Become a Travel Blogger

In this era of digitalization, there are a number of ways that you can make money online. One such effective way is through building a successful blog and make money.

A blog is a piece of digital content that helps to share information with the audience. A person who starts a blog is known as a blogger. Such an individual may create blogs to help people learn about particular topics or categories.

You can create blogs on various topics according to your preferences.

One such niche in which people may create blogs is travel. If you love to travel the world, you may convert your passion into a source of income by suggesting travel tips and tricks.

There are people who plan to travel around the world or may dream of living overseas. Even while working from your office from 8 to 9, you think of backpacking and starting off a trip soon.

In all such cases, why don’t you consider to start writing a travel blog? As a professional travel blogger, you not only get to travel but can also make great incomes.

Some of the successful travel bloggers are presently earning six-figure incomes. However, all this is possible only if you put in a lot of hard work and remain patient.

This is because, as we all know, blogging is a passive form of income that requires an investment of time.

But once you know all the tricks to starting your travel blog, you can achieve success in this industry. A person can start a travel blog for a number of different reasons or goals.

Let’s take a look at some of the reasons you might want to start a travel blog.

Why Should You Start Travel Blogging?

Before opting for any profession, you require an incentive or motivation that can help you do so. In the same way, when you write travel blogs, you should get something in return or have a goal in mind.

The purpose behind creating the travel blog serves as your incentive. You can always find out the reason behind creating your travel blogs by asking certain questions.

• Will creating a travel blog help me in the future?
• Will a travel blog help to enhance my professional image as a traveler?
• Do I want to earn income by creating travel blogs?

Once you get answers to such questions, you can know the purpose behind creating your blog.

The different purposes for which individuals generally create their travel blogs are as follows:

1. Share Your Personal Traveling Experience

Travel blogging provides the users with a platform through which they can share their traveling experiences with an audience. By creating their travel blogs, they can easily mention the places they have visited.

You can even provide suggestions and recommendations to the audience about the particular place or your experience. There are various ways to create a travel blog.

You can share your experience with the audience by keeping a travel diary. In the travel diary, you keep updating your personal experiences.

Say, for example, that you visited place ‘A’ when you started to create your blog. After a few days, you went to place ‘B’ and then to ‘C’. If you create a travel diary with the help of your blogs, you can update your audience about the places you visit in the same order.

Besides the travel diary, the travel bloggers can also create an informative blog for the users. This blog should help the users decide whether they want to visit the place or not.

You can describe the place along with the advantages and disadvantages of visiting it. There are chances that you may not be able to attract a large amount of traffic in the beginning when you create such a blog.

However, with time and effort, you can surely attract followers. But if you create your travel blog to simply share your experience with the audience, then you may not feel too low if you are not able to attract traffic.

2. Build a Community of Travelers

When you create travel blogs, you will also read the blogs of other similar bloggers. This will help you get to know different travelers who create blogs.

You can connect with all such travelers with the help of different social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. This will help you build up a community of travelers.

Once these travel bloggers know you, they will visit your blogs and support you through their comments. When you know a community of likewise travelers, you can connect.

It is always good to know that there are similar people who are putting in efforts to create travel blogs. You can also share your knowledge with them and seek their support when needed.

Also, having a look at your competitors’ strategies can let you know the tips and tricks that may work for you.

3. Make Money with Your Travel Blog

One of the major purposes for travelers to create blogs is to earn income. Money serves as an incentive for these people to create their blogs and share their traveling experience.

Once you attract great traffic towards your travel blogs, you can make money with a travel blog in various ways. However, this is possible only if you put in great efforts to create quality content for your audience.

The different methods to monetise your travel blog are as follows:

i) Affiliate Marketing

The process of affiliate marketing helps the travelers to earn income by promoting several traveling equipment and goods. Travel bloggers can promote products that attract their specific target audience.

But who is the target audience of these bloggers? Since you create travel blogs, the target audience which you attract relates to the people who like to travel.

So the travel bloggers may promote products like traveling cameras, travel bags, adventurous equipment, travel clothes, travel packages etc. Besides the products, the bloggers can also suggest different services to their audience.

These services may include the service of the hotels, travel insurance or even the different activity and tour guides.

To promote particular products or services, the bloggers can place the respective traveling affiliate link in their blogs. When the audience clicks on such links, they are redirected to the particular traveling product or service.

From here they can make their purchases. This will help the travel bloggers to earn income. Different activity traveling affiliate programs which you can go for are as follows-

The hotel affiliate programs include:

• Booking.com

Booking.com is a newer affiliate hotel program. People who have a travel website or a blog can use this affiliate program to earn income. It provides some of the best offers for hotel bookings to the people. You can easily sign up on the platform.

Once you sign up, the software has a search option. This search option will help you search for the different hotels that you can promote in your travel blog.

Once you promote the services of different hotels, you can earn income. This affiliate program provides 25% of their earnings as commissions to the affiliates.

However, if you help to further increase the number of customers, your commission share will increase.

• Air bnb

Air Bnb is another hotel affiliate program. However, this program is different from the previous affiliate program. This is because the software allows you to earn points instead of the commission. The affiliates can use these points to purchase the products or services of the program.

Besides the affiliate program, Air Bnb also has a referral process. Once you suggest the platform to an individual and he or she makes a successful purchase, you can earn up to $72.

The different affiliate programs related to the travel activities and tours are:

• Viator

Viator provides destination activities and tours to its users. You can suggest this platform to your audience for destination tours. Once successful purchases are made from your affiliate link, you can earn commissions.

The platform provides an 8% commission when an individual books a tour through your affiliate link. It also has a 30-day cookie. Other affiliate programs that can help you to promote traveling products include ShareASale, Amazon, etc.

For more information on earning income through affiliate marketing. You can visit our blog.

ii) Advertising Your Blog Posts

Travel bloggers can even earn passive income by placing advertisements on their blogs. Placing advertisements is one of the most common ways of earning income through your blogs based on the traffic that visits it.

These advertisements are the banner images that serve as a link on your blog. You can advertise any traveling product, brand or service using the advertisement.

But before opting for any advertisement platform, you should consider various factors.

These factors include the number of advertisements you want to place on your blog or the responsiveness of these advertisements for different desktops and mobile devices.

The digital platforms that provide advertising services to the users include Google AdSense, media.net, MediaVine, etc. 

iii) Sell Your Products

Another method to monetize your travel blog is to sell your products. On your travel blog, you may sell different products like your designed t-shirts, customized handbags, travel bags, etc.

Hence, these were some of the purposes for which you may create your travel blog. Once you know why you want to create your travel blog, you can move on to the next steps.

How to Start a Travel Blog?

1. Decide a Blog Name 

To create a travel blog, you will need a website. The bloggers also need to have a travel blog name. The name of the website is known as the domain.

Determining the domain is one of the most important aspects of a website. This domain provides the first impression to your target audience when they visit your website.

Hence, deciding the domain of your website is a daunting task. If you choose the wrong domain, changing it later is a hectic process. So you should always keep the domain of your website related to traveling.

Other features which you must remember before choosing the name of your website are as follows:

i) Represent Your Work

When you choose travel blogging, it should always describe the work that you do as a travel blogger. For example, you are a nomad.

So you can choose the name of your domain as a nomadic fanatic. This name will provide the first impression to the audience, and they will know your profession in detail.

ii) Everlasting Name

While creating a travel blog, you should not restrict the name of your domain to particular places. If you do so, then you will not have a wide scope in the future.

Say, for example, that you name your domain EfaAdventuresAsia.com. However, later on, you will visit places outside Asia as well.

This will restrict your scope, and you will have to change your domain name in the future. Instead of this name, you may choose a domain name such as efaadventures.com.

iii) Avoid Using Dates

Sometimes the travel bloggers may choose dates according to their ages in their domain. For example, you may name your domain as  20Wanderlust.com. However, age also restricts your scope to write further and create travel blogs.

iv) Common Words

The travel bloggers can find certain common words in the domains of other travel bloggers. You should avoid using these vague words that have been used by almost every travel blogger. These words may include wanderlust, nomad adventure, etc. So you should use creativity and uniqueness in your domain.

v) Short and Crisp

Your domain name should be short and easy to remember. If the audience can remember it, they can visit your website again and again.

To make the process of choosing a domain name easier, you can opt for automatic domain name generators. There are more than 360,000,000 registered domain name generators that can help you.

2. Select a Website Hosting

After deciding the name or title of your website, it is crucial to choose its website hosting service provider. But before choosing the website hosting service, you should know the meaning of web hosting.

When you create a website, this website requires a platform or space on the Internet. Using this space, it can store all the important data, files, pictures, videos, and other crucial information for your blog.

The web hosting services also allow people from all over the globe to access your data when they search for your domain.

So getting a web hosting service is essential to start blogging or while creating a new travel blog from scratch . However, there is a lot of competition in this field.

This makes it difficult for people to choose the right web hosting service for their website. There are a plethora of web hosting service providers for you new blog. You may choose different providers based on several factors, like performance, price, offers, etc.

Some of the best web hosting services that can help you create your travel blog are:

• Bluehost
• Host Gator
• A2 hosting
• Hostinger
• Dreamhost
• Siteground
• WordPress blog: WP engine

You can choose any web hosting service according to the features that align with your travel blog requirements. 

3. Decide the Theme of Your Website

Once you are done with the technical processes of choosing the domain and the web hosting service, you can decide the theme of your website.

The theme or design of your website gives a crucial element while customizing your blog. This is why it provides the first visual impression to your target audience when they open your website.

It is based on this theme that they will decide whether they want to stay on your website or leave it. So an appealing and intriguing theme that can make your blog catch the attention of the target audience is important.

Since you want to create a travel blog, you should always personalize your theme to reflect the travel niche. This theme should help you start with the viewers knowing, in the first instance, that your website or blogs relate to travel.

Travel bloggers can choose from two types of themes: free themes and paid or premium themes. The free theme help you keep your costs low and are available at wordpress.org.

On the other hand, the premium themes add more uniqueness and functionality to your website. Generally, you can get a premium theme for $25 or less.

However, before choosing any theme, you should make sure to take care of various factors. These factors include the code quality of the theme, its customer support, the travel niche of your website, and other attributes.

You can even purchase themes from a digital marketplace known as Theme Trust.

4. Create the Main Pages

Once you have chosen a particular theme or design for your blog website, you can create its basic pages. The pages of your website are different from the blog posts.

These pages are separate from the blogs on your website, and they do not tend to change their position. However,  a blog keeps changing its position. When you create new blogs, these blogs take up the position of the older blogs.

Let us understand this with an example. This article is also a blog post, which will be uploaded to the website. However, when a new article is published on our website, this post will be pushed down.

It will make it difficult for the target audience to find this particular blog. On the other hand, the basic pages of the website do not change their positions.

For example, the about us page of the website may be located at the top or bottom of the page. This does not change its position with the development of new pages. Once you create a travel website, you should also create different basic pages.

Let us have a look at these pages.

i) The Contact Page

You share information on your personalised traveling experiences and suggestions with the help of your travel blogs. When the readers or target audience read your blogs, they may have certain queries from you.

In such cases, you should provide a contact page on your website. This contact page should have information related to your email address, contact number, etc.

In this way, people can reach out to you and get their doubts cleared. This will help you to gain more traffic as well. 

For example, that you provided an experience with a particular place on your travel blog. In all such cases, the target audience or viewers have some queries related to the same place.

They can easily connect with you through the details mentioned on your contact page.

 ii) The About Page

On the about page you can provide a short description or insight into your history.  Besides a description of yourself, you can also describe your travel blogs on the about page.

This will help the audience to know your traveling niche and decide whether they want to read your blogs or not.

iii) The Privacy Page

The privacy page consists of all the agreements and terms and conditions of your website and travel blogs. You can also provide the procedure for the cookies and the other laws of your travel blogs on this page.

5. Content Marketing Strategy

Creating high-quality travel blogs without the right content marketing strategy will lead you nowhere. A content marketing strategy will help you attract traffic to your travel blogs.

This is because your travel blogs are of no use if they cannot share the required information with your audience. Many marketing strategies can help you with content marketing.

Different factors that allow the travel bloggers to create their content marketing strategy are as follows:

i) Identify the Interests of Your Target Audience

Since you create travel blogs, you know the interests of your target audience. The travel bloggers should always align their content marketing strategy according to the audience’s interests.

ii) Create a Content Calendar

By creating a content calendar, you can post about your travel blogs in a consistent manner. Regularity in the publication of your travel blogs will also help you attract more traffic.

Not only this, but the content calendars can also provide you with notifications about your pending tasks. Different content calendars that travel bloggers can use include Google Calendar, Trello, etc.

iii) Determine the Object for Your Travel Blogs

To create an impressive content marketing strategy, you should always know your goal or objective when creating the blog. Travel bloggers may have different goals or objectives. Some of the bloggers may have the goal of establishing their brand.

On the other hand, others may want to attract greater traffic or generate leads. Some may just want to spread information. Whatever your goal, if you know it clearly, you can create your content marketing strategy.

iv) Choose the Right Keywords

People generally search for different subjects on the internet with the help of keywords. These keywords are also recognized by search engines.

So you can always improve the ranking of your travel blogs on search engine result pages by using different keywords.

However, there are several things that you should know before choosing the right keywords for your travel blog. Let us have a look at them.

6. Travel Bloggers Should Choose Right Keywords

Travel bloggers should always include travel-related keywords in their content. These keywords will help to increase the organic traffic that visits the blog websites of their travel bloggers. But how can you find the right travel-related keywords for your travel blogs?

To streamline the keyword search process for travel bloggers, the web has several tools. You can use these tools according to the topic of your blog.

For example, you may use Keyword Explorer to find travel-related keywords for your travel blogs.

Let us say the topic of your travel blog is “The Top Five Hotels to Reside in Kerala.” For this topic, your keywords may include “top 5 lodgings,” “hotels in Kerela,” “best hotels in Kerela,” etc.

However, you cannot add all the keywords available on the web to your travel blog.

For this, you should choose some specific keywords that have the highest potential to rank your travel blog. But before choosing these keywords, there are several factors that you should consider.

First of all, the travel keywords that you use should align with the topic of your blog. Secondly, you should also check the keyword difficulty score of the keyword that you wish to use in your travel blog.

Travel bloggers can analyze the rankings of different phrases and keywords using Keyword Explorer. When you start creating travel blogs, the difficulty score of your keywords may range anywhere between 20 and 30.

Another important factor that you should consider before using travel keywords in your blog is the search volume. The search volume refers to the number of searches done for the specific keyword in a month.

Let us understand this with the help of the previous example. In the above example, the two keywords “top five lodgings” and “hotels in Kerala” are mentioned.

Out of these two, the second keyword, “hotels in Kerela” has a greater search volume. In this case, it is advisable to use a keyword with a higher search volume. This will help you attract more traffic.

Travel bloggers should also learn how to use keywords to streamline their content marketing strategies. This is because, in this era of digitalization, Google’s algorithms have become quite strong.

Hence, the right usage of the keywords will help your travel blog rank higher. To know more about the usage of the keywords and their significance, you can read our blog by clicking on this link.

Once you create a content marketing strategy, you can move on to the next step.

7. Search Engine Optimization

There are a lot of articles on the web about the same topic or type of travel. But how can you make your articles stand out from your competitors’ articles?

Herein lies the importance of search engine optimization. As a travel blogger, you should use the techniques of on-page and off-page search engine optimization. This will help attract more traffic to your website.

Let us understand the meaning of both of these types of search engine optimization.

i) On-Page Search Engine Optimization

As mentioned above, the content marketing strategy and the right usage or travel keywords include on-page search engine optimization. 

ii) Off-Page Search Engine Optimization

The process of off-page search engine optimization is passive. It can help you in your blogging process with the help of shares and links.

Since the process involves sharing your travel blogs, it has no relation to the algorithms of different search engine result pages.

The different types of search engine optimization techniques that travel bloggers can follow are:

• Social Media

In this digital world, almost every individual has an account on social media. You can use this benefit to share your travel blogs on social media.

Not only this, but the importance of social media is also recognized by the algorithms of Google. This will help you attract greater traffic to your travel blog through Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.

To streamline the process of using social media, you should be responsive on these platforms, assess your performance, and build strong connections. 

• Blog Commenting

Another off-page search engine optimization technique that can help you gain organic traffic is blog commenting. You can learn about blog commenting by reading our article.

• Lead Generation Forms

There are visitors who have an interest in your travel blog. However, once they read your blog fully, they do not know what to do. For this, you can provide a call to action to your viewers in the form of lead generation forms. These forms will help you gain more sales and attract regular visitors. 

• Posting Forums

You can post in forums to promote your travel articles. Different types of forums include Reddit, Yahoo Answers, Quora, etc. By providing answers to the questions of your target audience related to travel, you can win their trust.

So these were the off-page search engine optimization techniques. With all the information related to travel blogging, you can now start and publish your travel blog. After posting the travel blog, you should follow the next step.

8. Assessing the Traffic on Your Travel Blog

One of the biggest mistakes that travel bloggers make is to publish their blogs and then sit quietly.

However, if you want to gain more followers, you should identify the mistakes in your blog and improve on them. For this, you can analyze the performance of your travel logs.

There are several factors that you should consider before assessing the traffic to your travel blog.

• First of all, you should know the type of traffic visiting your travel website. These types of traffic include social media traffic, direct traffic, organic traffic, etc.
• Secondly, you should know the software or applications that can help you analyze the traffic visiting your travel blog.

Some of the common tools that can help you in this process include Google Search Console, Google Analytics, open web analytics, etc.

9. Learning and Improving

After knowing the amount of traffic visiting your website, you can always improve your travel blogs. Bloggers should improve their blogs by addressing their shortcomings.

Through improvisation, travel bloggers can also update their blogs. Say, for example, you write a travel blog on the best hotels in Kerala. However, after a week, the hotel prices have changed.

In such a case, you can improve this travel blog by updating the new travel prices in the blog.

To improve your travel blog by aligning it with the needs of the target audience, you should perform the following steps:

• The travel bloggers need to be consistent and regular in their improvisation and posting. Consistency also compels the bloggers to always update their existing blogs. If you remain consistent, then there is a constant relationship between you and your audience. However, in cases of inconsistency, your audience may forget about you.
• Secondly, the travel bloggers should focus on the four-step strategy. This strategy includes the steps of ‘learning, practicing, implementing, and improvising.’
• You should also integrate a call to action at the end of your travel blog. This call to action will help you convert the leads into regular customers.
• While improvising your blog, it is very essential to verify its grammar mistakes. The grammatical mistakes can show your unprofessionalism as a travel blogger. These mistakes also tend to have a negative impact on your readability score. This can, in turn, affect the ranking of your travel blogs on the Google search engine result pages. To correct your article grammatically, there are a number of tools. These tools include Grammarly, Pro Aid, data.yze, etc.
• Rethinking your strategy is another important way to learn and improve your travel blog. The prior step of analyzing the traffic will help you know the weaknesses of the blog. Based on these shortcomings, you can improve your strategy.
• Giveaways are also a special technique to increase organic traffic to your website.
• Improving the website’s loading time will help you attract more traffic. To improve its loading time, you can check the loading time of your travel blogs on different browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, etc.
• In the end, you can always learn about the shortcomings of your travel blog through the comments section. The comment section will help you interact with your target audience and align with their requirements.

Start Your Blog Now! 

So, you can begin a travel blog either as a hobby or even as a way to make money. It takes even less than an hour to create your travel website.

But you should make sure to make an appealing and intriguing website that can attract your target audience. Your travel blogs should also exhibit the niche of traveling through various designs and themes.

Once you are a beginner and have just set up your blogs, it is crucial to post consistently. The reason behind this is that your travel blog is the sole medium of communication with your audience.

If you do not communicate with them regularly through your travel blogs, they may forget about you. On the other hand, if you keep on posting consistently, a connection of trust is built between you and your audience.

Once you have a great audience base, you can also make six-figure incomes. However, in the beginning, you should not aim at making income.

This is because travel blogging is a passive form of earning income. It requires an investment in terms of time and effort. So you will have to work hard and wait for a longer period before making money from your travel blogs.

There are a number of ways to monetize your travel blogs and become a successful travel blogger. You can choose any method according to your requirements, like affiliate marketing, Google advertisements, etc.