How To Create An Online Travel Blog

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Smitten by wanderlust? Want to see the world? Why not start a travel blog to share your experiences with others?

Beyond it just plain being fun to write about your adventures, creating a travel blog might even be able to help you make enough money to fund even more fun adventures.

In this post, we'll give you a step-by-step tutorial for everything you need to do to start a travel blog.

The 5 things you'll need to create an awesome travel blog

Beyond your awesome writing and pictures, these are the 5 things you'll need to build your travel blog.

Web hosting – this is the engine that will power your travel blog and make it available to visitors around the world.
Domain name – your blog's permanent address. For example, ours is themeisle.com.
The free WordPress software – we highly recommend you useself-hosted WordPress, located at wordpress.org. This is different than WordPress.com.
A WordPress theme – once you install WordPress, your theme controls how your travel blog looks.
WordPress plugins – plugins help you add functionality to your site without requiring any technical knowledge. You'll use them to add maps of where you've traveled, travel galleries, and more.

Once we show you how to get those basics set up, we'll also share some tips for how you can create content, promote it, and maybe even make money from your blog.

How to start a travel blog: step-by-step

how to start a travel blog

Here's your step-by-step guide to start a travel blog:

Step 1: Pick a niche

There's a wide choice of travel blog niches to pick from – specific country or area, backpacking, targeted audiences, luxury travel, traveling with kids or pets, and more. Your chances of building a high traffic blog improve if you keep your focus on a few specific areas.

Go with the one you're most passionate about because you're in this for the long haul!

Step 2: Select a domain name

Your domain name should be simple and easy to remember.

Using a brand name in the domain may not be an option for you when you're just starting off. So, you should do the next best thing, select a name that you can build into a brand. Something that's short, easy to recall, and maybe a bit quirky. Keyword-based names are good too, though you'll find that most are already taken up.

You could even use your own name if you're going to maintain a highly personal style throughout your blog. Or, you can use part of your name in a brand – e.g. nomadicmatt.com.

We have some general tips on how to choose a domain name. And if you're really stuck, you can try using a blog name generator to come up with some ideas.

Step 3: Purchase WordPress hosting and install WordPress

Your hosting is important because it ensures your site loads quickly and is always available to your visitors. There are a ton of quality WordPress hosting services, but a good starting point is SiteGround.

In addition to always scoring well in our annual WordPress hosting survey, SiteGround:

Is affordable
Gives you a setup wizard that installs WordPress for you
Makes it easy purchase your domain name
Has awesome support if you ever need help

You can choose the cheapestStartUp plan to get started. Then, you just need to follow the simple signup process.

Once you sign up, SiteGround will configure your domain name and install WordPress for you…which means you officially have a working travel blog!

Step 4: Choose a travel blog theme

Your blog'stheme determines how it looks. Luckily, you'll find a number of free and premium themes, many designed specifically for travel blogs.

When you pick an existing travel blog theme, you'll instantly get set up with a great-looking travel blog. To help you find such a theme, you can check out lists of the:

Best free travel themes
Best premium travel themes

Beyond those lists, here are three specific options to get you started:

Travel Blog
The Trip
Soledad

Soledad WordPress theme

For example, the Soledad theme has:

A travel template
32 pre-made featured slider styles
Stylish image galleries with lightbox
Pinterest and Twitter slider widget

All these built-in features make it super simple to start a travel blog.

To install your chosen theme, visit your WordPress dashboard and click Appearance → Themes → Add New .

Step 5: Install helpful plugins for travel blogs

WordPress plugins help you add new functionality to your travel blogwithout requiring any technical knowledge on your part. They're one of the things that makes WordPress so awesome. And pretty much every WordPress site makes good use of plugins.

There are some must-have plugins forallsites, including travel blogs:

SEO plugins
Caching plugins
Social share button plugins
Security plugins
Contact form plugins
Gutenberg block plugins

Beyond those must-haves, you'll also want some specific travel plugins. While this can vary depending on your focus area, here are some good ideas:

A good photo gallery plugin such as NextGEN Gallery to share your travel pictures in a gallery
Plugins to help integrate with Instagram and Facebook
Slider plugins such as Nivo Slider to display amazing full-width photos
A lightbox plugin such as Simple Lightbox to allow readers to view your photos in a customizable lightbox
A map plugin to plot places and routes is a must-have when you want to start a travel blog. It helps to keep your readers stay engaged with you as you move from one place to another. Intergeo Maps plugin is available for free (and as a premium plugin). Interactive World Maps plugin is another fine option
Plugins like TravelPayouts help you add a travel booking capability to your blog. It helps your visitors find deals on flights and hotels to different locations while you earn a commission

interactive travel maps

Learn how to install WordPress plugins.

Step 6: Create and add content

Once you've set up your travel blog's foundation, you're ready to start adding content. To write blog posts in WordPress, go toPosts –> Add New in your WordPress dashboard.

From there, you can use theAdd Media button to insert images and the text editor to write and format your content:

how to write a travel blog post

Step 7: Build your blog's audience

There are a few channels you can use to grow your blog's traffic.

With millions of active users, social media can help your content reach the right audience. Adding Social media share buttons makes it easy for readers to share your content. Instagram and Pinterest are suitable platforms to promote your blog, and should form part of your social media strategy.

Beyond that, you should also learn about SEO and topics like keyword research.

Building an email list is another great way to grow a long-term audience.

Step 8: How to make money from your travel blog

Once your starts to get some traffic, here are some ways that you can make money from your blog:

Affiliate marketing: You can have affiliates for almost everything – accommodation, insurance, travel gear, web hosting. Every time someone clicks on a link resulting in the purchase of an affiliate's product, you earn a (small) commission.
Google Adsense: Google generates ads relevant to travel on your blog. When visitors click on the offered ads, you earn revenue
Premium content: You can sell digital guides for the places that you've visited to save other travelers time.
Add a donation button: Obviously, this can work only when you've built up a dedicated readership
Offer personalized advice: Offer travel related advice for payment of a fee, or offer personalized or guided tours of specific places, or curate travel plans
Sponsored posts: Travel related businesses may pay you to write about them on your blog. Just make sure to be transparent.
Sponsored trips: Tourism boards, private companies or brands can ask you to visit their places and write about it.
Workshops: Accept offers to conduct travel-related workshops

Wrapping up

That wraps up our guide. If you made it this far, congratulations on creating your own travel blog!

Have any other questions about how to start a travel blog? Leave a comment and we'll try to help out.

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