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Welcome once again to the Interview with a blogger series. This post I should call it as interview with bloggers as it features not one but two bloggers – Crystal and Candy – the blogger sister duo from the United States.

Their blog, www.thetravelpockets.com, is a travel and style blog wherein they write about their travel adventures, tips and tricks of a safe travel, style and many more. And yes the icing on the cake is the photographs that they post on their blog.

Thanks to the social media through which I got connected with them and enjoy reading their travel adventures and also like to watch their videos on their YouTube channel.

Now it’s over to Crystal & Candy to hear about them more…

1. Please introduce yourself to our readers.

We’re sisters, Crystal and Candy, who grew up as military brats and spent the first half of our lives in Japan. The majority of our family resides in Japan, but we ventured out and have spent the second half of our lives mainly in the United States.

2. What was your inspiration to start your blog www.thetravelpockets.com?

We both love traveling and have always documented our travels mainly with photos and videos. We would often receive questions about the places we stayed, how much things cost, recommendations on what to do, etc. We started noticing that the photos and videos we shared were inspiring people to travel, so we decided to add some context to them.

3. How would you describe/introduce your blog to the new readers?

A fun travel blog created by two sisters who love traveling the world in style and finding the best hidden gems.

4. What do you think as the best and challenging aspects about being a blogger?

The challenging part is capturing as much as we can of our travel experiences for our readers. It’s hard to take pictures AND shoot video everywhere we go but we have adapted and now have the system down.

The best part is that we travel a lot more together now and have more quality sister time. It’s also been wonderful meeting fellow bloggers.

5. How would you describe your blogging style?

We ourselves read a ton of blogs when researching travel destinations and we prefer reading posts that are concise and deliver honest feedback. Since we enjoy this type of writing style we try to keep things fun and to the point. We also prefer blog posts with personal photos rather than stock images. Being able to see a personal photo or video really helps tell the story that is relatable and authentic.

6. What do you think blogging will look like in next 5 years? Will it still be around?

More people are starting to rely on information from bloggers, so yes, we believe it will still be around in 5 years.

7. Which part of blogging excites you the most – post writing or photography?

We enjoy both parts of blogging but photography is probably where we excel the most. We’re also incorporating more videos to our posts, so that’s been fun as well.

8. What is the biggest surprise that you have ever experienced after becoming a blogger?

That people actually read our blog and give us kudos for our posts. We started blogging to have a space to share our content, in one place, mainly for our friends and family. The fact that our audience has expanded outside of our immediate circle truly makes us happy.

9. What has been the toughest criticism and best compliment given to you as a blogger?

Best compliment would be that our posts are really authentic and natural.

Toughest criticism would be that we don’t have the right information. It’s especially hard when we get criticized for content that we know to be true, like our posts on Japan. We grew up in Japan and our mother is Japanese, so when people say we are providing false information, we take it a little harder than normal.

10. Would you like to share some words of wisdom or tips for the aspiring bloggers?

Keep a consistent schedule with your blog and try to keep your posts as simple as possible to help the readers. We find ourselves less focused with posts that have fonts that are difficult to read, tons of pop-ups and ads, and little to no photos.

We also think it’s important to help out other bloggers. We’ve asked fellow bloggers for help and we’ve also helped bloggers who have reached out to us. We really don’t view other bloggers as competition and see everyone as a community of travelers.

It has been great to know more about The Travelpockets. I hope you all enjoyed the interview too. I would like to thank Crystal and Candy for their time in doing this interview and share their thoughts.

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