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Discover how to start a travel blog.
Blogging can be a fun hobby or a full-time job income opportunity.
How to start a travel blog can be the first step to finding a way to earn extra money or spend your free time writing about topics related to travel that interest you.
With that being said blogging is not for everyone because if you don’t enjoy writing or spending time on the computer typing and researching topics you may be better off doing something else.
If you’re still interested in learning how to blog read on to learn how to set up your blog and earn money with it.
It’s actually not as difficult as you might think.
You’ll just need to put in some effort up front to get your blog ready for visitors.
Once your blog is ready you just want to manage it and create content that your audience will want to read and share with others.
Let’s get started…
How To Start A Travel Blog And Make Money
I’ll assume you’re like most people that start a blog…
That is you want to blog for money not just for fun as a hobby.
When I started blogging I learned everything I could about it.
I’ve spent a lot of money enrolling in blogging courses and a lot of time with trial and error.
In fact, my first two blogs totally failed.
Most people would have given up because I spent years learning what works and what doesn’t work.
Now you can bypass those mistakes I’ve made by learning how to start your blog right the first time.
You see if you choose the wrong niche or the wrong keywords your blog will likely receive very few visitors and in turn, it will earn no money.
Below Are Some Good Niches For Travel Bloggers:
- RV Travel
- Traveling Camper
- City Specific Traveler
- Solo Traveler
- Female Travel Safely
- Travel Stories and Tips
Those are just a few examples to get you thinking about the kind of blog you want to create.
Before you do anything you need to choose a niche-specific travel blog.
Step One: Choose Your Niche
What interests you about travel?
Write down some topics you are interested in blogging about and find out if it’s low competition with enough traffic to get a lot of views on your blog.
Later I’ll discuss some free and paid tools you can use to help you make an informed decision about choosing the right niche and find out if it will be profitable.
You can view other travel blogs or travel vlogs to learn more about the types of travel that interest people the most.
Step Two: Get Your Domain Name And Web Hostinng
A domain name is how your visitors will find you online.
For Example: amazon.com
Choosing a domain name is easy just make it something evergreen and related to your blog topic.
You can get your domain name free for 12 months as well as affordable beginner-friendly web hosting by going to BLUEHOST.
It can be confusing when researching and learning about all of the various web hosting options today.
I’ve found that in my opinion the best two web hosting and domain options for beginners are:
Once you choose your domain name and web hosting you have just completed more steps than a lot of other people and it shows you are serious about becoming a blogger that earns money.
Step Three: Choose Your Blog Theme
There are thousands of blog themes to choose from.
It’s not something you want to spend a lot of time on in the beginning because what’s more important is to start getting good content on your blog.
You don’t need to spend any money on a paid theme when you are getting started either there are plenty of quality free themes to choose from.
Below Are Good Free Blog Thems:
- Ocean WP
- Astra
- Hestia
Assuming you are going with a WordPress CMS all you need to do is go to your dashboard and go to Appearance > Themes > Choose Your Theme > Add Theme > Install Theme.
That’s it.
Step Four: Build Your Blog
Now you are only one step away from launching your blog.
You need to add the following pages to your blog:
- About Page
- Privacy Policy
- Contact
- Legal Page
- Disclaimers
- Any Additional Pages You Want
If you’d like to learn how to set up your blog fast and easy get a look over the shoulder view to set up your blog fast here.
After you have set up your blog pages go back to your WordPress dashboard and go to Plugins.
Plugins that are common to add to your blog are:
- Monsterinsights
- All-In-One SEO
- Woo Commerce
- Pretty Links
- Smush
- Yoast SEO
- Google XML Sitemaps
- Beaver Builder
Step Five: Create Killer Content
Probably the most important part, if you want to blog for money, is to create content that crushes your competition and gets ranked in the search engines… especially in Google.
That being said there are tools bloggers use to help them with finding the best keywords to blog on as well as understanding what your audience is interested in reading.
It’s a mix of entertainment and education that seems to be the key ingredients that keep your audience coming back for more.
Now that your blog is ready to launch you’re going to be writing often.
It’s a good idea to find a list of topics you’d like to write on so you don’t have to figure this out every time you post a new article on your blog.
You should have a blog schedule where you commit to writing new content.
A good goal is to write at least once a week and even better if you can blog three times or more weekly.
Whatever blog frequency you choose make sure you are consistent to give your blog the best chance of being successful.
BONUS TIP: Create Social Media Accounts For Your Blog
The Best Social Media For Bloggers Are:
- Youtube
How Do Travel Bloggers Get Paid?
Travel bloggers can get paid in a number of ways.
I know of a travel blogger that started her blog at 21 and now at 28 earns $10K+ monthly.
She has been able to travel and blog her way through college and now lives the dream.
And she wakes up when she wants and works when she wants too.
That being said it takes a lot of hard work and discipline to get to her level of blogger.
Here are some ways to earn money with your blog:
- Affiliate Marketing
- Create eBooks
- Create Courses
- Ads
Those are just some of the ways your blog can help you earn money.
You can sign up to earn affiliate commissions and promote products you believe in.
Create eBooks or Courses that teach people about something of interest on your blog.
And the most common ways to blog for money is to run ads on your blog.
When you combine all of these methods you can potentially earn a nice income over time.
How Much Does It Cost To Start A Travel Blog?
How to start a travel blog most common question is how much does it cost to start a blog.
Well, you can actually start a blog for free but if you want to blog for money it’s not recommended.
Mostly because free blogs don’t look professional and you don’t have full control over your blog.
So if you intend to earn money for your blog it’s recommended to pay for your own domain name and hosting which you can get for a low price on BLUEHOST.
The cost to start a blog is probably one of the most inexpensive ways to start a business online.
It will require an investment of $200 to $500 to start your blog.
Best Free And Paid Tools For Travel Bloggers
There are some great free and paid tools that you should know about if you intend to blog for money.
Below Are Some Of The Best Free Tools:
- Canva.com – Free Marketing site to help you create all kinds of graphic images.
- Aweber – Get Autoresponder, Landing Pages, and Capture Leads -.> Click Here For Free Account
- Pixels- Also Pixaby and Unsplash For Free Images
- Google Sheets- Create Free Online Spread Sheets
- Hemingway App – Improve Your Writing FREE
That is just a sort sample of the literal hundreds of free tools available for bloggers.
Below Are Some Of The Best Paid Tools:
- AHREFS – My favorite paid tool for finding the best keywords for ranking your blog
- Ryter – AI Content Creator Free and Paid Versions Available -> Click Here For Free Account
- Can I Rank – Get AI blogging tips to help you rank your blog
- Link Miner – Helps you build links to your blog
- Skimlinks – Allows your to automatically monetize product links
A lot of the paid tools have both free and paid options so you can use them before you make a decision to purchase them.
Over time as your blog grows you’ll definitely want to invest in paid blogging tools.
Conclusion
Now you know how to start a travel blog.
Are you up to the challenge?
To recap get domain name free for your first 12 months and affordable hosting at BLUEHOST.
Choose your niche make sure it’s not overly competitive and has keywords you can rank for.
Select your theme and add necessary blog pages as well as plugins.
Blog on a schedule make sure to be consistent to add fresh content at least weekly.
Don’t stop you may feel like giving up when you are starting out.
You’ll receive very little traffic to your blog for the first 8 – 12 months.
Even if you have amazing content and a beautiful blog it takes Google time to trust your blog and rank your articles.
It’s just part of the blogging process so be persistent and once you get to the 24-36 months time frame you could have a blog that earns you a full-time income.
That being said there is no guarantee you will earn any money.
Remember my first two blogs failed and I didn’t earn a penny.
However I kept moving forward and finally learned how to blog for money.
Thanks for reading this article please share it to someone that would be interested in learning how to start a travel blog.
If you’d like to read other articles about travel you can find them here.