How to Start a Travel Blog

If you want to become a travel blogger and start your own blog, you will have to make a couple of steps before you can get everything ready. These are not complicated things, but still, you need to know what is a blog, what you are doing, and make everything right to start your blogging career properly.

This guide will help you go through these steps smoothly while also pointing out important things you need to know about being a travel blogger. We will talk about the important things you need to know to run that blog properly. Have no worries, it’s not difficult to start your own travel blog, but you need to have the right mindset and put in the necessary work.

Here is what we will talk about today:

This guide is focused on building a travel blog, but there are also many things here that can help you start any kind of blog. Simply put, some things are the same, but some are different. So, let’s start with the first important question that needs to be answered.

Why start a travel blog?

There are a couple of reasons why you should embark on this journey. Naturally, like with any serious step in your life, you need to know your “why” if you are going to succeed. This is what fuels your motivation and keeps you going even when you are feeling tired, and let’s be honest, you might experience various setbacks on the road up ahead.

Still, nothing worthwhile comes easily and the same rule applies to becoming a successful travel blogger. Here are some good reasons that will drive you towards success.

You want to do it for yourself

If you want to start a travel blog and eventually become successful and make money off it, there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it is very good to have this kind of ambition. We all have our dreams and aspirations, an idea of how we would like our lives to look in the future.

If you are an independent individual who wants to do everything on their own, this kind of career choice might be suitable for you. So, if you can’t imagine your life without traveling and you would like to continue doing it in the future while making money, then this is a path you should pursue.

The important thing is to be prepared to work for yourself as well and not just dream of being a travel blogger. Work hard and you will get there.

You want to get into the tourism industry

A lot of people see travel blogging as an opportunity to get into the tourism industry. Although this is a viable option, there is a big mistake people make at the start. Instead of thinking about what they can offer to the industry, they immediately think about what they will get.

To get something in return, you need to give value and not the other way around. Don’t be that blogger that sends emails to travel agencies asking them for free accommodation etc. Work on building your blog and focus on yourself. As you offer quality, the opportunities will arise on their own.

You want to help others

It’s good to have ambition and achieve everything you’ve imagined in life through travel blogging, but still, if you think that you can make it all about yourself and succeed, you are terribly wrong. Travel blogging is about engaging with various communities and sharing content, learning from each other, and cooperating.

You need to establish a connection with your audience, collaborate with other bloggers and influencers, and be partners with people from the tourism industry. This means providing quality content that will teach, inspire and entertain people and be helpful to them in some way.

All bloggers need to have the motivation to share their ideas and try to bring value to people; this can sustain them even when they are not making money.

What you will be doing as a travel blogger

A lot of people have misconceptions about what it means to be a blogger. For example, people think that the only thing travel bloggers do is travel around the world and get discounts and free services. If it were this easy, everyone would be doing it, but in reality, there are many tasks behind the scene that bloggers do and spend most of their time on.

You will spend a lot of time in front of your computer

A travel blogger is a writer, editor, journalist, researcher, photographer and many other things. You will have to spend a lot of time reading about places, travel destinations, sights, landmarks, restaurants, and hotels before you can do other things. You will spend time writing, editing photos, communicating with people, booking, and maintaining your blog.

Becoming a jack of all trades

Being independent means that you will have to do everything on your own. At least until you start making enough money to have someone assist you with the work you do. You will have to learn a bit of everything to make a serious travel blog. This includes writing, photographing, video editing, photo editing, promoting content, pitching ideas, making business connections, etc.

How to know if this is right for you

The first essential condition for this is that you love to travel. If you are not enthusiastic about traveling, seeing new places, learning about new countries, exploring and meeting new people, then this is not a path you should pursue. Travel bloggers need to be curious and open to exploring, this is how they are able to find interesting topics to talk about and create engaging content.

A lot of people travel twice per year and think that they can easily become travel bloggers, but bear in mind that travel bloggers are constantly on the move and that they always look to find cheap accommodation and work while traveling. You need to be adjustable and have the ability to not get attached to a single place.

Traveling as a blogger is different than going on a vacation. As soon as you land somewhere, you will have to focus on your work, follow a schedule and make sure that you visit the things you planned to.

You won’t have much time to sit back, relax and enjoy yourself.

There are difficulties you need to overcome

Travel blogging is a job and it’s not easy. Like we mentioned earlier, most people only see glamour and exotic locations, but they don’t realize that there is a lot of hard work behind that. More importantly, those bloggers you look up to took several years to achieve the success they have and it didn’t happen overnight. Here are a couple of real difficulties travel bloggers experience.

The competition is fierce

A lot of people like to travel and, naturally, they also want to become travel bloggers. On top of that, they think it’s easy to become one. Even though people with this kind of mindset don’t create successful blogs, there are those who put in the work and build their empires carefully over a long time.

This means that there are a lot of travel blogs out there and that it is difficult to make it big unless you add something unique to what your blog has to offer.

There isn’t a fixed salary

A lot of people are used to having a fixed monthly income on which they can rely and create plans around. When you start your career as a travel blogger this is not possible, and even later you will often earn different amounts each month. With blogging, the beginning is more of an expense than a job.

You need to invest in building up your blog and traveling to places in order to add some content to that blog. This is how things might work for a while and you will have to learn to manage with your limited finances unless you have a lot of money saved up in your bank account.

You will have to learn how to overcome your writing blocks

When you’ve worked out your travel blogging “gigs” and you make deals with travel agencies, you will have to create quality content on a regular basis. Simply put, you will have deadlines that you will have to meet, similar to any other job.

Apart from having to create a lot of content, you will also have to travel and try to visit as many locations as you can while learning about them so that you can have something to offer on your blog.

You will have to become thick-skinned

It may be very exciting to you when you start your blogging career, but soon enough you will start to understand that things don’t always go as easily as you thought. There are a lot of disappointments waiting for you on this path, so be prepared to try over and over again until you catch your big break.

Sometimes, you will feel like you don’t know where to go next and what to try, and it is best to take a break for the day and clear your mind so that you can start over tomorrow.

Define your travel niche

Having a clearly defined niche is a very important thing, but at the same time, it can be very annoying. A lot of people have various interests concerning travel and they want to talk about many different things. However, this creates a problem, as you won’t be able to build an audience that will keep coming back to your blog.

Simply put, if you write about various different aspects of traveling on your blog but you don’t focus on anything in particular, you will end up with a lot of superficial information and nothing truly unique and valuable. Travel is a blogging niche on its own, but you can further specialize in the things you love and offer quality content.

You can find your travel niche simply by combining travel with an additional aspect and focusing on those things, for example:

• Travel and cooking
• Travel and music festivals
• Travel and ancient landmarks
• Travel and family vacations
• Travel and traditional cuisine
• Travel and fashion

These are all clear and precise travel blogging niches. Choose the one you are passionate about and where there is a clear audience hungry for more content.

A lot of people worry about whether or not they will be able to keep it interesting if they limit themselves to one niche; you will be able to do this if you are really interested in what you are writing about and if your work hard.

Come up with a name for your travel blog

The name of your blog carries a lot of importance. Not only will it represent your blog, but it will also be a part of your brand and help you attract more visitors. More importantly, you will always be able to change and improve various aspects of your blog, but your name will stick forever and this is why you need to think about it very carefully.

All of the pieces need to fit together because a lot will depend on the name of your blog in the future. Here are the essentials you need to cover when coming up with a domain name for your travel blog:

• The name must be simple, easy to remember and spell.
• It should be fairly short.
• You shouldn’t include numbers or signs.
• The name should tell people what your blog is about.
• It should be unique.

Recommended tool:

Create your own travel blog

Instructions for setting up your Bluehost account

In these short 11 steps, we will give you detailed instructions on how to make your own Bluehost hosting account along with the appropriate screenshots.

Step One

Click on this link to grab your Bluehost special deal. After that, click on “Get Started Now”.

Step Two

Select the plan you want. If you are doing this for the first time, choose the basic plan and change it once you’ve learned more about the other ones. The basic plan has everything you need for starting a simple blog and running it for a while. You can upgrade it to some other plan later when you really need it.

Step Three

The domain name of your blog is extremely important, so make sure that you think about it and come up with a good one. Once you’ve found the right idea, enter your domain name in the “new domain” to see whether it’s available or not.

Step Four

Once you’ve finished setting up your domain name you will be taken to the registration page and this is where you will provide personal information such as a billing location. It only takes a few minutes to do this.

Step Five

Carefully consider the hosting options that you are given. The 12-month option is the cheapest one, but there are also other options that make a good long-term investment in your blog. The rest of the boxes can remain unchecked and you can change their settings when you want.

Step Six

When you get into the WordPress dashboard, you will see a welcome message and be asked if you want to use the Bluehost wizard that will guide you through the creation of your blog. If you are a beginner, then this is the right way to go, if you have experience with setting up blogs, reject the help and continue on your own.

Step Seven

The first thing you need to do is choose a WordPress theme that will be set on your blog at all times. Don’t worry, you are not making any commitments and you can always come back to these settings in your Bluehost account to change it to some other theme from a WordPress.org repository.

Step Eight

In the top left corner, you can find the Bluehost option. When you click on it, you will see a list of all the tools that you can use to customize and build your blog. Once you’ve set everything the way you like it, click “Launch” and your new blog will be online in a matter of minutes.

Ta-dah! Now you can start your blogging career! If you have some additional questions about your blog and Bluehost’s service, feel free to ask us and we will gladly help you as best as we can.

How to write and create great blog content

Content is an often discussed subject in the blogging world and when you read opinions from different bloggers, you will see that almost all of them have different approaches. This is because creating content is a very personal thing and everyone has their own thought process in their head while doing this. Even though you will eventually have your own way of doing this, there are certain essentials that you must cover.

Make sure your content is unique

Regardless of whether you are writing blog posts or shooting photos, you need to give something unique to your potential audience. As we mentioned earlier, the travel blogging market is very saturated and there are many blogs competing for the same audiences. In this sea of opportunities, you need to stand out and catch the reader’s eye with something that nobody else has.

If you offer content that is basically the same as something they’ve seen, they won’t pay much attention to it and just keep moving on. Branding is also very important in blogging and to build your own brand you must have a unique approach to creating content.

Create content for your audience

Before you write, record or photograph anything, you should consider the audience that content is aimed at. Good content is a subjective thing, one audience might like a certain style of writing, tone, phrases, and information included within the content, while another audience will have no interest in it whatsoever.

Define your target audience, learn about it as much as possible and always consider it when creating content for your blog. This is how you will always make sure that your content has something the audience finds interesting.

Write about what you know

All bloggers stick to what they know best. This is the recipe for success. Sure, you can expand your range of interests, topics, and knowledge over time, but you will always have one area where most of your interests and expertise lie.

For example, if you know how to cook and like to taste various dishes when traveling, stick to talking about food and introducing people to different cultures through cuisine. This way, you will have a higher chance of engaging your audience and telling them something interesting and exciting that they didn’t already know.

How to promote your travel blog and its content

No matter how good your blog might be in terms of visuals, content, design, and functionality, you will never be able to build your audience unless you promote your blog properly. You need to put yourself out there for someone to notice your content and give you their attention. Simply put, you can have all the quality to offer in the world, but without anyone to see it, it won’t be worth anything. Here are the things you need to do:

Promote your blog on social media

Social media is the bread and butter of any blogger, as it is a great platform for spreading the word about your blog. First of all, you need to share all new blog posts on social media to drive traffic to your site and engage people to comment, share, criticize or get in touch with you. You can also join groups with travel enthusiasts and other bloggers and gain access to people that might be interested in what you have to offer.

Collaborate with other bloggers

By researching and getting in touch with other like-minded bloggers, you will be able to create relationships which are mutually beneficial. First of all, you can do link exchanges where you promote other people’s blogs and they promote your blog on their posts. On the other hand, you can do guest posts on someone else’s blog and they on yours, to tap into each other’s audiences.

Write articles for travel sites

There are various travel websites where you can guest post for free. They need quality content and you need more people to know about you. After writing quality posts, you can add links to your blog and social media profiles so that people can get more from you if they like what you do.

These are the basic and most fundamental ways you can promote your blog at the start for no money. It’s all about being persistent and learning how to do these things better and better to maximize results.

How travel blogs can earn money

Even though you shouldn’t expect to make money any time soon after launching your blog, it is a good thing to know what the potential ways of getting cash for what you do are. First of all, you need to understand that your number one priority after launching your blog should be to build your audience, promote it, and create as much quality content as possible.

This is because all sources of income are directly dependent on these things and without a developed blog, you will never be able to make money. So, here are the three most common ways travel blogs make money:

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is when a blog adds banners, links, or ads from a third-party on their blog and suggests that their readers go to another site and look at their products or services. With travel blogging, affiliate marketing usually revolves around promoting travel agencies, hotels, restaurants, travel websites, and so on.

Simply put, you need to promote something that might interest your audience because your income depends on the number of people you send through affiliate links.

Writing sponsored posts

When your blog has grown enough, you will get contacted by people who want you to write posts for them on your blog and publish them for money. In most cases, these posts have a link which leads to the client’s website. Still, it is important to write posts relevant to your audience and avoid ruining your blog just because someone is paying you money.

Sponsored press trips

A lot of big bloggers get contacted by travel agencies to visit a certain location, review it, talk about sights, and their impressions. In return, they get paid and their travel expenses are taken care of.

Conclusion

Stick to the advice that we gave you today and setting up a blog will be a walk in the park. However, your job is just starting and you will have to work hard to build an audience for your blog.

Be prepared to put in a lot of work and don’t expect to see any big results in the near future, both financially and in terms of visitors. Still, if you put in 2 hours per day, and even less on average, you will get good results after a while and get that dream job you always wanted.