How To Start A Travel Blog And Make Money

How To Start A Travel Blog And Make Money

After blogging for over 13 years, we cover everything you need to know to start a travel blog and make money in this easy step-by-step guide!

So you have a passion for travel and would like to learn how to start a travel blog? Great! Travel blogging is a fun way to keep logs of your adventures, make friends, and trade tips with the larger internet voyager community. But let’s get one misconception out of the way: if you’re expecting to immediately become internet famous, have a huge following, and get paid to travel the world solely through blogging, there is a long, tough road ahead of you.

Still, if you’re serious about wanting to blog professionally — or even just for fun — a little challenge can be encouraging! Like travel, you’ll find starting your travel blog gives you ample opportunities to try new things, develop new skills, and live new experiences. Follow these 8 easy steps to learn everything you need to know to begin blogging like a pro.

How To Start A Travel Blog And Make Money

 

How To Start A Travel Blog And Make Money

 

Step 1: Brainstorm Your Blog Niche & Name

Before you learn to monetize your blog, though, you have to have a blog. Before you have a blog, you’ll have to know what you want to blog about and how to distinguish yourself from the many other amazing travel blogs out there. Luckily, none of those other bloggers are you, so even if you are writing about the same thing — travel — the way you approach your travels will be different.

Take some time to think about what makes you and your perspective on travel unique. Are you a backpacker or a jetsetter? Young or old? An experienced expatriate or just ready to take your first airplane flight?

Often travel bloggers find that the appeal of a traveling lifestyle intersects with other interests such as photography, cooking, architecture, climate-specific sports, or something else. If you have a particular profession or hobby that traveling lets you indulge, why not make your blog about that?

Once you’ve pinned down what makes you unique, spend some real time thinking about your eventual domain name. You want to make sure the name of your future website is something easy to remember and straightforward, and that it isn’t too close to an already existing blog’s name. Make sure it gets the point across: if you’re an experienced traveler with an interest in astronomy, a name like AstroTourist will be much clearer than Jim’s Travel Blog.

 

Step 2: Get Hosted

Once your name has been chosen, you need to register it. We recommend Bluehost as not only are they inexpensive (get a discount and only pay $3.95 per month by signing up through our link), but they’re also built for WordPress, have one-click install, offer a number of other handy website management tools, and have a fabulous 24-hour support team in case you have questions or run into any issues.

WordPress itself also offers cheap domain hosting and free subdomain hosting, but the customization limits and inability to use widgets make these less than ideal if you’re planning to run your travel blog as more than a hobby.

To setup hosting with Bluehost, head over to Bluehost’s homepage, and click on the green “Get Started Now” Button.

How To Start A Travel Blog

From here, you’ll be taken to a screen that will present three plan options to choose from. Which plan you choose depends on your needs, but as a beginner, it’s a safe bet to choose the most basic plan. You can always upgrade as you dive deeper into blogging and grow your audience!

How To Start A Travel Blog

Once you choose your plan, you’ll be taken to a screen where you can insert your chosen domain name (meaning a URL such as ordinarytraveler.com). If you have yet to register a domain, type your preferred name into the left box and click next.

You’ll then be taken to a screen where you can see whether or not your domain is available.

How To Start A Travel Blog

If your domain is available, you will be prompted to create a Bluehost account, select your package, insert your payment information, and submit. Remember, the longer amount of time you commit to hosting (36 months vs. 12 months) upon signing up, the more money you’ll save in the long run!

How To Start A Travel Blog

Voila! You have just set up hosting for your website!

 

Step 3: Download WordPress

Over 74 million sites use WordPress as their content management software of choice; basically, there are other CMS choices, but WordPress has the most reach and resources. If you chose to host your blog using Bluehost, the option to install WordPress will be available on your onsite control panel once you log in.

If you chose a different hosting option, you should consult with your host company. Worst case scenario, WordPress has detailed installation instructions for a number of unique cases on its wiki.

 

Step 4: Choose a Theme

A professional or custom theme can help your blog stand out from the others by virtue of simply looking a step above the rest. However, themes are about much more than just the look of your blog: they’re also about its functionality.

The right theme will also take into account the kind of layout that will be most intuitive to you and your readers. Will you be a heavily image-focused blogger? Are you more comfortable writing lots of articles or in creating video content? The right theme will let you customize your site to fit your blogging style.

Keep in mind that some themes might not look as nice when viewed from a different device. Check that your theme is responsive before installing/purchasing.

It’s important to get your site built structurally correct from the start; it’s a huge headache to fix it after it is already built (take it from us!) One of the best investments a blogger or business can make is on their website design. We’ve built dozens of websites over the years and know what’s important — with structure, speed, and design — which is why we started a digital marketing agency to help others with this process.

 

Step 5: Install Plugins

Plugins are what make WordPress so fantastic — consider them mini apps for your website. Wordpress offers its own plugin and widget marketplace, so search thoroughly. Make sure you get:

  • Akismet: A spam blocker that will keep bot commenters from bothering you and your readers.
  • EWWW Image Optimizer: A must-have for photo-heavy blogs, this lets images load faster and use less bandwidth.
  • Easy Social Share Buttons: Allows your users to like, share, and subscribe to your content from 20+ social media sites as well as lets you track relevant analytics.
  • Yoast SEO: Helps you analyze your site’s SEO and suggests improvements to help readers find your site more easily.
  • SumoMe: A collection of tools to help boost your site’s subscriber count.
  • W3 Total Cache: Improves site performance & loading time.
  • Wordfence Security: Helps protect your site from virus and phishing attacks — absolutely necessary if you plan on handling monetary transactions through your site.

 

Step 6: Connect to Social Media & Start an Email List

Now that you’ve got your blog set up, time to let the world know! Make sure to lock down your new username on Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and any other social media sites you plan on using to get the word out. Remember to always try to use the same username so there’s no confusion for your readers.

Starting an email list is possibly the most important thing to do in the beginning of your blogging career. Social media sites will come and go and you never really have control over them (ahem, Facebook).

You basically have two options for your email list — Mailchimp and AWeber. You can start with Mailchimp for free and deal with switching to AWeber later — and possibly lose some or all of your email addresses in the process — or sign up with AWeber from the beginning and pay as low as $15/month. With better email tracking and lower prices for lists with more than 2,000 subscribers, AWeber turns out to be the most economical choice in the long run.

How To Start A Travel Blog - A Step-By-Step Guide

 

Step 7: Take A Blogging Course

One of the best decisions we made early on in our blogging journey was taking a course to help me learn the industry. I recommend taking a course to build your strategy and learn the ins and outs of SEO and writing good content. This particular course is inexpensive and it provides comprehensive lessons.

 

Step 8: Start Writing

Now that you have your travel blog, it’s time to start growing an audience — unfortunately that’s easier said than done, and discussing all the techniques and tricks for doing so could easily fill another article. (Hint: learning how to use the plugins from Step 6 is a good start.)

The best way to start growing an audience is to simply start producing content. Many beginning bloggers find posting something new 2-3 times a week is a good way to attract their first readers. If that’s not ideal for your schedule and you have the means to hire a professional copywriter to help out with content creation, that’s a great option as well. 

If you stick to a regular posting schedule, tag your posts with appropriate search keywords, and share them via social media with your friends and family, over time you’ll begin to develop a following. Most of all, remember to keep doing what you love — it takes time, but it’s worth the adventure.

Happy blogging!

 

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How To Start A Travel Blog And Make Money

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10 Comments

  1. I’m a newbie here so your advice just helps me much. Thanks for the share.

  2. Blog voyage says:

    Thanks for the advice !

  3. Tina McClain Pierson says:

    Thank you for this excellent post! It is very motivating and helped me see that my dream of a travel blog is within reach. I am anxious about one thing and was hoping you would share your knowledge with me. How often do you travel? Your post indicated to succeed a writer should post 2-3 times per week. How would you suggest accomplishing this if you only traveled 2-3 times per year?

    1. Ordinary Traveler says:

      Hi Tina. We travel about twice a month right now. You could write general travel tips or write about past trips you’ve taken. You could even do more of a lifestyle focus and write about things other than travel. 🙂

  4. I first started my blog 6 years ago, so it’s practically middle aged in blog years. I’ve only recently decided to take it in a travel direction, though. I’ve read countless articles looking for travel blogging advice. Countless. And I feel like they all say the same thing and nothing at the same time. “Create a blog. Join Travel Blog Success”.

    Well, I already have the blog! Lol. And I can’t afford TBS. So I’m feeling a little frustrated. 🙂

    1. Ordinary Traveler says:

      Sorry to hear you are feeling frustrated! Maybe there is a way to make the money to buy the course? Otherwise, there’s tons of free information on blogging if you do a Google search. In my experience of owning several businesses, at some point you have to invest money to make money. Maybe you are not at that point right now and that’s okay — use those free resources online for now. Just do what you can and try to save for other courses for the future.

    2. It’s probably because TBS pay a handsome affiliate fee for referrals, that doesn’t make it a bad thing though, but it might twist a few bloggers to suggest joining it.

      Take a look at the most popular posts from travel blogs you like. And see if there is something similar that you can write. Get on social media, and follow top travel bloggers, and converse with them. Most importantly write about things that interest you.

      1. Ordinary Traveler says:

        Here’s a thought. You see this course mentioned often because there wasn’t a lot of information online about how to be a travel blogger when most of the travel bloggers, including myself, began blogging over 6 years ago. We all purchased this course (invested in our business) and we all still use it today to get advice from other bloggers in the same field.

  5. trawextech says:

    Thanks for helping me christy.

    1. Ordinary Traveler says:

      You’re welcome!