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I started my travel blog in 2015 during my first year of university as a way to reminisce about all the travelling I’d done during my gap year. I’d always had a love for writing, so that part came naturally, but I self-taught myself everything else from SEO, web design, social media marketing, and newsletter funnels.

Now, after a lot of hard work and countless miles travelled, I’ve now been able to turn my blog into a successful business.

Whether you’re pursuing travel blogging as a hobby or a business, this article outlines some key strategies that will help you establish a strong foundation to build a successful online blog.

Disclaimer: If you’re wanting to get into travel blogging for a fat paycheque or free travel, I’m going to stop you right now. While travel blogging does have incredible perks, they don’t come easy. I was blogging for well over a year before I saw a cent of income from my website. Travel blogging is not all press trips and first-class upgrades; it takes a lot of work to start generating income from your website and even more to get large companies to pay you to travel the world. These perks are incredible and they do exist, but please do not start a travel blog under the assumption you’ll soon be going on sponsored trips around the globe. You’ll need to put in the work first – maybe years of it – before you reap the rewards of travel blogging.

Here’s my ultimate guide to starting a travel blog!

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Before we get into the steps to starting your blog, I want to quickly outline the differences between hosting your blog on a free platform (like Wix or Blogspot) or paying to self host your site on a paid platform (like Bluehost).

I always advocate for paying to host your site, regardless of if you want to start a hobby blog or start a business. Generally speaking, paying to host your website has a lot of benefits, including a custom domain that gives a more professional experience, more creative freedom, the ability to monetize your website with ads, and most importantly gives you full ownership of the site.

Hopefully, this quick comparison has helped weed out whether or not you want to put in the time and effort to make this a professional, monetized site, or if you prefer to just write for fun for your friends and family. (Which is totally okay too! And probably a lot less stressful!)

For those of you who have decided that you want to self-host your website and want more information on how to get started on this journey, keep on reading! Below I’ve laid out detailed step by step instructions to hopefully answer all of your blogging questions.

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1. Decide what you want to blog about and find your niche

Unfortunately, the travel blogging industry and the blogging industry in general is incredibly oversaturated. Just being a “travel blog” isn’t enough of a niche. You’re really going to need to think about what sets you apart from other travel blogs. What can you offer that nobody else can?

For example, Seaside with Emily is a travel blog that focuses on food and drink travel, with a specific focus on coastal destinations. My niche could be considered seafood travel.

Think about what will set your website apart. Can you write about travelling on a budget, luxury travel, couple travel, or traveling with children? Most people who are just starting out are scared to narrow down their niche because they’re worried about having too small of a target audience, but that’s exactly what you want. If you have a small target audience, the chances are you’re the only one blogging about that topic, so that entire small audience will be looking at your blog!

As your website begins to grow you can expand to more broad topics, but don’t start broad with the intent to narrow it down later. Start with a specific niche and once you expand, the following that you’ve gained will want to stick around as you write about more topics because they’ve fallen in love with you and your content.

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2. Choose a blog name

This is a step to spend some time on. You’re going to want to think about a name that can grow with you and that you won’t get sick of after a while. (I learned the hard way to think carefully about how your blog name reflects your content to your audience when after five years, I rebranded from “Airplanes & Avocados” to “Seaside with Emily”.

Take your time deciding what to name your website. It should be a name that you keep forever, so you’re going to want to pick something timeless that you’ll love today and ten years from now. It might take you a while to settle on the perfect name, so be patient and resist the urge to choose the first thing that comes to mind.

After you’ve narrowed it down, trust your gut and choose one.

Here are some helpful tips for coming up with the perfect blog name:

• Try to make it short and sweet, or at least easy to remember
• Be unique (avoid calling your blog “Adventurous Sally”, this is a widely popular name in the travel blogging community and your blog will easily get lost in the mix)
• Avoid using numbers and symbols
• Make sure your domain name isn’t already taken (also be sure to Google your proposed name beforehand, the last thing you want is your new travel blog sharing a name with a raunchy website)
• Make sure the name is also available on social media, it’s best to keep your blog name the same across all channels for synergy in your branding

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3. Purchase your domain and web hosting

Once you’ve settled on the perfect name for your website, it’s time to purchase your domain. There are a variety of different websites that offer domain purchasing, but I personally purchase mine through Bluehost, which is the same company that I use to host my website.

A super quick breakdown of those two terms:

• A domain is the URL of your website. For example, my domain is seasidewithemily.com. To claim your website, you’ll need to pay an annual fee for your domain.
• When it comes to web hosting, we are talking about renting space on the internet where your website will live.

You need both of these things to run your website. Luckily, you can usually purchase both of these things together, which is exactly what I did when I set up my blog.

I use Bluehost for web hosting as do many other bloggers. Their customer service is always timely and incredibly helpful, their plans are affordable, and I’ve never had issues with my site crashing or running slowly. Bluehost is also very beginner-friendly; their interface is very simple and they have a ton of resources available to help you get started.

They also give you a free domain name registration when you sign up for hosting, so it’s a win-win!

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EXCLUSIVE OFFER: When you sign up for Bluehost through my blog, you’ll pay just $2.95/month rather than $7.99!

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4. Install a theme and customize your site

After you’ve finished the sign up process, Bluehost automatically downloads WordPress for you. WordPress is the platform that you’ll use to build your website.

This is where the fun begins and you have the opportunity to play around with the look of your website and customize it any way you’d like.

The first thing you’ll want to do is install a theme, which is essentially the template of your website design. This is a step that requires patience as you get over the WordPress learning curve. You’ll also want to make sure you really love the design, you don’t want to be changing the layout of your website every week because it will be very confusing for your readers, so make sure you’re in love with the theme that you choose.

You can choose to go with a free theme or a paid theme. When you’re just starting out you may want to begin with a free theme, or you might want to make the commitment and jump right into a paid theme. A paid theme is definitely a worthwhile investment if you’re looking to continue blogging because it will set your website apart from the others and paid themes usually have way more customization options.

WordPress offers both its own free and paid themes, however, you can also go elsewhere to find a paid theme:

• Creative Market
• Elegant Themes
• Restored 316 Designs

Once you’ve purchased a theme, to install it on your website you’ll want to go to your WordPress dashboard -> Appearance -> Themes -> Upload -> Install -> Activate.

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BONUS: Install Plugins

WordPress plugins are absolutely necessary to ensure the optimal functioning of your website. Think of them as apps that will spice up the site and make the user experience that much better. Below are a few WordPress plugins that I recommend. You can easily install any of these by going to your Dashboard -> Plugins -> Add New.

• Askimet – protects your site from comment spam
• Jetpack – takes care of site security, website performance, traffic growth, image optimization, website appearance, and more
• Yoast SEO – helps optimize your content for search engines
• Google Analytics – tracks your website stats and performance
  (You can read more about how to use Google Analytics HERE.)

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5. Start creating amazing content

Now you’re really ready to start putting this website together!

Start first with a few key pages to lay the groundwork of your website. Some important ones that I would include are:

• About me – a place where you can introduce yourself to new readers and let people know what to expect from your website
• Contact – you can leave your email, social media handles, or install a contact form so readers know how they can reach you
• Others depending on your content – as you grow and you begin to settle into your niche you may want to add more pages like “Destinations”, “FAQ”, “Work With Me”, etc.

It’s also important to make sure that your social media handles are clearly visible on your page. You want first-time readers to quickly be able to see an area they can click to find your social media pages. Usually, most themes have a social media customization option with them, where you can display your social icons right at the top of the page. (You can customize these form your WordPress dashboard by going to Appearance -> Theme Options).

In order to create really great content, you’re going to have to plan ahead. I have never written an amazing blog post the night before it’s published. I usually plan out my editorial calendar month by month and start writing posts anywhere from 2 days to 2 months in advance, depending on how much research they require, photoshoots, interviews, etc.

I recommend using something like Google Calendar or Trello to help you plan out your content so you have a clear visual of when your posts will be going up.

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Check out this post for more of the tools that I use to help my run my blog: 9 Blogging Tools that Every Blogger Needs

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Two important things to remember about blogging: your content should always be engaging and original and you should be uploading regularly. It’s okay to search other blogs for inspiration, but don’t copy someone else’s ideas outright. People will catch on and will not appreciate your dishonesty. Come up with your own unique ideas and put an original spin on posts that may have already been written a.

It’s also always a good idea to get someone else to proofread your posts before you publish them. Get your family and friends to give you their opinions on some of your writing and check for spelling and grammar errors – it never hurts to have a second set of eyes on your work!

I’ve started used Grammarly to help spell-check and grammar-check my work. I highly recommend it!

As you begin to plan your first few weeks of content you’re also going to need to think about the timing and frequency of your posts; How often do you want to post? How often can you realistically commit to uploading? Some bloggers are able to post every single day (I have no idea how they do it), and others post once or twice a week. Personally, I like to aim to post 2 posts a week and that’s what works for me. Think about your current commitments and how much time you have to dedicate to blogging and work around that. It may take some trial and error and fine-tuning, but that’s alright! And remember that quality is always better than quantity; don’t just put crappy posts up for the sake of putting up something new, people will appreciate good content more than frequent content.

To get you started, some of your first posts could be introduction posts about yourself, your new blog, and what your goals are for your website.

6. Keep writing and be patient

Remember that blogging success doesn’t come overnight.

I warned you at the very beginning that blogging wasn’t easy and for a very long time after starting out you may be writing to an audience of only yourself and your mom. The only way to really succeed in blogging is to push through this phase and keep writing great content.

The more you write and the more you get comfortable with blogging, the better your content will be and you’ll begin to establish your own distinct voice and settle in nicely to your niche. It was only after about a year and a bit of blogging that I found like I had really found my voice in the blogging world and established myself as a professional and expert in my field.

Great things take time and blogging is no exception.

I promise that if you stay committed and dedicated to your blog, and produce high-quality content that you’re passionate and excited about, you will find success in blogging.

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