Do you love to travel? Do friends and family come to you for advice and suggestions for their vacations? Are you looking to start a side hustle or create a business for yourself outside of a traditional day job? Well, starting a travel blog could be for you! So whether you’re looking to get started, grow an existing blog, or finally make money, this article is for you.
How to Start a Travel Blog? Pick Your Focus First
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When you decide to create a blog, it’s crucial to pick a niche first. It not only helps focus your content but will tell the reader exactly what your site is about. See, you can’t be all things to all people, and who would want to be? If you’re struggling with how to start a travel blog with a niche focus, consider some of these popular areas to kick off your own brainstorming.
- Cruising
- Traveling in an RV
- Camping
- Theme Parks or Amusement Parks
- National Parks
- Road Trips
- Family Travel
- Luxury Travel
- Budget Travel
- Travel Hacking/Reward Points Travel
- Couples Travel
- Weekend Getaways
- Destination/Region Specific (e.g., Hawaii, Las Vegas, Orlando or Pacific Northwest, Caribbean, U.S. East Coast)
This list is by no means all the possibilities out there, and some people do cover more than one on their site as that is how they personally travel. Think about your own travel lifestyle or areas of expertise. What is something you are passionate about that you could write about every week? How could you help people travel more or travel better? When thinking about How To Start a Travel Blog, finding your focus area isn’t something to rush.
For example, Monica at Planner at Heart writes about timeshare traveling. As a happy timeshare owner of 15 years, she writes articles for her fellow timeshare owners or those thinking about a timeshare purchase. In addition, she offers free tutorials to help people who own a timeshare make the most of it, timeshare resort reviews, popular timeshare destination overviews, and guides such as See 70% of U.S. National Parks by trading your Timeshare with RCI Exchange.
And, you don’t have to be a full-time traveler to start a travel blog. You can create content around planning a vacation, packing for a trip, shopping for deals as well as your own trips and adventures.
How To Start A Travel Blog: 6 Steps
Starting a blog can seem overwhelming. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Even a little bit of work a week can add up! Take it piece by piece with these six steps.
1. How to Start a Travel Blog: Pick a Blog Name
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If you want to start a new blog, one of the first things you will do is consider a domain name, aka the URL of your site. Consider a name that will grow with you. For example, if you have a travel blog named “Exploring Europe,” it might not be relevant if you decide to explore Australia next year.
Keep in mind that your domain name is part of a brand, so you will likely stick with it for a long time. Therefore, think about names that can grow with you.
Tips for Picking a Blog Name
Blogs are a powerful way to promote your content to the masses, but in a crowded space like the internet, you need to make sure your blog has a strong identity. To stand out with your blog’s name, here are some tips and tricks you can use.
1) Make it relevant
2) Keep it short
3) Incorporate keywords
4) Make it easy to remember
The name seems the most important thing right now, but don’t stop too long to think about the perfect blog name. It’s okay to change your name down the road if you really don’t like it.
It’s better to start blogging now than to postpone starting a blog because you can’t find the perfect name.
2. How to Start a Travel Blog: Set Up Your Hosting and Domain
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If you are starting a website, there are a few terms you might not be familiar with. This guide can help you start learning the basics of domain and hosting.
- A domain is the website address that users type in, like AshandPri.com. If you want a domain for your site, you’ll have to pay an annual fee and wait for the website provider to approve your request. You now own the URL.
- When it comes to web hosting, you are essentially renting a space on the internet where your website will live. Therefore, you’ll need both a domain and website hosting for your site.
Some popular platforms that offer both blogging services are:
3. How to Start a Travel Blog on WordPress
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When you set up your blog on WordPress, make sure you pick WordPress.org and not WordPress.com. WordPress.org is the platform where you can host your website, and you can determine how it looks. WordPress.com means you’re using WordPress’ platform to host a WordPress blog, where you have little to no influence on how it will look.
WordPress.org is an excellent platform for beginners, and it also has an abundance of WordPress plugins and WordPress themes to keep up with new trends and change the looks to whatever you like.
You may experience a bit of an initial learning curve. Luckily, Google is your best friend, as you can find plenty of tips and tricks on the web. Plus, installing WordPress is just one click of a button, and you’re up and running. You’ve got a website, woohoo!
Stick with WordPress. There is much more freedom to design your site on WordPress, and it’s forever free to use. However, changing it later can be a real hassle, so avoid that.
When you’re thinking: hmmm, what did I just read? No worries, if you’re using one of the popular platforms above, they will help you with the free WordPress install and your blog design.
Alternatively, you can try Squarespace that provides various templates and services to help you build and monetize your website every step of the way.
4. How to Start a Travel Blog: Design
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Handling the branding and design of your website might seem like a daunting task, but in reality, it can be much easier than you think. When it comes to branding, a logo is the beginning. Next, you’ll need to decide on colors, fonts, and general design guidelines for your page.
It can help to start with a WordPress theme. My favorite themes include Astra and GeneratePress, and both offer a free option and a premium template with more options.
Pick the ones you like best for now. It’s perfectly fine to change the looks a couple of months in. For now, the most important thing is that you get content out. When starting, setting up premium themes or a fancy logo isn’t your top priority, so don’t get stuck on that step.
5. How to Start a Travel Blog: Creating Your Content
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There are many reasons to start a blog, but most people want to share blog content with others. Your content is what brings people to your blog. And it is what makes them come back again and again.
Writing blog posts and thinking of blog post ideas can be challenging in the beginning. That’s why, when you’re just starting, find blogs that you like and see how they’re constructing their posts. What are they doing? And what do you like about that? You can use their tactics to improve your writing.
As for what to write about, it’s again important to just start. If you’re overthinking about what you will write about and you’re not writing, just start. Every single blogger will tell you that their writing and articles improve over time. You might be rusty at first, but don’t let that prevent you from getting started. You can always go back and edit your old articles as you find your groove. Let your everyday life be the inspiration for your articles. From researching, planning, and shopping for trips, bring your readers into how you travel.
Building an Audience of Readers on Social Media Platforms
When you have a travel blog, building an audience on social media can help drive readers and help you make connections to other travel bloggers. One way to do that is by being active on the platform. That can mean commenting and sharing other’s content as well as sharing your own.
The other way is by using a social media company to help you with that. For example, if you publish content on your website and then use services like Hootsuite or Buffer, your posts will be published automatically without any input from you. That makes sure you don’t miss promoting your posts and get them out into the world more quickly and easily.
Also, when you’re lazy like me, you can use services like Zapier to automatically post to social media when you publish a new blog post. It takes the manual work out of blogging, and you don’t have to spend any brain space thinking about it.
6. How to Start a Travel Blog that Makes Money
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When you first start with your travel blog, your biggest fans will be most likely your family and close friends. That’s fine! However, if you want to start making money with your blog, you will need to grow your audience past several people visiting your site a month. How would you do that?
Honestly, making money blogging is hard work in the beginning. But, if you know what you’re doing and follow a process, and you stick to it, you have the biggest chances of success.
If you don’t know what you’re doing, getting to the point of making money can take much longer than you want it to. It took me over two years to start making a decent amount of money, just because I didn’t know what I was doing.
Now that I’m following a process outlined for me by Money Mix Insiders, I’m actually making money with my blog.
My site went from 5,000 to 50,000 monthly page views; my DA increased from 17 to 58. I made exactly $0 from my blog the month I joined, and now I’m making over $2,000 per month.
If I could do it all again, I would immediately sign up for the Money Mix Insiders program to avoid losing time working on things that don’t get me results.
What Does The Money Mix Insiders Offer?
If you want to earn more money in less time and optimize your way to a money-making travel blog, this group is for you.
When you sign up for the Money Mix Insiders, you’ll get the tools to make you get that sweet Google traffic. You will get one-on-one consultations to help you with traffic, writing content, website speed, and monetization. You’ll also be with like-minded people who have the same goal as you. We all support each other, cheer each other’s accomplishments, and lend an ear on those challenging days.
You also get the process that 70+ experienced bloggers in our group use to get consistent readers without losing your unique voice. Plus, you’ll get sponsored content opportunities, affiliate relationships, and you will get tools with over $1,600 of value that’ll help you succeed.
The best thing? You can start from just $1/month for the first three months. If that isn’t a no-brainer, I don’t know what is.
Conclusion: How to Start Travel Blog
When thinking about how to start a travel blog, it can seem so overwhelming. There are dozens of things you can do. Focus on the most important ones and start by setting up your blog and getting out content. All the other things that you want to do will only overwhelm you and are okay to do later in the process.
If you want to make money blogging and build your audience consistently, the best thing you can do is follow a tested and optimized process. But, then, you only have to follow the process, which will get you the results you want: a profitable blog and an income-producing asset in the long term.
This post originally appeared on Savoteur.
Featured Image Credit: Pexels.