How to Start a Travel Blog and Make Money (2024)

Looking to start a travel blog but don’t know where to begin? Don’t worry!

We are here to help you.

In this step-by-step guide, we’ll show you how to start a travel and make money from it without any special technical skills.

Let’s get started!

How to Start a Travel Blog

Here is your step-by-step guide to starting a professional travel blog from scratch.

1. Pick a Niche

The first step in creating a successful blog is finding the perfect blog niche idea. This will give the website a distinct personality, allowing it to stand out from the crowded travel blogging community.

If you’re not sure where to begin, here are a few travel blogging niche examples:

• Solo Female Travel: Focused on solo female travelers’ experiences, tips, and challenges.
• Budget Travel: Offering advice on how to travel the world without breaking the bank.
• Luxury Travel: Covering high-end travel experiences, luxurious accommodations, and exclusive destinations.
• Adventure Travel: For those who seek thrill and excitement, covering activities like hiking, skydiving, or scuba diving.
• Foodie Travel: Exploring destinations through their culinary offerings and food culture.
• Family Travel: Providing tips and insights for traveling with children and family.
• Historical Travel: Focusing on historical sites, monuments, and the history of different places.

After deciding your niche, research the target audience to better understand their pain points and goals. This lets you create content that appeals to your visitors with similar interests and builds a loyal reader base.

Furthermore, consistently writing on a similar topic also benefits search engine optimization (SEO). This shows your site’s expertise and helps it rank higher for related keywords. The higher the travel blog’s ranking, the more visitors it will attract.

Here are some tips to help you generate appealing content ideas:

• Explore Trending Topics: Keep an eye on trending travel topics on platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and travel forums. This can help you stay up-to-date and relevant.
• Competitor Analysis: Look at what other bloggers in your niche are doing. Discover gaps in their content that you could fill or find inspiration for your unique take on popular topics.
• SEO Research: Use SEO tools to discover what travel-related queries people are searching for online. Tailor your content to answer these queries.

2. Choose a Memorable Blog Name

Your blog name is crucial since it also serves as your brand’s name. While you can change many aspects of your blog over time, your name should remain the same. Think about it carefully before making a decision.

Not sure what to title your new travel blog? You may start with your own name, a play on it, or a combination of your name and travel-related phrases. Here are a few general rules for settling on a blog name:

• Be It Simple and Memorable: Pick a name that is easy to remember, speak, and spell. Avoid complex or overly long names that might be hard for your audience to recall.
• Reflect Your Niche: Your blog name should give readers a hint about its content. For instance, if you’re focusing on luxury travel, include words that resonate with luxury and exclusivity.
• Be Unique: Ensure your blog name stands out. Avoid using names that are similar to existing blogs, especially within your niche, to prevent confusion.
• Avoid Hyphens and Numbers: Names with hyphens and numbers can be confusing. People might forget to include them when searching for your blog or mistype them.
• Use Keywords Strategically: Including relevant keywords can be beneficial for SEO. However, don’t force them into the name awkwardly.

When brainstorming for a blog name, think about the domain name as well. While there are many choices for blog names, domain addresses are unique. For example, there is only one pickupwp.com.

Make sure you perform a quick domain name search to see whether your desired travel blog name is still available.

Here are some of the best domain registrars you can check out to register your domain name.

3. Choose a Blogging Platform and Web Hosting

The next step in starting a travel blog is to choose the best blogging platform. There are many options available that you can use. However, we recommended WordPress.org.

WordPress is the world’s most popular and open-source blogging platform, giving you complete freedom to start, grow, and make money from your blog. It is used by over 43% of websites on the internet.

Note: When we used WordPress in this guide, it meant WordPress.org, not WordPress.com. See the difference between the two in our complete comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

To start a travel blog with WordPress, you will need a WordPress hosting account.

Normally, web hosting plans start at $7.99 per month.

That’s a lot more for someone just starting a professional travel blog.

However, don’t worry. There are many cheap WordPress hosting options available that you can use. We recommended Bluehost, one of the officially recommended hosting services by WordPress.

That being said, now let’s go ahead and purchase your hosting for your travel blog.

Once you sign up, Bluehost will install WordPress for you. As a result, you officially have a working travel blog!

4. Choose a Travel Blog Theme

The look of your blog is determined by its theme. Fortunately, there are many free and premium themes available, some of which are specifically designed for travel blogs.

When you choose an existing travel blog theme, you will instantly get set up with a great-looking travel blog.

Furthermore, free WordPress themes may be enough for most blogs. But upgrading to a paid one could be very beneficial for others.

Here are some travel blog themes we recommend:

• Blossom Travel: A freemium theme that is fully responsive and optimized for search engines. This well-organized theme is excellent for many types of travel bloggers. Its elegant style makes it an excellent choice, especially for female travel bloggers.
• Astra: A fast and multipurpose WordPress theme with 240+ pre-made Starter Templates. Astra is compatible with the majority of WordPress page builders and has all of the features you’ll need to create an engaging travel blog.
• The Traveler: WordPress blog theme for travel bloggers, photographers, and storytellers. It has a basic and beautiful grid-style blog layout to visually display your photographs and content.

To install a WordPress theme, open your WordPress dashboard and go to Appearance » Themes. Next, click on the Add New button and browse through the WordPress theme library. After finding a suitable blog theme, click on Install and Activate.

Alternatively, you may download a theme from a third-party site, then open your WordPress admin panel and go to Appearance » Themes. Now, click Add New » Upload Theme, choose the downloaded theme’s ZIP file, and install it.

5. Adding Content to Your Travel Blog

After you’ve installed and configured a WordPress theme, it’s time to start adding content.

WordPress, by default, offers two content types: posts and pages. While posts will be the entries in your travel blog, pages are used to provide static content to your website.

We recommend starting with static content first since it helps you create a structure for your website.

For example, the contact page, about page, privacy policy, home page, and so on.

Next, you should start adding articles and posts to your travel blog. To write your first blog post, go to Posts » Add New from your WordPress dashboard.

You are free to add whatever type of content you want. The content editor, often known as the block editor or Gutenberg, allows you to fully customize the look of your written content.

You can write articles and travel guides, as well as upload images, videos, audio, and other content.

6. Download Essential Plugins

Now that your travel blog is fully set up and ready to go, it’s time to install some plugins. WordPress plugins help you to add extra functionality to your travel blog without the need for any technical expertise. They’re one of the things that make WordPress so great.

Here are a few plugins that will make your travel blog journey more enjoyable.

1. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a popular SEO plugin for WordPress. It helps you optimize your content with keywords, create readable texts, and generate sitemaps, ensuring your travel website reaches a wider audience.

2. WP Rocket

Loading speed is vital for keeping visitors engaged. WP Rocket enhances your site’s performance by caching pages, compressing files, and loading images on demand, ensuring your readers don’t bounce off due to slow load times.

3. Social Snap

In the world of travel blogging, social media is key. Social Snap allows you to easily add social share buttons to your blog posts, helping your content reach a broader audience on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

4. Imagify

Images are a core part of any travel blog. Imagify compresses and optimizes your images for faster page loading without compromising on quality.

5. Envira Gallery

Create beautiful, responsive galleries for your travel adventures with Envira Gallery. It’s intuitive and offers numerous customization options. It is also one of the best WordPress gallery plugins.

7. Getting Traffic to Your Travel Blog

Once you’ve started writing content for your travel blog, the next step is to help readers find it. For this, you need to take the following steps.

1. Optimize Your Blog for SEO

Blog SEO is important for improving visibility and driving more organic traffic to your website. Effective SEO ensures that search engines find your blog quickly and that it ranks high in search results.

WordPress is very SEO-friendly, right out of the box. However, there is a lot more you can do to increase traffic to your travel blog.

Check out our complete guide to Blog SEO.

2. Start Building an Email List

Did you know that around 75% of users who visit your website will never return?

To ensure users return to your website, you must convert them into subscribers first.

The quickest way to do this is by building your email list.

For this, we recommended MailerLite, one of the top free email marketing providers for bloggers.

However, just adding email forms to your website will not encourage most visitors to sign up.

This is where the OptinMonster comes in. It is one of the most effective conversion optimization software available, and it can help you convert blog visitors into subscribers and sales.

It offers advanced features such as lightbox popups, floating header and footer banners, slide-in widgets, a countdown timer, and more. All of this helps you nudge users into signing up for your email list.

For more, read out our complete OptinMonster review.

3. Track User Statistics

Most beginners use their best guesses about what their users will like to read or watch. You don’t need to do that when you get real data to show you exactly what users want and do on your website.

Using this info, you can make informed decisions about your blogging journey and create a content strategy to help your website grow.

To get these insights, you need to use Google Analytics. It shows you how many people visit your website, what they view, where they came from, and other information.

For more information, check out our beginner’s guide on installing Google Analytics in WordPress.

4. Make a YouTube Channel

YouTube is both the world’s largest video-sharing website and the world’s second most popular search engine.

You may create a free YouTube channel and begin sharing your trip videos, vlogs, and tips for traveling.

YouTube has a great number of travel channels. In fact, travel vloggers on YouTube are already earning thousands of dollars from sponsorships, ads, and brand endorsements.

Even if you don’t want to be a YouTuber, you may use the platform to increase traffic to your travel blog.

5. Use Social Media

Another effective way to increase traffic to your travel blog is through social media platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest.

Because this type of content is mostly visual, it will do well on image-friendly sites like Instagram or Pinterest, where millions of daily users are actively exploring and engaging with travel-related content.

6. Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is another effective strategy to drive highly relevant traffic to your travel site. It is the act of collaborating with other travel bloggers to publish a “guest post” article on their websites.

To succeed with guest blogging, you should:

• Target sites that your target readers visit and spend time on.
• Build meaningful relationships with the owners of those blogs.
• Create something unique, valuable, and interesting so that people will feel motivated to visit your site.

While it looks counterintuitive to create excellent content and publish it for free elsewhere, it’s actually a great way to show your expertise. Plus, if you are posting on the right blogs, it will not only help attract more visitors but will also help you establish your own authority within your travel blogging niche.

8. Making Money From Your Travel Blog

Have you ever wondered how these top travel bloggers go to exotic places across the world?

Traveling is expensive, yet some of these successful bloggers travel full-time for work. So, how do they make money?

Here, we will explain how other travel blogs generate money and how you may do the same with your own blog.

1. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing allows you to promote travel products that you use and enjoy. You receive a referral commission when your users click on your affiliate link and buy a product.

To make money with affiliate marketing, you must first identify travel products and companies that offer an affiliate program. These could be adventure cameras, selfie sticks, travel insurance firms, tour companies, etc.

Amazon Associates is one of the most popular affiliate programs available. They have a lot of travel gadgets, accessories, bags, apparel, and more.

Furthermore, you can also join travel-specific affiliate programs sponsored by companies such as Booking.com, Expedia, and others.

2. Sponsorships

Sponsorships provide the best travel benefits for popular travel bloggers. Hotels, airlines, tour operators, and even government companies that promote tourism all provide sponsorships.

Once your blog receives a decent amount of regular traffic, you can contact these organizations on your own.

In exchange for free stuff or a fixed fee, they would want you to mention their business or service on your blog. Companies may also contact you to request guest or sponsored content on your site.

While sponsorship partnerships might provide certain benefits, they are unlikely to generate enough money to make travel blogging a viable business.

3. Display Advertising

Selling ad space on your travel blog is one of the best tactics to start earning money from your blog.

You could test the waters with display advertising by either approaching potential advertisers directly and negotiating a deal or simply using a display ad network such as Google AdSense.

If you can successfully drive visitors to your blog, this may be a terrific method to make passive income from people who browse your content.

If you don’t want to use Google AdSense for display ads, here are some of the best Google AdSense alternatives you can check out.

However, in comparison to AdSense, they have higher traffic requirements, a lower publisher share, and a smaller pool of advertisers.

For more, check out some other common ways to make money blogging.

Final Thoughts on How to Start a Travel Blog

That’s everything you need to know about how to start a travel blog and make money in 2024.

Sure, it will take a lot of hard work, patience, and careful experimentation to turn your travel blog into a profitable business, but the rewards may be huge.

By following this guide, you’ll set yourself up for a successful travel blogging journey.

And with enough time, it may even become your main source of income.

For more, check out these other helpful resources:

• 9 Best Free Blogging Sites to Start Your Blog for Free
• Blog vs Vlog: Which is Better for Make Money Online?
• 10 Free Blog Submission Sites List

Lastly, follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay updated on the latest WordPress and blogging-related articles.