Why All Travel Enthusiasts Should Consider Starting A Travel Blog

Do you love to travel? Do you enjoy talking about travel with other people? Are you interested in being part of community that shares and connects on like-minded travel topics? And most of all, do you want to make money with your love of travel?

If you said yes to all these questions, then you probably have already considered starting your own personal travel blog. If so, that’s awesome!

Before we created We Who Roam, we frequently found ourselves referencing numerous other travel blogs to help inspire our adventures. Over time and after traveling to so many places, we thought, why not start our own travel blog? The idea was planted and there was no going back.

But Where Do I Even Begin?

Like many others starting out, you’re probably thinking, “how the heck do I even start a travel blog?”

The good news is that it’s actually very easy! It just takes doing things one step at a time. We’ll be honest though, maintaining a blog and building an audience is the tricky part. Just wanted to get that fact out of the way early.

Once again – Starting a travel blog is EASY! Consistently maintaining a blog and building an audience takes time and dedication.

If you know this going in, you’re already ahead of many others starting a travel blog. Despite a few of the difficulties of being a travel blogger, we still highly recommend anyone to start a travel blog if you’re interested in doing so! It’s a decision that has changed our lives and pushed our love and desire to travel to the next level. Plus, we’ve met and connected with some really amazing people along the way.

So if you’re ready to create a travel blog and want to join an amazing community of fellow travelers, let’s dive in!

HOW TO START A TRAVEL BLOG IN 9 SIMPLE STEPS

This post is a doozy. We want to share with you all our useful tips that helped us get to where we are today. Some of which we didn’t even know at the time when we started!

To quickly get yourself up and running, follow these 9 steps to create your own unique travel blog.

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1. Decide on Your Niche & Name

If you don’t already have something in mind, you need to first decide on your niche. The most successful travel blogs are based around a niche or a specialized topic related to travel. This can range from a multitude of topics!

Maybe you want your niche to focus on tropical islands or beaches? Or maybe you’re a foodie and your niche is blogging about all the best food in the world.

We decided to have our niche be on nature and the love of the great outdoors. As avid hikers and nature lovers, we focus primarily on outdoor adventure, national parks, hiking trails, and the very best nature spots. As well as useful travel tips and helpful methods to traveling cheap (cause we love saving money).

Ultimately, your niche is up to you! You can be even more specific, like vegan street foods found along coastal countries around the world. The more specific your blog is, the less competition you’ll have within your niche.

Narrow down what you love and create a specific niche to base your blog around.

Choose An Ideal Name For Your Travel Blog

Next, decide on a name! This step is probably the hardest part of them all. It took us a good few weeks just to settle on a name we both liked. Choose a creative name that easily and clearly relates to your chosen niche. Decide your name wisely as it’s bad to change your name later on down the road when you’re already established. Think long term.

Try to stick to a professional and more simple name. Too long can be confusing. Avoid hyphens or other characters to create an easy URL. Nothing’s more annoying than telling others your travel blog but having to spell out a confusing or awkward name for them to remember.

Once you figured our your niche and name, check if the domain name (your URL name) is available. You can search your name on sites like GoDaddy or InstantDomainSearch.

Check Your Name Availability on Social Media

Lastly, be sure to check every social media channel to see if your name is available. This is huge! Social media is a huge component to building your blog and your audience.

If your desired name is taken on a social platform, then you should probably consider picking a new one. Although with social, it’s more okay to alter your name a bit with hyphens or periods. Definitely less damaging than altering a domain name. It just depends how strongly you want to stick with your chosen name.

Popular social media sites to check are Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

If they’re not taken, claim them now! Create your free accounts on each platform to avoid them being taken in the near future.

2. Get Website Hosting – Bluehost

Once you’ve decided on your name and confirmed that it’s not taken, it’s time to sign up for hosting! Now, this part sounds scary, but trust us it isn’t. The overall process is very simple.

Web hosting is basically the place where all the files on your website will live. Think of your domain name as the address and web hosting as the actual house. You can’t have a website unless you sign up for a web hosting service which stores and manages your information on their servers.

After comparing a few website hosting companies, we decided to choose Bluehost to host our website. They have the cheapest pricing, they’re efficient, have helpful customer service which includes live chat, and overall the platform is just really easy to use.

Plus! If you sign up for hosting through Bluehost, you’ll receive your domain name for free!

To start, go to Bluehost’s homepage to begin the sign up process.

Click that big green button right in front that says “Get Started Now.”

You will be directed to a page that outlines all the different types of plans they offer.

 

If you’re just starting out, we recommend starting with the Basic plan. It’s extremely affordable and offers all that you would need and more for a beginner travel blog. If you need to, you can always visit Bluehost again at any time to upgrade your plan.

Once you select your plan, you’re taken to the following page:

If you haven’t already bought your domain name, this is where you sign up for free! Type your chosen name into the box on the left and click next. Double triple check your name to make sure it’s spelled correctly! If you already have purchased your domain name, enter it on the box on the right.

On the next page you’ll input your account information. Fill out everything accordingly to complete your Bluehost account.

Below this, you will be taken to this page where you can review your Bluehost package information.

Under “Account Plan,” we chose the Basic 36 month plan. This is the cheapest option available and doesn’t lock you into a 60 month plan. Who knows when you might want to upgrade? 36 months is plenty of time to decide. Also, this is the only other plan for the price of $3.95 outside of the 60 month.

After selecting your account plan, you can choose if you want to add on any package extras below.

On the bottom of the page, enter your payment information and read and agree to the Terms of Service to finish signing up for Bluehost.

You’ve now just set up your hosting and your domain name! And all under 10 minutes? No problem.

3. Auto-Install WordPress

Before you exit out of Bluehost, it’s time to install WordPress. You can auto-install this once you have completed the steps above.

Once you submit payment you will be asked to choose your password for your account.

Next, Bluehost will ask you to pick a theme for your travel blog. Don’t worry too much on what you choose, this is just a temporary placeholder until you decide on a more permanent theme.

After selecting a temporary theme, you’re done installing WordPress! Just hit that blue button that says “Start Building.”

Next, you will be directed to the setup of your WordPress page. You will be asked if your travel blog will be used for business or personal. If you’re planning to someday make money online through your blog, then you should click business.

Weird! This was our first legitimate “oh yeah” moment to starting our own company and becoming our own bosses. Exciting stuff!

From here, you will be taken to your official WordPress dashboard. Here you have the option to launch your new website.

We personally didn’t launch our site right away. We preferred to get our site all set with a theme, plugins, header image, logo, and a few posts before we officially launched. That way when our site went “live” we actually had some content to scroll through.

Of course in the very beginning you probably won’t have many viewers coming to your site. So it shouldn’t harm you in anyway if you choose to launch your site now. It’s just personal preference, the choice is up to you!

If you do decide to launch, you will be guided to the following screen.

Choose your site title and logo. Don’t worry too much what you decide, you can change this at any time down the road. We guarantee you probably will.

Also, word of advice. We highly recommend to “self host” your travel blog.  This means that you own it directly and the WordPress software resides on your hosting company’s servers, not on a free WordPress account.

If you self host, your website will be called: “YourTravelBlog.com” instead of “YourTravelBlog.WordPress.com”

Other perks include:

• Have ownership and full control over your data
• Freely advertise on your site
• Install plugins & custom themes
• Use Google Analytics for tracking (SUPER important)

Once WordPress is completed, you’re probably wondering, what do I do now? Well, it’s time to start building your site!

Before you start writing posts, be sure to set up a few other essentials first, like important plugins and choosing a theme!

4. Install Essential Plugins

Once you have both Bluehost and WordPress set up, you can now start installing your essential plugins. What the heck is a plugin you may ask?

Plugins are extensions you can install to expand the functionality of your WordPress. Depending on your preferences or needs for your site will depend on what plugins you decide to install.

Obviously plugin choices range from person to person, but these generally are the most important ones to include for any blog.

You can find where to add new plugins on your WordPress dashboard on the left where it says Plugins -> Add New.

For all the plugins below we use the free versions, but you’re more than welcome to purchase the premium version if you want extra features.

YOAST SEO

Yoast SEO is our most frequently used plugin and is extremely important to have when it comes to writing your blog posts.

Real quick, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a combination of efforts to help search engines find your website and posts and make them more visible to your target audience.

Known as WordPress’s #1 SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plugin, Yoast SEO is an easy to understand way to grade an SEO score for each blog post you create. As well as creating important sitemaps for search engines to read.

This plugin grades your posts on things like run-on and passive sentences, titles, subheadings, transition words, paragraph lengths, etc. It also grades SEO based on focus keywords, inbound & outbound links, keyword density, meta descriptions, and more. All things Google and other search engines love to see in posts and across websites.

Yoast SEO basically makes you an SEO writing expert without any prior knowledge. An extremely helpful tool if you don’t know much (or anything) about writing for SEO.

TINYMCE ADVANCED

 TinyMCE Advanced adds a useful editing toolbar to the top of your editing space where you write posts. Simply install and activate.

Customize which editing buttons you want to include or exclude in your toolbar. These buttons give you more options to edit your writing within your posts along with including other plugin buttons in your toolbar.

WP SMUSH

Did you know you rank lower on search engines like Google if your website has a slow page load speed? Large images contribute greatly to slowing down your site! Easily and automatically optimize your images by using WP Smush. WP Smush automatically resizes all images you upload to WordPress to keep storage files down, increasing your website speed.

This is huge for keeping your page load speeds fast and avoids the need for servers to scale down large image files when viewers visit your site.

W3 TOTAL CACHE

Another plugin which helps immensely with overall website speed. W3 Total Cache creates saved copies of your site instead of servers having to gather and load your site’s information each time someone visits. An extremely useful plugin to keep your site running fast.

This plugin is a bit more complex to use. You can customize settings like page cache, browser cache, minify CSS & Java, and even integrate with a CDN.

If you don’t have a clue what any of this is, don’t worry. We were also deer in the headlights hearing all this intimidating terminology.

Amazingly, there are numerous tutorials on YouTube and Google that walk you step by step to activate the best settings for your site. As well as general explanations on what everything means (thank Google, YT, and the Universe).

In the end, you should have some form of caching enabled on your site one way or another. W3 Total Cache is one of the highest rated cache plugins to use.

CONTACT FORM 7

One of the oldest and most used plugins for WordPress.

Just as the name states, Contact Form 7 lets you easily create multiple contact forms to be placed anywhere on your blog. People being able to contact you is invaluable. Whether it be fans or businesses, you’ll want to engage with both types of parties to further the success of your blog!

UPDRAFTPLUS – BACKUP/RESTORE

Every website should have a backup method installed. You never know when your site can crash, get hacked, or some other insane disaster to make you lose all your work. Sounds like every bloggers worst nightmare.

UpdraftPlus is a simple backup plugin that schedules consistent backup runs to continuously save all your files. You can even set up backups to run as many times as once per week if you wish! These save to an external remote storage location like Google Drive, Dropbox, or the UpdraftPlus Vault (the vault requires a premium plan).

Easy to use and can save your life in the case of a catastrophe. We don’t like to believe they happen, but they do.

WORDFENCE SECURITY

An important plugin to help block malware and other forms of malicious traffic. It comes with a web application firewall as well as a security scanner and other security tools to help keep your site safe.

WordFence Security scans core files, themes, bad URLs, SEO spam, redirects and code injections, and plugins for malware. This is the most used WordPress security solution for WordPress users.

SASSY SOCIAL SHARE BUTTONS

It’s essential to have a social sharing plugin enabled on all your blog posts. This is to help viewers share your content on popular social media platforms. Social media is extremely important when it comes to getting your name and content out in the world.

Be sure to have social share buttons easily clickable at the top, bottom, or floating on the side of your posts. You can customize which social share buttons to include.

We currently have Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Pinterest, Flipboard, Tumblr, Reddit, and email on our site. I like to place it as a floating sidebar so it remains in view at all times.

This isn’t the end all social button plugin to use, there are many more to choose from. Sassy Social Share Buttons just had the most options and is currently the most effective for us.

WPTOUCH MOBILE PLUGIN

This plugin automatically adds a simple and easy to use theme for the mobile version of your blog. Upon installation, it will enable a mobile-friendly version that passes the Google Mobile test and ensures that your SEO rankings won’t drop by not having a mobile-friendly website. This is known as the #1 mobile plugin for WordPress.

You can customize the settings for your mobile site through the plugin itself and through the “Customize” section of WordPress.

5. Choose & Install A Theme

A WordPress “Theme” is the complete design for your entire website. It involves the headers, footers, typography, colors, spacing, etc.

If you’re not a website developer, chances are high that you don’t know enough about coding and web design to create your own website layout. This is where theme’s come in!

Theme’s are previously coded web designs provided for free or at a premium that you can upload to your web server. If you’re establishing your brand and plan to make money with your blog then you’ll ultimately want to buy your theme. This keeps your theme free of any outside branding that may be otherwise incorporated.

The most successful themes are simple and easy to navigate. Think of your favorite travel blogs. Most of them have a similar “Theme” and it’s not a coincidence.

We recommend a more affordable theme to start so you’re not hard out of cash should you decide to change it down the road. As you learn more and do more with your blog you may outgrow your initial choice. It took us a few months to narrow down what we wanted out of a theme since we didn’t know exactly how we wanted to present our brand. Themes range from fun and simple to complex and highly organized.

You can find and download a theme directly through your WordPress Dashboard.

WordPress Dash Board > Appearance > Themes > Add New

If you want a full, comprehensive rundown on how to find and install your new theme check out this Beginners Guide: How to Install a WordPress Theme.

Although, if you want to make money from your travel blog, you’ll probably need a more professional theme. In this case, you would have to venture outside of WordPress.

Websites like StudioPress, Elegant Themes, or ThemeForest are just a few popular theme website to choose from. These all range from $30-$80 but are definitely worth it if you want a professional looking, high quality travel blog.

6. Create Initial Pages

Now that you have your base settings set up, it’s time to add some of your initial pages.

Pages are more static and stay on the homepage or menu of your blog for eternity (or until you delete them). Unlike posts that cycle in and out of a page.

To start, every blog should have the following 3 pages set up:

ABOUT PAGE

Your about page is where people go to learn about you, obviously. Make it personal! Don’t be afraid to speak your mind and be yourself. Share your hobbies, your quirks, things you love, why you started your blog, and what you hope to achieve.

This is just a few of the things that will help connect you with your audience. The more your audience knows you and understands your personality, the more they’ll want to read and follow your content.

CONTACT PAGE

A basic page which allows your viewers to reach out to you. Some do it simple and just add a contact form along with a few words. Others make it more personal and make their contact page longer. It’s up to you!

You can use the Contact Form 7 plugin to build your contact form or a different plugin if you’re looking for more features.

PRIVACY POLICY

Here’s what it is:

“A privacy policy is a statement or a legal document that discloses some or all of the ways a party gathers, uses, discloses, and manages a customer or client’s data. It fulfills a legal requirement to protect a customer or client’s privacy.” – Wikipedia

The biggest driving force of success on the internet is data. Data collected from users. When used strategically you can leverage data collected to better sell yourself, your product, and/or your service.

Now with that said, people aren’t always happy about their information being collected and/or used, especially without their permission. A privacy policy informs your visitors of the information you’re collecting and how it’s being used.

Consider this your insurance policy and remember that it’s actually required by law. You can easily source pre-written privacy policies with a simple Google search and make tweaks to them to fit your needs.

7. Create A Logo/Header Image

In the beginning stages, we highly recommend creating a logo and a driving header image for your homepage.

CREATING A LOGO

Having a logo early on establishes your brand and gives your website more authority. When it comes to creating a logo, the goal is to appear professional and also relatable to your niche.

Maybe select an icon that symbolizes your niche to include in your logo. It’s not a requirement but it does help get your niche across with one easy picture. We chose a compass as it’s unique, not commonly used by other blogs, and relates to our niche of nature and travel. Compasses are mostly used by hikers and outdoor enthusiasts.

Depending on your budget, you can either create your logo for free or purchase one online from a professional illustrator or designer.

If you’re just starting out, looking into a free option would probably be best. You can find free logo creators online which quickly design a logo of your choosing. Either from logo maker specific sites or by using the popular (and free!) image editing site Canva.

First of all, we LOVE Canva. It is an amazing graphic design tool that lets you create all different types of images, banners, logos, social media banners, pins, etc. Literally almost everything we design, we use Canva to do it.

If you have a general idea in mind of what you want your logo to be, try creating it yourself in Canva. This is a little more hands on than other free logo makers online.

If you have the budget and don’t want to create one yourself, you can always hire someone to create one for you. This obviously can range from cheap to expensive depending on who you hire.

DECIDING ON A HEADER IMAGE

Alongside your logo, make sure you include a header image on your front page. As with the logo, select a header image that relates to your niche and immediately pulls your audiences attention in.

If you’re setting up a travel blog, you will most likely want to use an image of yourself in a unique destination. Try to use a header image that includes yourself in the photo.

Having your viewers see immediately who you are creates a more personal approach rather than a photo of just the landscape. If your niche deviates from you as a person then by all means use a different approach. There are no rules, but we like suggestions.

Find an image that promotes feelings of emotion. Based on your niche this can fall into a few different areas.

If you’re about adventure travel, then your header image should involve you doing some exciting outdoor activity. Something that immediately pumps your viewers up once they land on your home page.

If you’re a travel couple, you could always aim for a more romantic feeling image that touches your readers soft sides.

Or maybe it’s more focused on professional travel photography. Then you would post your best photograph, something that leaves your audience with a lasting impression.

In the end, your header image should inspire your viewers and instill curiosity in what you and your travel blog are about. Logos and header images are the first things people see when they land on your site so make them count.

8. Set Up Email List & Social Media Early On

Two very important things to tackle head on when starting a travel blog is your email list and your social media accounts.

EMAIL LIST

Why the heck do I need an email list?? Does anyone even use email that much anymore?

Both valid questions! But yes an email list is one of the most important things you can add to your travel blog in the beginning stages.

By having your audience subscribe to your blog, they will receive weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly newsletters from you straight to their inbox. This is one of the most direct and consistent approaches to keeping your viewers constantly connected. Much more personal and frequent than social media.

There are multiple email marketing platforms to choose from. We personally use MailChimp. It’s easy and free to set up an account, create email templates, and schedule campaigns to when your emails should be sent out.

In the beginning you can stick to their free plan which allows up to 2,000 subscribers. For unlimited subscribers, you would have to bump up to their $10/month plan. The price of 2 lattes from a popular coffee chain. Totally affordable!

Don’t wait to set up your email list. Start building your email list as soon as possible.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social Media is HUGE when it comes to building your audience. This is one of the best methods to pushing your amazing content out into the world and driving traffic back to your website.

Base your blogging strategy on the well known 80/20 rule. 80% promotion and 20% content creation. Crazy right?! I was skeptical hearing this at first but after blogging for a while now, it couldn’t be more true.

Unfortunately, just creating good content alone isn’t going to have viewers flocking to your site. Sadly the internet just doesn’t work that way.

You need to promote your content daily, sometimes even twice a day to help bring in viewers. Of course this is more important when you’re just starting out compared to later years when you’re more established.

The main social media accounts you should focus on are:

• Facebook
• Pinterest
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube

Surprisingly, Pinterest is our biggest traffic converter. We didn’t know how important Pinterest was till months after we started blogging! Big mistake!

If you don’t want to commit to managing 5 social media accounts, you don’t have to. But we HIGHLY recommend making Pinterest one of them. Facebook and Instagram are the runner ups when it comes to connecting with our audience.

Be sure to post daily on your social media accounts. Some accounts like Twitter and Pinterest, it’s recommended to post 2-5 times per day for the best results.

WHY YOU SHOULD SCHEDULE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS

Promoting on social media can be very time consuming, especially when you’re still learning and getting the hang of it. Luckily there are numerous social media scheduling websites you can use to better plan your posts!

Pinterest: We use Tailwind to schedule our daily pins. The site has literally saved our lives when it comes to successful daily pinning on Pinterest!

Since we pin around 20 pins daily, Tailwind is super essential to keeping us on track. There’s no way we could pin up to 20 times per day without pre-scheduling our pins.

You can try out the free trial for Tailwind which lets you schedule and publish up to 100 Pinterest pins.

If you run out pins and want more, you then will need to sign up for the Tailwind Plus Plan at $10/month which allows unlimited pinning plus other features like Tailwind Tribes and more.  (A must have for all Pinterest users looking to send more traffic to their blog!)

Twitter: We like to use Buffer for all our scheduled tweets. This is also free but only lets you schedule 10 tweets at a time. This isn’t the best if you’re trying to schedule posts a week in advance, but at least it’s a few days ahead.

Facebook: What’s nice is that Facebook comes with its on scheduling feature, no need to use a 3rd party website. This feature is completely free to use and is available directly through Facebook’s posting system.

Instagram: We prefer to use the app known as Later. Schedule your posts and images online at Later.com, and post your images through the app or set them to post automatically. The free version lets you schedule 30 posts per month. Any more you would have to upgrade to their plus plan at $10/month.

Successful Travel Blogs Use Social Media Scheduling

To sum it up, if you want an effective social media strategy then you need to implement social media scheduling. It keeps your daily posts on track at all times of the day.

Choose a day that works best for you to set up social media for the week! We like to set up our social calendars every Sunday night for the upcoming week. Then we just sit back and let the posts fly day after day.

9. Write 2-3 Posts to Start

Before your launch your travel blog, it’s good to have at least a few blog posts up on your site. You don’t want anyone to land on your blog and only have your About Page and your Contact Page to read. Obviously.

We recommend writing at least 2-3 blog posts to start. Focus on blog posts that relate to your niche. Of course you should always try to relate to your niche, but as you get more established, it’s okay to branch out a bit more. In the beginning though, stick to your niche to better develop your brand and grow your specific audience.

WRITE QUALITY POSTS

The #1 most important goal when it comes to having a successful travel blog is to post quality content.

Well duh, why wouldn’t you want to post quality content? But no, we mean serious QUALITY content. Something that gives your readers even more than they expected.

Most readers come to a website hoping to learn something new. This could be detailed information about what to know before going, where to go, how much money something is, or other secret tips not found anywhere else.

As much as you enjoy writing about that time you went to Venice where you ate pizza next to that beautiful cathedral while Italian men sang to you, this probably won’t cut it for most readers.

Viewers are generally not interested in reading your personal diary about how much fun you had at wherever spot you were in. They will most likely be looking to learn something of value.

We’re not saying you can’t include your personal stories within your posts, just make sure to not have that be the ONLY thing you write about. Once you have a large following and people trust you as an authority, maybe then they’ll want to know what you ate for breakfast.

These are just a few of the essential items we try to include in our posts to make them useful and helpful.

Key Points for Quality Blog Posts

• Local Amenities – nearby lodging, food, shops, etc
• What to expect in price
• Hours of operation (if applicable)
• How to save money while here
• Best things to see/do at a location
• History of a location
• Geology or information on an outdoor location
• What to Avoid When Visiting

Basically, provide informational posts that will give your audience something useful to take away. Something that will further help them down the road if they decide to visit where you’ve been.

Don’t forget to have fun with it! Don’t be a bore or sound like a teacher lecturing without any tonal fluctuations. Bring your personality, your humor, and your own personal experience into it to make your piece more exciting. Yes you can be personal, informative, and entertaining all in 1! But keep value at the forefront.

WRITE FOR SEO

With all your posts, make sure you are writing with SEO in mind. Use Google Keyword Planner to research and choose keywords to focus your posts around.

A good focus keyword is a word or phrase that ranks high in search engines, like Google. Search your topic on keyword planner to see which keywords rank the highest. Then use the highest ranked keyword throughout your blog post. It’s good to use a few other high ranked keywords as well.

Search engines use crawlers to crawl through articles and scrape essential keywords. If these crawlers pick up enough popular keywords in your posts, you will have a better chance of ranking higher on search engines.

Although, don’t keyword stuff your posts! Too much just looks bad and might have a negative outcome.

Also, Google loves longer posts. All our posts are usually over 1,000 words, sometimes up to 2,000 or more. If you can, aim for lengthy and value loaded posts. Don’t just fill your posts with fluff to hit that 1,000 word count. Quality over quantity still comes first.

Be sure to have the Yoast SEO plugin enabled, the one we mentioned earlier in step #4. Reference it for each post you write to ensure a strong SEO written post.

USE HEADINGS AND IMAGES

Lastly, include beautiful images and catchy headings to grab your audiences attention.

Headings are extremely important to making your posts “scannable” to your readers. As much as you want everyone to read every single word your write, it just won’t happen. Accept it.

By making your posts easy to scan and skim, the more your readers will likely stay on your page.

It’s more than likely for viewers to immediately leave a page if they land on one giant block of text. It’s just too intimidating and time consuming for the average online consumer.

With headings and sub-headings, you can easily break up your content in clear and concise sections to read. It allows your viewers to easily scan through your page, picking out all the information they actually want to read.

NOT CURRENTLY TRAVELING?

If you’re not on the road at this moment, there are still opportunities to write for your travel blog. There is lots of quality content to choose from!

Write on your immediate area. The amount of content just around where you live is seemingly endless. Check out the local spots, best parks, nature spots, or other hidden gems in your city or town. You could also write on old trips you’ve taken. I still recall the majority of my past experiences from trips taken years ago. Memories that make for great blog posts today.

You can literally write about anything, it’s up to you to make it interesting and useful to your audience.

Lastly, Build an Audience & Stay Consistent!

Now that you know the 9 steps to creating a travel blog, it’s time to get started!

Okay, if you made it this far you may be feeling a bit overwhelmed. This is a lot of information, but it is all information you can digest by focusing on 1 step at a time. Remember what we said in the beginning: creating a travel blog is easy if you take your time with each of these steps. Maintaining a blog and building an audience is the difficult part.

We’re not saying you can’t do it, honestly anyone can! It just takes time, passion, and dedication. Building an audience doesn’t come overnight. Some travel blogs take months, even years to build a strong and loyal audience. You take out what you put in, so time frames will vary.

Looking to Make Money From Your Travel Blog?

Well, the good news is that it’s totally possible! Work hard, post frequently, interact with your readers and other bloggers, and most importantly don’t give up. Don’t. Give. Up.

If you’re hoping to start a travel blog and instantly start making money, then you’re starting a blog for the wrong reasons. Many travel blogs take years to start seeing any sort of income. At least enough to completely fund a life of travel. It’s a long term process of consistent blogging to see results. Patience and persistence is key.

Sadly, many give up blogging after a few months because they don’t see spikes in traffic or gain any consistent readers. This is completely normal in the beginning. Don’t throw in the towel! Keep moving forward and know if you work hard and give it time, you will start seeing results. If one thing doesn’t work it’s time to try something else. Don’t make the same mistakes over and over.

If you’re aware and okay with all this, then that’s great! Starting a travel blog is not only about making money but sharing your experiences, information, and connecting with other like minded travelers. Overall, it’s a rewarding and life changing experience.

What are some of your inspirations to starting your own travel blog? We’d love to hear your story! Share with us in the comments below!

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