If travel and writing are your passions, then starting a travel blog could be a dream come true! Whether or not you’ll be able to earn a living from it is questionable. Still, the fact is that there are many successful travel bloggers out there whose enthusiasm for seeing and experiencing different cultures has translated into a lucrative career.
If you’d like to give travel blogging a go, use the step-by-step guide below to get up and running!
Find Your Niche
It’s understandable if you think that travel writing is a niche in itself. However, the travel blogging market is highly saturated: let’s face it, who doesn’t want to get paid to jet off on adventures around the world?
The best way to stand out in the crowd is to be a little more specialized in what you’re offering. What does this look like? Well, how about focusing your blog on how to travel with young kids or the best countries to explore if you’re on a tight budget?
Set Up Your Website
Next, it’s time to get your new website up and running. Using a website builder makes this a quick, easy, and cost-effective task – your site could be ready to go in just a couple of hours!
Most website builders will offer a range of innovative, customizable site and page templates, so selecting the one highlighted as suitable for a blogging site makes things even easier to set up.
Your site needs to be as professional as possible, so ensure that all text is free of spelling and grammatical errors and only use high-quality images. To stand out further, consider using a stock video or two on your website alongside any footage and photos of your own. This is a great way of adding interest and upleveling the appearance of your new site – and it may be cheaper than you think, too!
Get Branding
How you brand your new travel blog will make a big difference to its chances of success. Start by coming up with a name: this must be memorable and suggestive of your blog’s content. Make sure it’s not too long or difficult to spell and doesn’t include any numbers or special characters.
Next, think about the fonts, color palette, overall style, and tone of your blog. All of these are crucial for helping it to stick in the minds of readers and generate an audience. You’ll need to use these consistently in all your posts and any crossover with social media platforms.
Boost Functionality with Plug-Ins
As well as enlisting plug-ins to help with back-office things like SEO and visitor analytics, consider incorporating others designed to improve your readers’ experience. For example, add an Instagram plug-in to allow visitors to access a curated collection of your travel photos, or incorporate a plug-in such as TravelMap to give your audience a visual representation of your travel routes worldwide.
Create Your Content
It may sound simple, but the best way to start writing….is to start writing! The key is to use a consistent tone of voice and post regularly. The more active you are on your blog, the better.
As well as text, incorporate plenty of other types of content, such as photos, videos, and how-to guides.
Boost the organic amount of traffic directed to your blog site by making the best use possible of SEO keywords, which will help your site climb up the Google search rankings. Free online tools can help you with this, which are super easy to use.
Promote, Promote, Promote!
The final step in getting your new travel blog off the ground is promoting it to build an audience base.
Using social media is a free, highly-effective way to get the word out about your blog and deliver visitors directly to your site via a temptingly worded link. Use promotions or competitions to encourage engagement or partner up with a fellow blogger writing in another niche to cross-promote each other’s sites.
You could also have a go at writing guest blog posts on other individuals’ or organizations’ platforms to drive traffic to your own site.
But How Will This Make Me Money?
Good question. Most successful travel bloggers have monetized their writing through affiliate marketing. The basics of this are as such: you become affiliated with a specific hotel and mention this hotel in your blog, along with a link to its official website. You will receive a small commission for every visitor who clicks on this link and makes a successful purchase.
The other means of making money from a travel blog is to offer related services that your audience may be interested in signing up and paying for, such as itinerary planning or personal shopping.
Bon Voyage!
There you have it: all the steps you need to take to get your travel blog up and running! Create a schedule to ensure you’ll post high-quality content frequently. Keep innovating ways to grow your readership to have the best chance of attracting affiliate deals that could turn your hobby into a profession!