How to Start a Travel Blog
Ultimate Step-by-Step Tutorial for Beginner Travelers
Everyone of us follows celebrities or influential people on social media. You see beautiful pictures from an amazing lifestyle and so many other people liking and commenting on them.
I bet you ask yourself every time what have these people done in order to become popular and influential? Where do they find money for traveling so often to different destinations? And how is it possible to not go to work for so long?
You can earn enough money to travel the world only by sharing your vacation pics!
How do travel bloggers make money?
For someone, traveling is a lifestyle; a way of living and enjoining life in an absolute feeling of freedom, happiness and adrenalin and a perfect opportunity to charge personal batteries.
By becoming a digital nomad, you can easily make the world your office and travel forever.
Become a “real life” advertisement and you’ll get paid for that when you share travel moments on your travel blog and Social Media sites.
There are bloggers for everything nowadays – lifestyle, food, beauty, airline, political, health, mommy, construction bloggers, car bloggers – seriously pick a passion and blog about it.
You probably already know that bloggers are often paid for advertising. The more followers a blogger has, the higher is the fee. For example, a large influencer with over 100K+ followers will receive around $1,000 for a single Instagram post. Hotels are offering bloggers free accommodations and financial incentives in exchange for just a few social media posts.
Social Media became the influencer of your travel plans:
This why companies are now expected to spend at least $1 billion on Instagram influencer marketing this year.
Top bloggers are mini celebrities and they Instagram posts can be expensive, and simply not within the budget for many businesses. This is how the micro-influencer (YOU) marketing comes in.
Influencers which have fewer followers, between 1,000 and 100,000, charge as low as $50-$100 per post, so brands can save money by working with micro-influencers like you.
I make money on advertising and affiliate sales, other travel bloggers prefer to be paid to promote destinations, hotels, attractions and so on. Here is a list of source of income for a travel blogger:
A lot of travel bloggers recommend waiting until you’ve built a large and engaged audience before you even start to think about monetizing your site, but I don’t think waiting is necessary.
You can start earning income early by using Affiliate Marketing.
Affiliate sale it’s an endorsement of a product. I recommend a product, you buy it through my link, and I get a cut in exchange (cash or credits).
Affiliate programs let you recommend things like clothing, travel gear, photography equipment, tours, or even hotels you stay at within your blog posts and social media. You then earn a small commission whenever someone clicks on one of these tracking links and buys something.
Examples of affiliate links used by popular youtubers. They get commissions by promoting those products.
For example, you can share your custom code for a hotel or AirBnb accommodation, and earn commissions every time someone makes a reservation using your code. The same goes for Amazon’s affiliate program (cameras, drones, etc). and many other affiliate programs.
You could win a free room on AirBnb, using just your Instagram or Facebook profile, even if you have only a few friends and followers.
Introduce a friend to Airbnb. They’ll get $25 in travel credit when they sign up, and you’ll get $15 in travel credit once they complete their first trip.
Let’s say you are on a vacation and your friends can ask you where are you staying.
You can share photos on Instagram, you can write a post on Facebook or even better – on your travel blog while sharing that referral link.
In this way you can earn some extra money for your next trip ;)
While sharing with your friends, it’s ok, having more followers on your Instagram or blog – is the next level.
So how you can earn money with Airbnb.com, Booking.com, HotelsCombined.com, Skyscanner.net, Momondo.com, Amazon.com etc. by recommending hotels, trips, gear and other stuff?
How to get traffic to your Instagram and promote your blog?
This free website setup guide will help you launch a website online in less than an hour, showing you the entire journey from a blank screen to a live blog that gets traffic and readers.
In this post, I’ll guide you through each step and give you everything you need to know and do to start a blog.
So, if you don’t succeed to get your blog online within an hour after thoroughly following this tutorial – I encourage you to contact me and I will help you finish the process.
Your travel blog name must be memorable and cool so people could find you
The web home of your travel blog that will host it and ensure its availability to visitors
WordPress is the foundation of your website. Nearly 25% of all websites online are powered by the WP
A theme is a ready-to-use website design and interface that will help people easily navigate through it
Vital plugins help you add functionality to your site without requiring any technical knowledge
Here’s what you need to consider first, starting with how you’ll monetize your audience
Get started now in under 15 minutes
The first thing you need to do before anything else is to get yourself a domain name and a web hosting.
A web hosting is a place where people pay a fee for storing their websites (thus, for renting “internet” space).
Step 1: Go to SiteGround and choose the cheapest StartUp plan.
Step 2: Choose your domain name
Your domain name should be simple and easy to remember. Pick a name that describes what you do as much as possible.
You can find here a list of some of the renowned travel blogs names that may help you come up with some ideas. Also, you can use OneClickName tool to find the perfect domain name for your blog.
Step 3: Fill out your information. First step DONE!
Create your account username and password, fill in your contact and payment info, and then select your hosting period.
After you’ve registered your domain name and got your hosting package, the next thing you need to do is install WordPress.
Need help with your travel blog?
If you don’t succeed to get your blog online within an hour after thoroughly following this tutorial – I encourage you to contact me and I will help you finish the process.