Travel the world and make money. Sounds fun? But to actually make money from travel blogging, it takes time and effort along with passion and a never give up attitude. How to do that? Here’s how to become a professional travel blogger.
1. Consistent quality content
The first rule is to deliver quality content regularly. Invest in writing content that is error-free and engaging. Always provide relevant and accurate information along with your story and build a strong narrative. Add good photographs and videos wherever relevant. To develop a unique content style, constantly read and watch books and movies to get inspired and craft your own style.
It’s also important to post regularly and consistently. If you decide you will post once a week, stick to it. This way, your audience know when your content will come, and they will be there to view it. If you post once in a week and three times the next, it will make your schedule erratic, and become a problem for both you and your audience.
2. Readers rule
While writing about your passion is most useful, write about it in the way your readers want. The thing to remember is that your travel blog is not your journal (at least not exclusively), and readers will only come back to it if they find the information they are looking for. Even if they share your passion, they need to find your content relatable and useful.
For instance, if your passion is adventure travelling, there are many other people in the world as well who like the idea. But they want to know less about how the heart was in your ears when trying a sport and more about where you did bungee jumping in New Zealand for such a great experience. Provide your website with a plugin for commenting, and people will ask you about what they want through it. Tailor content this way, and you will develop a steady audience.
3. Establish your expertise
Ensure that your passion becomes your expertise and establish it by offering to guest post or freelance for bloggers that have a large audience base and are mostly related to your own blog topic. This way, you are putting your name and brand out there. Link your name to your blog and some of the viewers who liked your content will come back to your blog for more.
4. Email subscription
Once you have a steady stream of viewers for your blog, give them the option to subscribe and stay connected to it on their mail. You can also personalise emailers by sending each subscriber the latest blogs only on the topics they are interested in. This will make it more convenient for them and they can share it, getting you a new audience.
5. Social media
The biggest mistake any content marketer makes is putting out the same content everywhere, mainly to get people back to your blog. But, different content for different platforms is needed to drive steady engagement and getting only some of the ones who are interested to read your blog. You can share most things on Facebook while Instagram is mainly for posting photos and YouTube for videos. Produce social media content in the format of the platform you want to use. This way you are making effective use of the platform.
Also, be consistent here as well. Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest and now TikTok all have different age groups of users with different purposes and different times of logging in to their account. Use scheduler apps to send out the content as per the platform’s needs, and then go back and reply to comments and such to show people your blog is useful and helpful.
6. SEO
To help Google display your work on the first results page more often, you should ensure your blog is SEO optimised. Basically, ensure your content is accurate and updated, and use the most asked phrases on Google in your blog when writing about that topic, and these along with the backlink you gained by linking your guest posts on the popular websites back to your blog will signal Google to rank your page higher and thus more likely to show on the first page.
7. Brand collaboration vs own products
While brand collaborations are not bad, do it only with ones that match your topic, values, and audience. Try to build long-lasting relationships with the brand, rather than doing one-off collaborations. Also, ensure you have less sponsored content, otherwise, it will make your blog look like an advertising platform, and people may think you are biased in your content.
If you feel like collaboration curbs your creativity and freedom, it is a good idea to build your own brand providing products that are related to your blog and useful to your readers. Selling your own products will also help you make money off your blog and give your readers a sense of belonging to it.
8. Website experience
Attracting people to your blog is not enough. They need to be engaged, and good website experience is one of the most important factors in keeping people on your blog. Ensure that your design is beautiful and does not hurt the eyes. Make the user experience better by providing easy navigability on the site, and make your articles simple and readable. If users are put off when your blog is taking a long time to load, by colours that are not attractive to the eye, or font and style that makes the text unreadable, no one will stay to read your content. Invest in building a good website experience.
9. Start and stay
Most established travel bloggers state that there is at least one year between your starting your blog and it being recognized and a steady source of payment. Hence, start early, start now. The sooner you start, the more time you have to learn and improve. And after you start, be prepared for the struggle, be patient with your blog, and don’t give up. Remember that as long as you are delivering quality content that is engaging and useful to the audience, you will make it.
In conclusion, stay passionate about your topic, accurate and engaging in your content, relevant through your social media presence and SEO tools, and dedicated enough to not quit, and you will become a professional travel blogger with at least some money in your pockets.