I have a short list of things that make me happy: sunshine, a cold beer and my friends (and puppies, too). Moving to Seville was a no-brainer for me.

When I graduated college, I expected to live abroad for a year, learning Spanish and traveling as much as 631€ would allow, and the  return to Chicago to become a journalist. But I was hooked, not willing to give up my daily siesta, the cheap tapas and a whirlwind relationship with the Novio. Five years on, I make a living from teaching part-time and blogging part-time. Turns out, with Seville as my muse, I’m able to sell the city I now call my hogar dulce hogar. A city where flamenco seduces, where the sun and empty blue sky reflect off the Guadalquivir, where lunchtime stretches into dinnertime. My visitors to Seville understand the draw it’s had on me, and I seek to relate that to my readers, too.

When Flavio Bastos, a travel professional with a background in digital platforms, offered me the chance to test run his course about how to use your city as a vehicle with which to make money, I couldn’t say no. Habla de Tu Ciudad y Vive de Ella is the result of over fifteen years in the travel industry, numerous city guides and a love for Europe’s great cities.

The Course

Habla de tu Ciudad is a five-part online course that focuses on the various mechanics of starting up a blog or webpage, learning SEO, writing compelling content and learning how to monetize your blog. Each module comes with mini-lessons, complete with videos and text to helped you get the most out of each one. After deciding to self-host Sunshine and Siestas late last summer, I’ve used loads of resources on the net and other e-books to get an idea of how to begin taking my humble blog to the next level. They’re useful and pertinent, but very one-dimensional in the sense that you read it, take notes, and try to apply what you’ve learned to your own pages. But Flavio’s approach, his videos that show real-time tutorials and “homework” activities that allow you to put to practice the different topics discussed in each module.

Want proof? Type in “guy speedo siesta spain” and see who comes up first. I am an SEO genius. Not really, but the 15-year-old boy in me is loving this. Or, do a google image search for “Ham Fair Aracena” and you’ll see a few of my photos.

What Else I Liked

Flavio has worked on this course for the last four years, taking into account the latest rules and algorithms used by Google to rank pages. Apart from having the latest information within the travel and digital journalism, Flavio’s personal anecdotes of trial and error and how they led to his own successes were heart warming and left me feeling at ease. And even though it’s travel and tourism-centric, there are loads of relevant information for bloggers and digital media strategists. The course is easy to follow and starts with the basics, followed by a gradual build up.

Satisfied with that I had learned, I asked the course creator to tell me a bit more about the course.

Describe tu experiencia profesional, tanto en el sector en turismo como plataformas digitales. // Describe your professional experience, both in turismo and the digital world.

De formación soy periodista. Sin embargo tengo más de 15 años trabajando con Internet, trabajé en varias startups a lo largo de mi vida, y siempre de manera muy autodidacta. Cuando vine a vivir a Lisboa, hace 4 años, decidí que era el momento de entender más del área del turismo, que es algo que siempre me había fascinado pero nunca había tenido la oportunidad de explorar. Desde entonces he trabajado en el área de comunicaciones e internet para varias empresas, desde las RRPP para un software de revenue management hotelero hasta el community management para un buscador de turismo rural muy conocido en Portugal.

I’m a journalist by studies. Nevertheless, I have more than 15 years of experience working on the Internet, working on various start-ups throughout my life, and always in a self-teaching type of way. When I came to live in Lisbon four years ago, I decided it was he best moment to start understanding this part of tourism more – it’s something that has always fascinated my, but I never had the opportunity to explore it. Since then I’ve been working

¿Cómo desarrollaste el curso? ¿Tienes algún plan de elaborarlo o hacer otro curso parecido? // How did you develop the course? Do you have any plans to expand it, or begin another, similar course?

El curso nace de una inquietud: ver el potencial de muchas personas que no saben cómo sacarle provecho a las herramientas que nos brinda la era digital. A nivel personal, antes del curso, había formado a algunas personas con conocimientos básicos sobre cómo hacer ciertas cosas.

Por mi experiencia con la industria turística y tras ver casos como el de AirBnb (empresa valorada actualmente en 1 billón de dólares), pensé que esto es algo que puede hacer cualquier persona. Me refiero a “hablar de su ciudad”: la gran mayoría ya lo hace a través de las redes sociales: instagram, facebook, twitter. Y para vivir de ello sólo deben entender un poco más de el mundo digital y hacer eficazmente esas comunicaciones. Deben tener ciertos conocimientos: conocer cómo funcionan los programas de afiliados, optimización para buscadores (SEO), cómo escribir para web, gestión eficaz de redes sociales, asuntos de publicidad,  etc.

El curso es una plataforma pensada en brindar las herramientas necesarias a cualquier persona que quiera trabajar con Internet intentando abarcar de lo más básico a un nivel intermedio. El curso podría perfectamente llamarse “Habla de cualquier cosa y vive de ello”, pero pensé que no sería un buen nombre, y por eso decidí enfocarme en las ciudades y el turismo. Pero el curso lo han hecho personas de varias industrias y todos le están sacando provecho en sus carreras o empleos actuales, además de estar generando webs paralelas que les permiten tener ingresos adicionales.

No tengo planes de hacer un nuevo curso, sino de seguir mejorando el actual. De hecho, el curso está en constante actualización, y tenemos sesiones grupales y personales permanentemente para garantizar que quienes hacen el curso sacan el mejor provecho de las herramientas dispuestas en el curso.

The course was born from restlessness: seeing the potential that many people had to create content, but had no idea of how to take advantage of the numerous digital tools at their disposition. On a personal level, I was already training several people and teaching them the basics.

In my experience in the tourism industry and after seeing cases like AirBnb (currently valued at 1 billion dollars), I thought that it was something anyone could do: talking about their city. Most already do it through social media: twitter, Facebook, instagram. To be able to make a living really only depends on understanding the digital world a bit more and effective communication.  One should have certain skills: they should know about affiliate programs, SEO, how to write web copy, how to use social media, publicity, etc.

The course is a platform that uses the necessary tools that anyone who wants to live and work on the Internet, from the most basic to an intermediate level. It could actually be called, “Talk About Whatever You Want and Make a Living Off of It,” but I thought that it wouldn’t be such a good name, and that’s why I decided to focus on cities and tourism. But the course has been done by people in various industries who have seen its benefits in their professional careers and current jobs, in addition to running additional blogs as an extra income source.

I don’t have any plans to make another course, but to keep improving the current one. In fact, the course is constantly under construction, and we have group and personalized sessions constantly to guarantee that those who do the course get the most out of the tools at their disposal.

¿Cómo pueden los blogueros adaptar tu curso a sus blogs o las redes sociales? // How can bloggers adapt your course to their own blogs or social media?

Una de las inquietudes permanentes de los blogueros es “vivir del blog”. Con mi plataforma, muchos blogueros descubren qué están haciendo bien y qué están haciendo mal, así como generar ideas sobre nuevas oportunidades que quizás no vieron anteriormente.

Así que el curso puede funcionar como varias cosas: mera inspiración y mejoramiento de habilidades, o aprendizaje de cero de cómo iniciarte en el mundo digital, cómo escribir y sobre todo cómo sacar dinero de ello, en cualquier industria.

One of the biggest worries bloggers have is how to “live from” their blogs. With the platform, many bloggers have discovered what they’re doing well and what they’re not, allowing them to create new opportunities that perhaps they didn’t see before.

That way, the course works on many levels: plain old inspiration and improving skills, or starting from zero and learning how to get started in the digital world, how to write and, above all, how to make money within any industry.

¿Cuál es tu ciudad preferida? Descríbela en una o dos frases. // What’s your favorite city? Describe it in a few sentences.

Lisboa. Lisboa es una ciudad que para empezar, no parece una ciudad, sino una pequeña aldea pero al mismo tiempo con todos los beneficios de una capital europea. Tiene playa y montaña a menos de 30 minutos. Y es muy auténtica. Por  eso adoro esta ciudad.

Lisbon. Lisbon is a that, at first glance, doesn’t seem like a city but a small town, but at the same time has all the benefits of being a European capital. It’s got beaches and mountains at less than 30 minutes. And it’s very authentic. That’s why I love this city.

Mil gracias to Flavio for providing me with a free trial of his great digital training program, Habla de Tu Ciudad. As always, all opinions expressed are my own. Click on the link above to learn more and sign up to learn how you can start living from your city, and take advantage of this incredible offer, plus a 20€ discount by using the code SUNSHINE. First ten to grab it and purchase the course will get the discount. Follow Flavio on twitter at @fba.