.m. to noon, I focus on facilitating the kids' education and supporting their passions while Luke works on our other business. We take half an hour for lunch at noon, and then answer and send emails, and plan content for the coming days. In the afternoon, we pitch and organize brand collaborations, create posts for social media, and engage with the social community in the comments and DMs.
Dinner happens around 5 p.m., and then we spend a few hours outside, playing games, or having adventures. Around 8, we start winding down. That might look like listening to an audiobook or reading. We turn off screens at this point so the kids are ready for bed between 9 and 9:30. At 10, Luke and I go to bed ourselves.
Although this is a rough outline of our day, we’re flexible because we’re traveling constantly. Sometimes there are other kids at a campground for our kids to play with, which can create a bit more time to get work done.
Income
We own another business – a recruiting company we started a few years ago. That’s what pays the majority of our bills, and we see content creation as an added income stream that can help support our travels.
Pros and Cons of Being an Influencer
We love inspiring others to live extraordinary lives, teaching people about RV living, and helping people with travel planning.
The downside for us would be how time-consuming it can be. We are traveling full-time to spend time together and adventure as much as we can. Sometimes the balance of traveling, parenting, and working from home can become overwhelming. We have found that having a loose schedule works best for us so that we can leave room for all the chaos that comes with living this way.
Over the years, we’ve gotten quite a few messages from families who have changed their lives and are following their dreams because we share our content. We always say how beautiful the world would be if everyone could live their dream. Even if we only change one person's life, it is all worth it.
Advice for Future Influencers
Be consistent. I mentioned above how hard it can be to stay consistent with this work when you’re traveling as much as we do, but consistency is key in this world. We have played the long game and it is slow and steady over time. Although we haven’t had explosive growth, we’ve stuck with it anyway. When you realize it’s truly not about numbers, but about helping other people, you’ll feel much better about staying consistent.
Trina Sholin from RV Fixer Upper
The Beginning
We’ve been RVing for 13 years. We initially bought our RV for camping in Alaska in the summer because we used to live there. In 2020, we bought our current RV, a 2016 Heartland Cyclone 4250.
I've been an influencer since 2018. I started posting pictures on Instagram of our personal RV renovation and a lot of them went viral. My account quickly grew, and we got a lot of attention from companies that wanted to work with us.
Partnering with Brands
Sometimes I reach out to brands, and sometimes they reach out to me. I do have a talent agency that finds collaborations and helps me negotiate. When I negotiate deals myself, they take place via email – and sometimes it takes quite a few emails. In the influencer world, taking a product instead of payment is typically seen as a no-no, because you can’t pay the bills with products and it sets a bad precedent that puts other influencers at a disadvantage. I only accept product-only deals if it’s a high-ticket item that I like a lot, and only if they’re only asking for something small like a shout-out in stories.
Creating Content
I’m known for my before and afters, and I also do a lot of tutorials that break down how we accomplished individual projects.
I block out certain days to film content and I always keep a running list of ongoing ideas. Trends change fast on social media, so you can't sleep on them. On average I spend about four hours per day on social media, whether it's creating content, answering questions, or coming up with new ideas.
Every partnership is a little different. Some give you a script laying out exactly what they want you to say, and some include things you're not allowed to say. Some of my partnerships give me free rein to be original, which is great because it is organic and true to my personality. Brands might tell you what to put on each slide of an Instagram post, and what hashtags and mentions to include.
Editing Content & Exclusivity
As I'm editing, I keep the client's requests in front of me so I don't miss anything. One thing that people probably don't realize is how much back and forth can go on after you've completed filming and submitted the content to the client. That's why you want to get it 100% right the first time! If there's something you missed or something the client doesn't like, you’ll have to re-film, re-edit, and re-submit.
Exclusivity is something else that probably isn't widely known to your audience. Most companies include in the contract that for X number of days, you can't promote XYZ which is in direct competition with them. So if you just did something with a bicycle company, for example, they’ll ask you not to work with another bicycle company for a specific period to give them exclusivity on your social channel. As an influencer, you want to pay close attention to that clause and negotiate it if need be.
Daily Schedule
Mornings consist of checking/answering emails and answering questions and comments that people have asked on my posts or through DMs. On days I film, I try to film in the late morning or early afternoon. The lighting is best and I'm much more energetic at that time of the day. Most of the time I film my videos myself, but occasionally if it's something that I need assistance with, Steve acts as my photographer or videographer. I do editing in the late afternoons, but I always save my final edit for the next morning, so I can look at the project with fresh eyes.
Income
About 50% of my income comes from affiliate marketing, followed by selling online products like buying guides and doing consultation calls. I also manage social media for other businesses.
Pros and Cons of Being an Influencer
The best side of being an influencer is getting to do something I’m passionate about – and getting paid for it. Some of our renovations have influenced how manufacturers are designing future RVs, which is pretty cool. The CEO of THOR Industries mentioned our company by name on national TV – I was shocked he even knew who we were and what we did. I'm proud to be part of the movement that’s transforming RVs into more personalized, beautiful spaces and none of that would've happened if I wasn't an influencer/content creator.
The downside is probably creating boundaries with your business and not working all the time. It's super easy to overwork because most of us work from our phones.
Advice for Future Influencers
Connect with your audience. Become a part of the RV community by posting and answering questions. People love absorbing valuable information about RVs, RV living, travel, and RV renovations. Reach out to brands even if you think they’ll say no – because a lot of the time, they’ll probably say yes!
