Are you looking for a business venture that is fun and that you can run in your spare time? Well, then you might want to think about setting up a travel blog. Yes, with a travel blog, you can make money, while travelling the globe or simply staying at home. It’s entirely up to you. A lot of people love this idea and think they have what it takes to find success down this path. But do they?
It’s actually far more difficult than most people realize to set up and run a successful travel blog. So, let’s break down the key ingredients that you’ll need and the steps that you must be ready to take.
Put Yourself Out There
One of the mistakes people make when starting a travel blog is to assume that it’s about the places that you write about. While this is undoubtedly a major aspect of it, it’s not the most important piece of the puzzle. Instead, you need to ensure that you are putting yourself out there and showing the person behind the blog. It’s you who your audience is going to connect with. It’s you who they will be interested in reading about. So, you can’t hide in the shadows or refuse to show pictures of your face. They need to see you in your travel adventures.
You also need to make sure that you are engaging with your audience. A passive travel blog where you simply post information isn’t going to be enough. You need to engage and interact with the audience. Ask them questions, find out who they are, where they want to go next and where they’d like to see you go. Do this and you’ll get the crucial repeat views for your blog. Of course, inbound marketing will be crucial here too because you’re going to need to make a push for new audience members.
To do that you need to build up a personal brand. Remember, with a travel blog, it’s not just the content that’s the product. It’s content around who you are and your lifestyle.
Keep Up The Quality
A lot of people are keen to monetize their travel blogs as quickly as possible and that’s totally understandable. You are, after all, treating this as a business venture. One of the easiest ways to monetize any blog is to start publishing sponsored content that is paid for by companies to advertise products and services. However, that shouldn’t be your main goal here. Instead, you need to make sure that you are providing content that offers users real value. In other words, every piece of content should provide information or entertainment and it needs to be targetted for your audience.
Even the sponsored content that you publish needs to be of high quality. If it sticks out like a sore thumb, then this is going to damage the reputation of your travel blog and it will lead to fewer people visiting the site.
Tell Stories
There’s certain travel content that is super easy to write. It’s not hard to research the best places to go in Rome and then spin it or write about the most popular places to visit across Africa. Instead, you need to work on telling personal travel stories through your content. Again, this is going to be based on your adventures. If you can tell a story, then you can keep your audience engaged and ensure that they constantly come back for more. That’s all you need to ensure that your blog is a success – an invested audience.
You also need to work on delivering a USP. A USP is basically just something that they can’t find anywhere else. Now, your stories are going to be part of this. But you also need to make sure that you have info that isn’t anywhere else online. Or, if it is then it should be hard to find. For instance, you can tell your readers about the Disney Vacation Club secret if they are visiting Disney World. Specifically, if you stop and have a conversation with the cast members, they’ll give you free gold fast passes to 3 of the rides in the park.
We hope this helps you understand what you need to ensure that you do find success in setting up and running your own travel blog. There are travel blogs online where people make thousands every month, simply by writing and posting pictures of things they love. Could you be the next winner in this funfilled industry?