If working from anywhere is what you want, what about sharing your stories about your journeys on a train? Travelling is desired by many people, but the fact is, you need money to fund your travel. And this is not possible if you are still working on a job. Hence, why don’t combine the best of both? Start a travel blog and monetize it to fund your journey.
Although it seems hard to believe that this is possible, it is actually done by many travel bloggers. And don’t get me wrong, I didn’t say that the process should be simple or you don’t need to work on it to get it done.
There are still lots of efforts that need to be taken to realize it. Travel blogging can take you places you love to go without worrying about getting back to work. Because this is your work!
Just because you are running your own “business” now and now working in an office, there are a lot of things that you need to take care of. There are lots of work, dedication, consistency and planning required to get it successful. Not only that, without a full-time job simply means that you are going to look for your income monthly. Which might be different every month.
So, you need to determine how bad it is that you want to make it successful. Knowing that the journey might be hard at first, but the fruit is good, are you willing to take up the journey and chase the dream of becoming a successful travel blogger?
If you are interested, then continue reading our post here about how to start a travel blog and monetize it.
Why Starting A Travel Blog
As the idea of making money travelling is something that is desirable by many people. There are many people trying to join this industry every year. In fact, every month we can see a new travel blogger.
However, there are only a few that really survive and grow into a full-time travel bloggers. This is because many believe that it is a quick rich scheme and there is little work to be done to make it a success.
What they miss out on is the work and dedication required to make it a success. There will be times when your posts are not getting views, and you are demotivated because your business is slowing down. There might be times when you start questioning the workload of it.
But that’s totally normal, sacrifices are required to build an empire. And this is the same for building your travel blog. Since your income will be depending on it, you need to find a way to make it work.
Here are some of the reasons to become a travel blogger:
1. Passion is the key
Passion and consistency should be the driving force of everything you do. There are so many people in life that are doing things that they don’t like. And if you can make a living through your passions, why not go all into it?
If your passion is sharing your travelling experiences through blogs, photos and videos, then a travel blogger is one of the good options for you. By exploring the new journey, at the same time, you are sharing a unique experience with your audiences.
When you fully understand a place, you can share exclusive tips and tricks for your audiences as well.
2. Find Your Unique Angle
Anyone can start a travel blog nowadays. With just a laptop and smartphone, one can start shooting and writing. But why not everyone is able to be successful? And how you want to get people to view your content.
If you search for travel tips for a place, there are hundreds or thousands of blogs sharing the same place. But there are only a few that show up on the first page. And only a few travel bloggers really stand out.
If you research them, you will see that there is some uniqueness in their content. How they explain the place, their personality or their viewpoint of that place.
We call this the attractive character.
Everyone will have their own strengths that either they are born with or learn through experience. You too will have your own strength.
If you are unsure about it yet, don’t worry. Just start and you will find your voice along the way. However, it will be good if you can create an attractive character that your audience can relate to.
For example, instead of showing how awesome is the place that you are travelling to or how is your travel life. You can also share how you quit your 9-5 job and pursue this journey.
It’s the changes and transformations that you went through to reach this stage that makes them able to relate to you.
3. Give back to the community
Leveraging the strength of a community, you can start joining a travel group and share your experience or nice photos in the group. And if people are asking questions about a place that you know, try to help them and give back to the community.
Soon, you too can build your own community or follow that you can monetize in the future.
You can help solve travel problems through your tips and guides and offer actionable advice for travellers. The community doesn’t forget when you help them.
When your reputation is built, it will be easier for you to sell them your products later.
4. Support the travel industry
As a travel blogger, you too are now part of the travel industry. Support your industry and grow it in a healthy way. By doing this, you need to be truly helping them but not thinking of taking the consultation fee first.
When you start to contribute to the travel industry, it will benefit your travel blog as you can bring in traffic from the industry events and communities. Or you can also raise some awareness through your travel blog.
For example, if you are a wildlife photographer, highlighting conservation issues or other worthy causes can help the world at large as well as your blog.
5. Business Skill
Travel blogging isn’t about publishing your experiences and waiting for people to read them. It’s a complete business that involves planning, marketing, selling, and everything businesses need.
If you can learn the ins and outs of business skills and transform your blog into a successful online travel business, you have a stronger chance of success.
6. Willing to learn
There are many things to learn and do when starting your own business. Travelling is also part of the learning process. You need to learn new things every day and master what you learned to get better.
Being a professional or industry expert means you are not only going to share something that is known by everyone. That makes no difference for your content with others.
You want to be like a local and discover more things that are not usually available to the tourist.
How to Start a Travel Blog
Full Guide for How To Build a Travel Website
Starting a travel blog can be a fun and rewarding experience, but it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to build a successful blog. Here are the detailed steps to start a travel blog:
Choose a blogging platform
The first step to starting a travel blog is to choose a platform. Popular blogging platforms include WordPress, Blogger, Wix, and Squarespace. WordPress is the most popular and offers the most customization options, but it requires some technical know-how.
Choose a domain name and web hosting
A domain name is your blog’s address on the internet, and web hosting is where your blog is stored. There are many web hosting companies to choose from, such as Bluehost, SiteGround, and HostGator.
Customize your blog’s design and layout
Once you have chosen a platform and hosting, it’s time to customize your blog’s design and layout. This includes choosing a theme, customizing the header and footer, and creating pages and menus.
Start creating and publishing content
Content is the most important part of your travel blog. Start by creating and publishing high-quality articles, photos, and videos about your travel experiences. Make sure to include keywords related to travel in your articles to help your blog rank in search engines.
Promote your blog
Promoting your blog is essential to attracting readers and building an audience. Utilize social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to share your articles and interact with your followers. You can also guest post on other travel blogs to reach a new audience.
Interact with your audience
Responding to comments and interacting with your audience is crucial for building a loyal following. Encourage readers to leave comments, and respond to their questions and feedback.
Monetize your blog
Once your blog has a substantial following, you can start monetizing it through advertising, sponsorships, and affiliate marketing. You can sell ad space on your blog, work with brands on sponsored content, or promote travel products and services through affiliate marketing.
Starting a travel blog takes time and effort, but with persistence and hard work, you can build a successful blog too. Don’t take it lightly, and understand that there are efforts for getting it to work.
Full Guide for How To Build a Travel Website
How to Promote Your Travel Blog
Now, this is the final and most important step of creating a successful blog. You need to get traffic, and people to visit your website for you to be able to monetize it.
You need to start going out and telling others about what you are doing.
First of all, it would definitely mean starting to travel. You can start with a lower-budget place where you can afford to get some content and your business running. Then, share it with your friends and family what you are and let them share it on their networks.
But soon, the traffic source will be depleted and you will need to use social media to reach more people.
And for these visitors or cold traffics to your content, you would want to collect their contact details and follow up with them via emails.
And one of the keys here is to post and update regularly. People don’t want to read something updated.
Start travelling
Travelling is the best way to get your content. While you can copy from others’ experiences and share them on your blog, that’s not something personalized. Anyone can do the same thing, and that’s lack of your own personal experience.
You need to see and feel it in order to be able to share it well. So, start travelling and gather as much information as you can to share with your audiences. You do not need to spend much on travelling to a very far place for this. All you need to do is to visit your nearby location to get your first few contents.
Start with the town you are living in, then the neighbouring town, then the neighbouring country and finally go global. You are now reaching a global audience, there is nothing wrong to share it.
In fact, this is what many travel bloggers do during the lockdown when they cannot travel overseas.
Write engaging content
Start producing content even if you are not good at writing. It doesn’t matter if no one is reading your post. All it matters now is to look for your voice.
Be persistent and share your experiences on your site. Soon, you will be able to master the skill even without realizing it.
Networking
You can start by sharing your travel blog with your friends and family, and get them to help share it with their contacts.
Then, network with other travel bloggers, travel industry professionals, and influencers to promote your blog and reach a larger audience.
You may also attend travel events, conferences, and meetups to make connections and collaborate on projects or blog posts. Building relationships with other travel bloggers can also lead to cross-promotion opportunities and increased visibility.
SEO optimize your content
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a crucial part of blog promotion. Other than paid ads or social media, search engines are the main traffic for most blogs.
And, it’s free. All you need to do is to implement the SEO techniques, get backlinks and rank your page on the search engines. It might take some time for it to index and rank.
But eventually, when you are able to rank for some high search volume keywords, you will start to feel the power of organic traffic.
Social Media Marketing
Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube are all effective social networks for promoting content.
You can create the same content for different platforms, but you need to bear in mind that different platforms will have different algorithms. The same content idea will need to be tweaked based on the platform to get more reach.
Pinterest, for example, is best for sharing photos, and Instagram is best for sharing photos and short videos.
Run paid ad campaigns
For a fast result, you are going to run paid ads. It will give you faster results, and at the same time will cost you money.
Google and Facebook have ad networks that can bring you lots of traffic. However, you need to ensure that you have the sales process in place to convert them into your leads and customers.
Newsletter or Customer Retention Email
On your website, you can have a pop-up or an opt-in form to collect emails of your website visitors. Ideally, you should offer something to them for free to get them to subscribe to your list.
Then with the list, you can start running your email automation sequences to build trust and relationships. And finally, to convert them into paying customers.
Attend events and network
One of the important things to get success is to leverage. By joining events and seminars, you can get to know different speakers or big names in the industry.
You can learn from them what they are doing or the latest industry trend. Not only that, you can also piggyback on their fame to build yours.
Do a collaboration, guest posting or interview with them, and then post it on your social media platforms and websites. This is a good way for you to reach their audiences with the posts.
How to Make Money From Your Travel Blog
Now, we are talking about real business here. Starting a travel blog is not a money quick scheme or a hobby. You are not going to earn a living without putting in real effort.
However, the more dedicated you are to it, the faster you will see success.
Every single blogger out there will have their own method that works for them. They might be learning from the same mentor and following the same framework, but due to their experience and opportunities, the road taken might be different.
Below are some of the revenue-generation ideas for your travel blog.
Display ads for Travel Blog
This is the most straightforward way to generate revenue from your blog. Your blog is your online asset, and you are renting out spaces on your blog for advertisers to show their banners on your blog.
And in return, they will pay you for the space.
Of course, you will need to have a steady audience to monetize your blog space. The more traffic you have, the more you can charge for this.
You can display banner ads alongside content on your website at different spots depending on your preferences and layout.
You can take orders from advertisers directly, or you can sign up for Google AdSense and Google will link you with the advertisers.
Sponsored posts for Travel Blog
Brands are paying for publishers or influencers to promote their products. It can be a review post, photos or videos of their products.
It can be you handling the posts or they will provide you with the content for you to publish. Either way, you can charge sponsored posts high for you to have huge high-quality traffic.
To avoid getting complaints, make sure you disclose any promotion that you do on your website. You don’t want to ruin your reputation with a sponsored post.
Affiliate Marketing for Travel Blog
This is one of the most favourable income sources for travel bloggers. In fact, affiliate marketing is one of the income sources for most bloggers. They promote different related products in their blog and get commissions when people buy them.
Affiliate marketing is the business model where you sign up to an affiliate network, and get an affiliate link to embed to your website. When someone clicked on the link and makes a purchase, you get paid commissions.
You can get in touch with the companies or join an affiliate network to get access to the product.
Common travel booking websites like Booking, Klook, and Agoda, all have affiliate programs. You can scroll to the bottom of their page to check out the affiliate program.
Besides, you can also promote other travel accessories in your blog. You can talk to the brand directly about this. Or you can also sign up for programs like Amazon affiliates or other marketplace affiliate programs to get access to more products.
Premium Content for Travel Blog
To increase your revenue, you can create premium content apart from the general content that is available for everyone.
This can include some well-researched guides, tips and hacks. eBooks travel guides that are not available elsewhere. And of course, for the subscription fee they paid, they will get more in return in terms of value.
Your monthly subscription fee does not need to be high. You can be charging like $5 per month, but when your community grows, the same goes for your income.
Sell products and services for Travel Blog
With dropshipping and print-on-demand, you can literally sell anything as long as it is relevant. And the beauty of this is that you don’t need to handle inventory and shipping, all you need to do is to leverage the traffic that you already have, and promote your product in your page.
You can either be selling physical or digital products. Both are good, but for a digital product, it is easier to reproduce and fulfilled as you only need to get access to them and they can download them themselves.
Besides, with the stunning photos and videos that you took during the trip, you can sell them for royalty as well.
Final thoughts – How To Start A Travel Blog and Monetize it
Travel blogging has become one of the most lucrative areas of blogging. You get to travel to different places at the same time, earning money. It’s the dream job for most people.
What’s most never seen is the commitment and the effort behind it before all the results are created. A travel blog is like any other business, takes time and dedication to build.
And, you will also need marketing and business skills to generate revenue and stand out in the crowd.