Yes, travel blogging. With the current situation this is the perfect time to start your travel blog as so many people dream now about travelling and you can be their inspiration!

Travel blogging is a popular dream job for many people but while many want to be a travel blogger, only a few people really dive into travel blogging.

This is a pity because our world deserves to be seen and people should travel more. Especially now, in a world where everybody only thinks about technology and getting humanity further, we forget about where we live in the now and how wonderful our world already is with the things we already achieved or with its pure nature.

I encourage you to read this article, to finally start your travel blog if you dream of it and to carry out the beauty of our world. Especially right now when most people don’t have the possibility to see it.

When I wanted to start a travel blog and began searching for things like “How to start travel blogging” or “How to be successful with travel blogging”, I was getting results as:

“Get your travel blog noticed/Build an audience” — Oh, thank you Mr. Obvious. I thought I will have to write my travel articles for the endless void. How to build that audience is the question!

By the way, I have two good articles on this exact topic. It could be interesting for you because it changed the game for us:

“Create good/useful/awesome/epic content on your travel blog” — Oh really? I thought I have to create content that sucks and doesn’t interest other people so that I appeal to my audience. You changed my world forever with this knowledge!

(P.S. I will tell you later in this article some tips on how to create valuable content for your readers.)

“Use Social Media and SEO for your travel blog” — Where do we live? Oh, dude, I forgot that it’s the 18th century! For real? What do they think? That I will go from door to door and promote my travel blog?! It’s like saying “use the internet when travel blogging”.

The articles I shared above tell you exactly how to use social media for your travel blog.

Besides that, I’ll explain to you later in this article why you shouldn’t use SEO for your travel blog. Oh yes, I know that sounds interesting so read until the end.

Such answers bothered me and hinder people to start travel blogging. That is why I felt like I had to add something to this library of travel blogging knowledge.

This article should help you because I collected all of the following information for YEARS (and you don’t want to do that), had a business in the travel niche, and coach people on how to start an online business (the real hidden passion).

Now I compiled this whole knowledge in this article for you so that you have a one-stop-shop for learning how to start travel blogging the quickest and most effective way possible, as well as how to make money travel blogging.

Nevertheless, don’t just stop here after you’ve read this piece. Always look for further information and absorb everything you can. There are plenty of amazing travel bloggers out there and even if some posts might look the same, all of them have details that the others don’t have.

Find the details you need.

A glimpse of what you’ll learn about travel blogging in this article:

1. Before I Teach You How To Start Travel Blogging, Adopt The Right Mindset
2. How You Will Make Money Travel Blogging?
3. Choose The Travel Blogging Niche You Love
4. Just Do It!
5. The Second Step Into Your Travel Blogging Journey: Customization Of Your Travel Blog Website
6. The Third Step — The Identity Of Your Travel Blog And You
7. The Fourth Step — Essential Plugins For Your Travel Blog
8. The Fifth And Final Step — Your First Travel Blogging Steps
9. DON’T Hire
10. What Travel Blogging Needs To Be Successful
11. Travel Blogging Is About Traveling, Look Around You!
12. Make Every Piece Of Content On Your Travel Blog As Your Masterpiece
13. Content Marketing Secrets For Travel Blogging: DON’T Waste Your Time With SEO
14. Learn How To Shoot And Edit Like A Beast
15. How To Make Money With Travel Blogging
16. Invest In Yourself And Your Travel Blogging Skills
17. Why Competition In Travel Blogging Is Completely Irrelevant

1. Before I Teach You How To Start Travel Blogging, Adopt The Right Mindset

First of all, you can really make money travel blogging and it is NOT hard.

It’s not.

If you are thinking now “But all the other travel blogging people said…” Forget what everybody else said and is saying!

If you start with the belief that it’s hard, you program yourself to expect that it will be hard and you will be successfully making it harder for yourself on your own.

I know what I’m talking about. I constantly made everything harder for me because my dad always told me “It will be hard for you” and I believed him. At the moment when I gave up this belief, everything was so much easier.

Besides that, it’s easy if you have a plan and a person who is holding your hand, like me. Like Warren Buffet said:

“Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing”

and most people don’t know how it’s done, bash their heads against a wall with travel blogging, before finally giving up and saying to everybody who wants to try it out that it’s not possible.

Only because they didn’t make it, or even better: They don’t even try travel blogging and say that it’s impossible. Familiar with that?

But you won’t be one of them!

Even though it takes a lot of work to make money travel blogging, if you work smart and not hard, you will be able to save SO much time and you will reach your travel blogging goal (I mean the making money travel blogging part) without a doubt!

But why travel blogging at all?

If you are here, it means that you love traveling and also know or feel that there must be something behind travel blogging. Maybe you didn’t know that you can make money travel blogging but now you know it (Yes, you can!)

At first, you might be thinking that this is not a get rich quick scheme or if it’s even possible at all because everyone says either it’s impossible to make money travel blogging or it takes so much hard work that only a few people can reach this goal.

But what if you really think about it?

Travel blogging actually is a possibility to get rich or at least make a good amount of income quicker than with the traditional way and even be happier with it.

You wonder why?

Well, imagine how long it would take you to work an ordinary 9–5 job to get to a CEO salary of about $300,000 per year. Perhaps many years and this would only work if you’re extremely motivated over these years, right?

If you read further, you will be shocked by how much money you can make with travel blogging and even more important: The only thing you have to do for that is to not stop travel blogging (aka doing what you love), gathering an audience/traffic to your travel blog and monetize the sh*t out of it.

Then your dream of making money travel blogging will eventually come true. The best part is that the monetization of your travel blog happens due to helping others so it’s not only allowed but even needed! No worries, I’ll come to the monetization part in a second.

However, before starting a travel blog, you should think about why you are doing this in the first place because sometimes the why is more important than the how. The why will be your end goal which will pull you forward.

So, why do you want to start travel blogging?

Write the answer to this question down on a piece of paper and hang it up where you can see it every day. This will help you on bad days.

2. How You Will Make Money Travel Blogging?

Yep, exactly. I’m starting with the most interesting part for you. But you have to start with this question. That’s what you have to decide from the beginning so that you can start travel blogging most effectively — with a plan and with long-term thinking.

If you wonder why I’ll tell you.

Your whole travel blog and your posts as well as social media marketing will be organized and built around the answer to this question. It’s okay, you don’t have to fall into despair already.

I have an ebook with the most effective and lucrative methods for making money when travel blogging or with any other kind of online business.

It contains a list of monetization methods, explains how they work and what you have to do so that they work for you. It will help you with your choice.

You can find this ebook on our opt-in page here. You will have to opt-in to get the ebook. I know that people on Medium don’t like opt-in pages and they’re forbidden for publications because you wonderful people already pay for Medium. But it’s NOT my intent to sell you some sh*t or even have you on my email list.

I’m just too fuck*ng plain lazy, to summarize these methods in this article.

I’m pouring out my brain with this article which feels like writing a book and if you’ve ever written an article, feel some empathy. If I’d also add the information from this ebook in this article, I’d have to add another 10 pages or so. But as I tend to work smart and not hard (and I also encourage you to do so), I want to save myself time.

So, before judging me for putting an opt-in page in this article have that in mind and with that said: Feel free to opt-out after you got this ebook.

Back to the “how to start travel blogging” part. It doesn’t mean that money should be the driving factor in your early travel blogging efforts. Have your method in mind but start it in the last step of creating your travel blog.

However, more about how to make money from travel blogging later on. There is even a whole point about that topic.

3. Choose The Travel Blogging Niche You Love

How obvious this is but how many people still do that one wrong. You will be with it for a long time, so choose wisely. Imagine you’re choosing your wife/husband.

For the beginning you should specialize more in-depth so that people understand immediately what you’re doing. After your travel blog has gained some good traction, you will always have a following because people will love you and they will buy into you and not into your topic (Tony Robbins is a good example for that).

This means that you can later also start writing about other travel blogging topics you love but don’t think about that right now. When specializing, brainstorm travel blogging topics, write them all down and you will understand what you love writing about the most.

The majority of your travel blog posts will come from your interests, passions, personal experiences, failures, problems you’ve solved, new things you’ve learned, and so on.

Some examples that could help you think in the right direction:

• Budget Family Travel
• Europe Travel
• Asia Travel (More niched down would be, for example, China travel)
• Boat Travel
• RV Travel
• Hiking in Europe (More niched down would be, for example, hiking in Italy)
• Road Tripping (More niched down would be, for example, road tripping around Germany)
• Camping Around The World

Nonetheless, don’t forget about your audience! Here you have some examples of questions which you have to research about your audience:

• What excites, intrigues, or stirs passion in travel blog readers?
• What are the common challenges travel blog readers go through?
• What are character traits travel blog readers possess?
• What do travel blog readers love or hate about your travel blogging niche?

You get the point. Don’t get too much in-depth like “Vegan Female Budget Traveling on a sailboat with a disability”. If you do that, you risk having an audience that is too small.

You might be thinking that the competition is also less but I’ll tell you something about the myth of competition at a later point.

4. Just Do It!

START YOUR TRAVEL BLOG!

FAIL your way to massive success!

If you’re thinking now “But I’m not an expert at any of my chosen travel blogging topics…”, that’s not a problem! Think about it this way: There are for sure people out there who know less than you about the specific travel blogging topic you want to write about.

Besides that, you also get more information and knowledge with writing and researching your topic. So, get a domain with your brand name or register a Medium account and start travel blogging right now!

Is this the moment where you need some piece of advice on how to start a travel blog? I won’t leave you hanging there. In the following I will guide you step by step through how to start a travel blog most effectively and cheaply possible, while thinking long-term.

I researched for half a year web hosts, tested with free themes from WordPress and I also failed with that. About investing in yourself and the pain of not doing it, I’ll tell you something later.

You see, I don’t just say it, I really learned from my fails. I lost so much time and money, and now I want to help you save this time and money.

So, let’s get started.

4.1 The Very First Step For Starting a Travel Blog — Web Hosting

Like I said before, I researched for half a year which web host to take because I wanted the most effective and at the same time the cheapest choice.

Bluehost was the one for me that won in every category. They make it amazingly easy to get a new blog up and running with their one-click automatic WordPress installation. As a bonus, you’ll get for the first year of hosting a free domain name and also a free SSL certificate.

In case you don’t know, WordPress is a free and open-source content management system with which a website runs. WordPress runs 34% of the entire internet and powers 14.7% of the top 100 websites in the world.

Bluehost offers an incredibly low price for 3 years of hosting where other hosters offer for the same price only 1 year of hosting and on top of that they provide outstanding customer service.

From day one they solved all my problems in a few minutes and needed for that only a chat and that was at any time of the day because their support works 24/7! That’s why I recommend using Bluehost for your first website.

If you’re able to afford more than that and want to get something faster because you know you’ll stick with it anyway, I’d recommend using Skystra.

They cost a bit more (not that $10/month would be much) but they provide you with a cloud platform. Their hosting platform is built on the newest cloud infrastructure and they have already implemented CDN (content delivery networks).

CDN are distributing servers spatially relative to your readers’ geographical location so that the content loads faster for the reader. You should imagine what crazy performance Skystra’s cloud hosting delivers. I won’t even start talking about their support here. They’re just amazing.

4.2 The Second Step Into Your Travel Blogging Journey: Customization Of Your Travel Blog Website

Now that you finally have your travel blog, you only have to customize your travel blog website. In the WordPress administrator area you can make any changes you want to your travel blog website.

The party happens on the left-hand side of your dashboard and just for the case that you understand everything:

• Posts: Here you can write articles for your readers
• Pages: Here you can create static pages on your travel blog website which will be shown on the navigation bar at the top of your site at all times (You only have to create a menu for that)
• Comments: Here you’ll approve or reply to comments on your articles from readers
• Appearance: Here you’ll alter the look of your travel blog website by installing a new theme, editing its code, etc. I’ll come to that in a second
• Plugin: Here you will be able to add additional features to your travel blog website
• Settings: Pretty self-explanatory. Here you can change settings of your website

At first, everything maybe sounds a little overwhelming, but you’ll get very quickly used to it. So, before going live you should customize your travel blog.

Everyone has a different idea of how they want their travel blog to look. One of the great things about a website with WordPress is that you can change your entire layout and design with just a few clicks. Without having any coding knowledge.

In WordPress, blog layouts are known as “Themes”. In case you wonder what Themes are, they control the entire design of your travel blog. To change your theme you have to click on the “Appearance” tab on the left menu, then go to “Themes”, and “Add New Theme”.

There you just have to look for themes, click on them, and then install them. After that you have to activate them in the “Themes” tab.

Our recommendation for your travel blog theme is the Divi theme. I used it for my wife’s and my travel website back then and all of my clients are also happy with it.

Divi is perfect for you especially when you don’t have any coding knowledge because it is a visual page builder where you can drag and drop literally everything. With this, travel blogging for beginners is made extremely easy.

Elegant Themes provides you with over 80 themes and the Divi theme is one of them. (In fact, Divi is already even a theme builder) We’ve built our whole website only with Divi. For us it is the most amazing theme in terms of creating a website and everything that belongs to one, like a travel blog, a store, a gallery, or even a membership site.

With Divi, you get over 800 premade website layouts along with royalty-free photos, icons, and illustrations, which you can use for your travel blog. These layouts are one of the reasons why we needed only 1 day for our whole website to be complete while doing this for the first time.

You’ll also get Monarch, a Social Media Sharing Plugin, and what is important for the content on your travel blog?

Right, sharing!

With all of this you are all set up for your travel blog running fast, effective, and professional.

If you should need any help with Divi, just hit me up on Twitter and I’ll see how I can help you.

4.3 The Third Step — The Identity Of Your Travel Blog And You

A logo is important for your travel blog but don’t freak out already. When starting a travel blog you don’t have to put a lot of time in a logo if you don’t want, but when your travel blog starts growing, you should think about your final logo so that people recognize your travel blog brand.

For the logo creation we would recommend Adobe Illustrator because if you learn it, you can use it forever, you’re way more flexible with it. If you don’t want to invest money in Illustrator to create the logo for your travel blog, you can also use Canva.

It has a completely free version, so if you have a tight budget, this is the way to go. You only have to create an account, sign in, and put in the search “logo” because Canva already has some templates for logos which are really good.

Play around with them, you will find something before you create your final logo for sure.

4.4 The Fourth Step — Essential Plugins For Your Travel Blog

A plugin is basically a software that integrates with your WordPress travel blog to allow you to make customizations and improvements to your travel blog.

A few examples of what plugins can do your travel blog are:

• Collecting email subscribers (like Bloom from Elegant Themes)
• Compress images to speed up your website (what is very important for your readers)
• Display your traffic statistics (what is essential for you to analyze what is good and bad content and more)
• Social media sharing (like Monarch which I told you earlier about)

I’m going to show you a couple of basic and free plugins that every new travel blogger needs in the beginning.

Yoast SEO

SEO is the process of optimizing your travel blog to be found in search engines like Google for particular keywords and phrases. If you’re new to SEO, then this may seem daunting. But, WordPress makes it very easy to optimize the technical aspects of your travel blog.

The majority of your SEO efforts will be to create content on your travel blog that engages your readers. Whether that’s through text, videos, or images, your job as a travel blogger is to spark a relationship with your readers.

You can get started by downloading Yoast SEO. It’s a plugin that helps you optimize the content on your travel blog by using a traffic light system. It will give you tasks to complete to make sure your articles are optimized for Google search and give you a green light when you have everything set up properly.

Akismet

This plugin is to prevent spam on your travel blog. Akismet will catch and delete the spam comments automatically. I never use this plugin because I turn off comments on my blogs and always recommend to do that for my clients.

Comments are beneficial for Google SEO but I like to spark engagement on social media where the algorithm looks at your content as useful when people engage in it.

Contact Form 7

If you don’t use Divi, where different contact forms are already within different templates, Contact Form 7 will add a form to your contact page so that people can email you.

WP-Optimize

This plugin is great for the speed of your travel blog because it’s an all-in-one plugin that cleans your database, compresses your images, and caches your site.

For example, when uploading it automatically resizes images for maximum width and height, which minimizes the file size on your travel blog and keeps the loading time down.

Pro tip: Don’t try to properly size and compress your images manually. We did that the first time because we didn’t know about such plugins and that’s really a pain.

UpdraftPlus

This plugin can save you one day. It takes backups of your travel blog and saves them locally or in Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, etc. Always have a backup of your travel blog, nobody knows what can happen!

Mash Share

You must have the possibility for people to share your posts. If you decide not to use Divi, which comes with the social media sharing plugin Monarch, Mash Share also adds social media buttons to every post of your travel blog.

4.5 The Fifth And Final Step — Your First Travel Blogging Steps

Install Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a must if you want to track how many people visit your travel blog each day and find out more about your readers. You will have to analyze a lot to really understand the audience of your travel blog.

This is one of the methods which helps travel bloggers to understand why some of their content goes well and something doesn’t go well. There are tons of different plugins and trackers that all say they can track your travel blog visitors and stats but in my opinion Google Analytics is the most accurate for the beginning and it’s free.

Some important points which Google Analytics does for your travel blog:

• Track real data (people who are right now on your travel blog)
• Track number of visits to your travel blog
• Track Demographics
• Track the resources from where your travel blog visitors are coming
• Comparing the time readers spent on your travel blog, travel articles, etc.

I’ve put a little beginner tutorial together on how to add Google Analytics to your WordPress travel blog, because we had difficulties in the beginning, and like I said: We want to save you as much time as possible.

There are two ways to install Google Analytics on your travel blog. Through a plugin where you place the code in there, or through manually adding the code. I’ll explain the way with the plugin because it’s slightly easier.

First, you will have to sign up for Google Analytics, then you have to copy the tracking ID for your account and after that you will have to add the code on your WordPress travel blog with a plugin.

Signing up with Google Analytics is pretty self-explanatory, just use your existing Gmail account or create one.

When logged in, click on the “Admin” link in the top menu and fill in the information about your travel blog. The account name can be anything, the website name is your travel blog name, the website address is your travel blog URL and the industry or category should be relevant to your travel blog topic.

Make also sure to tick the recommended options to get the Tracking ID. After that, save your Google Analytics ID. It should look something like UA-XXXXXXXXX-X.

Next, install the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin, you should already know how to do that if you’ve installed the essential plugins for your travel blog which I mentioned before. Once you’ve installed and activated it, go to “Settings”, “Google Analytics” and enter your Tracking ID.

Now you’re ready to track the visitors on your travel blog but it can take a while until Google Analytics starts to work, so don’t worry.

Create an about page

The first thing most people do when they land on a travel blog is finding out who the travel blogger is, what he/she is currently doing, and why someone should even bother reading their travel blog.

That is why an about page is so important. It tells your readers why they should follow your travel blogging journey and who you are. This is the place where they get a picture of you.

But when you create the about page, don’t talk about yourself! You should have in mind that it’s actually an “about the reader” page. This is the page where you show your readers how you can provide THEM value. They must see that you’re worth following.

Maybe create a content plan

You don’t have to create a content plan for your travel blog but it helps many people with the effectivity and to keep the overview. My wife and I usually write down all content ideas in bullet points in Notion after we get them, but we don’t create a plan on which day we will create or post these ideas.

You shouldn’t do that because you have to watch the trends, what people look for and you have to understand how your readers feel today. If you just publish content that YOU think is valuable today, it won’t work as effectively as it works when you publish topics for your audience.

Read the last point in this article if you want to know how I come up with endless ideas for content:

Nevertheless, you should always stay consistent. After some time, you can also split up your travel blog posts into little social media posts, which makes sure that you will also stay consistent with social media.

With splitting up your travel blog content I mean that if you, for example, write about 12 places to best visit with a boat, you can already split that up into 12 individual posts for Instagram, etc. You get the idea.

I’ve got an article where I go more in-depth about content hacking:

Getting the first actions done on your travel blogging journey: Write your first posts

Now we’re actively getting started with your travel blogging journey — your first blog post! Write it, post it, and get used to sharing your travel blog posts on social media.

I will also write articles about how to properly use social media for the promotion of your online business so keep an eye open for that.

When you first start, you can publish new articles 1–2 times per week to stay consistent but in the end the quality is more important than the quantity. Never forget that!

So much about starting a travel blog. Now we can finally proceed to the “successful travel blogging” part.

5. DON’T Hire

Yes, you heard right. Don’t be a lazy travel blogger. Don’t hire somebody else to create your travel blogging content or for anything else. At least don’t do that at the beginning of your travel blogging journey.

You might be wondering why you shouldn’t do that. I’ll tell you: You will miss the opportunity to learn all of that by yourself and understand the workflow.

If you did it all on your own and start hiring someone afterward, you will already know what to look for if you want to find extremely good employees or virtual assistants.

6. What Travel Blogging Needs To Be Successful

Like any other online business, travel blogging needs research to be successful!

Spend time reading other travel blogs from your chosen travel blogging niche, join travel blogging groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. search for travel blogging related topics in Reddit, look on Instagram, and Pinterest for travel blogging influencers.

You must know every single thing about travel blogging and their readers!

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel but to create your own style out of a travel blogging topic. Analyze other travel blogging niches and influencers. If you wonder how you can do that, think about the following questions:

• What do they do and how do they do that?
• What is their writing style?
• What topics do they write about?
• What content types do they use? (Story, how-to, guide, list etc.?)
• What emotions do they use?
• What value do they give to their readers and how much of it?
• What does their content achieve? (Maybe it solves a problem?)
• What is working and why?
• What is not working and why?

Copy the working things, learn from their failures, then develop your own style, and eventually make it better. Also, don’t forget to ask your readers what they like, dislike, or about travel blogging topics they would like to hear about.

Another important thing is to choose your favorite person (or a few of them) to learn from and stick with this person, until you feel like you can move on with learning.

I was subscribed to roughly 9237948 bloggers at the beginning (not always travel bloggers) and that was overwhelming. After some time I removed everyone and stayed only with a single one: Pat Flynn.

He isn’t writing about travel blogging but about blogging in general and strategies related to that, which you can apply within your travel blogging journey.

7. Travel Blogging Is About Traveling, Look Around You!

Go out there and discover your region! My wife and I live a 1-hour drive away from the alps but we still made the mistake to think that we have to travel to other countries for travel blogging or good travel photography.

Until we finally realized that other people are coming across the globe to take shots and write about the alps which we see from our house. Open your eyes, open your mind, and see the beauty of your region. In the end, you also don’t have to be a nomad, it’s up to you. Be creative.

8. Make Every Piece Of Content On Your Travel Blog As Your Masterpiece

Yeah, yeah, content is king, and so on. So many people say it but only a few people really understand what it means. Not talking about explaining it.

I saw so many “marketing professionals” who said “Google is shit” and “Social Media doesn’t work for me”, while the sole problem was their content. The problem is NEVER Google or Social Media, it is and will always be our shitty content.

You have to feel like you just wrote an article worth a doctor’s degree, worth changing the world. It has to be pure value. Always ask yourself, would you find this valuable?

If you’ve achieved this feeling, then your article will be good…

For the next 3 weeks. After that you will want to rewrite it because you are now so much better in writing.

You have to create content that solves problems and pains of travel blog readers. Learn copywriting, understand human psychology, use psychological triggers. Learn what makes up viral content.

Be polarizing

Have your own style and don’t please everybody. You won’t be able to do that anyway. There are so many travel bloggers out there and in the end people will still be reading more than one travel blogger on a specific travel topic. Everyone has his or her favorite travel blogger.

Although pleasing a specific group will lead to receiving hate from the other readers, the success you achieve from appealing those who identify with your travel blogging brand and your message will erase the negative vibes caused by your haters.

Tell a story

Learn the art of storytelling and do it in your own way, be your own travel blogging brand. People have to recognize you from your writing style and type of storytelling.

Don’t just tell random stories though. Craft them specifically to influence readers. For every story that you tell, make sure it’s clear WHY you are telling this story. What does your reader gain from it?

Practice creating stories out of usual daily things like brushing your teeth and tweak those stories to better suit your goal.

9. Content Marketing Secrets For Travel Blogging: DON’T Waste Your Time With SEO

You will have to get visitors to your travel blog and most travel bloggers start concentrating on SEO because it’s obvious. Start thinking like a growth hacker!

Leverage the power of social media! Think about it for a second. If you use SEO, you could be the best in SEO but it still takes so much time for Google to even rank you, and then you need time to get on a place where people start to notice you.

That doesn’t mean that you should completely forget about SEO, but think in the beginnings of your travel blogging journey about SEO as an addition and optimize only as much as it is worth your time. If you can do it quickly, do it, and then move on to social media.

I can’t stress that enough. Leverage social media. Many people think that social media is becoming less relevant to building an online business like a travel blog. That’s complete bullshit and I can’t understand how somebody can even consider thinking about this.

If you learn to create extremely valuable content for your audience on social media, you will gain SO much more readers and subscribers from your social media in SO much less time than from SEO.

And just imagine what will happen if you learn how to create viral content (oh yes, it can be engineered). You will get an unbelievable amount of traffic!

When it comes to social media, you still shouldn’t scatter your focus on multiple platforms but concentrate on a single one. Pinterest is the platform to go for travel bloggers.

I also started with it because it’s the easiest platform to manage for the beginning of travel blogging and you can gain a massive amount of traffic already from the start of your travel blog. You can dominate Pinterest with your travel blogging niche very easily if you learn how to use Pinterest effectively.

It’s also less competitive because most marketers don’t understand how to use it. Most people just prefer to smash their heads against a wall with Facebook and Instagram.

10. Learn How To Shoot And Edit Like A Beast

You just have to be a professional photographer when travel blogging! Why you ask? This will make your travel blog stand out for sure because most people don’t have a clue about how to make a really good shot.

I have an in-depth article about the photography basics you need. It will teach you the only photography basics which you need to know for the beginning to start photography the most effective way from day one.

You might be wondering why you need that at all?

Well first, you can make your Instagram profile go viral with a crazy shot. Second, people will value your content even more because they think of you as a real travel blogging professional and thus they’ll quickly recognize your travel blogging style all over the internet.

Besides that, you will also get more brands interested in you but more about making money travel blogging in a second.

If you wonder how else to learn photography and where to start, begin with our photography basics and look for tutorials on YouTube from people like Peter McKinnon, Chris Hau, Peter Walbeck, etc.

Take also a look at the courses from Serge Ramelli. He is a master in fine art photography and I believe that you can create your own story and style the best way with his help.

Finally, also make sure to check out Maarten Schrader as he creates Lightroom tutorials that help people edit their images like Instagram influencers and photography pros like Peter McKinnon. He also has color grading tutorials for videos.

Then practice every day at least 30 minutes!

Analyze other photographers on Instagram, 500px, and so on. Copy their work in terms of editing style, shooting angle, shooting ideas, etc. until you finally get a feeling for it and developed your own style.

11. How To Make Money With Travel Blogging

Have you ever asked yourself the question “How do travel bloggers make money” or “How much do travel bloggers make”? Yes? I also have and this is where it gets really interesting.

I often read that “professional” travel bloggers make something between $2,000 and $7,000 a month and only the old school travel bloggers, who were already travel blogging at the time when Hong Kong was still a British colony. Because it was “so much easier” and there was “so little competition”.

Well, that’s not quite the truth.

I don’t know if the “professional” travel bloggers say that because they really believe in it or because they just don’t want to have more competition.

With all the opportunities out there, I wonder how you can believe in that and if one really is at this level for a long time, then this person just doesn’t want to earn more or do more for that. Because this is all about scaling a business.

I don’t say it is a bad thing to not scale a business but I think it’s not fair to tell other people that it’s not possible, only because you haven’t made it and obviously just haven’t researched enough for that.

If you go and research a little bit, you would already discover what possibilities there are. I saw ordinary people that make $100,000 a month travel blogging. They just started and they made it. So why exactly shouldn’t you be one of them?

Have in mind that if you haven’t hired anybody to do all the things I mentioned earlier on your own, you’ve acquired a LOT of skills on your travel blogging journey.

Just think about it: A travel blog requires online marketing, content marketing, SEO, content writing, copywriting, content management, website design, graphic design, and of course social media management skills.

It could be that you also mastered how to use ads. If you also learned photography, you additionally have your photography skills. That’s a lot of skills which perhaps feel so natural for you, but you can use them to create a lot of damn good streams of income.

If you think now “Cool, but how should I do that?”, here are some examples: Offer services as a

• Freelance writer
• Content marketer
• SEO specialist
• Copywriter
• Content manager
• Web designer
• Graphic designer
• Social media manager
• Social media consultant
• Virtual assistant

Of course, you should offer everything in remote if you want to have your freedom. You can use your articles, photography, social media following, website designs, etc. to pitch future clients as proof of your skills. Your blog or anything of the mentioned above can be used as your resume.

If you combine the more active methods from above with the unique passive income streams I told you about in my ebook from the beginning of the article, you’ll have the possibility to create easily multiple 6 figure monthly passive income streams.

You will need to put in the effort for that but I think it should be worth it.

Hint: You should start from the beginning of your travel blogging journey to collect emails and to give as much value to your readers as possible. Before you ask for anything, learn how to give others value yourself first.

After you’ve built a good relationship with your readers, you can monetize your audience with the methods I talk about in my ebook. If you ask yourself now how you can collect these emails, I highly recommend using ConvertKit.

We tested a few providers and trust me if I say that ConvertKit is the best out there! They don’t just say it, their single goal is really to help content creators make a living. They help you at all costs and you immediately feel that.

12. Invest In Yourself And Your Travel Blogging Skills

Buy courses about building an online business, travel blogging, copywriting, travel photography, increasing travel blog traffic, and so on. Learn every day and never stop! That’s a really important mindset that will eventually make you successful.

I could talk the whole day about how much I’ve learned and how much how many people changed my lives but the important thing is that this wouldn’t have happened, if I didn’t open up for investing in myself!

I insist on investing in yourself because I know how hard it is. For me, it was always hard to invest in myself because I always saw people who just want my money, and maybe it was once like this, but the people have already changed.

It was only the belief that was programmed into my mind by parents and the people around me. In fact you almost always get the value for what you pay, if you research properly.

Of course, I also bought courses which were not so good, but that doesn’t matter in the end! There are really a lot of people who want to help. There is a whole bunch of community who wants to! You just have to open your eyes and use that to your advantage.

This is what will develop your travel blogging skills and make you a pro in everything you make! In the end, your intuition instantly tells you who wants to help and who only wants your money. If you failed, then you will reveal bad products and understand what are good products even better.

This is a win-win situation.

13. Why Competition In Travel Blogging Is Completely Irrelevant

You might be thinking now “Zhenya, your whole article sounds interesting and motivating, but travel blogging just seems so saturated…”

You’ll wonder, but that doesn’t matter!

Let me explain with a story. Before starting our travel blog, I read just about every blog/travel blog and watched every YouTube video out there about blogging/travel blogging and social media. I also bought ebooks, online courses, watched live seminars, and so on.

You name it. I learned about it.

If it was about developing social media skills… I learned it.

If it was about learning to write emails… I learned it.

If it was about stepping out of my comfort zone to learn a new skill for travel blogging… I learned it.

As somebody who wanted to travel the world and be free, I needed all the help concerning travel blogging and building an online business that I could get. Now, let’s take a step back for a second, and think about that: I spent literally thousands of dollars and thousands of hours.

On products from a handful of different people. All talking about the same subject.

Was I crazy?!

📷Photo by Saori Oya on Unsplash

No. Even if many people thought so. In fact, this is totally normal behavior. You probably do it. Most people just don’t realize how often this happens. It’s when you’re super passionate, interested, and excited about a topic (sometimes only for a short period) and you become RAVENOUS to learn EVERYTHING out there about it.

Here’s an example:

Most of my friends get their “passion fix” in the same way. They’ll buy 10 different products from 10 different companies on topics they’re extremely into. Whether it’s games, photography, or clean eating.

What’s even crazier is that this real-life phenomenon completely BLOWS one of the biggest business myths out of the water.

What myth you ask?

Let’s hear it straight from the source:

“There’s too much competition out there in the [insert insanely lucrative niche here]. It’s too late for any newcomers. The customers are all gone.”
— Mr. KnowsEverythingBetter, MBA

DAMN!

I’m getting high blood pressure every time I hear that! You ask why this advice drives me crazy? Because competition and a “saturated niche” (like the travel blogging niche) are irrelevant when you’re selling to a hungry market!

Why? Because the majority of the audience is so ravenous, they’ll never satisfy their appetite by purchasing just ONE product. Ever noticed the never-ending parade of “fad” diets, juice cleanses, and gimmicky exercise regimens that splash the front covers of Cosmo and Men’s Health?

Or…

Have you ever noticed that billion-dollar makeup and beauty companies literally sell the same white-labeled Crayola crayons at a 1000x markup year after year, after year?

Now, here’s my point: Contrary to popular belief, “crowded markets” are some of the BEST niches to go into.

There’s plenty of money flowing around, there are nearly unlimited customers, and they’re typically the kind of markets that will exist for all of eternity and then some.

Still following?

Hungry markets never get full. Go after a BIG market and take advantage of a limitless pool of customers.

Now, maybe you’re wondering…

Have our customer’s purchased products from our “competition”? Sure they have and that’s good. I always motivate people to learn and invest as much as they can into themselves. But has that stopped our best customers from buying every single product we release or promote?

Not a single one.

I can’t reiterate this enough:

When it comes to starting an online business like a travel blog, there’s no such thing as arriving “too late to the game”.

The only thing you should fear is never arriving at all. There will always be customers for products that solve burning problems or teach skills people are dying to learn.

And the best customers? They’ll keep buying more and more products until they’ve “scratched their itch” completely. Even after that, they may still come back for more. Just because they like you.

Don’t let the naysayers discourage you from setting up a shop in the middle of a hungry crowd.