How do I become a successful travel blogger?

Are you good at writing, do you travel a lot and do you want to share your stories with the world? Then becoming a travel blogger might be something for you. From blog platforms to Photoshop, from SEO to networking; with these tips, you can get started right away!

#1 Is this really your passion?

It takes a long time to acquire celebrity as a full-time travel blogger. So, in the beginning, you earn very little. It is therefore very important that you do something that you enjoy doing. Write about something that interests you. Otherwise, it will all be one big rut for you and your readers will feel this too. Those who do not write something with passion cannot win over their audience.

If you don't like travelling, writing, photography, being your own boss and above all working very hard for little recognition, stop here: being a travel blogger is not for you! Being a travel blogger does not automatically mean you can travel for free. In the beginning, it is difficult to breakthrough.

Do you still want to become a travel blogger? See tip 2!

#2 Find your niche or expertise

From city trips to road trips, from adventure travel to beach holidays, from luxury travel to travelling on a budget, you name it! When your blogs revolve around one focal point, your travel blog becomes the go-to for many readers because you come across as THE expert in that niche!

Today there are many successful travel bloggers, so it is best to focus on just one topic. What are you the expert at? What is your niche? Find this out and focus on it. This attracts more readers to one general travel blog. It also gives you the opportunity to delve into one subject and in a while, you will be a real expert.

#3 You are your own fire!

Once you've found your niche, stick to it! Be yourself through all your online channels and marketing. Stick to one image and keep the same style everywhere. Your social media, blog content, logo, blog name, website design... should reflect your mission and vision. You are like a 'fire', just like BudgetAir is a fire. Successful personal branding ensures recognition; readers look for you if they want to know something about your niche and you have a consistent stream of readers!

Also write from your perspective, because you are the unique aspect of your blog. You are the reason people keep coming back to your blog. Also, don't be fake and act like your life is perfect, show the real you! People are more attracted to your reading material that way.

#4 Make up a catchy blog name

This is not always on the tip of your tongue! And you should certainly not make a hasty decision about this. Your blog name is how people are going to remember you. So choose something that suits your chosen niche, your brand and the mission of your travel blog. Choose something unique and try to avoid years, dates or numbers!

Also, try to find something catchy that people will remember! Furthermore, you also have to take into account the number of characters, because some social media have a character limit. So choose something short or something you can shorten. Finally, it is best to find out if your blog name already exists, we have a handy tool for this.

#5 Choose a blog platform

You can either choose a free platform or a self-hosted blog. What is the latter? If you host your blog yourself, it means that you pay for a place on the internet where you publish your posts. You then own your blog and you have your own say. The alternative is to create a blog on a platform offered for free, but there you have a limited choice, little control and often the name of the platform in your website URL.

Most professional bloggers recommend a self-hosted blog. It takes longer to master everything, but you are your own boss. Furthermore, it offers more options for SEO and customisation. What is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation , freely translated search engine optimisation, and in short, all activities are intended to make a web page rank high in the search results of a search engine such as Google.

Self hosting blog platforms: Wordpress.org, Ghost, Joomla
Free platforms: Wix, Wordpress.com, Weebly, Blogger

#6 Consistent, correct and creative

Do you want to be taken seriously as a travel expert? Then you should not have any grammar errors. You should not be the spelling champion but always read your blog. Furthermore, consistent posting is a plus! Posting every day is certainly not necessary, but try weekly and always at the same time. That way, your readers automatically know when your new blog comes out!

In addition to being correct and consistent, a successful blogger is mainly known for his high-quality creative content. Don't write a blog quickly before some deadline, but give it more time, Your hard work will be rewarded because the more quality content, the more readers you will attract. In addition to creative content, you should also focus on what your audience would like to know and find useful. What frequent questions do they ask online? Investigate this and 'give the audience what they want'

#7 Double threat: blogger and photographer

Travel blogs often go hand in hand with photography; your readers want to travel with you and admire all those beautiful places through your lens. Flashy photos are not done! First, get a good camera and take a few online photography lessons. Second, learn to work with Photoshop Sometimes you take a bad picture due to the bad weather or people getting in the way, then it is quite handy that you can solve this with Photoshop. Finally, if you have forgotten to take a picture or if you are a bad photographer, there are also sites like Getty Images, Flickr or Unsplash that have nice pictures on offer.

#8 Get social on social media!

By promoting your blogs on different social media platforms, you not only get more traffic on your blog site, but it is also a way to reach different audiences. Be careful not to blindly copy all your content on all social media, but adapt to the platform and the associated audience. Don't just use social media for posting your blogs, but interact with your readers! Reply to their comments, reply to chat messages, share content from other accounts, etc.

Another tip: in addition to social media, let your readers subscribe to a newsletter. Having a mailing list of your readers is worth gold. It proves that you have won their trust and you can contact them directly with the latest news!

#9 Attract readers with SEO

You can have the best blog name, post the most creative content and take the best photos ever. This still can't be enough to attract readers! They have to find you first, SEO helps a lot here.

You already know the SEO principle: the higher your web page in the search results, the more chance of visitors. There are so many SEO techniques, but an important and easy technique is that of the 'keywords'.

Keywords or popular search terms are used everywhere: in the URL, title, subtitles, meta description, first paragraph, alt tag of your photos and at least 5 times in the rest of your blog. How do you find those keywords? Among other Google offers many free SEO tools which can help here as Google Trends, Google Search Console and Google Ads Keyword Planner, but you can also find them in travel communities on social media or "people ask/researched" and "searches related to" on Google search results.

More about SEO in the SEO bible of Moz.com

#10 Make friends with other travel bloggers

How do you get to know influencers? Often through other influencers. Everyone is friends with every one and this creates more exposure. The same with travel bloggers and the travel blogging community. Online networking is easy: join Facebook groups, post interesting content from time to time, contact other travel bloggers, do collabs with other travel bloggers, shout out to other travel bloggers, you will catch their eye! You can do offline networking by going to travel events and selling yourself. Travel conferences are very popular such as TravelCon and World Travel Market.

Networking helps for every company and therefore also for travel blogging. By making contacts within and outside the travel blog industry, you are gradually creating brand awareness. It also brings in more money, because thanks to successful networking, you are offered all kinds of things: product endorsements, guest blog features, social media influencer projects, etc. Be careful! Stay true to your brand and don't work for companies or support products you don't like.

#11 Money, money, money!

If you want to be a full-time travel blogger, you must first let money go before the money flows in. You are the CEO of your own company. In addition to CEO, as a travel blogger, you also take on the role of writer, photographer, graphic designer, marketer, accountant and much more! You also realize that you cannot continue to do this alone, especially if your blog gets bigger and bigger. Focus on what you are good at and leave the rest to experts.

Besides employing a few people, you can also invest in your lifelong learning process! Learn the latest do's and don'ts about blogging by taking some online courses, learn to take pictures with a photography course, follow online photoshop tutorials and so on!

You can also invest in advertising on Google, social media, other blogs. Think about it: how many times have you already clicked on paid advertising?

Smart investing will pay off later!

#12 Be a nice person

Finally, to gain brand awareness in the beginning and earn some money here and there, it is best to write some guest blogs for well-known brands. This is how you gradually bring readers from all those channels to your travel blog! In addition to brand awareness, this also gives you more credibility as an expert. For example, if you are allowed to write a blog for us, BudgetAir, our readers will regard you as a reliable source and successful travel blogger. Don't write a guest blog for every popular website now, stay true to your brand and yourself!

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