You have to fork out the initial travel money. Your blog isn't going to pay you to see Patagonia in the first year.
My travel blog is the byproduct of my passion for photography and travel. I started to document my excursions and photographic adventures around the world and from that, another hobby (writing) developed. Travel blogging can be both rewarding and frustrating at the same time. Frustrating because of all the trials and errors that I went through for the nearly two years of development. Rewarding because once I learned from mistakes and realized some wins, the feeling is exhilarating.
From all the failures there were a lot of Eureka moments that more made up for those mistakes. Here I will share with you what I have learned and you will get something from this guide to help you start your own Travel Blog.
First, let's do a reality check and set the expectations. You are not going to make thousands of dollars in your first few months (let alone the first year) of travel blogging, period. Forget about having a travel blog that will fund your travels at the beginning. You will have to fork out the initial investment for your travels so you will have something to write and blog about. I know there’s a lot of websites out there making outlandish claims that you can make thousands of dollars but first, you have to sign up to their newsletter or take their course.
Travel blogging is a small pond with more fish in it than the seven seas. Nine-five percent of people who start a travel blog give up after the first year. Nine-five percent of those that stay earn next to nothing from their travel blogs. I know the temptation, traveling the world while being paid, who would not want this?
The reality of it is, most travel bloggers are actually digital nomads so they have an income supporting them on their travels. I have landed gigs that allow me to work remotely so I can work anywhere. The travel bloggers I know are in the same boat – they are freelancers doing web development, content writing, copywriting, programming, graphic design, and any jobs that do not require physical presence.
I don’t mean to scare you. However, you need to keep your feet on the ground and don’t set yourself up for a huge disappointment. Nevertheless, people are always hungry for awesome content – there is still a lot of opportunities for travel bloggers who take awesome photos, entertaining content, and kickass videos.
There are many ways to make money from your travel blog and it can indirectly lead to other opportunities. My travel blog is a great promotion tool for my photography. Yours might promote your awesome writing skills. Maybe it can make money by selling tin foil – the possibilities are endless.
Another thing, Travel Blogging requires hard work and extreme dedication even without seeing the rewards for months. Some bloggers will not see a penny from all their efforts even after two years of blogging. However, if you are serious about it and have a passion to write great content, you Setup your Landing Page, About Me Page, and Contact Page via Administration > Pages > Add New
There is going to be a lot to cover learning how to use WordPress that I will not be able to cover here.
For the rest, you can head on over to http://learn.wordpress.com/
Alternatively, simply do what I do and learn it by trial and error.
Set Up Google Analytics
What is Google Analytics? It tracks all the happenings and goings of your blog. This provides you with insights so you can better analyze your audience and make sound decisions about how to improve your blog. It can track where the user is from whether they’re using a phone or tablet, their age group and demographic, what page they accessed, how long they accessed it, and so on. Things that can give awesome information about your blog so can put it to actionable results – like finding which posts are popular and unpopular.
Setting it up is easy. Just open a Google Analytics account and verify your website/blog in the administration panel. Once done, you can either manually add your tracking code in the Head Section of your Index.php or simply have a Plugin like YOAST SEO(more on this later) handle it all for you. Here is a detail information to get you going: Google Analytics.
Part 6: Pick an Awesome Theme to Style Your Blog
A theme dictates your blog’s look and feel. It allows you to make your blog look like it is professionally developed without any design skills or coding expertise. The good news is there are thousands of free and premium themes available out there for WordPress.
The bad news? There are thousands to choose from! So how do you wade through the needle in a sea of needles? I spent almost eight months
switching and moving from theme to theme until I finally found the current theme I have on my blog now.
My site was a broken mess after switching themes from one to the other. You have to make sure you pick the right theme from the get-go so you do not run into the same trap. Here are things to look for:
Is the Theme Responsive? This means that your theme can handle the entire different medium that your users are viewing your blog whether it be a laptop or a mobile device. You can also enable Google Amp to handle this part. Some themes might look great but it might be bog down with some many things that it loads very slow, losing your users in the process. Run your theme’s demo page through a themes speed tester: http://www.wpspeedster.com/
Look for Simplicity. Too much clutter can detract the user from your content.
Plugins Compatibility. Make sure all the plugins you have works with the theme. It will save you many headaches later.
SEO Optimized. A good theme is properly coded for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Support. Premium themes should offer technical support if you have some issues with the installation.
Where to Get Premium Themes?
You can get premium themes at Theme Forest. I played around with several themes like Soledad, which is a very adaptable and mobile-friendly theme. Finally, I settled on the Ness Theme, which I liked because of its minimalist design. I then modified it to my own preference.
Themes cost around $60 each (the cost varies, but averages out at approximately $50) and there a hundred to choose from and offer endless customizations. You can play around with some free ones that come with
WordPress but save yourself time, pay the $60 and save yourself the time and effort it takes to build a theme to premium standards.
Once you have picked your theme, it’s time to install it. It is straightforward. However, you want to make sure you installed the “Child Theme” that should in included with your theme download. The Child Theme is a subset of your main theme. You can do all your theme edits and whatever customizations you do here.
The reason you want to do all your customizations and modifications on the child theme is that you do not want to affect the global theme files. When it’s time to update your theme there’s a chance that all your changes and modifications will be overridden by the update if you did your changes globally.
Part 7: Design a Smokin' Logo
A logo is important for your brand’s face. It sets you apart from other bloggers. If you do not have any design skills, just head on over to Fiverr and have somebody else make it for you. If you are inclined and are motivated, go and design it yourself. Make sure it resonates your blog’s message.
You can use Photoshop, which is what I used to design mine. I purchased a few vector stock images, played around with the fonts and went to town with it in Photoshop. There were a few iterations before finally settling in with my current one. I also design the Favicon with “AW.” A Favicon is a little icon you see on the tab of your browser. It’s little touches like these are what makes your blog pleasing to look at. You can use tools like Canva to design your logo.
Part 8: Get These Plugins
Plugins are essential to your travel blogging success. They help keep your travel blog’s performance and help your day-to-day management smooth. Here is a list of plugins that I believe every travel blogger must have. To install the plugins, go to plugins panel in Wordpress admin and click on "Add New" and then search for the plugin.
YOAST SEO – This is an essential plugin for WordPress. There are other SEO plugins out there but this is the easiest to use and by far the best I have used. It can also produce a sitemap that it will automatically send to Google and other search engines for indexing. Indexing allows your blog to be found on search engines around the world.AutoOptimize – Optimizes your site for speed. JavaScript, CSS, etc., all have to be loaded to run all the fancy doodads of your site. The only thing is it slows it down like molasses. This plugin can compress your CSS and JavaScript, therefore speed up your website in the process.
Complete Analytics Optimization Suite (CAOS) – This is like AutoOptimize. However, it is made for optimizing your Google Analytics Tracking code. You will score higher on page speed test with this one.
Jet Pack – This is actually a bunch of plugins packaged into one rolled out with any WordPress Installation. It allows you to connect your WordPress account to your self-hosted WordPress blog. It also has a Social Sharing portion where you can share your content across your social media channels
Akismet – The only good spam is the one that comes out of a tin can. There’s so much bad SPAM out there you are bound to be attacked. Akismet protects your blog from SPAM.
Contact Form 7 – You can place this cool contact form in a post or a separate page. It allows your audience to contact you in case they have a question about your latest escapade with Selena Gomez.
Broken Link Manager – Eventually you will have a bunch of broken links from editing content and moving it around. This helps manage all of that.
Enhanced Text Widget – This allows you push HTML code in your widgets so you can display links and images properly. You can also add custom ads if you want.
Instagram Slider Widget – Ties your Instagram account to your blog.
SumoMe – Social media sharing and automation tools for your blog.
SG Optimizer or W3 Total Cache – SG Optimizer is a home built caching plugin by Siteground or similarly W3 Cache. These plugins cache your content for better speed and performance.
Disqus or Some Comment Plugin – Allows your readers to leave comments on posts and pages.
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) – I love this plugin. My site loads almost 3 times as much on this platform than the mobile responsive version. It converts all your posts and pages into AMP ready content.
Some Backup Plugin – if your hosting doesn’t provide automatic backups of your site get one of these.
EWWW – Optimizes your images for the web.
NextScripts Social AutoPoster – A godsend! It allows me to publish my content automatically to all my social media channels. There is the bunch in here – Medium, Instapaper, VK, Tumblr, Weibo, and much more!