How to Make Money Travel Blogging (From Anywhere in the World)

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Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could make money talking about stuff we loved all day every day, working our own hours from wherever we wanted in the world? What a dream that would be…

It’s not a dream! You absolutely can and in this article, I am going to walk you through how to make money travel blogging from your kitchen table or a beach in Fiji!

And don’t be fooled into thinking travel blogging is only about writing. Whether you enjoy writing, talking, or performing, you can build a money-making travel blog in your PJ’s!

Travel Blogging in the 2020’s

After a bit of a harsh start with travel taking a nose dive through Covid, it’s already bouncing back to pre covid levels and if you compare travel as a trend to other super popular niches such as business or health, you can see it’s still one of the most popular niches online!

Whether you start a blog, website, vlog, call it what you like, your travel blog is a place you can have fun, create content around topics you’re passionate about, and add massive value to your niche inviting your community, customers, and clients to learn more about what it is they want or need to know.

If you love writing you can create text based posts covering your niche topics;

If you love talking, start a podcast and build a site around your podcast;

If you love making videos, start a youtube channel and build a site around your videos;

I like to call my site my ‘home’. I may have content all over the web, but my blog is where people can come to read my best and biggest posts, download my free email course, learn more about me and how I can help them, and purchase my products and services, all in one place!

Meaning you can build a huge following on Instagram or TikTok with your travel posts & videos and gently guide your viewers over to your travel blog to build a stronger relationship and give them even more useful content!

How to Make Money Travel Blogging

Before I get into the nitty gritty of how you can get started building your money making travel blog, let’s have a look at all the ways you’ll be able to monetize it once you’ve grown an audience of adoring fans!

• Advertising
• Affiliate Marketing
• Books and Ebooks
• Online Courses
• Membership Sites
• Tours & Events
• Physical Products
• Selling Services
• Become an Influencer

1. Advertising

Advertising is one of the most easily understood and popular methods to make money travel blogging.

With such high search volumes across the travel niche, your goal is to publish high quality and useful content as often as possible on your travel blog.

Then, as your traffic grows, you can sell space on your site for other companies to post their advertisements on or sign up to a specialized advertising service like Ezoic or Mediavine who’ll manage the process for you.

If you don’t fancy adding ads to your travel blog you could instead look for brand deals.

Brand deals are when a company and travel blogger work directly together to spread the reach of a company’s image. A common method of this is when a blogger uses that company’s product throughout its content instead of its competitors.

The travel blogging couple, Lia and Jeremy make money travel blogging by writing about their travels and experiences in different parts of the world.

They have several revenue streams, such as:

• Services
• Courses
• Advertising
• Affiliate

But most of their income comes from advertising. They typically use Mediavine to sell space on their website, however you’ll need over 50,000 page views before you can use this service.

Other ad services to use when just getting started include Google Adsense & Ezoic.

The key to their successful ad revenue stream is the sheer volume of traffic they receive. With as many as 300k monthly visitors, they monetize tons of space on their site.

To get this amount of traffic, they focused their content around keywords that bring in traffic. They also guest post on larger travel sites frequently to increase their reach and the number of authoritative links back to their own site. Now they even allow other bloggers to guest post on their site, meaning they can cover even more keywords, increase their traffic and give their readers more variety of content!

2. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing has got a bad rap over the years. Mainly because, very unfortunately for the rest of us, this segment of online business is flooded with scammers and people just looking to make a fast buck.

Why? Because you don’t have to put the work into writing the book or making the course or manufacturing the product. Your job is to create great content, drive traffic to that content and then link out to other people who’ve done the hard work writing the book, making the course, or manufacturing the product.

The challenge however is that creating great content and driving traffic is equally hard work, so don’t be fooled thinking this is the easy way in. It isn’t.

For example one of my most popular posts about starting a business on Amazon, which drives a significant amount of monthly affiliate income for me, is over 19,000 words long!

My main ‘How to Start a Blog’ post is 25,000 words long!

To attract readers and encourage them to buy via your links takes creating quality content consistently and building a level of trust through your posts and travel blog.

Matt from Expert Vagabond for example has become a trusted source of valuable travel information and has been running his travel blog for years.

On most of his ‘things to do in’ posts he has an advert for SafetyWing travel insurance which I’m sure brings in very healthy affiliate commissions.

Other examples of affiliate offers on travel blogs include links to hotel booking sites, activities and events booking sites, travel credit cards, photography equipment and anything else you can think of that’s travel related.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money travel blogging as long as it’s done tastefully, the recommendations are for trusted brands such as SafetyWing Travel Insurance for Digital Nomads, and you’re providing high quality content.

3. Books and Ebooks

Love writing? These days it’s easier than ever to publish a book online whether a physical book or an ebook.

What a fantastic way to get your message into the world, grow your profile, impact as many people as possible and make money travel blogging!

Popular travel blogger Nomadic Matt has published both guide books and books documenting his travels.

And the awesome Yaya & Lloyd, creators of the travel blog and brand Hand Luggage Only have published a book on exploring their home country of Great Britain.

If you think you have a book inside you and most of us have, what are you waiting for?

4. Online Courses

Are you an expert on something in particular?

As you’ll be attracting people who like to travel, in an ideal world your skills need to appeal to your audience.

Perhaps you’re an amazing photographer, videographer, writer, nutritionist, or travel blogger.

You name it, someone wants to learn about it.

You only have to look at Udemy, Skillshare and Lynda to see how many courses there are on a multitude of varying travel topics.

udemy.com

In fact, due to the recent pandemic, this is a fast-growing area. People want skills! People need skills! And they’re going to be looking online to develop them. So how can you help?

Goats on the Road very cleverly offer their ‘Start a Travel Blog‘ course for free provided you start your blog using Bluehost, which earns them an affiliate commission.

If you already have a blog or want to use a different host you’ll need to purchase their course for $120.

Check out my step-by-step post on How to Create a 6 Fig Online Course here and start to make money travel blogging by creating your first course today!

5. Membership Sites

A membership site is the next step up from an online course. You can start by taking what you created in your online course and turning it into a monthly subscription.

You will of course have to offer more value by way of a community, regularly updated content, and member benefits, but it’s a great business model and is in fact how I generated my first 6 figures online.

The Lab by Digital Nomad girls is a great example of this;

6. Tours and Events

A great way to expand your travel blog and repertoire of countries is to start offering tours across the world or host events for travelers.

Wandering Earl started as a travel blog but after numerous requests from his readers asking for tours based on his own experiences, the creator of the blog Derek started wanderingearltours.com.

Now he gets to meet and travel with so many with his travel blog fans!

Nomad Capitalist is the brainchild of Andrew Henderson, an American entrepreneur who wanted to find a way to reduce his taxes.

Go where you’re treated best’ is the company mantra and alongside a best selling book, blog and client services they run an annual event for those looking to improve their financial situation by creating a second citizenship and learning about offshore tax strategies.

It’s actually one of my goals to host some immersive retreats in the future for this wanting to learn strategies to build a business they can run while traveling anywhere in the world, so watch this space!

7. Physical Products

Another way to make money travel blogging is to add physical products to the mix.

Ecommerce is such an exciting business model which you can start today with almost no money down!

The most common form of eCommerce is dropshipping, a bit like affiliate marketing, your job is to drive the traffic to your site, but the product is manufactured and shipped by someone else.

However my favourite model is Print on Demand. Much like dropshipping I don’t have to purchase products upfront or manufacture myself, but unlike dropshipping I can have my brand and my designs all over the product, making it far more personal to me!

Nomatic.com (known as Gomatic in Europe where I am as I write this) are a great example of a popular travel brand who have built an extremely successful business selling travel products.

What’s to stop you selling t-shirts, travel journals or travel accessories as your travel blog and brand grows?

8. Selling Services

This is any service you can exchange for a fee.

Common services to sell are consulting, coaching, writing, and any other freelance service. When starting out, this is a great way to get yourself off the ground because it doesn’t require a large audience.

Here’s some great examples of blogs (websites) set up for this very purpose;

Elna Cain offers her writing and coaching services through her blog. She is a mommy blogger who wanted to start working from home to raise her children. Her blog is focused on teaching people how to start freelance writing.

Another great example is Nomad Capitalist, who started out as one man but has now grown to a team of over 50 people offering everything from tax planning, citizenship and the global nomad lifestyle.

Other ways to make money travel blogging via services are by promoting your photography or videography skills. Perhaps you’re amazing at drone photography and can offer your services to hotels or travel companies in exchange for money, for accommodation or for experiences.

The world is your oyster!

9. Become an Influencer

Becoming an Influencer off the back of your travel blog encompasses all of the above!

As you grow your audience, you may decide to sell services, online courses, or a membership program, become a best-selling author, sell advertising or sponsorship, add affiliate links and some physical products!

Or do it all! As your travel blog audience grows, more and more opportunities to make money travel blogging will present themselves to you.

So focus first on creating and publishing awesome content consistently and watch for the doors start to open!

How to Start Your Money Making Travel Blog

So, should you start a travel blog?

Of course! There is no time like now. Anyone who tells you blogging is dead, probably didn’t work hard enough to get their blog off the ground, so provided you have the passion, determination, and commitment there is absolutely no reason you can’t build a successful travel blog that generates income while you sleep!

Here’s how;

1. Choose Your Niche

This might seem a strange starting point as of course your niche is travel.

However, travel is a huge and broad subject you may want to niche down a little and focus on a specific area of travel such as;

• Backpacking
• Adventure Travel
• Travel Photography
• Solo Travel
• Female Travel
• Traveling with a Family

My blog is about business and travel with a heavy lean towards online business models that require minimal hours per day to generate enough income for you to have the time to explore the places you visit rather than just arrive and start working!

Choosing a niche is a roadblock so many budding entrepreneurs can’t move beyond. Don’t spend weeks, months or years trying to think of the perfect niche.

Just think about the following questions;

• Who is the kind of person you’d love to read your travel blog and you’d love to connect with?
• What elements of travel are you particularly interested in?
• What do you enjoy writing about or talking about?
• What problem have you recently solved that you could help others with?
• What do you love reading about/consuming?

Confusion over picking a niche is usually less about knowing what you’re interested in and more about the fear you face when thinking of competing in that niche.

Never fear strong competition. It means there’s a strong market. You just need to figure out how to be better or how to add a unique angle, which (by the way) you tend to work out as you go.

If you can’t decide on a niche, just start writing. The more you create and produce, I guarantee, your niche will find you! Remember, even if you think it’s been done before, no one else in this world has your perspective and experiences in life. So your offering is 1 of a kind =).

The most important thing of course is to ensure your niche is profitable, which thankfully in the travel space most sub niches are.

Assessing Market Demand

An easy way to assess if your niche might be profitable is to see if any brands are advertising for keywords that apply to your niche. In this image, it is safe to assume “travel insurance” is a lucrative niche.

If brands are spending money to be seen by your target audience, your target audience are likely to be buyers.

Once you have a general idea that a niche is profitable, head over to google keyword planner. Start a new plan and type in your keyword to learn more about it. (this image is for the key term “travel insurance”)

Do this for a few different keywords in your niche to really understand what is happening here.

Good to know: The higher the average CPC, the more profitable the audience is. The more impressions, the larger the audience.

This will help you assess market demand.

Assess the Competition

The amazing thing about the internet is that you do not have to be #1 in your niche to make money. The amount of money you make is based on the value of each customer and how many of them you can reach.

But, the less competition you have the more traffic you will receive.

So to measure the competition, fire up an SEO tool like Ahrefs, Ubersuggest or SEMRush

Go to the keyword planner and type in one of your keywords.

This keyword has a lot of traffic but is also very competitive. If you are starting out, I probably wouldn’t recommend going for a broad keyword like travel insurance.

If however you’re targeting families or backpackers you could find some gems within these niches, with far less competition.

Don’t be put off with the lower search volumes either. Attracting 100 people a month to a post because you can rank is far better than trying to reach hundreds of thousands who will never see your post! Plus once you start to rank, you rank for lots of other keywords also, meaning your traffic levels have the potential to be far greater.

What If I’m Multi Passionate?

Ah yes, the multi-passionate entrepreneur.

If you look around this site you’ll see posts about building your lifestyle business, travel, and mindset. I am your typical multi-passionate entrepreneur.

Within the lifestyle business section, you’ll find posts on blogging, ecommerce, social media.

No matter how hard I try, I find it impossible to only focus on one subject. However, thankfully all my subjects interlink nicely leading to an overall subject of living your best life!

But that, my friend, is the beauty of blogging. You can test & measure to find what works best by using multivariate testing to find what works best. As long as your passions are connected and are subsets of a broader niche, there is no reason not to cast a wider net to see what resonates with your audience.

NB: Creating a blog around golf and dog health, just because you happen to be a dog-owning golfer is not testing subsets of a broader niche by the way!

You may eventually find yourself producing more content around one or two very specific subjects as that’s what your market has demanded, but that’s how you start to carve your mark and add a unique angle to your content, by listening to your audience.

2. Pick a Name & Register Your Domain

Before you set your travel blog up, you’ll need a name that becomes your domain. For example, this blog is called Your Lifestyle Business, and the URL is yourlifestylebusiness.com.

It’s a little long for my liking, but it describes exactly what I’m talking about which is how to build an online business that funds your lifestyle and gives you the freedom to travel the world.

Your domain name, otherwise known as a URL, is your space on the web. It’s your website address, which is a great way to describe it, as I always tend to call your website your business home.

So every time someone types that URL into a browser, your travel blog will pop up!

I wouldn’t get too caught up here. Some of the biggest brands have the most obscure or bland brand names, think Apple, Dyson, IBM.

Many travel blogs simply go with their name so they can pivot if need be. I started with my name many years back with my site jobarnesonline.com. I sometimes wish I’d kept it so I could cover a more wide-ranging topic base, but I had a bee in my bonnet about my brand being about my customers (hence ‘your’ business) rather than me!

As with your niche, there is no right or wrong, only memorable or forgettable, and no matter what the name, it will be forgettable until it isn’t, and that’s far more about your content and brand presence than your name.

However, the shorter and easier to remember, the better.

To help find a name for your travel brand, you can use free online name generators to get some ideas.

My favorite is namelix.com.

Here’s what popped up when I typed in the keywords ‘Wanderlust’ and went for the brandable option. (You’ll see the options pop up when you enter your keywords).

I don’t know about you, but I love the name Quite Lost for a travel blog!

Unfortunately this only gives you name ideas and not available domains so you will also need to use a domain registrar such as Bluehost to check your preferred names are available.

Once you’ve decided your name and have established the domain is available, you’ll need to purchase that domain name and register it to you, so you now own it, and no one else can ever use that same domain name!

There are plenty of domain services, but I’ve always used Bluehost.

They’ve always provided a great service, they make it easy to transfer the domain to most hosting companies, and their pricing seems in line with most other domain services on the web.

Other domain providers include; namecheap.com, domain.com, google domains, dynadot. They’re all much of a muchness, but there might be a price difference and if you’re watching the pennies, it might pay to shop around.

NB: Before you shoot off and register your domain name, you may want to consider buying your domain directly from Bluehost if you use them for hosting.

Read the next section first about how best to host your website, and then you can decide the best route forward for you.

3. Choose Hosting & Create Your Site

The next step for your awesome journey on how to make money travel blogging is to get yourself some hosting!

What is hosting?

Hosting is what enables your travel blog to be visible on the world wide web. A web host is a service provider that provides all the necessary technology to ensure that when a visitor enters your domain name into the browser’s address bar, your website shows up.

There are literally hundreds of web hosts to choose from, and deciding on the right one for your business is a bit like navigating a minefield.

But as luck would have it, I’ve been doing a lot of research into hosting recently for my own site (this very one you’re on right now).

Choosing a Web Host

I’ve discovered that the most important considerations when choosing a web host are;

1. Speed. Your site’s speed is an important ranking factor in google’s eyes and your web host goes a long way to contributing to that. But we don’t want a speedy website just for google; we live in a highly impatient and distracted world. If your website doesn’t load instantly, you’ll have lower page views, conversions, and sales.
2. Support. An extremely knowledgeable tech person may disagree that this should be No 2, but if you’re a layman like me and your specialty isn’t in programming and web tech issues, then a reliable support team makes all the difference! I recently walked away from a hosting company because their ‘world-class support’ had become extremely sub-par.
3. Price. Again we should probably list some of the tech specs as a higher priority. Still, if you’re a solopreneur without a huge budget, then the price will be a critical consideration for you.
4. Tech specs and other features. If the hosting company is super speedy, has amazing support reviews, and fits within your budget, the next things to consider are; whether it provides email services, free backups, an SSL certificate (an absolute must to get ranked on google), a staging area, CDN included and lots of other fancy acronyms. Most of which I have no clue what they mean but are likely to be included as standard with most services these days.

So with all that being said, what is the best hosting service?

It depends on your objectives, but for this post, I’m going to give my recommendations based on you being a solopreneur starting a one-person WordPress travel blog!

WordPress itself recommends Bluehost.

That’s why, if you do some digging, you’ll see most ‘How to Start a Blog’ posts recommending Bluehost. I always thought it was because they must offer the highest affiliate commissions in the market, but in all honesty, they’re on a par with other hosting providers (if not on the low end).

But they’ve set themselves up as the perfect hosting option for beginners. With prices beginning at just $3.95/month, they offer;

• Free domain name for one year
• Free SSL certificate
• 1-Click WordPress Install
• 24/7 customer support

Please note, however, these low prices are for ’shared hosting.’ According to Neil Patel ’shared hosting‘ means;

“Shared web hosting will always be the cheapest option. These entry-level plans host multiple websites on a single server.

You’ll benefit from low rates, but your site won’t have dedicated server resources. Other sites on your server could take up the server resources and cause your site to crash. Your host might even limit your bandwidth and slow down your site if you get traffic spikes.

While shared hosting isn’t the top of the line, it’s the best option for the vast majority of new websites. If you want something cheap, there’s no reason to look beyond shared plans.”

If you’re serious about making money travel blogging, in an ideal world, you’ll want ‘managed WordPress hosting’ or a ‘VPS’ (virtual private server) to ensure you’re getting the best performance possible.

Bluehost does offer Managed WordPress Plans but these packages comparatively start at $19.95/month (3 years paid in advance) or £29.99/month paid monthly.

(As an aside, in my very early days when I used Hostgator, I couldn’t understand why my site went down so often. Now I know it was because I was on a shared hosting plan, so my site was greatly affected by the limitations of the server and other websites taking up space. If you find your site is consistently suffering downtime, check the hosting package you have before migrating to a new host, it may simply be a case of upgrading.)

If you’re chomping at the bit to get going, your budgets are low, and you just want a cheap and easy host to get your travel blog off the ground, then a Bluehost shared WordPress package might be for you. Just be aware that you will need to sign up for a minimum of 12 months, but you do get the free domain.

Why I Chose WPX Hosting

If, however, you want a lightning-fast, managed hosting solution site from Day 1, my personal recommendation is WPX Hosting.

With a whopping 4.9 stars out of 934, WPX Hosting offers $24.99/month for 5 sites, 10GB storage & 100GB bandwidth, no cap on visitors (as many as my bandwidth can take).

I switched to WPX Hosting over 2 years ago after a bad experience with my last host (Liquid Web) and they have been excellent!

The customer service is phenomenal. You just log on, hit live chat, and get your questions answered in seconds (I mean that; it’s like they’re there just waiting for you to have a question).

Read my full review of WPX Hosting here.

My site is definitely much faster, and I also added the Nitropack plugin, which helps to significantly speed up your site.

With the hosting and the plugin, here’s my latest speed score;

It no longer takes 7 seconds or even 3.5 seconds to load my site. According to Pingdom it only takes 894ms to load my site!

When looking at your site speed, google pagespeed and Pingdom only allow you to test one web page at a time. I found a nifty little tool called experte.com/pagespeed which measures the speed of all of the pages on your site, simply by entering your domain name. Well worth checking out!

In summary, my recommendation is to do your own due diligence and decide which hosting looks good to you, but as I said above, from a price only perspective Bluehost is a great starter plan, easy to setup and recommended by WordPress themselves and when the time is right it will be an easy upgrade to their managed WordPress plan.

WPX Hosting is an excellent option if you want the speediest hosting, fab customer service, an affordable monthly price, and all the bells and whistles – CDN, email services, backups, etc.

4. Your First Blog Posts

So now comes the exciting part. Publishing your first travel blog posts.

The chances are you already have some topics in mind and are keen to get published as soon as possible; however, before you get carried away with content you’re sure your audience will love, it’s a good idea to take a breath and do some planning here.

Although the travel niche is still wide open for new travel bloggers to make a lot of money, it’s not as simple as starting a travel blog and slapping a few posts up and waiting for the cash to come rolling in.

The critical point here is to add value. If possible massive value – although don’t put too much pressure on yourself so you don’t act. Get it done then get it right!

To compete in the travel niche you’re going to have to stand out, and to do that you need to be meeting your customer’s needs more so than others in the space.

The way to do this is to get inside the head of your potential customer.

So firstly;

1. Identify your audience

You will never be all things to all people and that’s the fastest route to failure. Who is your ideal target market?

Don’t just think about the demographic either, ie, age, gender, location, etc, try to think about what their hopes and dreams are and what keeps them up at night. How can your content solve their challenges?

Is your ideal consumer a backpacker, looking for tips on backpacking around the world, are they a solo female traveler who will likely be looking for safety tips and best countries to visit. Perhaps they’re a family looking for adventures with kids.

By truly understanding your ideal audience, you’ll find it so much easier to create content and speak to them in their language, tone of voice, etc. This makes it easier for you to resonate with them and for them to resonate with you!

Here’s my ideal customer avatar worksheet to help you with this process;

2. Make a List of Questions Your Audience Likely Has

I love the story about Marcus Sheridan from ‘The Sales Lion.’ Years ago he ran a pool installation company. When the 2008 recession hit, no-one was rushing out to buy a new pool and sales plummeted. Rather than panicking and bottoming out as so many similar companies did, Marcus made a huge list of all the questions his potential customers might have.

He then set about writing blog posts answering each and every question. As a result, his website hit the No 1 spot for anyone searching any questions surrounding pool installations and his company thrived in the darkest of times.

That is the power of a well planned and well-executed blog for any and all business models!

Your blog isn’t about you. Even if you want to become an influencer and will most certainly tell some personal stories, your content still isn’t about you.

It’s about the people you want to sell to, to serve, to influence, to coach, to write books for, to create courses for, etc.

So what do they need to know? How can you help them? How can your information solve their problem or meet their needs in some way?

Start, like Marcus did, by listing out every question your audience might have.

Head to quora.com, answerthepublic.com, google forums, Facebook groups, reddit, blog comments. There are hundreds of ways to discover the kinds of questions your potential customers are asking.

Listen on to my podcast episode – Top 10 Ways to Find Awesome Content Ideas for a huge list of ways to research your target market and find out what information they’re looking for.

Once you have a list of questions, you’ll want to dig into which ones are likely to rank on Google to refine your list and prioritize your content creation.

3. Make a List of Keywords You Want to Rank For

Keyword research is a complex topic.

In fact, SEO is a behemoth of a topic and so in this section, I’m going to try to keep it super simple and just run through the basics with you (mainly because that’s about all I know!).

Step 1 – Go through all your questions and make a list of your ideal seed keywords.

Using travel backpacking as an example, some key phrases might be;

• How to pack a backpack?
• Essential gear for backpacking
• What are the best countries for backpacking?
• Backpacking tips for beginners
• What’s the difference between backpacking and hiking?
• How to backpack across the world?
• Top backpacking destinations
• Backpacking mistakes to avoid

Step 2 – Use a Keyword Tool

I use ahrefs.com for all my SEO ‘stuff’, including keywords research however, they’re not the cheapest kids on the block.

Google keyword planner is a free tool and can help you create more keyword ideas, SEMrush is another option much like ahrefs, and probably the most cost effective for beginner blogs is Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest.

Whichever tool you use, the goal is try to find keywords that have a decent amount of searches and not too much competition.

Here are the results I got when I searched for ‘backpacking breakfast’

Take note of the volume & keyword difficulty.

As you can see the volume is decent at 700, SEO difficulty is 14, meaning if you create great content you stand a good chance of ranking in time.

Let’s break that down;

Volume. The higher the better. When trying to attract organic traffic, the more people searching for a term that you’re going to write about the better. However, high volume keywords are likely to have far more competition and be harder to rank for (not always the case, but usually).

Therefore these days I’m happy to publish posts with a volume level of 100+.

Keyword difficulty or KD. This is the ahrefs algorithm determining how hard it would be to rank for that term. It scores from 0 – 100. The lower the score the easier it is to rank. It’s measured by looking at the ‘authority’ (shown as domain score) of competing sites ranking for the same term and their relevance to the search query.

An authority of a site is generally measured by the amount of backlinks point to it from other higher authority sites.

For instance, in this example of ‘backpacking breakfast’ the KD is 14, meaning sites competing for the top 10 spots likely have lower domain authority.

You’ll understand this more as you publish posts and analyse results for now, your goal would be to publish posts with low KD scores, preferably 15 or under to start with.

I said this was a bit complex. If it makes you feel any better, it just took me about an hour to write the last few paragraphs in a way I felt made sense. If you’re still a little unclear, don’t worry, SEO is an unclear game.

We just have to do the best we can with the tools we have. So your best bet is not to think too deeply about it and when starting out, use the volume and KD scores as guides.

If the volume is decent (over 100) and the KD is low (under 15), add it to your spreadsheet.

If the volume is high and the KD is high, maybe add it to a ‘later on when I have a higher domain authority myself list’ or create a couple of posts anyway if you feel they’re important for your audience (like this post you’re reading.)

4. Create Headlines for 3 – 5 Starter Posts

To start your money making travel blog, I recommend writing and publishing 3 – 5 ‘pillar’ posts to kick start your content schedule.

Pillar posts are generally meatier than standard blog posts and in fact, I would describe them as your ‘showcase’ posts. These posts are going to tell any visitors, what you do, why you do it, and specifically how you are of value.

One or two of these posts should be ‘cornerstone posts’; a term that comes from the Yoast plugin, which I highly recommend installing if you’re serious about getting your posts ranked.

Cornerstone content in Yoast’s own words;

Cornerstone content is the core of your website. It consists of the best, most important articles on your site; the pages or posts you want to rank highest in the search engines. Cornerstone articles are usually relatively long, informative articles, combining insights from different blog posts, and covering everything that’s important about a certain topic.

My cornerstone posts include;

How to Start a Life Changing Online Lifestyle Business

How We Built a 7 Figure Amazon Business in 12 Months

101 Travel Tips to Save You Time & Money

Take note, you don’t have to have all your cornerstone posts published and ready to go when you launch. You may decide only to write one or two cornerstone posts to start and add more as you see fit.

Here’s how you could structure your starter posts;

1. One super cornerstone, humdinger power post – high volume, high KD (hard to rank now but as your domain authority grows you stand a chance)
2. Two cornerstone posts – medium volume, medium to low KD (challenging but doable to rank with some work)
3. One normal but super valuable post – medium volume, low KD (long-tail keyword, fairly easy to rank)
4. One ‘brand story’ post. No keyword research, not looking to rank, but tells a visitor what you are, what you do, and why!

This is just a suggested structure. You can of course launch with whatever suits you and your niche, but the goal is to create 3 – 5 solid posts you feel good about promoting to help get your site off the ground!

Just a quick note on why you would bother with a post you may never rank for. If you feel a post is relevant to your audience and you should have it on your site no matter how difficult the keyphrase is, then write it. Your audience is your most important focus and you’re writing for them before Google.

Remember you can always share your post on social media, send it out by email, link to it from forum answers, etc. There is a multitude of ways to drive traffic to your site and we’ll be covering some of those shortly.

5. Create Insanely Valuable Content

As I write this post my domain authority according to moz.com is at 35. I have no right to be ranking on page one for some of my search terms amongst websites with rankings of 75 and up.

But I am.

The only explanation is that I write insanely valuable content. I pour my heart and soul into my blog posts and try to give the benefit of my experiences and lessons learned along the way.

I give fair reviews and comparisons putting my readers above sales or commissions and am not afraid to admit I don’t have all the answers and link through to people who know more than me about specific subjects.

You (yes you, the one reading this) are the most important person to me when I write this post.

As a result, some of my posts are over 20,000 words long. With a post as long as that you’re bound to include not only your main search term but lots of related terms, synonyms, semantic content, etc.

I’m certain that’s why I’m ranking in some places, that by the rules of SEO, I shouldn’t be ranking.

I’m not suggesting you run out and start writing 20,000-word posts, but I do urge you to write content for your audience first.

• What’s their main pain point?
• What do they need an answer to?
• How can you solve their problem or meet their needs?
• How can you help them in the easiest and most convenient way possible?

Write first for your audience and then ‘googlify’ your work.

1. Ensure your main keyphrase is in the headline.
2. Add your keyphrase to your first 100 words.
3. Include your keywords or keyphrases relevantly throughout the article.
4. Add in any related terms or synonyms.
5. Add alt tags to all your images, including your keywords where it makes sense.
6. Add a meta description.
7. Add images, videos, podcasts, or any other content that compliments your main article.
8. Check your work in Grammarly

If you install Yoast, it will highlight anything you need to do to ensure your post meets SEO standards for your chosen keyword/phrase.

When ready, hit publish and congratulations you’re in the game!

6. Create a Content Schedule

Don’t get caught up here and spend months planning the ‘most awesome content calendar’ in the world which actually never sees the light of day.

First things first, start creating based on the needs of your audience (as determined by your keyword research).

As the awesome Amy Porterfield so articulately says;

Then decide on a consistent schedule you know you can stick to.

To make money travel blogging you’ll need to be posting quality content consistently, so choose a schedule you know works for you.

Can you post once a week, twice a week, once a month? What’s a schedule that you can realistically stick to?

Once you’ve decided, stick to it!

You are responsible for your own actions as an entrepreneur. You don’t have a boss or a supervisor telling you what to do and when to do it. The deadlines you set are self-imposed.

It’s down to you to stick to them or not.

All I can tell you is that sticking to them most likely leads to success. Not sticking to them….well, you know.

Now the hard work really starts! 😁

5. Promote Your Travel Blog

This is where things start to get REALLY exciting!

You’ve spent a lot of time and effort in deciding how your travel blog will look and the kind of content you will write about.

Now, it’s time to showcase it to the world!

If you want to make serious money from your new lifestyle site you’re going to need plenty of readers.

We’ve already mentioned a few promotional strategies throughout this guide, like SEO and social media, but what do they all mean? Which ones are best? Which ones are most suited to help your site grow?

There really is no exact answer here, you’re welcome to try one or as many as you like!

Let’s take a look at each of my favorite strategies in turn, it should help you decide …

1. SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and is the overarching name given to anything you do to help your website rank higher in the search results.

Say you want to get lots of traffic through Google (or other search engines like Bing) for your guide on “The 10 Best Backpacking Destinations in the World”.

What you actually want is for your guide to be the number one link when people search for “Best Backpacking Destinations”.

This is because the first link usually gets upwards of 30% of all clicks.

The second link may get roughly 10-15% of clicks; the 3rd getting perhaps 5% of clicks and the next few links getting maybe 1-2%.

Simply put, the lion’s share of traffic goes to those websites that can get their guides ranking right at the top!

So, how do you improve your website’s SEO performance?

Unfortunately, there are too many strategies to cover in this post, however, here are my Top 5 SEO tips;

Tip #1 – Build backlinks

A backlink is a link back to your site from another website.

Through this post, I’ve linked to various resources. Each time I create a link, they’re gaining a backlink from my site to theirs.

They are SUPER important for SEO, and many swear by them as the absolute number one way to boost search engine rankings over time.

Why is that? Because a link from another site gives your site authority. I wouldn’t link out to a resource I didn’t recommend, so by linking out I’m saying ‘I trust and value that site’ and vice versa if someone links back to me.

Search engines rank your content by regularly crawling your entire website looking at all of the “signals” they can find. These signals include things like how long your posts are, which keywords you are using, and how many other websites link back to yours.

For example;

Say there are two completely different travel blogs, each with a post on “The 10 Best Backpacking Destinations”. Each post is just as useful to a reader, but one of them has 20 other websites all linking to that exact post, whereas the second post doesn’t have any backlinks.

Which one do you think Google will choose to rank most highly?

It’s going to choose the one it believes has the most trust and authority online because other people have linked to it, thereby indicating that is the case. Therefore nine times out of ten it will rank the first one with all the backlinks before the second one.

However, you don’t want to build hundreds of backlinks from low-quality websites filled with spammy content. Google has become far too clever for that!

Instead, focus on building backlinks from quality sites within your niche that are trusted and are, ideally, bigger or more established than yours.

How do you build backlinks to your blog?

My favorite technique is guest posting.

This is when you write a brand new article (not published on your own website) and allow a different blog to publish it on theirs. In return, the website you have guest posted for will include a link or two back to your blog.

What’s great about guest posting is that, not only do you get a backlink that can boost your site’s SEO performance, you can also get lots of visitors clicking through these links and checking out your site that way!

The best way to find guest post opportunities is to make a long list of all the other travel blogs that are similar to yours and within your niche.

Then, scroll through their site, find the contact page, and drop them an email.

Be sure to tailor each email to that site, rather than just sending a blanket email. Here’s an example outreach email you may send for a guest post …

Hi [Name of site owner]

I just wanted to quickly introduce myself, I’m [Your Name] the founder behind [your url].

I’ve followed your blog for a while now and recently stumbled upon your guide on [topic of recent post].

I particularly enjoyed how you [reference something unique they wrote in their post].

I was wondering if you would be interested in featuring one of my posts on your site?

I recently put together a really awesome (in my opinion at least!) post on [guest post idea].

I think it would fit in really well with your audience!

Just drop me a reply and let me know what you think.

Either way, keep up the great work with your blog!

Warm wishes

[Your Name]

It’s short, to the point, and includes a personalized touch, hopefully improving response rates. From there, it’s a simple case of responding to emails and sending across high-quality guest posts in a timely manner.

Other powerful link building techniques include:

• Broken link building – This is when you find links on someone else’s website that no longer point to an active page. You point it out via email and recommend swapping the link to a relevant post on your site instead! Here’s an in-depth example of how to do this.
• Round-up posts – These are when a website owner publishes a big guide on their site, including recommendations/opinions from a range of other website owners. They get the benefit of free content on their site, and you get the benefit of a backlink by only needing to write 100-200 words. The best way to find “collabs” as they are known, is through Facebook. Simply search for “[your niche] collabs” and join the groups that pop up.
• HARO – Help a Reporter Out is a service that brings journalists or site owners and content creators together. The website owner posts the subject matter they’re looking for content on, and we, the creators, respond which hopefully results in being featured on a post and a backlink! I’ve been using Haro for a while now and got a feature in Thrive Global from the opportunity!

You may read about link exchanges being a way to build links, however, engage in this practice under caution! Link exchanges are frowned upon by Google, although I didn’t know this and merrily swapped some links with other sites who had been kind enough to link to me until one of them contacted me to let me know it wasn’t an ideal scenario! (We don’t know what we don’t know right!)

If you do want to thank another site for linking to you, see if they’ll write a guest post for your site, or invite them to become a podcast guest, or save their link for a couple of months down the road and the link to them organically from a new blog post.

It’s best not to get involved in any shady practices when building links as long term it could hurt your chances of ranking.

Ultimately, the secret to building links is to build real human connections within your niche.

The sorts of sites that want to link to you are those that are within your niche, passionate about the same things as you! So take time to network online through different forums and Facebook groups and discover link building opportunities organically.

Tip #2 – Focus on speed!

It is extremely rare that search engines reveal the exact things they look for when deciding how to rank your site. One of the few exceptions is their policy on promoting sites that load quickly!

With so much information available online these days, people don’t want to hang around all day for pages to load. Instead, they want them now! And there is a very clear correlation between blog posts that rank high in Google and those that load extremely fast.

Here’s what you can do to help make sure your website loads lightning fast:

• Pay for good hosting – If all the pages on your site are taking 10 or 20 seconds to load, then it could well be because your hosting provider isn’t very good. As I highlighted above in the hosting section, after migrating to WPX Hosting my site now loads in 894ms!

• Install Nitropack or WP Rocket – These are game changers and add all sorts of functionality to your site to ensure it loads faster!
• Optimize images – Before uploading images to your blog posts, make sure they are resized and then optimized. For example, instead of uploading a 3.2mb image that is 2400px wide and 1000px tall; reduce the size to around 1000px wide and then put this image through an optimizing tool. This reduces the size to closer to 100-200kb.
• Remove anything unnecessary – This includes images, videos, GIFs, extra code, basically anything on each page of your site that isn’t 100% necessary to the reader.

For more quick and easy tips on how to boost your website’s speed, you can check out a free tool like PageSpeed Insights.

Or you get all these features and more as a part of a subscription to Ubersuggest.

Tip #3 – Think about mobile users

Did you know that more searches begin on mobile devices as opposed to laptops?

More than 50% of searches are now on mobile, and Google has made it clear that they favor sites that offer a great mobile experience.

Not only does this mean making sure your travel blog loads quickly, but it also means making it easy to use. Many sites were built originally for desktop only, and when you use it through your phone you find that text is too small to read and links are hard to click. You may also find that you need to scroll the page horizontally, rather than just vertically; this is a big no-no.

The great thing about building your website through WordPress is that it makes designing for mobile really easy.

Tip #4 – Write exciting meta titles and descriptions

Over time, if you follow SEO best practices, the aim is for your content to start to rise higher in the search results. When you reach the top spots you want to make sure that people are excited to click on and read your post. This is where metadata comes into play.

What is metadata?

These are the titles and descriptions that you see on search engine results pages.

Don’t worry about getting too technical here as WordPress makes it super easy to include metadata in all of your posts. You will see that whenever you go to publish a new post, it has space for you to include these, (especially if you install Yoast.)

For your meta title (this can be the same as the actual title of the blog post by the way) try to create a headline that not only includes the keyword you are targeting but which is also exciting and click-worthy!

Also, make sure it’s no more than 50-60 characters long or else Google will cut the end off.

The same goes for your meta description, which should ideally be between 150-155 characters long. Make this unique and give the reader a brief yet exciting snippet of what to expect in the post.

When writing your headlines, here are a few more of my top tips.

• Use numbers where possible – They make titles stand out much more and can greatly increase clickthrough rates.
• Make your title unique – Have a look at how other people currently ranking for your keyword are naming their guides; then make yours different in some way to help it stand out.
• Use brackets or parentheses – Again these can make titles stand out from the masses. For example: “10 Best Backpacking Destinations {+ Pro Travel Tips!}”

Tip #5 – Perform in-depth keyword research

To make money travel blogging you need to ensure you’re creating content your ideal audience are searching for.

You’ve already learned the basics of keyword research to help you find blog post ideas, but to help boost your chances of ever ranking for that keyword, it’s time to double down and keyword research your chosen keyword.

Doing this is a fundamental and powerful way to help you write better content that not only your readers will love, but also Google!

Here’s how to go about it;

Head on over to your chosen keyword tool, in this case, I will use ahrefs, and type in your chosen keyword.

The tool will then come back to you with lots of helpful information about this keyword, as well as tonnes of related keywords. These related keywords are what search engines feel is the most relevant information regarding your target keyword.

So in the case above you can see that, if someone is searching for “backpacking europe”, they are also likely to be interested in things like …

• Europe trip planner
• What is backpacking?
• How much does backpacking in europe cost?

Why is this useful?

Because it gives you an effective roadmap for how to structure your posts! You now know that your guide on ‘backpacking europe’ should mention things like ‘europe trip planner’, ‘what is backpacking’, and ‘how much does backpacking in europe cost?’

Your readers will find this super useful and spend longer reading your post (which Google loves), and Google will also think that your post is overall very relevant to the primary keyword.

Another one of the best and easiest ways to find these related keywords is through Google itself.

First of all, head to the Google search bar and type in your keyword, but don’t hit search just yet. You see all those suggestions popping up? Throw a few of them in!

Next, check out the ‘people also ask’ section.Then scroll to the bottom of the page. Do you see those two rows of related searches? Throw some of them in too! However, don’t go including dozens of these related keywords unless they actually make sense to the post.

2. Social media

Though SEO is your priority on your journey to make money travel blogging, it’s a long-term game (6-12 months+).

If you want some faster results, social media is a great place to start.

I’m sure you’re familiar with many different social platforms, and the great news is that they can all be used in a variety of ways to benefit your blog.

Here’s a look at each one in turn.

I recommend picking 1 or 2 that you think are most relevant to your niche and audience and stick to those for now rather than trying to use a dozen different platforms and never really getting anywhere on any of them!

Pinterest

I’m including Pinterest here under social media, but in many ways, it’s actually more similar to a search engine!

With other social media platforms, when you post a new status, photo, or video, it will gain the vast majority of its visibility within a short period; usually less than a day. But with Pinterest, many “Pins” as they are known, will go up to little fanfare and start to generate more and more traffic over the following weeks and months.

This is why Pinterest can be such a powerful way to grow your blog as the time and effort you commit to it in the short run can pay off for possibly years.

Here are a few top tips for using Pinterest to grow readers on your blog:

1. Create at least 3 different pins for each post – Pinterest LOVES fresh content. If you continually reshare the same Pin over the coming months they’ll get buried and start to gain very little traffic. Instead, a new Pin about the same post is seen as fine in Pinterest’s eyes as it’s new content for users to check out.
2. Use keyword-rich Pin descriptions – In the same way that keywords in your blog posts help them to rank in Google, the same principle applies to rank Pins on Pinterest.
3. Use top quality photos – Pinterest is primarily a visual platform. To help your Pins stand out from the masses, images need to be of superb quality and, most of all, original. Your own images are best here as standard stock photos are simply not up to the mark.
4. Test to see what works best – Your aim with Pinterest is to make your Pins as click-worthy as possible. To do this you can continually tweak the style of your Pins to see which ones work best and get the highest click-through rates. Tweak things like font type, font size, color schemes, and photos used. Over time you should develop a few styles that work well with your target audience.
5. Create and engage in boards – Boards are what you pin your Pins onto. But be aware that Pinterest is a SOCIAL platform meaning they want you to engage with and share other people’s content too. So create boards related to your niche and as well as sharing your own posts in them, also share others as well. This will directly grow traffic to your own site.

YouTube

Again, YouTube can be looked at as both a social media platform as well as a search engine.

In fact, it’s the second-largest search engine in the world, behind Google. Meaning that YouTube is a fantastic place to broaden visibility for the brand you are trying to create.

If you have the time and energy to commit properly to YouTube, then the results can be dramatic.

Video content perfectly compliments articles you publish on your blog, and getting traffic to videos on YouTube can be much faster than through traditional SEO.

You have the added benefit that, if your YouTube account was to become successful enough, you can monetize through the YouTube Partner program and add another revenue stream to your business.

If nothing else, it is a great place to publish videos for free, and you can then embed those videos directly into blog posts to help compliment your article for readers.

And of course, multimedia-rich blog posts tend to rank more highly in Google. So by simply embedding these videos in your posts you then have a greater chance of getting traffic through search as well!

Facebook

Of course, I have to mention Facebook! It’s how I first started my digital marketing career many moons ago and it’s the platform I know best!

In terms of promoting a new lifestyle blog, you have two different tools to use through Facebook, this includes starting a Page and starting a Group.

What’s the difference?

Well, a Page is best used as a place for you to promote new content to your audience.

With enough avid followers to your page, you can post any new blog posts from your blog and generate likes, feedback, and pageviews relatively easily.

On the flip side, a Group is more intended as a place for discussion and building a deeper sense of community around your niche.

For example, the Your Lifestyle Business, FB community.

It is a private space where followers of my blog can ask all manner of questions relating to starting and growing a lifestyle business.

To use a group for the purposes of promoting your blog, be sure to post your latest posts and lots of questions around the main subject matter.

Your group won’t necessarily generate a vast amount of blog traffic each month, but through discussion and questions, it will help you solidify relationships with your readers or subscribers and get a much better sense of what sort of content they are looking for.

Instagram & TikTok

While Instagram used to be mainly for images, more recently it’s turned it’s attention to video following in the footsteps of the wildly successful TikTok.

Both platforms lend themselves perfectly to the travel niche!

However, it’s worth pointing out that more followers and likes DOES NOT mean more traffic to your blog.

The platforms are set up to both attract and keep visitors on the platforms themselves. However, you can use them to grow your brand presence and the more consistent you are, the more people will want to find out more about you and either click your travel blog link or search for you directly on google.

3. Email Marketing

An incredibly effective and fairly fast route to make money travel blogging is by building an email list. As soon as is feasibly possible you’ll want to start building your email list of people interested in your content.

The best way to get someone’s email address is to give them something of value in exchange. This is most commonly referred to as a lead magnet.

On my home page, I offer my 21 days free email course for my readers.

To receive the email course, each reader has to fill out their email address.

Now, not only will the reader receive my ebooks, but I’ll also send out regular updates of new content as and when it’s published, invites to Facebook lives or webinars, and notifications of new offers and products.

Don’t let anyone tell you email is irrelevant these days. Sure my 16 year old is oblivious to email preferring snapchat or IG messages, but we’ve got a few more years yet before it becomes defunct if ever!

Start building your email list from Day 1 with a service like Flodesk if possible but don’t let it hold you up! Don’t sacrifice creating and publishing content for spending weeks creating the perfect list builder.

Check out my post on building your email list for a multitude of options for building your list with or without a lead magnet!

6. Set long term consistent content goals

The key to making money blogging is to be consistent over the long term. It’s no good throwing up a few blog posts and hoping for magic to occur.

The best blogs, by best I mean most profitable, can be relied upon to be churning out new posts every week if not daily or even hourly for some of the bigger blogs.

I’m not suggesting you publish hourly or even daily but as I said in the section about your content calendar it’s imperative that you set a schedule you can stick to and then stick to it.

Your audience will learn to trust new content is always coming and google will love you for it.

You don’t need every post to an epic post either. My strategy is to write 2000 – 2500 words, publish the post, and then if it hits page 2 or 3 of google I go to town on improving it and lengthening it to include more keywords and useful information to push it up to page 1.

It’s also a good idea to roughly plan out the next 6 – 12 months of traffic and income goals by researching other blogs. It’s amazing how setting some measurable numbers focuses the mind!

Research blogs in your niche using sites like similarweb.com, ahrefs.com or semrush.com to assess their traffic growth over time, and start to plot your numbers.

Setting goals and looking at the numbers each month gives you a target to go for and will undoubtedly keep you motivated to publish consistently.

Pros and Cons of Travel Blog Monetization Strategies

Pros:

1. Diverse Revenue Streams: Travel blogging offers various monetization methods, including sponsored posts, affiliate links, and selling ad space, allowing bloggers to diversify their income sources.
2. Global Accessibility: As a travel blogger, you can make money from anywhere globally, making it an ideal option for those seeking location independence and the freedom to work while exploring the world.
3. Creative Expression: Blogging provides a platform for creative expression, allowing you to share your travel experiences, insights, and tips while earning an income—a perfect blend of passion and profit.
4. Scalability: Successful travel bloggers can scale their earnings as their audience grows. More readers mean increased opportunities for sponsored posts, affiliate sales, and other monetization strategies.
5. Community Building: Through consistent blogging, you can build a loyal community of followers who share a common interest in travel, creating opportunities for engagement, feedback, and collaboration.

Cons:

1. Initial Investment: Starting a travel blog and making money requires an initial investment in hosting, domain registration, and potentially professional photography equipment, which may be a barrier for beginner bloggers.
2. Time-Intensive: Building a profitable travel blog takes time, and success is not instantaneous. It requires consistent content creation, audience engagement, and strategic monetization efforts, making it a long-term commitment.
3. Market Saturation: The travel blogging sphere is highly competitive, with many bloggers vying for attention. Standing out and gaining recognition requires unique content, a strong online presence, and effective marketing strategies.
4. Income Variability: Blog income can be unpredictable, especially for those heavily reliant on sponsored posts and affiliate sales. Fluctuations in the market, seasonality, or changes in algorithms can impact earnings.
5. Learning Curve: For beginners, there is a learning curve involved in understanding SEO, content creation, and effective monetization strategies. Success may require acquiring new skills or seeking guidance from experienced bloggers.
6. Dependence on Partnerships: Reliance on sponsored posts and partnerships may impact content authenticity. Striking a balance between monetization and maintaining genuine, valuable content is crucial.

How to Make Money Travel Blogging – Summary

I love the make money blogging business model. In fact I’m not sure there is a better lifestyle business model around today. Sure it takes some time and effort to get it off the ground, but once you’re up and running, have systems in place to publish regular content and build regular links, plus have an email funnel setup and a promotion strategy, not only is it fun and valuable, it becomes more passive over time.

I honestly wish I’d started blogging 10 years ago when I started my online adventure.

Don’t let anyone tell you blogging is dead. Blogging is simply another word for building an informational website for your brand. How to make money travel blogging is simply a phrase for generating income from your website!

Don’t delay, get started today!

Thanks for reading!

Jo 🙂

How to Make Money Travel Blogging – FAQ’s

How do beginner travel bloggers make money?

There are numerous ways for a beginner travel blogger to make money blogging. One of the best ways is to freelance for other businesses while traveling and getting your own travel blog off the ground.

Assess your skills and make a list of the kind of jobs or tasks you could do remotely for others. Then sign up to a site such as upwork.com or fiverr.com and promote your services.

What are the best blogging sites to make money?

The absolute best blogging site to make money on is WordPress. They offer a free version and a paid version. The free version works if you want to be a hobby blogger and have no desire to make money. But odds are if you’re reading this post you want your blog to be a business.

The paid version of WordPress, WordPress.org, allows you access to tons of plugins that allow you to customize your blog in plenty of ways.

Wix is another good blogging platform but has significantly fewer options for plugins and themes. They are known for their easy to use drag and drop software that makes it easier for beginners, however my preference is and always will be wordpress.

Can you actually make money from travel blogging?

Yes! In so many ways, as I’ve demonstrated above. If you’re told otherwise it will be from someone who wasn’t consistent or didn’t persevere.

How do travel bloggers get paid?

A blog is a business, and like all businesses, at some point, you will need to create a business entity. However, as I am not a qualified accountant and my readers are worldwide, I never advise on this subject. You’ll need to hire a specialist.

In the meantime however, when you’re just starting out I recommend getting yourself a paypal account, a stripe account (for credit card payments) and a Transferwise account (for paying outsources / suppliers all over the world without astronomic banking fees).

If you’re the adventurous sort you may even consider adding a bitcoin payment platform to your site!

Where do I start travel blogging?

Get published!

Use google docs, a word doc, evernote, whatever you want, but literally don’t wait to start writing or recording or creating. Just open up a doc and start right now.

We have a tendency to over complicate things, but I urge you to not spend weeks designing the perfect theme or writing the perfect about page or creating the perfect list builder.

If you’re not sure what hosting company you want to host your wordpress website on, see my WPX Hosting Review post. You can have a website setup in minutes!

Then create content and get it published. As soon as you possibly can.

Here is an interview I did with Jeff Walker of Product Launch Formula back in 2010. Listen to what he says;

How do free blogs make money?

Most blogs are free for users to enjoy. In fact, I don’t know many who charge to read their content other than news sites.

Everything we’ve talked about in this post is for you to start a free travel blog and monetize via all the ways I covered above.

Who is the highest paid blogger?

The highest-paid blogger in the world is Arianna Huffington. She launched her blog Huffpost in May 2005. With 11.3 million monthly visitors, her news aggregating blog brings in $500 million in revenue per year.

The HuffPost is a news and media site that constantly updates the readers about current events and hot topics.

This blog has gone as far as winning a Pulitzer Prize for its efforts in the media industry.

Why do most blogs fail?

Because the blogger gives up too early or doesn’t post enough content consistently enough. You have to be in it to win it!

Are travel blogs still worth it?

They sure are! They do require a ton of work to start ranking on google and bring in enough traffic to make a difference. But if your goal is to start an online lifestyle business, then blogging is definitely for you.

Is blogging better than Youtube?

That depends on your personality. If you love to write long-form content then blogging may be perfect for you.

If you are more excited to get in front of a camera and make video content, then by all means do that!

There is no one size fits all for content on the internet. There are plenty of successful bloggers and vloggers out there.

In fact, the best people do both! That way they can capture attention from the two biggest search platforms, google and youtube.

Do people read blogs anymore?

What are you doing right now?

According to Optinmonster each month, approximately 409 million people view more than 20 billion pages.

The blogging world has continuously become more saturated, but there will always be a nice lovely corner of the internet for you to engage with your niche. Also, the amount of people who read blogs has increased, along with the amount of time people spend reading blogs

What has replaced blogging?

Nothing has replaced blogging. Many things like vlogging, social media, texting, and zoom offer different forms of communication. But communication in long written form will never go away, although it will continuously evolve and change to meet the demand of the consumers.

Plenty of social media channels like Twitter and Facebook are basically blog feeds full of small posts created by all of the people you wish to follow.

Can you make $1,000 a month with a blog?

Yes, it is possible to make $1,000 a month with a blog, especially through diverse monetization strategies such as affiliate links, sponsored posts, and selling ad space. However, success depends on factors like niche, audience engagement, and the effectiveness of your blog monetization strategy.

Can you realistically make money blogging?

Absolutely. Many bloggers, including those in the realm of travel blogging, have successfully turned their passion into a profitable venture. Realistic expectations, consistent effort, and strategic use of monetization methods like affiliate links, sponsored posts, and selling ad space contribute to blogging success.

How much do bloggers get paid for 1,000 views?

The payment for 1,000 views can vary based on multiple factors, such as the blog’s niche, audience demographics, and the effectiveness of monetization strategies. Successful bloggers who effectively utilize sponsored posts and other revenue streams may earn varying amounts for 1,000 views, with some earning higher rates based on their blog income and profit margins.