A travel blog is a great way to document your travels, share your experiences, and show the amazing destinations you’re visiting. Becoming a successful travel blogger is all about creating great content for users on a consistent basis. Once you establish a travel blog and a following, you can find ways to monetize it and grow your channel. Let’s go through how to start a travel blog and how to make money blogging.
What is a Travel Blog?
A travel blog is a way to document your travels and show your destinations. It can be done in the form of a travel vlog, with primarily video-based content. Other options include long-form written blogs that describe travel experiences and share travel tips, a photoblog of your travels, or a combination of the above.
Why You Should Start a Travel Blog in 2022
Becoming a travel blogger is one of the best ways to share your experiences, and it has many benefits, such as:
- Monetization: As you grow your following, you can monetize your blog through different avenues and earn money (which helps you travel more!) and create a profitable travel blog.
- Advice: You can share advice, helpful tips, and your experiences with others which can be beneficial for travel destination research.
- Memories: As you travel, you have a way to document your trips and preserve your adventures and memories online on your own blog.
- Connections: You can connect with other travelers online and offline by sharing your content on a serious travel blog, so you can get advice, meet new people, and have new experiences wherever you go through a travel blogging community.
Starting a Travel Blog in 13 Simple Steps
Starting your own travel blog isn’t as hard as it might seem. You can create a brand new blog in a few simple steps and optimize for Google search to increase your reach. We’ll go through some of the steps successful travel bloggers have taken to start their blogs and how you can create successful blogs.
1. Learn Everything You Can About Travel Blogging
Before starting with a blog and blogging platform, establish a solid foundation for your blog by taking courses. You can take a travel blogging course specifically and general freelance writing courses depending on the medium you choose for your travel blog.
2. Choose a Niche
A general blog can get lost in the competition. The best way to differentiate? Choose a niche when creating your personal brand. The niche will depend on the types of trips and your interests, but some examples include solo travel, budget travel, luxury travel, off the beaten path, and more for your travel blog theme.
3. Look at Your Competition
Once you’ve selected a niche, take a look at what other travel blogs are doing and how professional travel bloggers are building their following. Some things to note are how often they post, what kind of content seems to get them more engagement, and how they interact with followers on social media platforms.
4. Get the Necessary Tools
There are many digital marketing tools that can help you become a successful blogger. Make sure to undertake search engine optimization for your posts using tools such as Yoast SEO to gain visibility. You can also use tools like Google Analytics to understand traffic on your own site and optimize accordingly. Google Analytics features detailed analytics, including clicks, bounce rates, and user behavior, to help you identify how users are interacting with your content.
5. Choose a Web Hosting Provider
There are many different hosting companies with various deals available, so take the time to select a hosting company for your website. Most travel blogs are created on a self-hosted WordPress account, making them easy to set up. Look for a hosting provider that you can use with the WordPress platform to make it easy to set up and host basic pages of your blog.
6. Buy a Travel Blog Domain
Once you’ve chosen a hosting provider, go through their hosting plan in detail. You should purchase an exclusive domain name and domain privacy protection for your travel website. Some may have offers if you buy hosting, so look for exclusive deals to gain a free domain name for your travel blog.
7. Create Your Travel Blog
Once you have the domain and hosting set up, you’re ready to start. Install WordPress to make it easy to set up and maintain your first blog posts. A WordPress blog is easy to format and post. You can also find additional tools on the WordPress dashboard to enhance your blog by adding WordPress plugins. You can use free themes for your WordPress site or a premium theme that you purchase for website design. If you’re not comfortable setting up your WordPress theme, you can work with a cheap web developer to get the website up and running with a free theme.
8. Organize Your Site
Now that your site is designed, you should use the WordPress content management system to organize your content and make it easy for users to find content on your site. Look at other professional websites to see how other bloggers have set up their website sections.
9. Write Your First Blog Post
The next step is to start writing your first blog and posting it. You can talk about exclusive travel tips, your experiences in a country, or really anything that you’d like. Focus on making it valuable for users, and include information you wish you had known beforehand to give users an exclusive look at your travel.
10. Optimize Your Blog Post for SEO
Making sure search engines can find your posts helps you gain more followers as that can help with making money. Add in relevant keywords based on what people are searching for in travel blogs and the destinations you’re writing for. Posting regularly and optimizing for SEO as much as possible will help you grow your travel blog exponentially.
11. Publish Your Post
After you’ve written the post, it’s time to publish it. You’ll need to preview the formatting to ensure it shows up on the website correctly and hit publish. You can find helpful articles on publishing the blog on a free WordPress website if you’re unsure how to.
12. Share on Social Media
Now that the blog is up, it’s time to promote it! Word of mouth marketing helps increase social media coverage to drive more views and traffic to your business. You can promote the post within your own network on any social media platform to start with. Ask for feedback to gauge whether people can tell how much effort you put in and what users would like to see so you can improve moving forward.
13. Grow Your Travel Blog
After the first post is published and promoted, you’re on your way to becoming a seasoned travel blogger. A successful blog is all about ensuring that you’re posting consistently and that users find your content valuable (and tell you that!). Encourage users to leave comments, like posts, and ask questions to build your following. Once you start seeing engagement, you can seek opportunities for sponsored posts and affiliate marketing to become a successful owner of your blog.
Travel Blogging Tips
Creating a successful travel blog is about consistency, value, and adding a unique voice to the mix. Here are some top tips to make your travel blog even better:
- Be you: You can look at other blogs to get a sense of people’s styles, but ultimately, users are coming for your perspective. So be authentic and honest rather than trying to go for someone else’s style and build your unique brand.
- Communicate: Posting consistently is a huge part of the blogging experience, but so is communication. Keep your followers updated on what you’re up to, what your plans are, and if there will be delays in the content.
- Maintain a social media presence: A social media presence across different platforms ensures that you reach users where they are and have a solid following. Don’t just stick to one platform. Try to vary content across Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and even TikTok to reach new audiences.
- Plan ahead: It’s a lot of pressure to regularly create fresh content, which is why it’s crucial to plan and create a schedule. Even if it’s a loose plan, map out what you’d like to write about, so you’re not feeling stuck for content.
How much does it cost to start a travel blog?
The cost of starting a travel blog varies based on how much investment you’re willing to put in and how you set it up. Some of the main expenses include
- Website hosting and domain name
- Website development costs
- Social media marketing
- Travel blogging equipment such as a camera and mic
How do travel bloggers get paid?
A professional travel blogger can make money in different ways, depending on the type of content and user engagement. Some of the ways travel bloggers can get paid include:
- Sponsored content: Working with brands and destinations to create sponsored content based on needs
- Affiliate marketing: Gaining a commission from products sold through the blog, including clothing, equipment, travel essentials
- Subscriptions: Creating exclusive content and rewards for users that pay a monthly subscription fee
Is it worth starting a travel blog?
If you travel a lot and want to share your experiences, a travel blog can be a fun way to accomplish that. You can document your trips and gain enough of a following to start making some income from it. Of course, how much time and money you get from it will depend on the level of time and investment you’re willing to put in, but it can be worthwhile. If you’re unsure whether a travel blog is right for you, you can start one and run it for just a year and see how much traction you get before fully committing to it.
Image: Depositphotos
This article, “How to Start a Travel Blog” was first published on Small Business Trends
