How to Start a Travel Blog (6 Tips to Get Started)

If you love to travel, perhaps you have dreamed of turning your passion into a job, a side hustle, or at least a fun hobby. The good news is that setting up your own travel blog is quite easy. The not-so-good news is that travel blogging is a saturated market. Many, many people want to make it as a travel blogger. If you can find what makes you, your writing, and your style unique, though, you can find success in travel blogging. The tips below will help understand how to stand out.

Is this the time to start a travel blog?

The market is full of travel blogs, especially now. The restrictions that we saw during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic made people even more eager to travel and write about their travels. The audience for travel blogs also keeps growing. People want to read about travel, either to prepare for their own trips or to live vicariously through those who get to travel more frequently. People even read travel blogs while they are already on vacation to learn more about where they are, get recommendations for restaurants and sightseeing, and more.

If your main goal in starting a travel blog is to have fun, the commercial potential for your blog might not seem as important. Many bloggers who started out blogging as a hobby have managed to turn their blogs into steady sources of income, so it’s something you should keep in mind.

For those who want to make travel blogging their job or side hustle, the sooner you get started, the better. The planning and setup process might seem overwhelming at first. It will take time to gain an audience. It all builds up to doing something you love, though, and hopefully reaping rewards from it.

6 Tips to Get Started:

The following six tips can help you find your voice, stake out your space in the universe of travel blogs, and begin to build your brand.

1. Choose a Specific Traveling Niche

The internet is full of travel blogs, and there are lots of different travel niches, so you need to find a niche that distinguishes your blog from all the others. Ask yourself the following questions to start getting an idea for a niche:

• What do I love most about traveling?
• What do I love most about writing/blogging?
• What can I write about over and over again?
• What knowledge, experiences, and skills can I bring to the table for readers?

Your niche could be about a particular journey. Suppose you’re an avid cyclist, for example, and you plan on cycling through every country in Europe. That could make a very interesting and successful blog.

Your niche could also be about particular interests or needs. A few examples of travel blog niches include:

• Dietary, such as “Eating vegan while traveling”
• Accessibility, to assist travelers with impaired mobility, sight, or hearing
• Budgetary, focusing on low-cost options for travel destinations
• Age-based, particularly travel tips for seniors
• Family-based, such as a blog offering travel tips for families with young children

You can also focus your travel blog on a particular area, such as a country, region, or city. You could even start a travel blog for the city where you live, offering information for visitors.

2. Come up With a Great Blog Name

The name of your blog is the most important part of the branding process. Put some serious thought into it. Once you have launched your blog and begun building an audience, you might find it difficult to change the name.

You could base your blog’s name on your own name, or it could be a brief summary of your blog’s niche. Important features of a good blog name include:

• Easy to remember
• Easy to spell — your blog’s name will also be the domain name
• Simple, meaning it consists only of letters, no numbers or other symbols
• Relatively short

Given the sheer number of travel blogs out there, finding the perfect name could be challenging. Travel-related terms like “nomad” or “wandering” might suffer from overuse at this point. With a bit of creativity, though, you can find the right name for you.

3. Work on Your Branding

Knowing your blog’s name and its particular niche within the world of travel blogging will help you get started on building your brand. The term “brand” here refers broadly to the online persona you are creating around your blog. It includes everything from the blog name to the way you present yourself and your writing on social media.

Designing a logo for your blog is an important step in your branding. Your logo will identify your blog and everything else you do related to your blogging. You need something unique and appealing that fits both your own image and the travel blogging industry.

You can get ideas for a logo by looking at competitor travel blogs, but remember that your logo needs to be unique. Look at your competitors to see how their logos’ design and color fit into the themes of their blogs.

If you are artistically inclined, you can use apps like Adobe Photoshop or Canva to create your logo. You can also find a designer online who can work with you to create the perfect logo. Another option is a logo maker, you can design a logo fast with one of these and you don’t need any design skills.  

4. Set up Your Website

You will need a place to host your blog, of course, so the next step is to set up the website. Many free platforms are available for bloggers, such as WordPress.com and Blogger, and this is fine for a blog you are creating solely for fun. If you intend to monetize your blog, though, setting up a self-hosted site is a better plan.

WordPress allows you to create a self-hosted blog with a great deal of freedom to customize it however you like. Other online website builders are available as well too. You will need to register your domain name and pay for hosting, but many content management systems (CMSs) are free for you to use for your blog.

5. Start Working on Your Content

Your content should fit the overall theme of your blog, your brand, and your travel blogging niche. Unique text, meaning original writing in each post, is essential for search engine optimization (SEO).

Images and videos can help your blog stand out from the crowd. Your blog’s CMS will allow you to post as many images as you want, but it probably will not include the ability to embed videos in your posts. For that, you might need to rely on a third-party site like YouTube.

6. Network with Other Travel Bloggers as You Go

Other travel bloggers might be your competitors, but they can also be a source for ideas and strategies. Many experienced bloggers are happy to help people who are just getting started. Don’t be afraid to reach out with questions, or even just to introduce yourself. You might find a friend, a support network, or even a mentor for your blogging career.

Conclusion

It has never been so easy to set up your own travel blog. While the market for travel blogs might seem crowded, readers are eager for new content. The steps described above can help you get started building your own travel blog for fun or for profit.