You love to travel. You also love to tell people about amazing places to visit — where to go, places to avoid, and practical advice on how to make the most of their trip. Basically, you have all the makings of a great travel blogger.
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But there’s a problem: You don’t know how to start a travel blog. And do travel bloggers get paid? The good news is that many travel bloggers can and do make thousands of dollars per month from their travel blogs. And most of them, if not all, had the same questions you have right now. Fortunately, we have answers. Here are the steps to becoming a successful travel blogger.
Choose a Niche
It’s a big world out there, and you might think that you need to write about as many destinations and topics as possible to be a successful travel blogger. But that approach could slow your success, said Shelley Marmor, a full-time, professional blogger who has five blogs, including Travel Mexico Solo and Travel Blogging 101, where she teaches blogging courses. “I often hear that people don’t want to pigeonhole themselves, or limit what they write about,” she said.
But if you want financial success in a shorter amount of time, she said sticking to a well-defined niche is the way to go. “Google will eventually see you as an expert in that niche, and start to show you in their search results,” she said. So go ahead, embrace your love of 17th-century cheesemaking, the world’s best train rides or vegetarian restaurants in the South. Chances are if you are interested in it, others are too.
Choose a Name for Your Blog
This is a choice that can get first-time travel bloggers hung up for days, if not weeks. But believe it or not, said Marmor, your blog’s name is far less important than you think. “While many people will rack their brains to come up with a cool, funny or clever name, I personally think direct blog names work best,” she said. For instance, her blog that covers Tulum, Mexico, is simply named Tulum Travel Secrets. The name is simple and descriptive, and it took only a few minutes to come up with. Stick to this formula, she said, and Google will know what your blog is about immediately, leading to better search results for you.
Here are three important things Marmor suggested you keep in mind when naming your blog:
- Leave your name out of the blog title, because if you ever sell your travel blog, you’ll have to sell it with your name attached.
- Make sure you can grow with the blog. For instance, stay away from names like 20-Something Travels or Traveling With Two Kids, because eventually you will be 30, and you might have a third child.
- Don’t get too clever and cross into confusing. Tell someone who doesn’t know you well and see if they get your name without an explanation.
Consider Taking a Blogging Course
If you have never written professionally or created a website, you might want to take a course on blogging or travel blogging. It is by no means necessary; however, it can help. In fact, Marmor, who was a professional journalist before starting her blog, took a travel blogging course herself when she was starting out and said it was one of the best moves she made. “There is a formula that works when it comes to profitable blogging, and you either know it or you don’t,” she said.
Learn SEO
Many people are under the false belief that search engine optimization involves merely finding keywords that launch their site to the top of Google’s list, or at least on it. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. SEO is very complex, involving not only keywords but site organization, loading speed and a host of other elements.
Learning SEO, at least at a fundamental level, is important to your blog’s success. “I believe that SEO is vital to blogging, and I’m pretty sure the vast majority of bloggers would agree,” said Marmor. “If you want to get free traffic from Google and other search engines, then you need to learn the language search engines speak, and that’s SEO.”
Decide on a Length for Your Blog Posts
This might seem arbitrary and unimportant. And to some extent, your blog posts can be any length. The important thing is that each post fully answers the reader’s questions about a destination or activity. While there is no exact agreed-upon or even recommended length for travel blog articles, Google tends to favor long-form content that thoroughly answers the user’s query, said Marmor, whose own blog posts tend to run 2,500 to 4,000 words.
Choose a Hosting Platform for Your Travel Blog
This is another area in which a new blogger could easily find themselves falling down a rabbit hole. Do a search on Google and there will be a vast array of advice, each seemingly suggesting a different list of the best hosting platforms for travel bloggers.
But, said Marmor, don’t sweat this too much. Just make sure you choose a reputable provider that makes building your travel blog easy. Remember, you want most of your energy going into writing. “As long as you aren’t choosing a bottom-of-the-barrel host, you’re fine,” she said. “No hosts that I know of are specific to travel blogs, so just read reviews before choosing,” she said.
Decide on Your Blog’s Cadence and Write Posts Consistently
This is your blog, so you get to decide how often you write a new post. But in today’s world, more is usually more. So a good rule of thumb is to write as often as you can, without burning yourself out, said Marmor.
“When you burn out you’ll quit, so if your life doesn’t allow it right now, don’t set an unrealistic expectation that you’ll write and publish 15 blogs per week,” she said. Instead, she advised, concentrate on making each and every blog high quality. “If you can get one high-quality blog done per week without burnout, that’s great. If you can get five done per week without burnout, even better,” she said.
Add Photos and Videos to Your Travel Blog
Much of the attraction of travel is seeing the sights, so photos and videos are great additions to your blog. They enhance the user experience and keep readers engaged and coming back.
But, said Marmor, when you are starting out, you might want to keep your vlogging in check. “Doing both [blogging and vlogging] can expand your reach and your audience, but doing both well is like having two full-time jobs,” she said. “When you’re making enough in passive income from one, you can start thinking about starting the other.”
Promote Your Travel Blog
The good news is that in today’s world, self-promotion is fairly easy to do, thanks to the vast social media landscape. The bad news is that that landscape is absolutely littered with noise that makes breaking through difficult. So while outlets such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter, might seem like a necessity, Marmor warned that they can also become a drain on your time. “I do zero social media, and have no interest in ever doing it,” she said. “If the day comes when I feel I need it for my business, I will hire out.” She believes that no platform benefits a blogger more than spending more time traveling and blogging.
Incorporate Affiliate Marketing Into Your Travel Blog
Affiliate marketing is a marketing model in which you, the travel blogger, incorporate links and promotions for goods and services on your website. When one of your readers clicks through and makes a purchase, you are rewarded, usually in cash. If done well, it can be extremely lucrative. In fact, said Marmor, about half of her monthly income is from affiliate marketing.
Marmor, who writes about and teaches classes on affiliate marketing, said that different affiliate marketing programs have different criteria. When you have a sufficient amount of blog posts live on your site — at least 10, she said — you can apply to these.
Partner With Brands You Love
Another monetization opportunity is partnerships with companies, where they pay you to promote their products and services. These take time and readership, however, because companies will want strong metrics showing that many people visit your site each month, said Marmor. “It will take time to build that up to a number which will make companies take notice, and be willing to pay you to promote them,” she said.
She also cautions to only endorse brands you use yourself and stand behind, as she does. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing the trust of your readers, the worst thing possible for your brand.
Be Patient — Making Money From Your Travel Blog Takes Time
While travel blogging can pay off, don’t expect success to come overnight — or even in a year. Marmor tells new bloggers to expect it to take about two years of consistent work for your blog to make money. “It can take slightly less, but that will really depend on how fast you work, and more importantly, how smart you work,” she said.
Marmor saw success quickly, but she said that’s because she worked full time on her blog with a devotion to becoming her own boss. If family, work or other obligations won’t allow you to devote 40 hours a week to your blog, be patient and keep typing.
Remember the Most Important Rule of Travel Blogging
Sure, you probably want to become a travel blogger so you can turn your passion into a paycheck. But to do that, you need to provide a service. As Marmor so succinctly put it, “No one cares where I’ve been in Mexico — and I’ve been to a lot of places — but they do care about how I can help them have the best vacation ever in those same places.” So, she said, in 2024, it is vital to the success of your travel blog that it helps readers gain valuable information they can use to improve their travel experience. Do that and the cash will come.
Source: Turn Your Love of Travel Into a Paycheck: Step-by-Step Guide to Starting a Travel Blog
