How To Start A Travel Blog And Make Money

Great article, thanks for sharing! Thanks for the article. Like a lot of peope I want instant succes. A good reminder to just keep on doing what I like and take it easy. I have to breathe really deep and remind myself to just enjoy the journey and let it all unravel rather than pushing to get it here now. I am trying to get better at making money through affiliate income. Hi Caz, thanks for sharing all this valuable information with us!

I love your posts about travel blogging and digital lifestyle. I will be waiting for your travel blog course! I already realized it is really hard work and I will do the best I can given my current time limitations. Your post are always so inspiring and full of helpful information. Just always remember you can only do the best with what you have from where you are. That;s something I always like to remind myself of when I get stuck and feel like things, such as time, are against me. Thank you so much Dana! I think its so important to see how others grow their own business. It really helps in those moments when you feel like you want to quit.

Another well written and helpful article — as usual! I would love to see a list of seminars, and meetings for bloggers who want to take classes, hear others speak and exchange ideas. Is there a yearly International get together or conference? How about regional conferences? I always learn so much from this conference and I love how blogs from a variety of niches are represented! I always learn a lot from what those in other niches do.

That is such great advice, especially for people who are starting out now. You are completely right — travel blogging is not easy and yes, free trips especially the big blogger campaigns are the worst way to travel or see a new place. Thank you for the amazing insight and encouragement, in this post and in many others!

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Excellent and comprehensive article, Caz. One thing, however, was very clear to me from the beginning: I had to build a brand, credibility, an audience and a network. I only half agree with you that launching a blog only to get free trips is not a good idea. As you say, blogging is a lot of work. And many tourism boards and tourism operators apparently are still happy to host bloggers providing very little value added.

The industry really need to get better at vetting who they work with.

The 5 things you’ll need to create an awesome travel blog

Those who have the solid foundation in place are the ones they will eventually come to. Thanks for sharing the tips. Having an entrepreneur mindset is very important in this blogging business. Entrepreneur mindset is key. We were focused in the beginning on working on this to get it right. My blog was so broad when I first started!!! Dear Caz, thank you for this clear and concise post. As always, I get so much value from everything that you do and write. As a new food and travel blogger, all the work can become daunting at times. Yes and you are putting in a solid foundation Brenda!

Loving all your latest photos from Italy. As always I really enjoy your honesty and insight. There is little doubt that you work incredibly hard and have earnt the success you now reap. Full credit to you both. You did mention media kits.

They then ask a string of questions which are already addressed in the kit. I know I have to service them and be very polite yet their approach is very time inefficient. However my social media followings, subscribers and traffic are much lower than I want them to be. Oh yeah we have that problem with the media kit too!! Social media is really hard.

You just have to be persistent and post good stuff that your community want. Make it fun and engaging. Ask a lot of questions and share inspirational content. Consistently good content is key. Make sure that it has your keywords in there so you can capitalize on search traffic. It took us a good three years before we started seeing search traffic benefit and now it drives a lot of traffic to us.

All we did was produce good content that people wanted and we focused a lot of guest posting. You can definitely offer a gift or freebie. HAve some sort of free ebook or other bribe to get people to sign up to your email list and focus on giving them a more personal connection with you. The best way to increase your numbers is to focus on giving the best experience to the ones you already have.

Thank you so much Caz. I really appreciate your detailed and encouraging response. I know it is a long haul thing, just every now and then I need a pick me up. Always a time balance but as a part timer rather than full timer I need to keep realistic targets.

Thank you ever so much again. Like everyone else here, I really appreciate all that you do and share. So that needs fine-tuning. Ah that we are! But definitely you are right that you need to express it the right way — it is not an easy task. Just keep working at it and trust the right words will come. Thanks so much for the comprehensive breakdown.

It was tempting to pay off some of the credit card instead, but much smarter in the long run to spend it on the blog. I think investing in anything that will make you grow is a smart choice. We never realized in the beginning how important it is and not many people invest in it. Is like earn money being singer, you can earn cents or be a rockstar. It covers almost all the alternatives. We have years of travel and hundreds of blogs on publuc blog spaces. Successful travelers like you guys act as inspiration for what might be and yes…we are starting to see results after almost 12 months..

I love what you said about a blog being not just a money making platform but a pillar of your strategy, and having a long term plan. You guys are such an inspiration to us. I wish I read this 2 years ago when I began. Wow this post is filled with so much knowledge and honesty, and actionable tips! I then started working with a few clients via referrals, and eventually started announcing to people yup, in addition to writing I also do social media strategy. I am so happy I finally took the plunge, and now am working on my first course.

B-school really opens up your doors of ideas and gives you the process to implement them. IT really changed my whole strategy. So glad you were able to do the same Elizabeth! I finally have a domain registered, but now to get to the hard part and bed down my blog, the value I can add and get cracking! We hope we can continue to help you with lots of tips. I am currently on a trip around the world for a year. I am already on month five and am sad it is already half over.

This is such a well-written post. Travel blogging is still a new media for some, and many brands will devaluate your work! What is the average pricing here? A really nice sentiment. This is a very helpful, realistic and inspiring post. Hope I can do all these too. Thank you for sharing your expertise! I like this article and also how its augmentative and how factual situations and scenarios have been taken into account. I recently started an affiliate revenue driven travel website.

The website had a search box that a user uses to search for hotel and flight deals therefore earning me affiliate revenue through leads. Getting targeted traffic that converted well was very hard for me. However, after meeting a lady by the name Marie, on Facebook, things changed for the better. She offered me real genuine organic traffic with real computer IP addresses that really converted well. If you need her services you can contact her through this link http: If you plan to make money with your blog that could result in taxes, should we get a business license? What do you recommend?

I recommend talking with an accountant. Thank you for sharing, Anca. This is something me and my family definitely want to do but are really new to it all. Were currently saving every penny we have to start our first travel with our three children in a camper van around Europe. Would you recommend starting a blog asap in time for the start of our travels?

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Any other advise would be awsome. Thanks for the post! I have just started my own travel blog and dream of the day I can put teaching behind me. I can totally relate to you here! I think I could put twice as many hours a day into my blog and never go to bed as tired as I do after 7 hours in a classroom! Traveling is what I love most, and I hope one day to be able to share my experiences with many. As always, your article is the best.. Making your own products while growing your blog is the best way to monetize it.. Thanks for sharing your tips to earn money from travel blog.

I knew few things but not all, you have shared detailed information. I am seriously considering moving to Australia in the near future a month or two and have been looking in to travel blogging as a profession. I understand that this industry is no overnight success, but takes years of hard work, and I believe I am ready to work for it.

I have a plan to support myself until I can make this dream a tangible reality. I hope to talk soon. You can check it out here bit. And be sure to join our Digital Lifestyle email community. You guys have such an inspiring story, thanks for sharing it with the world! BTW, and just out of curiosity, did you ever worked with banner-based monetization systems like Adsense? Anyway, my congratulations on your outstanding project, and wish you every success in the future! I am not earning enough through my site and want to monetize now.

I am going to implement your instructions. You wrote very nice post here. Everyone is so adamant about making money that the patience is the first thing they lose. Glad to have come across your article. I am inspired by your story. I stumbled upon this post while searching on Google about ways to monetize a travel blog. I have just started working on my travel blog. I enjoy travel writing, so I think I will have the motivation to continue. Thats a very honest article with insight on other money making avenues of travel blogging. I feel the key lies in publishing good quality articles and not overdoing things from the start the mistake i made earlier.

How To Start A Travel Blog AND Make Money

One should start at a pace at which they can commit to even if it is 2 quality posts a month and hold onto to it for long. I am still an amateur writer so i limit my articles to words which is good enough to communicate the story my readers. I do share my articles a lot on social media and that keeps the traffic coming mostly through shares by friends and family. Lets see where this approach takes me to but i plan to be in the blogosphere for a loooongg time.

I love your tips here Caz! I was suprised not to see anything about Brand Ambassadorship as one way that you do or could earn money from travelling. If anyone is looking to earn some money for their travels, please get in touch with me. I work for a currency exchange company called WeSwap and we are currently recruiting travel bloggers to be Brand Ambassadors for us.

This is a really easy and fun way to fund your travels. Thank you for this post. I am new to blogging. This was definitely a great intro to blogging. I know exactly how much it takes to get an online business going. I recently join travelpreneur. Thank you for the inspiration. I have been planning to pursue my blogging career. My blog is more than a year online and been getting decent pageviews and followers. By next year, I am planning to quit my day job and become a full time travel blogger. But I have fears and doubts if things are going to work out well.

But thank you for the inspiration. I am positive again that things are going to work out for me. I am just earning 3 digits monthly, but hopefully, 6 digits later. I love that the entire community really tries to assist and encourage others in living their dreams. Here is a little list that we put together to help people in making money from the road, although it is much less comprehensive than yours! We had never thought of public speaking! I would like to read your information and experience, I live in a nursing home and can still get around but not well enough.

How to start a travel blog: step-by-step

I have traveled in Australia a lot and a bit of an Aussie character about me having worked on big properties mustering on horses and choppers, when I was only 14 so I tend to fit in. I wish you all the best in your travels thank you Norm. Hi Caz, you guys are amazing and inspiring. My gf and I just started a travel blog based in Asia too and we are getting serious this year! Hoping to read more articles on advices on travel blogging.

Have you had much success with Youtube? I know many travel bloggers, but are they really making much money with Youtube? Also, I am considered about Youtube owning my content and possbily suspending my account for no reason. The lack of control bothers me, but the of eyeballs on Youtube is staggering! Your comment about a TV show is interesting. How would you approach a strategy geared towards travel video content? Would you use Youtube or host the videos on your own website? This is incredibly helpful and insightful!

Thanks so much for taking time to write this. I certainly have a lot to consider before I venture forth. I am planning to start a travel blog and planning to sell packages and tickets through affiliate links, can you please suggest me the best tools for same. This post will offer you a few more tips https: Thank you for the great information.

We have just stepped into the travel blogging world and this will really help us. I have just started my blog, and your article give me something to look forward too. If others can do it, I can too. These are some really helpful tips on making money as a travel blogger. So far, I have been doing freelance content writing and sponsored posts. Have just started with affiliate marketing.

Thanks for the kick! We are on the look out for bloggers to take part in our holiday to sri lanka affliate programme. Thank you for good resource. Right now I am spending 33 days in Hawaii, was determined to not have another dreary Washington state winter! I can see how I could use a travel blog or travel related business to at least write off all of my travel expenses, which would be a big help.

Thanks for writing helpful information, which is going to lead me step by step towards achieving successful work on travel bogs. Thanks for writing such informative information. Thank you for this amazing article. Very helpful to those who are looking for ways how to earn from blogging. There is one on the bottom and one on the right and its really challenging to read with so much flashing and movement.

Glad you found the content useful Alyssa. As for the ads, you can X them out, well you should be able to. Just stumbled across this! I am just trying to learn more about how I can make my blog profitable. Google and your readers like websites that load quickly so here are some ways to help your site be as speedy as possible. Sometimes optimization plugins can cause issues with your site.

How to Start A Travel Blog That Actually Makes Money

After you install each plugin check your site to see if everything looks correct. Disabling the plugin will usually fix any problems that arise. Just follow the prompts when configuring the plugins. WP Rocket is a premium caching plugin that does an even better job than the two mentioned above and it has a few more features to help your pages load even faster. You should only run one Caching Plugin.

A CDN is a service that stores your web files on multiple servers all around the world. What does this mean? Many people simply drop an unedited image which is multiple megabytes in size into their blog but these huge will take forever to download especially on mobile. I use an old version Photoshop to edit my photos. There are also plenty of free photo editors that will get the job done. NET are the two most popular. All the plugins listed below have both free and premium version — but most free versions have a monthly limit.

For best results, you should still reduce your image dimension size before uploading them to your WordPress. For example, I usually reduce my images to about pixels in width. WordPress does a lot of things really well but it does have problems from time to time with security and vulnerabilities. The best way to keep your site safe is to always keep WordPress and your plugins updated to the latest version.



Themes Security is a good plugin that will help secure common vulnerabilities that hackers use to gains access to your site. But once your site gets popular and starts making money it is probably a good investment. You never know when your site might get infected so having a backup makes life a lot easier if you get attacked. Google has you covered here. The next step is to set up your website in Google Webmaster Tools. This not only helps Google crawl your website but it also helps you monitor your search results and website errors. Ok, now for the fun stuff… making your website look great.

I spent countless hours finding my first theme and then I spend even more time tweaking and customizing it. There are literally thousands of themes available both free and premium so you should be able to find something you like. I started off with a free theme and then moved to a premium theme. Then I had a developer tweak that theme and then I had a designer and developer make a custom theme. The best place to find free WordPress themes is within the WordPress dashboard.

Go to the Appearance tab; there you will find all the free WordPress themes. You can also download free themes from various websites. However, free themes do have some drawbacks. And these themes make it super easy to make a really great looking website without knowing any design skills. You can, and will, easily spend hours and hours trying to find the perfect theme.

Many of the most popular premium themes can be configured a dozen different ways so even someone with no coding skills can whip up a pretty impressive website — it just takes some time to learn how the theme functions. You also have to be careful with who you hire because cheap developers tend to give bad results. There are also a handful of online companies where you can hire a designer. UpWork is a site with a lot of freelance designers — from cheap and crappy to very good but expensive.

When it doubt choose clean and simple. Let your content shine. Too many people go overboard with the design elements and things quickly become busy and cluttered. There are a few different paths your blog can take. Both can be successful and both have their own challenges. Most bloggers fall into the journal category. These bloggers make a personal connection with their readers — which is always great. However, there is one main problem with this type of blog… it takes constant updating to build an audience.

And once the travel stops, these blogs usually die off. This gives them a long time to build an audience and generate content. Eventually, the most successful bloggers make enough off their blogs to pay for their travel so they can continue traveling. Informational bloggers focus on giving practical information to other travelers.

Additionally, you have to really know your subject matter in order to write in-depth articles that your readers will find helpful. Often a blog will start off as a trip journal and then morph into a hybrid as the blogger becomes more of an authority in their niche. This will make it difficult to stand out or gain popularity. The key is to target a specific niche. You can focus on anything — ultra-low budget travel in Europe, luxury travel in Europe, foodie travel blogging, traveling with kids, biking across Europe, traveling as a couple, solo-female travel, budget baby-boomer travel, vegan travel in Europe, blogging about European street fashion and interior design.

If you are super familiar with a city or destination, you can focus on a single topic for a single city — like budget travel in Amsterdam for example. Lifestyle blogs are also super popular these days, so you could create one that has a strong travel theme. Travel lifestyle blogs are also super popular these days and they give you a little more wiggle room to vary up your content. The competition is fierce. Getting on the first page of the search results will give you a huge boost in traffic and becoming the first result in Google is like winning the lottery.

Remember, getting your pages ranked takes a lot of time. Some of my posts have taken months before they showed up on the first or second page in Google. Learning about SEO can quickly suck you in and leave you scratching your head. Spend your time making great content.

When naming your post I recommend writing it the same way someone would search for it. Becuase these are intended to be passed around Facebook, Twitter, etc. This is the same concept as above. A direct and simple URL like the first one tells Google exactly what the article is about. The second URL is too ambiguous for Google to totally understand.

Try to naturally work in your page title and a few variations into your article. This is basically how your site is going to appear in the google results so craft the Meta Description to entice people to click. You can also get a little SEO boost with your article images. Make sure your title, alt text, and description reference your article.

Be sure to use different alt text and description for your images as keeping the same one looks spammy to Google. I use my article title as the alt text and description for my main image and then do variations for the other images. Plus, Google always wants to return the best results so long articles tend to have the most in-depth information. How much can you earn from your travel blog? Below is a list of the most popular ways that travel bloggers use their blog to make money: Banner ads are the easiest way to earn money from your site.

All you do is slap them up and watch the pennies and nickels come rolling in. I mean, when is the last time you clicked one? You have to be careful because if you plaster your site in banners, your readers will get annoyed and not come back. If your site gets super popular, you can sell your banner ad space directly to companies for a flat monthly fee for a lot more money. Usually, companies will contact you, but feel free to reach out to them if you want.

Affiliate sales are another popular way for bloggers to earn money. The idea behind affiliate sales is simple — you get a small commission when someone buys a product that you link to. For example, you post a link to Hotels. In theory, this is a good system, but most merchants hardly pay anything. Scummier things like getting people to sign up for credit cards pay a lot more, but the competition for credit cards is huge and I feel a little unethical pushing credit cards.

This window to make the sale is getting smaller every year. Amazon is another huge retailer with their own affiliate program. One of the most popular ways to make a good amount of money is to create your own product — usually an ebook or an app. One of the most popular topics to write about is how to make money with your travel blog. But seriously, selling ebooks is great because you keep a huge amount of the profit and there are no recurring costs.

That may not seem like a huge amount, but what if you sell books? It can really add up. Writing ebooks is great because you only have to do the work once. You write it and then you collect the money each time it sells. This is called passive income. A successful book takes a lot of self-promotion. That means you need to have a popular blog so you can drive more people to your books. OK, here is the on selling links. Google uses this info to help determine what pages get shown in the search results. A lot of online marketers will purchase links in order to game the system so that Google will display their page higher in the search results.

It can be tempting to sell links. Want to know a secret? Most of the most successful travel bloggers run multiple websites. Tourists boards are always looking for good press, so many of them invite bloggers on trips to their country. You should view these trips as work and not a vacation. If your writing is really good, other travel publications may ask you to write for them. Social media is super important, so you want to secure all your social media sites ASAP. I highly recommend Facebook , Twitter , Instagram , and Pinterest. There are a few others, but these four are the most influential.

In fact, many online marketing experts say that having a great email list is one of the most important things you can do to drive repeat traffic to your site. I know a lot of people who live in places like Thailand and then spend three or four months traveling around Europe every year.