What can be more interesting than starting a travel blog of yours? If you are also one of those interesting people who love to travel to popular and beautiful places around the world then starting a new blog of yours can help you a lot. It can help you pay for your trips to certain destinations and you can also make some extra income while enjoying your journeys at the same time!
But what about the technical information and process that are required for starting a new travel blog? Well, if you are not much familiar with such concepts I am here for you. In this article, I have come up with a complete definitive and step by step process that will help anyone to start their own travel blog in 2021.
Before getting started make sure that you have a little budget arranged for starting the blog. Hard work and consideration are also important if you are willing to compete with others in the market. However, it will be easier to understand the whole process if you take action instead of just brainstorming right?
8 Easy Points to Start Your Travel Blog in 2021
Now you have made your mind for starting a new traveling blog, consider following the below steps to come up with a fully functional blog with a good appearance too. Don’t worry about the technical part of the process you will get used to it after publishing your first traveling blog.
The main motive of starting a new travel blog should be sharing your own experience and interests with others. So you can make some extra cash while helping others with various types of problems they face regarding traveling. So let’s get started with the first phase of building a successful travel blog!
1. Deciding A Perfect Name For Your Blog
Name is something that can be decided only once. So you should take some time to come up with an easy to remember and effective name for your new blog. Because short and sweet names tend to perform better compared to the longer ones in the competition.
Think of your favorite tourist places or any type of specialty that you personally love! and you will find the best name for your blog quickly. For example, if you are a woman who loves to travel at the age of 40 years then you may think “Forty Year Lady Traveller” would be a good choice.
But actually, it will limit your content and ideas sometimes that can cause you some problems in the future. So make sure whatever the name you have decided it should be classy and extra-ordinary to stand out from others in the market. After you are done with deciding the name it’s time to choose.COM a domain name with that keyphrase.
You can either register it individually or use the one that is provided along with the hosting service. I would recommend you to go for the combo of hosting & domain name. As you will be surprised to see that it’s much cheaper to afford when bought together. Like with Bluehost you can get it as low as $3 per month.
2. Choose The Perfect Hosting Service
The second most important thing that you need to decide is the right hosting service provider from the market. There are tons of hosting services available on the internet but not all of them provide the best service at the best price. Instead of choosing a low-quality service provider, I would recommend you choose Bluehost.
Offering the best services in the industry of hosting providers you can count on Bluehost when it comes to reliability and maximum performance at an affordable price. Don’t worry about the budget as you will only need to pay $3.95/month for running your travel blog without any interruptions, it’s worth it.
After you have signed up for the basic plan you will be able to register a free domain name for your blog. With additional features like a free SSL certificate, and advanced C-Panel for further customization of your blog along with 24/7 customer support to solve any type of queries you have regarding anything.
3. Install The Best CMS [ WordPress ]
Once you are done with choosing the best Domain name and hosting service for your new travel blog. It’s time to install a CMS ( content management system ) on your hosting. Sounds complicated right? well, it’s not that complicated if you have used Bluehost as your hosting service provider.
Because they provide a one-click WordPress installation service which is really good for beginners and other peoples who are not familiar with technical terms like this. But why choose WordPress when there are so many CMS available in the market?
Actually, you should visit their official website to find out how many people around the world use WordPress to run their blog/business successfully. Empowering millions of new bloggers for a long time, WordPress has become the way to go choice for starting any type of new blog. So I would recommend you stick to WordPress if you want your blogging journey to be less complicated.
4. Understand How WordPress Works
Obviously, you will need some time to understand how this powerful content management system works. As the name suggests it will help you in managing the content on your behalf. WordPress is a simple framework created in different programming languages so people don’t have to learn about programming if they wish to start a new blog.
First thing is to be familiar with the WordPress dashboard which can be considered as the main control panel for your blog. Here you can find various options that will allow you to perform actions such as,
- Add media files to your blog
- Manage your media files
- Edit your photos for better performance
- Add new pages according to your requirements
- Create blog posts and drafts whenever you need them
- Edit your WordPress profile as you wish
- Change the appearance of your dashboard
- Get additional help regarding any issues
- Install any type of plugins/themes you wish
You can find all of these options located in different sections of your WordPress dashboard. Getting used to WordPress won’t take much time so don’t worry about that. As you can always reach out to customer support or Google whenever you face any issue.
5. Install A Beautiful Theme
The first impression is the last impression when it comes to the appearance of any type of blog. Designing and proper arrangements of different sections on your blog play a major role in keeping your audience connected with your content.
Or you can say if your blog is not easy to navigate for the readers you may lose many important visitors who can benefit you in many ways. So why not take some time to find a fast and lightweight theme for your WordPress blog that looks better compared to the traditional ones.
There are thousands of themes available in the WordPress library that you can use for free. But if you are serious about growing your blog really fast, then I would recommend you to go for the paid themes that are affordable too. Installing a theme is pretty easy.
Just visit the themes section under appearance and upload any paid theme you have or simply choose a theme from the WordPress library and activate it after installing it.
6. Activate The Necessary Plugins
Plugins can be very handy if you want to decrease your workload. According to WordPress users, you can find a plugin for literally anything! Suppose you want to add an E-mail subscription option to your blog. Adding it with pure coding will require advanced knowledge and programming skills but with plugins, you only need to find and install it with a single click.
For faster growth and SEO optimization, there are some popular plugins that most WordPress bloggers prefer. I recommend you install the below plugins on your travel blog to make it more effective compared to others. Let’s have a look at those plugins.
- SEO by Yoast
- Social Sharing Plugins
- AMP ( accelerated mobile pages ) service for faster loading
- Akismet Anti Spam
- Contact Form 7
All of these plugins have their own importance regarding different factors. For example, if someone wants to contact you regarding any query or business inquiry then having contact form 7 installed on your blog can help you a lot. The same way other plugins like SEO Yoast AMP service are related to your site’s overall SEO that will decide how many organic visitors you will receive monthly.
In order to stand out from others, you should explore different plugins that can be related to your traveling process. So make sure to add them for better performance and improved user experience for your readers.
7. Create Your Own Logo For Brand Awareness
If you love to interact with other companies and interested people who are related to the traveling field then creating your own unique logo is something you should not avoid at any cost. Because if you want people to remember your blog along with the awesome content you provide a good logo is very important.
Logos are very useful for new visitors because even if they forget your URL address, chances are they will remember your attractive logo for sure. So where you can get a professional-looking logo for your new travel blog? Don’t worry as I have already come up with free options for new bloggers.
- Use Canva ( online logo designing and editing platform )
- Using Photoshop for creating a logo
- Choose a popular online logo creator service
By using any of these tools you can easily create a professional-looking logo for your new blog. Only use these methods if you are low on budget as you will need some time to come up with a decent design. You can also outsource this task on freelancing sites like Fiverr, Freelancer, etc.
8. Explore Different Type Of Content And Create Your Own Unique Articles
Once you are done with setting up your new blog. You can start focusing on exploring similar content related to travel that other popular blogs are providing. It will help you understand how your competitors post and what type of content strategy they personally use to bring in more visitors every month.
After analyzing other blogs and content styles you will have to come up with some new topics for blogs that people are looking for daily. You can use keyword research tools like Kwfinder or Keyword planner from google to search for low competition keywords in your niche.
Creating content around such topics will benefit your new blog as they already have low competition. If you manage to write a long and quality article around the focus keyword. Chances of ranking your content in the top positions will increase automatically.
9. Keep Publishing Useful Content And Monetize Your Blog For Persistent Income
Now you officially own a travel blog that can be used for interacting with more people like you. You will get used to creating new and unique articles after some practice but never use someone’s content on your blog. As you can get penalties from search engines like Google and Bing it will negatively affect your rankings.
After publishing a dozen quality articles you can try applying for Google Adsense. Being one of the best ways to monetize your blog the Adsense can make you a decent income if you have enough traffic on your blog.
Don’t worry if you are still growing your blog no need to hurry, take your time because eventually, you will be able to monetize it and make a persistent monthly income for sure. Even if you got rejected from the Adsense you can try these alternatives to monetize your new blog easily.
Conclusion
Starting and managing your travel blog is a difficult task when you don’t have enough experience. But with enough dedication and efforts, you can make this work and pay for your traveling expenses once your blog starts receiving a decent amount of traffic.
If you are facing any issues related to starting a new travel blog then let us know in the comments section below. if you found any useful information in the article don’t forget to share it with your friends and other travelers you know.
