How to Start a Travel Blog – Step by Step Guide

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You’ve travelled the world – Asia, Africa, the Americas, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia  – You’ve visited almost every country. What next? Why not learn how to start a travel blog and share your experience with the community?

It’s a fun, adventurous, and lasting memory that will excite you and your audience for a long time.

You can not imagine enough the benefits of starting a travel blog until you build one yourself. 

In this post, I will show you a step-by-step guide on how to get into travel blogging, even if you’ve never written a blog before.

You will learn all the steps required to start and make money from running a travel blogging for beginners.

Here are the 8 important steps you must consider before starting a blog documenting your travelling adventure.

• Market Research is the most critical aspect; you must research your niche for demand vs market value. Is your travelling niche profitable? Are people interested in your journey? 
• A Domain name – You must buy and register a domain name that fits your blog topic. This is important, and you can’t skip it.
• Web Hosting – Without web hosting, there is no website or blog. So you need this one, too, to get your blog online.
• Travel Blog Theme – WordPress themes are not created equal; you need a theme that fits the purpose and showcases your experience in the best possible way.
• Travel Blog Plugins – Plugins extend the core functionalities of a WordPress blog; you’ll find some plugins specific to a travel blog on the list.
• Publish Content – Content is what brings people to your blog. But the type of content you create determines what type of audience you attract. We will walk through these steps together.
• Build Your Audience – You need an audience to profit from your travel blog. I will show you how to build an audience for your travel blog. It’s not as hard as you might believe. 
• Make Money With Travel Blogging – How can you make money travelling blogging? There are many options; I will show you five methods to turn your passion into a passive income or, maybe, a full-time income.

Now let’s explore these steps and start building your travel blog from scratch.

How to Start a Travel Blog – Setup Guide

If you want to start a travelling blog today, here is the complete tutorial.

This guide has all the in-depth details, from market research to monetization strategies.

Step 1. Market Research

The most important step in determining your travel blog’s success or failure is how well you know your target market. 

There are several options to choose from in the travel niche.

From country, vacation travel, family travel, specific location, seasonal, budget, luxury, adventure, backpacking, and more…there are many options to pick from. 

Your experience plays a big role in your selection, but you don’t have to assume you know your niche. Market research and analysis are the best ways to evaluate any market or industry for demand and value.

You will need a tool to do this.

Your gut feeling or instinct is not enough to make judgments here. Semrush keyword tool is my favourite for market research; you can sign up for a free account and start using it today.

Log into Semrush and plug in your seed keyword to analyze opportunities and competitors. Here is a comprehensive post that shows how to do keyword research with Semrush. 

Step 2. Register a Domain Name

Now that you’ve known your niche, it is time to register a domain name.

Your domain name may reflect your blog topic or name if you maintain a personal blog for the long haul. You can combine keywords with part of your name and be creative.

There are no right or wrong ways to choose a domain name, but there is some general consensus:

• Make it simple to read and say over the phone.
• It should be memorable.
• Keep it short and simple
• Avoid using special characters at all cost
• Keep it under two to three words maximum

If you need inspiration, here is a post that might be helpful, or you could use some help from domain name generators. You enter your niche in the tool, and it will generate hundreds of blog name ideas within minutes. 

Step 3. Choose a Web Host

Since you’re starting a media-heavy blog, you need a reliable, quality web host. There are many options; NameCheap and Bluehost are good web hosts.

Namecheap and Bluehost offer incredibly low-priced but quality web hosting services. The WordPress community recommends Bluehost, and Nameceahp is the most affordable for beginners.

Here are some of the hosting features you will get.

• Free SSL certificate
• 1-year free domain name registration fee
• Unmetered bandwidth
• Unlimited websites for the second-tier hosting plan
• Free CDN 
• SSD Storage
• One-click WordPress install
• Built-in cache system
• 24/7 hosting support
• 30-days money-back guarantee

You can sign up with any of the web hosting services providers below.

As a beginner, you can start with the entry-level hosting plan, which is cheaper and gives you what you need.

Step 4. Pick a Travel WordPress Theme

A blog theme gives your blog its look and design, so picking the right and unique WordPress themes is essential to user experience.

You will find hundreds of free and paid WordPress travel blog themes, but if you want to stand out, you should go for a premium theme like WP Astra. Check out my comparison of the free Astra theme with the Pro plugin to inform your decision.

WP Astra theme is affordable; at $47/per year for the Pro plan, you have access to advance theme features like:

• Advance header builder
• Customized footer builder
• Advance customization to link, typography, elements, font, etc.
• Native AMP supports
• Unlimited website 
• Custom layout builder
• Add-ons and plugins
• Starter Templates
• SEO Optimized and fast-loading themes
• Regular updates
• 14-day money-back guarantee
• Premium supports
• And lots more…

The Astra starter templates give you the advantage of building a powerful travel blog design in minutes without knowing how to code.

You can choose from hundreds of professional starter templates and import them into your blog directly.

All the pages you need are available in the templates – depending on the template you choose, you can begin editing the content and pages to fit your blog message and audience.

There are built-in features that make Astra starter templates a good choice for travel blog templates – you can select from different travel blog templates that allow displaying images in different forms, styles, carousels, positions, sizes, etc.

Check out this page for a full list of the Astra starter templates. The starter templates integrate with the Elementor and Beaver Builder.

So you can use it with your favourite WordPress page builder.

Step 5. Install WordPress Travel Blog Plugins

Without editing the code of your WordPress blog, you can extend and customize its functionalities.

Even if you know nothing about writing a script, you can make your blog do whatever you want. 

That’s one of the beauties of blogging on the WordPress platform.

Even though you’re running a travel blog, there are some basic plugins that most WordPress sites install or need. These plugins are essential for different needs and features:

• JetPack – Multi-purpose WordPress plugin
• SEO Plugins – Yoast, AIO SEO, or Rank Math.
• Cache – WP Rocket (#1 WordPress cache plugin)
• Security – Wordfence
• Akismet – Protect against spam comments

You’ll need to install some of these plugins and others you might need for building your travel blog effectively. Here are some WordPress plugins for travel blogs.

• Traveller Map
• GEO Mashup
• Photo Gallery by 10web

Step 6. Publish Your First Content

Much of your travel blog content will come from personal experiences. Places you’ve visited, people you’ve met, and many moments of joy to share.

You need a good camera set to take pictures and beautiful moments. Your choice of camera will depend on your blog quality, travel place, and audience.

You need a wide-angle lens camera to take pictures of beautiful landscapes and architecture. And if you’re visiting wildlife animal territory, you need a zoom lens camera. 

But it’s okay if you don’t have the budget for expensive cameras. You can start with a smartphone’s built-in camera.

Many high-end smartphones today can take stunning pictures in any light condition. And in different views, angles, and resolutions.

After taking pictures, you must log in to WordPress and write supporting content to share your experiences and more details about your adventures.

So from your WordPress admin dashboard, locate post>>add new.

In the text editor, write your content and upload your images. When you finish writing, editing, and proofreading your content, hit the publish button.

That’s it! Your first WordPress travel blog post is live. 

Step 7. Build Your Audience

You need an audience to build your blog traffic and monetize correctly. 

Social media is an incredible source of free traffic for a travel blog. With billions of active social media monthly users, you can promote your blog and reach the right audience without paid marketing.

Instagram and Pinterest are very good platforms for promoting travel blogs. These platforms are media-heavy compared to Facebook and Twitter. 

Also, you need to add social sharing buttons to your site. It makes it easy for readers to share your content with their followers.

While doing this, make part of your time focusing on SEO traffic and keyword research. You will get most of your valuable traffic from search engines.

For more information on how to drive SEO traffic, take a moment to read this post.

Step 8. Make Money With Travel Blogging 

You want to make money from travel blogging, and who doesn’t want that? 

You can begin monetizing your travel blog from the start or wait until you get some decent traffic.

Either way, you must experiment with ways to make money from your travel blog.

• Display Advertising – Display advertising works well in travel blog niches. You serve ads on your blog from third-party advertising agencies like Google Adsense. The downside is that you can only earn a decent income if your blog drives decent monthly pageviews. So you will have to work on increasing traffic consistently. This is a number game.
• Affiliate Marketing – Affiliate marketing is another way to make money with a travel blog. You can help other people sell their products and services on your blog. And there are affiliate programs for almost anything, including in the travel niche. You can promote flight tickets, discounts, accommodations, hotels, travel equipment, insurance, etc. When people buy from your recommendation link, you get a commission from the sale.
• Sponsored Post – Brands will likely come for sponsored posts when your blog attracts decent traffic and engagements. Depending on your blog traffic and value, the price of a sponsored post can range from $200 to $50k. Yes, some bloggers earn that much for a sponsored post.
• Sponsored Trips – You could get paid to visit places and write about your experience on the blog. This is likely to happen when you have a big community of audience and write a very popular blog.
• Donation – You can have a donate button on the blog and have people leading support hands. But this will happen only when you have a loyal and dedicated audience community. 
• Sell your Product – You can sell your travelling experience on the blog and make decent money. This could be in the form of an audio, ebook, video recording, or even live streaming. You charge for live streaming of places you visit and let people watch you live to explore different places. This can be fun and entertaining to your audience.

There is no limit to how far you can earn from your travel blog; as you explore other areas and grow your audience, you can try different tactics.

FAQ – How to Start Travel Blogging

Conclusion…

Travel blogging can be fun and rewarding with the right strategy and tactics.

If you follow the step-by-step guide in this article and the tips to start travel blogging, you’re one step toward creating your dream blog.