create a travel blog for free

How to Start a Travel Blog

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links, including the links for HostGator and Bluehost. At no additional cost to you, I earn a commission if you make a purchase using these links. If you have any questions about the companies or my status as an affiliate, please don’t hesitate to email me.

Whether as a hobby or profession, starting a travel blog is pretty easy. You can set it up in under 30 minutes. It’s a lot easier than when I started my blog in 2008. Back then, I didn’t know the first thing about making a website. Luckily, on my adventures around the world, I met Matt and Kat, a British couple who also happened to be web designers.

When I came home and decided I wanted to start this travel blog, they agreed to help me set it up and teach me HTML. I hand-coded the website and used a funky tool called Dreamweaver to build it. It was painfully slow and I wasn’t very good at it. (And my original website was really ugly!)

Luckily, you no longer have to build websites that way!

Creating a website has gotten a lot easier and simpler thanks to WordPress, an out-of-the-box platform designed to make sites easier for those not technically savvy (like myself). It powers over 25% of the internet and is the best platform to start a blog on. It’s super flexible and can do whatever you want it to do — from a simple journal to complex blogs and e-commerce websites.

In our blogging course , we’ve had thousands of students start a website on WordPress without any technical skills. They got them up and running — and you can too!

While I’ve talked about how to succeed as a travel blog in the past, today, I want to give a quick tutorial on how to create a travel blog from scratch in seven easy steps.  

Table of Contents

Step 1: Pick your domain name

The first thing you need to do is pick a domain name (i.e., your website name). When doing so, there are no hard and fast rules. There’s no such thing as a “wrong domain name,” but there are a couple of rules I like to live by:

Make a name that can last – If you pick “JohnsAsiaAdeventure.com” and then you leave Asia, the domain name won’t make sense anymore. Make sure you pick a name that isn’t so focused that if you decide to shift gears, you can keep the same domain name.

Don’t date your blog – Don’t pick something related to your age either. “Twenty-Something Travel” becomes really irrelevant when you get older, which actually happened to a blogger I know. Pick a name that can be used no matter your age!

Avoid certain words – Avoid words like “nomad,” “vagabond,” “wanderlust,” and “adventure.” They have been done to death, and they will make you seem like you’re copying people, not being original.

Pick a name that describes what you do as much as possible – I was a nomad, so “Nomadic Matt” was the best pick for me. If you’re into luxury, put words in your domain name that convey that. You want people to see the name and go, “I get what that website is about.”

Keep it short  – Use 3-4 words maximum. You want the name that rolls off the tongue. Even Ramit Sethi from “I Will Teach You to Be Rich” abbreviates his site to “I Will Teach” or “IWT.” The shorter, the better.

Keep it simple – I’m not a fan of using jargon or slang in your domain name, as I think that makes things confusing for people who don’t know it. The last thing you want is someone saying, “What does that mean?” or being confused. If someone has to think hard about the meaning, then you’ve already lost them. So don’t try to be clever!  

Step 2: Sign up for a host

After you’ve picked out your domain name, you’ll need to register it online and buy hosting (the little computer in the sky that’s going to power your website). There are a lot of basic hosting companies out there — and most of them are pretty terrible.

However, the two biggest and best are HostGator and Bluehost . I would go with one of those two.

While they are owned by the same parent company, I lean toward HostGator , as I find its call center customer service quicker and friendlier, and HostGator is prone to fewer outages (no one wants their website to go down!). It’s also really improved its service and now offers free SSL certificates (that’s the thing that tells users your website is secure).

Here’s a walk-through of how to set up your host with HostGator (it won’t take long):

First, head over to the website’s sign-up page and get hosting for only $2.78 per month. That’s over 60% off the normal price!

Next, choose your plan (I suggest the hatchling plan):

Enter your desired domain name at the top of the page. Make sure before you sign up that the domain you want is available, so as to avoid issues with your signup process.

The system will then prompt you to take out “domain privacy protection,” which we recommend you do. (Why? This will hide your address and contact details from appearing online when someone queries your domain name, and it will keep spammers from calling you to sell their sketchy web services. It’s really annoying — and once your name and phone number are out there, they’re out there forever. Nip it in the bud by hiding them from the beginning.)

If you already have a domain name but need hosting, simply select the “I already own this domain” from the tab at the top. Then, enter your domain name and continue to the next step.

Make sure you have selected the right hosting plan from the drop-down list and then select the billing cycle you are prepared to pay. The longer you lock in for, the cheaper initial pricing will be.

We suggest starting with the “Hatchling Plan” (which gives you hosting for one single domain), but if you have plans for more than one website, then opt for the “Baby Plan” instead, to give you room to grow (since you can host unlimited domains with it).

Next, you will then select the username for your account and a security PIN. Fill out your billing information and preferred payment type (credit card or PayPal.)

You can opt-out of all of the additional services on offer by unchecking them.

Review your order details and make sure everything is correct. Then click “Checkout Now!” at the bottom of the page.

Once your order has been received, you’ll be redirected to the HostGator billing portal. You will also be sent two separate emails with the login credentials to your hosting control panel and the billing portal for your HostGator account. Be sure to save the information. Save them on your computer and/or print the emails for safekeeping.

They will look similar to the example below:

For those of you with an existing domain or a domain purchased from a third-party site like GoDaddy, take note of the nameservers listed on your hosting account email. You will need to add those to your domain where you purchased it, to link your domain and hosting together. Please refer to the support documents from where you bought your domain for exact instructions on how to update your nameservers.

That’s it! All that takes about five minutes from start to finish!

Again, you can click here to go to  HostGator  to set it up.  

Step 3: How to Install WordPress

After you’ve registered your domain name and chosen your hosting package, the next thing you’ll want to do is install WordPress. (WordPress is what will actually run the website. The host is simply the computer your site sits on.)

WordPress is an open-source, free web publishing application, content management system (CMS), and blogging tool built by a community of developers and contributors to make it easy for people to blog!

After you’ve paid for your domain, you’ll get an email telling you your login details. Log in to your hosting control panel using the link provided to you by email when you purchased your hosting from Hostgator. The link would look similar to this:

https://gatorXXXX.hostgator.com:2083

The email will be titled “Your Account Info” if you have trouble locating it in your inbox.

Once logged into your control panel, you need to scroll down the settings page to locate the “Software” section. Then click on the “QuickInstall” link. The software section will be located toward the bottom of the page.

On the page that loads, select WordPress from the top menu or the WordPress tile on the page..

Select your domain name from the drop-down. Leave the “install/path/here” field blank.

Enter the name of your blog, an admin username (make sure the admin username is hard to guess), your name, and your email address, and then agree to the terms and conditions below. Then click the “Install” button.

Once the install process has finished, you will be given the password you need to log in to your WordPress site in the notification bar at the top (dismiss the popup that appears). Take note of the password, as we will show you how to change that later on. You will also be emailed the details if you miss or forget to save the info.

Step 4: Setting up your website

After you’ve installed WordPress, go to domainname.com/wp-admin and use the username and password you created to log in. You’ll see a screen like this after you log in:

Here’s a little overview of the menu on the left side of the screen:

• Dashboard  – The dashboard is the first thing you see when you log in to WordPress, and it’s the main administrative area for your blog.
• Home  – This will take you back to the main dashboard view.
• Updates  – This area will tell you if WordPress, your plugins, or your theme need to be updated.
• Posts  – You can view all your blog posts here, as well as set up new ones and add categories and tags.
• Media  – Here’s where you can view your media library and add new media content, like photos and videos.
• Pages  – Pages are the individual landing pages on your website (like your About page, Contact page, Resources page, etc.). You can add new pages here as well as review and edit existing ones.
• Comments  – Comments on your blog posts go here. You may want to check the spam folder periodically to make sure you’re not missing real comments.
• WPForms  – WordPress’s contact-form plugin.
• Marketplace  – Here you can create an online marketplace.
• Appearance  – This section lets you entirely customize your site’s appearance.
• Plugins  – Review, install, and update your plugins here.
• Users  – If there’s more than one person accessing your blog, you can create accounts and give them certain privileges here.
• Tools  – This section has certain tools to aid you with management tasks.
• Settings  – You can adjust all your site’s settings here, including things like your blog title and the size of thumbnails being used.
• Insights  – Insights provides traffic and user stats about those visiting your website. (Google Analytics is a better choice, though.)

Plugins are a great way to add additional functionality to a WordPress-powered site. And with over 50,000 listed in the WordPress Repository and many more premium options available from developers, there are endless possibilities as to what you can do with your site. (I’ll list some examples below.)

To get started, click on “Plugins” and then “Add New” when logged into your WordPress dashboard. Here you can search for plugins that you want and install them via a one-click install that automatically installs them to your WordPress platform.

Alternatively, you have the option to upload a plugin you have purchased or downloaded from a third-party site. To do this, see the “Step 3” arrow in the picture above. All you have to do is click “upload plugin” and you’ll be asked to upload the ZIP file of the plugin that you downloaded from the third-party website.

Once you have uploaded a plugin (or searched for one, as I’ve shown in the image below) you can install it.

After clicking the “Install Now” option, the button will change to say “Activate.” This allows you to enable the plugin on your site and makes it ready to be configured and used.

If you can think of a feature you’d like to have on your site, I can almost guarantee there is a plugin for it, but here are the essential ones for your travel blog:

Akismet  – Just like getting junk mail in your mailbox, your website will get spammers looking to leave junk comments on your site. Akismet seeks to reduce the amount of this by automatically filtering it for you.

Yoast SEO – The best SEO plugin out there. This combines the ability to create meta tags and descriptions for your posts, optimize your titles, create a sitemap for search engines to read, customize how your posts appear across social media, and do a whole lot more.

Relevanssi  – While WordPress does a lot of things well, what it fails at is adding search functionality to your site. Relevanssi seeks to fix this and give your readers the most accurate results when searching on your site.

UpdraftPlus – You can never back up your site too much. The WordPress database holds every word you’ve ever written, and if your blog has started to make you a few dollars, you would be nuts not to keep regular backups. UpdraftPlus does it perfectly.

Grow by Mediavine  – A great social sharing plugin for your site. It comes with great a simple set of icons that work well on both desktop and mobile.

Cache Enabler – This plugin creates saved copies of your site, making loading your web pages much faster.

Code Canyon – This interactive map is a cool way to highlight your travels and share them with your readers.  

Step 5: Install your theme

One of the most important things a blog needs besides good content is a good design. People decide in seconds whether or not they trust your website and choose to stay. A visually unappealing website will turn off readers and reduce the number of return visits you get.

So to accomplish a good design, you will need an amazing WordPress theme (i.e., design templates and files).

Luckily, there are lots of out-of-the-box options for you where you can download a predesigned theme, upload it to your website, switch it on, change some settings, and presto! A new look for your website!

You can get:

• Free themes – Free themes are plentiful and for budding new bloggers looking to make their mark online. They seem like a great option, as they allow you to keep costs low. There are many great free themes online, but most of them are not amazing. If you plan on blogging for a long time, this might become a problem as your website grows. However, if you just need a simple design to blog for your friends and family, then go the free route. You can find some good free themes at wordpress.org .
• Premium themes – The next step up from a free theme is a premium theme. Premium themes are paid themes that offer a bit more uniqueness, flexibility, and functionality. These cost $25 USD and up, depending on the developer and features.

I suggest getting a premium theme . Yes, it’s another cost — but here is why you should do it:

• With a premium theme, you almost always get customer support from the developers. If you get in trouble, they are there for you. You don’t get that with a free theme.
• With a premium theme, there are more controls and instructions so they are easier to change. Free themes don’t have that.
• Premium themes tend to be a lot prettier.
• Premium themes are faster and more SEO friendly.

Genesis themes by StudioPress are some of the best and most popular if you’re looking to invest in a top-notch theme.

To install your theme, simply go to the left-hand column, click Appearance –> Themes –> Upload.

Whatever theme you picked will come as a .ZIP file for you to easily upload. From there, you just activate it, and it’s turned on! All themes come with a manual and help file so you can customize your design to your specific needs.

(If you want a custom logo or need to hire any designers, two sites to find freelancers are Upwork and 99designs .)  

Step 6: Create your main pages

After you’ve uploaded your theme, you’re going to want to make a few basic pages on your website in addition to the blog posts. The difference between a page and a post is that a page is a static piece of content that lives separate from the blog. A post is a blog post that gets “buried” as you write more and more. For example, this post is a blog post. When I update again, another blog post will get put on top of it, and it will be pushed down in the archives, making it harder to find.

But a page, like my About page, lives on the top of the website, right near the main URL, and does NOT get buried. It’s a lot easier to find.

To create these pages, go again to your left sidebar and click Pages —> Add New. (For blog posts, use Posts –> Add New.)

I recommend creating four basic pages to start:

About page – This where you tell people about yourself and your history, what your blog is about, and why it will help them. This is one of the most important pages on your website, so make it personable!

Contact page – People need a way to reach you! Be sure to be very clear on what emails you will and won’t respond to, so people don’t send you spam.

Privacy page  – This is a standard user agreement page informing readers what the applicable laws on your site are, that you use cookies, etc. etc. You can find out-of-the-box examples throughout the internet.

Copyright page  – This is a standard page letting people know you own this work and not to steal it. You can find out-of-the-box examples of these, too, throughout the internet.

(If you look in my footer, under the “About Us” section, you can see examples of all four of these pages!)  

Step 7: Join our blogging program! (optional)

You’ll learn everything I know about creating a successful blog from creating engaging content, going viral, networking with bloggers, getting media attention, mastering SEO, creating products, growing a newsletter, and making money.

If you’re interested,  click here to learn more and get started !  

requently Asked Questions

Starting a blog can be an intimidating process. I struggled a ton when I first started blogging and had a lot of questions — but no one to ask them to. Since I continue to get questions about blogging emailed to me every week, I thought I’d share some of the answers here (we cover all of this in the course I mentioned above too).

How much does it cost to start a blog? You can start a travel blog for just a few dollars per month. Hosting costs less than $5 USD per month, which is the only expense you absolutely need. In a perfect world, you’d also purchase a premium theme, which can cost around $100-150 USD, but that’s about all you need at the start. Everything else can wait!

Can I blog if I have a full-time job? You definitely don’t need to be a full-time traveler to be successful. I started my blog as a hobby while working as a teacher — and so did tons of other bloggers who are now successful. Starting a blog is like starting a business. It won’t make money overnight, so keeping your day job is a smart move. Lots of part-time bloggers are successful!

Do I need a laptop or fancy camera to start a blog? You definitely need a laptop and, while a camera is helpful, a big fancy camera is not 100% necessary. A simple phone camera or point-and-shoot camera will suffice. I only travel with my iPhone and that works well!

Is it too late to start a blog? Definitely not! Think of blogs like restaurants. Is it too late to start a restaurant? Of course not! Yes, there are already a TON of restaurants out there, but there’s always room for a new, awesome restaurant.

The same goes for blogging. There are TONS of blogs out there, but most of them are average. There is ALWAYS room for new, awesome content!

Can you actually make money blogging? Definitely! This is not a get-rich-quick industry though. Most bloggers don’t make any money for their first year, however, there are thousands of travel bloggers out there making everything from a few bucks per month to full-time incomes. If you put in the work, learn the right skills, and stay consistent, it’s 100% possible to make a living in this industry.

Do I need a lot of technical skills to get started? There are some minor technical skills you need, but otherwise, that’s it. I had zero technical skills when I started, which is why I wanted to include a comprehensive tech unit in my course as the tech stuff is the most tedious. But you don’t need to be a computer whiz to get started. You just need to learn the basics.

How much money can you make as a blogger? There are travel bloggers bringing in over 1 million dollars a year from their website so the sky is the limit! But, realistically, the majority of full-time bloggers make between 80,000-150,000 a year.

That’s it! You’ve set up your basic website. Sure, there are social media buttons to add, blogs to write, images to upload, and things to tweak but all that comes later. Once you do the steps above, you have the framework needed to create and share your story with the world! To recap on how to start a travel blog:

• Step 1: Pick a Name
• Step 2: Sign Up for Hosting
• Step 3: Install WordPress
• Step 4: Set Up Your Website
• Step 5: Install Your Theme
• Step 6: Create Your Main Pages
• Step 7: Join Our Blogging Course (Optional!)

By following these steps, you can start your travel blog and your stories and tips with the world! (That’s where the real fun begins!) Don’t let the tech scare you. I didn’t know anything when I started. I was totally clueless and had to teach myself how to do this. If I can do this, you can start a blog too! I believe in you! (Email me if you want more encouragement.)

Book Your Trip: Logistical Tips and Tricks

Book Your Flight Find a cheap flight by using Skyscanner . It’s my favorite search engine because it searches websites and airlines around the globe so you always know no stone is being left unturned.

Book Your Accommodation You can book your hostel with Hostelworld . If you want to stay somewhere other than a hostel, use Booking.com as it consistently returns the cheapest rates for guesthouses and hotels.

Don’t Forget Travel Insurance Travel insurance will protect you against illness, injury, theft, and cancellations. It’s comprehensive protection in case anything goes wrong. I never go on a trip without it as I’ve had to use it many times in the past. My favorite companies that offer the best service and value are:

• SafetyWing (best for everyone)
• InsureMyTrip (for those 70 and over)
• Medjet (for additional evacuation coverage)

Want to Travel for Free? Travel credit cards allow you to earn points that can be redeemed for free flights and accommodation — all without any extra spending. Check out my guide to picking the right card and my current favorites to get started and see the latest best deals.

Need Help Finding Activities for Your Trip? Get Your Guide is a huge online marketplace where you can find cool walking tours, fun excursions, skip-the-line tickets, private guides, and more.

Ready to Book Your Trip? Check out my resource page for the best companies to use when you travel. I list all the ones I use when I travel. They are the best in class and you can’t go wrong using them on your trip.

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links above are affiliate links, including the links for HostGator and Bluehost. At no additional cost to you, I earn a commission if you make a purchase using these links. If you have any questions about the companies or my status as an affiliate, please don’t hesitate to email me.

Got a comment on this article? Join the conversation on Facebook , Instagram , or Twitter and share your thoughts!

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links above may be affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I earn a commission if you make a purchase. I recommend only products and companies I use and the income goes to keeping the site community supported and ad free.

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How to Start a Travel Blog (The Ultimate 2024 Guide)

• Last Updated: February 5, 2024

Congratulations, you’ve decided you want to know how to start a travel blog! Let us be the first to welcome you to the club. You’re in for a fun ride!

Before we start there are a few things we need to clear up about starting a travel blog.

First of all, it’s not hard. Second of all, it doesn’t take long. Third, it is cheap.

The difficult part comes in trying to grow and make money from your travel blog, but there’s a lot of potential to do this successfully, and the rewards are worth the effort.

These days we make over USD$30’000 a month from this website and our various media clients. In other words, we make a good living from travel blogging.

We’re going to assume you’re in the same position that we were when we first decided to start NOMADasaurus. One day we decided to make a travel blog. So we opened up Google, started researching, and became completely overwhelmed with an entire world that we knew nothing about.

Hosting, domains, analytics, content management systems, HTML, social media marketing, SEO – all these terms went straight over our heads.

The truth is that starting a travel blog is actually quite a simple step-by-step process, and there’s no need to get overwhelmed by it all.

Let us walk you through that process.

We’re going to show you exactly how to start a travel blog in less than an hour!

• Pick a blog name
• Define your brand
• Register your domain
• Purchase website hosting
• Set up your host (we’ll show you how)
• Install WordPress (the easy way)
• Pick a theme
• Get some essential plugins
• Plus have some bonus professional tips to start making money asap!

Table of Contents

Tips For Picking A Travel Blog Name

Tips for defining your brand, domains vs hosts, our favourite host is siteground, managed wordpress hosting, step by step guide with siteground, step 3 – install wordpress, free vs premium themes, w3 total cache, google analytics, get on social media, make an about page, custom design your blog, network with other bloggers, don’t sign up for a travel blog course, start blogging, what you need before our ‘how to start a travel blog’ guide.

You’re going to need a few things before we begin.

• A computer (not a smart phone).
• An internet connection.
• A credit card or debit card.
• 1 hour of free time.
• A delicious drink to enjoy.

You also may have seen these companies that give you a free website and only take a few minutes to setup.

Some examples are Wix, Blogspot, WordPress.com and others. These are absolutely fine if you just want to make an online diary about your travels, and maybe have a few friends and family follow along.

But these aren’t any good if you want to make a successful travel blog, or if you ever want to try and make money from it in the future.

Do yourself a favour and start with your own hosted travel blog from the very beginning. Not sure what that means or how to do it? Well, let’s get started…

Step 1 – Pick Your Name and Brand

This is by far the hardest part of starting a travel blog. Picking a name can literally take weeks.

This will be your online identity, and you’ll be telling people all around the world this on a daily basis, so make it something you are happy with.

If you want to start a travel blog about one particular place or thing rather than being the face of your travel blog, then this is easier.

You can be “Food Adventures In New York City”, and everyone will know exactly what your blog is about.

Example: Is your name Jim? Then perhaps something like “Travelling Jim” would work for your blog name. Say it out loud. Do you like it? Awesome. In fact, let’s use “Travelling Jim” as our example blog for the rest of this article.

• Keep it as short and simple as possible. You don’t want to be telling people, “Hey, make sure you check out my blog, ‘www.jimistravellingtheworldforanindefiniteamountoftimestartingin2020-ihopeyoufollowme.com'” What a mouthful! If you can keep it between one to four words, awesome! Also avoid having a hyphen (-) in there, again for simplicity.
• Give your blog longevity. Travelling Jim works well, but “Jim’s 2020 Travels” doesn’t. What if you travel in 2017? Same with “Adventures Of A 21-Year-Old”. That’s not going to work when you’re 22
• Don’t limit yourself. If you want to start a travel blog about one particular place or topic, then go for it. These can be very successful in a niche market. But if you are travelling to Australia for example, don’t call your blog, “Jim Travels Australia”. How are you going to blog about Europe if you ever go there? If you want to have a general travel blog and don’t know what your exact plans are in the future, keep it broad.
• Think outside the box. While you want to keep things as simple and general as possible, don’t forget that travel changes people. Don’t call your blog “Forever Single Traveller” just because you’re single when you started. What if you get a partner? Then you’re no longer the Forever Single Traveller. Same with something like “$1 A Day Travels”, because you’re broke when you start. Maybe in two years time you won’t be broke (and hopefully you’re actually making money from your travel blog). Reasons like this are why it’s great to keep it simple. This also helps with brand partnerships in the future, but you don’t need to worry about that today.

You’ve thought long and hard about it, and love “Travelling Jim”. Next step is to make sure it is available. This is easy to do.

• Type in “travellingjim.com” into your internet browser. If nothing comes up, you might be in luck. If it does, it’s time to come up with something new.
• Go to NameCheap.com and type in “travellingjim” into the little box. Hit search and see what it says. If it’s available, then the name is yours for the taking! You’re ready for the next step.
• Go ahead and buy that domain on NameCheap. You’ll then own your URL for as many years as you choose to buy it for, and it’ll be quite cheap (around US$10 a year). If you would prefer to buy it with your hosting and have it all in one place, hold off and you can do that in the next step.

Bonus Tip: If “travellingjim.com” is taken, but “travellingjim.net” is available, DO NOT go for it. This gets very confusing if you tell someone your blog is called “Travelling Jim” and they accidentally go to .com instead of .net. Find something that is fully available.

You have a very important question to ask yourself: What is your travel blog about?

You’re probably thinking, “Duh, travel!” And you are right. But in this day and age having a “travel blog” isn’t enough.

If you have zero plans to turn your travel blog into a way to make money while travelling , then you can skip this part.

But if you do want to start earning money from your travel blog one day, you need to come up with a direction and style that will give people a reason to read your posts.

Don’t worry, your brand can change over time. Ours has! But for now, here’s some tips to get you started.

• Will you be making videos or trying to take amazing photos?
• Do you have a unique back story?
• Want to write about the awesome food you find?
• Interested in documenting environmental issues and sustainable tourism?
• Are you an adventure traveller? If so, what kind of adventures?
• Delving into culture?

The list is endless. You will get bonus points if you are doing something truly epic that gives people a reason to follow you. For example even though we had already been travelling for years, we only started this travel blog when we began our “Thailand to South Africa without flying” mission. That gave us purpose and reason to write.

If you can’t think of anything right now that’s ok. Just keep in mind that as your blog grows it will be handy to have a brand and direction.

Step 2 – Get Hosting And The Domain

Now that all the thinking is done, it’s time to get started on the technical things. This is what will take less than 48 minutes.

Don’t worry, it’s not difficult and we’ll walk you through the process of how to start a travel blog from scratch.

If you don’t know what these are, let us try to explain them as easily as possible. Let’s go with a ‘house’ analogy.

A domain (travellingjim.com) is an address. A host is a house. A website is you.

You live in a house, and your address is how people find your house. In internet terms, your website lives on a host and travellingjim.com is the address.

In more details, a host is a company that has a bunch of computers (also called servers) that are permanently connected to the internet.

Your blog and all its content, pictures, videos, etc actually “lives” on your host’s computers.

When someone types in “travellingjim.com”, their browser (e.g. Chrome or Safari) downloads your blog from one of these computers, and opens it up on your reader’s device.

Don’t stress too much about all this. Once you’ve set it all up once, it will be a long time before you have to worry about this again.

We personally use and recommend SiteGround . They are our third hosts now (having previously been with Bluehost and Dreamhost), and we couldn’t be any happier that we changed over.

Besides being great for established websites, they are also perfect for brand new blogs.

They have incredible support, fast servers, an easy control panel to navigate and very high uptime.

They are also very affordable, and getting setup with them is super simple. They really make it very easy when it comes to how to start a travel blog.

We must stress this again – their support is amazing. We have lost count of the number of times we’ve been confused about some technical thing we’ve tried to implement on our site and screwed up, just to jump on SiteGround’s 24/7 instant chat service and have their experts fix the problem for us in a matter of minutes. This alone makes them the best company out there.

By all means, feel free to go and do your own research. You’ll find that most companies have the same prices on their entry-level plans (SiteGround is $3.95 a month) and you won’t likely notice any difference in quality until your blog grows.

But we only ever recommend brands that we have used and are happy with, so that’s why we’re going through the next few stages with SiteGround.

As we’re going to go with WordPress (the best option by far), it’s good to get a dedicated and managed WordPress hosting solution.

What this means is that your host and server is optimised to run WordPress efficiently and with no issues.

Luckily SiteGround has a spectacular Managed WordPress Hosting solution which includes premium plugins (more on plugins at the bottom of this article), one-click installation, great security and a bunch more.

And if you sign up to SiteGround’s Managed WordPress Hosting solutions through our links, you will receive 60% off the regular price. Amazing deals all around!

Note: We are not sponsored by SiteGround in any way, shape or form. We pay for our hosting just the same as everyone else does (and in fact are on their higher-end cloud plan due to us needing to trust the best host out there to manage our website). We just really, really love them.

We’re going to walk you through the process of how to start a travel blog step by step.

• Go to SiteGround and click on “Sign Up”

• Choose the “Start Up” plan. This is only $3.95 a month and has all the features you’ll need to get started. If you feel like you really want to focus on growing your travel blog to more than just your friends and family reading it, you can go with the “Grow Big” plan, but if you’re happy to keep costs down let’s go with Start Up.

• Choose the “Register A New Domain” section. Enter whatever your domain is (travellingjim.com), and click proceed.

• Enter some account details and your payment options. We recommend paying for at least 12 months up front. On the $3.95 plan, that works out to be only $47.40. Even cheaper than $50! You don’t need Domain Privacy or HackAlert Monitoring, so feel free to unselect those and keep your costs down.

***UPDATE – Siteground now charges $14.95 a year for registering a new domain. Website transfers are still free if you already own your own domain name, which you can buy with NameCheap .

• You’ve now come to a verify page. SiteGround will run a fraud check to make sure everything is all good.

Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of a new domain and host! At this point you will get all your login details for SiteGround sent to you in an email.

Don’t finish your drink just yet, there’s still a little bit more you need to do to finish starting a travel blog. And the next thing is to install WordPress.

What is WordPress we hear you ask? WordPress is a “Content Management System”, or CMS for short. Basically that is the system that allows you to put words, pictures and style on a website without knowing any coding or programming. WordPress makes building your website easy. In fact WordPress is used on 26% of all website on the entire web.

Now is a good time to mention that there are actually two WordPress’s. There’s WordPress.com and WordPress.org. WordPress.com is for free blogs, WordPress.org is for people who want to own their own blogs. You’re going to go with .org.

Installing WordPress onto your host is very easy to do, and with SiteGround it’s actually all automatically done for you with a very simple process.

• Login to SiteGround and click on “Get your new site up and running – Set up in 2 min!”

• You’ll get a popup with the SiteGround Account Setup Wizard. Select “Start a new website at (URL)” and hit proceed.

• Now you’ll be asked what type of website you need. Select “Personal/Blog” and then scroll down. The software you are going to use is WordPress, so select that and move onto the next part.

• Now you need to make up your WordPress login details. We recommend choosing something that would be really hard for people to guess, as this is the door to your website. So don’t choose “Admin” as your username for example. You will need these login details to access the “behind the scenes” section of your blog.

• Now you’ll be given an opportunity to choose your web design template. This is otherwise known as a theme, which we will go into more in Step 4. Feel free to click around and see if you can find a design you like. Otherwise you can skip this part for now.

And guess what – you’re done! You’ll get a very satisfying “Congratulations” with a big tick, and all your login credentials. We suggest you write these down somewhere safe.

What now? Well now you want to actually go to your website. And as usual, this is very easy to do.

• Simply go to the address bar in your internet browser and type in “travellingjim.com/wp-login.php”. You’ll be taken to this screen:

• Put in your login credentials and you’ll be taken to the WordPress dashboard. This is what it looks like (with a few less options on the left panel):

Welcome to WordPress! This is where all the magic happens. You will write your blogs under “Posts”, make things like your about page under “Pages”, change the style of your blog under “Appearance”, and so on. You’ll get pretty familiar with all this over the course of a month or so. But for now, let’s move on to the next stage!

Step 4 – Pick A Free Theme

You’ve got your domain, you’ve got your host, you’ve installed WordPress, now you need to choose a theme. What’s a theme? Well that’s what your website looks like when people go to it. Keeping up with the house analogy from before, think of it as all your furnishings and decorations.

Back in the day you needed someone who was good at computer coding to make your website look good. These days you just install a theme with a few clicks.

• Go into your WordPress dashboard.
• Look for “appearance” on the left panel and click on themes.
• Activate the WordPress Twenty Seventeen theme if it isn’t already, and your website is officially up and running!
• Now just type in travellingjim.com into your internet browser! There it is – how exciting!

There are thousands of themes out there to choose from. Some are free (yay!) and some cost money.

When you’re just starting out you should be pretty happy with just a free theme. But as time goes on and you get more content on your blog, you’ll likely want to upgrade to a paid theme. Why? They offer more customisation, they’re faster, and they look better.

All you have to do is Google “WordPress themes” and be prepared to lose the next few hours of your life as you scroll around. This all comes down to personal taste.

Personally for a few websites we own, we use the Elementor page builder theme . It’s a very powerful and simple to use “drag and drop” designer that is only limited by your imagination, but they also make a number of other awesome premium themes you can choose from.

 And guess what – you are now the proud owner of a fully functional travel blog! You did! If you want you can leave now and go get another drink. Otherwise stick around for some bonus tips to help make your travel blog extra awesome!

Step 5 – Download Essential Plugins

Now that your travel blog is fully setup and ready to go, it’s time to install some plugins. Think of plugins as extra additions to make your house better, like a security system or new light fixtures.

Again there’s thousands of plugins out there, but to begin with you only need a few core ones. To install a plugin go into your WordPress dashboard, look on the lefthand panel, click “Plugins” then click “Add New” on the page that opens up. Search for the ones listed below, click download, and activate. WordPress will do the rest.

This is an anti-spam plugin that filters out crap messages left on your blog. Don’t ask why (you’ll find out as time goes on), but you’re going to end up with hundreds of spam comments on your posts. Just install this plugin and let it do all the filtering.

You’re going to hear the term “SEO” a lot during your journey as a travel blogger. SEO stands for “search engine optimisation”, and that basically means when people go to a search engine like Google and type in something – for example “ things to do in Berlin ” – the posts that have the best SEO go to the top of the results, meaning more people click on them. It’s complicated and you’ll learn a lot more about it later, but for now just install Yoast.

Yoast is a plugin that pops up at the bottom of the section when you are writing a blog post. You put in whatever keywords you think you are writing about (like “best places for breakfast in Sydney”) and it will give you a list of things you can improve on to help make your post rank higher in Google.

Another plugin that is hard to explain for beginners, but essentially W3 Cache will make your website load faster for people who visit it. This is important. Install it and use the automatic settings until you learn more about it. One cool thing to note as well is that if you signed up on the Siteground “Grow Big” account, you also get a cacheing feature on your plan. Check it out.

WordFence is a great plugin that adds a layer of security to your website. This will stop people hacking your travel blog. Don’t ask why, but for whatever reason your blog will come under attack from hackers. Everyone’s does. So just install WordFence and let it do its thing.

Travel Blogging Tips

You’re now well on your way to being a travel blogger! Your site is up and running, you’ve installed WordPress, you have a theme to make it look pretty, and you’re ready to start writing.

Time to hit the world!

However if you’re still interested in becoming a professional travel blogger, or just would like to grow your travel blog, here are a few last bonus tips to help out.

Google Analytics is a program that tells you how many people go to your travel blog, and how they found it. When you first start blogging you’re probably really interested to know if anyone is reading what you write! Google Analytics will tell you.

Learning about how to setup Google Analytics and how to use it is an entire blog post in itself – something that we won’t get into. But you should read this article from Moz about how to set it up properly.

Now that you’ve got an awesome travel blog, you need to sign up for social media so people can learn about you and follow your journey! The most obvious ones are Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and, but you’ll also want to look into Snapchat, YouTube and Pinterest. Go to those websites and make accounts called “Travelling Jim”, and start connecting with the world.

One of the first things you should do on your travel blog is make an “about” page. Go to your WordPress dashboard and click on “Add New Page” on the lefthand panel. Name your page “About”, and write up a little biography on yourself and what your website is. Upload a few pretty pictures and you’re sorted. Then all you have to do is hit publish and you’re all set! Also make a “Contact” page while you’re at it.

Because you’ve set up your theme, you can go into WordPress, click on Appearance > Theme > Customize, then start designing your blog. Pick some colours, change your font, add some menus, etc. Don’t forget to design a cool logo for yourself! If you don’t know how to do this yourself, you can just go to Fiverr and pay someone a small amount to make something basic.

You’ve signed up to Facebook, so now you can start networking with other travel bloggers. There are a number of really good Facebook groups you can join where you’ll find a whole bunch of people wanting to discuss blogging, from absolute beginners right through to the biggest names in the industry. We recommend signing up for “We Travel We Blog” and “Under 1000 Club – Aspiring Travel Bloggers” first. As you come up with questions about travel blogging, we’ll all be there to help you answer them!

This might go against everything other bloggers will tell you to do. But trust us, you don’t need them. The most popular ones are “Travel Blog Success” and Nomadic Matt’s course. Guess what – everything they teach you in those courses you can learn for free on Google or by asking in those Facebook groups we told you about. Save the hundreds of dollars and learn by doing.

That’s it, that’s all! You made it to the end of the article. Together we went from being an absolute beginner to having created your very own travel blog from scratch! You deserve another drink.

There is only one thing left to do now – start blogging! Get out there, take some photos, write some stories and make the best damn travel blog on the internet!

Play around with the WordPress dashboard, go to the section that says “Posts”, add a few new ones and hit publish. We promise you that publishing your first blog post is a very, very exciting moment!

You still have a lot to learn, and that’s ok. We’ve been doing this for 3.5 years now, professionally for 2.5, and we still learn things every single day. This is an ongoing process, but you’ve made the big leap and landed on your own two feet.

If you have any other questions please feel free to email us. Also make sure to check out those Facebook groups.

Our other last tip is to use Google.

We guarantee that no matter what problem you are having, whatever segment it is that you don’t quite understand, someone else has been in the same situation and asked the same questions.

Happy travels and enjoy the journey! We’ll see you out there in the blogosphere.

Alesha and Jarryd

Hi, We’re Alesha and Jarryd!

We’ve been traveling the world together since 2008, searching for the planet’s best destinations and adventures.

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Thanks for sharing this wonderful guide, its very informative. Loved it!!

Thank you. Glad you found it helpful.

Alesha and Jarryd’s comprehensive guide on starting a travel blog is a goldmine! Their step-by-step approach and valuable tips make diving into blogging an exciting journey. Unlock the secrets of travel blogging with Alesha and Jarryd’s guide!

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This article is a breath of fresh air for anyone considering starting a travel blog. It’s refreshingly honest and concise, addressing common misconceptions head-on. The clear statement that it’s not a difficult, time-consuming, or expensive endeavor is reassuring for beginners. What sets this piece apart is the author’s personal success story. Making over $30,000 a month from a travel blog is not only impressive but also demonstrates the potential for real income in this field. The article’s brevity and candor make it an engaging and motivating read for those looking to dip their toes into the world of travel blogging. It’s a no-nonsense guide that leaves you feeling inspired and ready to take on the challenge.

Thanks a lot for posting such an informative article.

Glad you found it helpful. All the best

Thank you so much. We are glad you found the article helpful.

I really appreciate your blog it’s very useful, thanks for sharing. Nepal tour!

I can’t even begin to explain how this has helped me. I feel like it’s just so much easier to learn this way, and it’s fun. I love how interactive it is. I was able to find all the information I was looking for very quickly. The layout was appealing to the eye. I would highly recommend this website to anyone looking for this type of information.I just wanted to say thank you for the information. I am really enjoying it, and I appreciate the opportunity

Thanks for the great advice!

Wow, this is an amazing guide! I had no idea there were so many steps involved in starting a travel blog. This guide makes it seem so easy and doable. I’m definitely going to follow your tips and start my own travel blog! Thank you for sharing your knowledge!

So glad you found it helpful. Thank you so much. If you have any questions, give us a shout.

This blog is a great resource for anyone looking to learn more about the topic.

Thank you so much. We are glad you found the article helpful. 🙂

I can’t even begin to explain how this has helped me. I feel like it’s just so much easier to learn this way, and it’s fun. I love how interactive it is. I was able to find all the information I was looking for very quickly. The layout was appealing to the eye. I would highly recommend this website to anyone looking for this type of information.I just wanted to say thank you for the information. I am really enjoying it, and I appreciate the opportunity to

So stoked. So happy we could help. All the best with your website journey. 🙂

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Thank you so much for this very informative article! You are an angel. I’ve come across many blogs and this has been the perfect way to help starters like me to start our blogging journey. I wish to see more guide and help from you after blogging. The how’s and what’s. Thank you and more power!

There is a sort of amazingness about going far away and afterward returning all different.

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Thanks a lot for posting such an informative article. I have just started my blog website and your article has helped me gain confidence about how to kickstart my journey. Your article is the most useful and motivating article I have found so far.

Thank you so much.

Glad you found the article helpful. That is amazing you have started a website. CONGRATULATIONS!!! It is overwhelming. We totally understand. We have found YouTube so helpful for even little things we could not figure out. We have used it so much and still do today. Many people are so generous giving information about different things to do with website development. All the best with your journey and a massive congrats again. 🙂

Thank you for this step by step comprehensive instructions to create a travel blog, the best one I’ve seen so far. Thanks for sharing your tips. And wish you the best for the next.

You are welcome. Glad it was helpful. 🙂

Thank you for a very interesting article. I greatly appreciate the time you take to do all the research to put together your posts. I especially enjoyed this one!!

Thank you so much for your comment Shiwani. We really appreciate your kind words. 🙂

Hello from Morocco. i like your blog travel it’s very important to have bloger like this and well informed about travelbloger went above and beyond the expectations to show us how to get something very important and exactly the kinds of things we most interested in, and so much more that gave us a really memorable experience that i saw here in this bloger.

Thank you so much for this amazing things.

Nice info. This is a very impressive post, Very useful information, it clarified things a lot for us. Thanks for sharing valuable tips. – Shirdi

Hey Alesha and Jarryd, thank you for sharing! I just started my travel blog and this post is REALLY helpful!

That is AMAZING. Congratulations. We are stoked for you. So glad our article helped. 🙂

Hi Alesha And Jarryd . Just a couple of quick questions……. Can your photography be copied/ download from your site or do you use low res images for the site to stop the practice? I’m not to keen on the thought images can be taken. And finally- do you film in 4 k or is this a bit of overkill and 1080 p is fine ? Thanks in advance. Jim

Hi Jim, how are you? Sorry it has taken us a bit to get back to you. Unfortunately our photos can be. Definitely not downloaded but people can copy them as low resolution. We have had many sites steal our images. We give them a chance to delete them and if they do not we open a claim with our imagery copyright lawyers. 1080 is absolutely fine for social media platforms. If you intend to film a documentary or event, we recommend shooting in 4k. We do shoot in 4k. Some times it is over kill but we know we have high quality footage incase anyone want to buy it. It is totally up to you and your shortage situation. All the best

Wow! super impressed! Very throw! 5***** Your professionalisms and willingness to share, is like a breath of fresh air. Now that I’ve read through everything, time to start. Look forward to future conversations! Thank you!

Glad you liked the article and we could help. 🙂

Excellent i really want to start this project. Thanks !

Let us know how you go Alex. All the best.

Thanks for some new information and ideas which I’ve not seen in other places before

Glad to help. 🙂

Truly useful piece of information. It’s good to learn the ways to improve a blog from top bloggers.

Thank you. 🙂

Thanks guys

An excellent post , and great advice – learn by doing I have just subscribed and will recommend your site

Thank you so much. Glad we could help. 🙂

How do you guys earn money from the blog?

Hi Danny, through many different ways. Selling our photography, affiliate links, advertising and companies/tourism boards hiring us for different things, 🙂

Great article full of useful info. Love it!

Thank you. Glad you liked it. 🙂

Excellent article, I need to enhance the content i have truly. I have attempted to blog on third part systems, it did just not transpire the true way I needed it to. But your website has providing me a hope to do this. I will be bookmarking your website and checking it out from time to time. Many thanks!

Thank you so much. We are glad to help. 🙂

Thank you for this step by step comprehensive instructions to create a travel blog, the best one I’ve seen so far. Thanks for sharing your tips. And wish you the best for the next. Cheers.

Thank you so much. Glad we could help Lorris. All the best

OK, so I “just stumbled upon” you guys after about 2 weeks of reading, watching. listening to many other “How To Start A Blog” blogs. Without gushing, can I say you two had me mesmerized from the first photo, the content and “voice” which comes across your posts. To say this has been the most helpful of all the blogs and bloggers I have followed in the course of the past two weeks is an understatement. THANK YOU for this amazingly informative blog for newbies, sharing what equipment works for you, how to get started with growth in mind. I will take your advice to heart and yes, I will follow!

Hi Debra, thank you so much. We really appreciate it and are so happy this article helped you. It’s a lot of hard work, with lots of unpaid hours at the beginning but if you are committed you will come out the other end. Pick a unique niche and you will be noticed. And last don’t give up If this is what you want, it’ll come. All the best

Wonderful article. This is very informative one. I like it.

Awesome Blog!!! All the tips which are given in this blog are really helpful to start a travel blog

Awesome. Glad we could help. 🙂

Hi Alesha and Jarryd, Awesome post. Thankyou so much for sharing tips.

Glad we could help. 🙂

Hi Alesha and Jarryd, Thanks for the wonderful post. We have travelled to many countries, and, now motivated to start writing our blogs! Thanks for inspiring.

So glad we would inspire you. Once you have started the blog, keep it up. Put the hard work in and it will eventually pay off.

Hi Alesha and Jarryd! Great to find and follow you. Thanks for the fantastic information! We are a 50ish yr old couple from Colorado, USA. We’ve been all over the world, mostly for some pretty epic diving, and are heading out to Peru in the next few weeks. We DO have quite a backstory and have been thinking a lot about sharing it. Thanks for giving us the info to get started! Cheers! Dawn and Vern

Hi Dawn and Vern, Definitely share you stories and all your tips. There are so many more people travelling now. And all different ways too. We found it was a great project to do while we were on the road and then it expanded to what NOMADasaurus is today. It is a great way for your friends and family to ready your stories and keep track of where you have been. All the best and happy travels.

Wonderful Post!

Thank you so much John

We just signed up with SiteGround — thanks for the recommendation!

That was the most comprehensive instructions I I have ever seen. I have not had the time to do it yet but will give it a try. One question! I already have a URL address on Google. How do I move it to Worldpress?

So sorry we missed your comment. Thank you and we are so glad this article could help you. Our suggestion is to buy a URL through namecheap.com and buy hosting through Siteground (link above). Then you can install WordPress on there. If you have any more questions don’t hesitate to ask. 🙂

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WEBSITE ESSENTIALS

How to start a travel blog in 10 steps (2024 guide)

• Lena Sernoff
• 16 min read

While travel blogging is one of the most popular types of blogs, rest assured, you have not missed the boat (or plane) on your chance to start your own. While competition has increased over the years, so has demand: In fact, The World Travel & Tourism Council projects that travel and tourism in the United States will reach pre-pandemic levels in 2022, contributing nearly $2 trillion to the U.S. economy.

Today, the key to starting a travel blog is going into a niche and offering a specialty of focused content. New popular locations, adventures and hidden gems come to the surface every day. Even your own backyard and hometown might be unfamiliar to new readers, and you can add your unique perspectives to reviewing them.

In this guide, we'll help you navigate the field, from how to make a website and creating a blog to writing your posts and finding collaborations, to not only stand out but also get paid. Once you've learned how to start a travel blog, you'll have the world at your fingertips with this type of website .

Get started with the Wix Blog Maker .

Ready to start a travel blog now? Get started with Wix today.

How to start a travel blog

Choose the type of travel blogger you want to be

Pick a blog name and secure your domain name

Select your travel blog template

Create a blog logo

Prepare your footage

Write your first blog posts

Engage with your audience

Network with tourism partners and brands

Monetize your travel blog

Learn from the best (travel blog examples)

01. Choose the type of travel blogger you want to be

While you can cover all types of travel topics, choosing a niche will more easily lead to success. Think of who could benefit from your unique guidance and hone your content towards them. Not only will this naturally attract an audience of repeat readers, it will simplify the process of monetizing your blog , as you’ll have a defined value to bring to partners.

For example, Wix user Tales of Israel used her expertise as an Israeli resident to help citizens and tourists alike explore the country’s hidden corners.

We Are Travel Girls grew a solid following of more than 415,000 Instagram followers by focusing on tips for women travelers.

Here are some niche blog ideas in the travel space:

Country-focused

Budget travel

Luxury travel

Solo travel

Female travel

Traveling for work

Adventure travel

Family travel

Empty nesters

Accessible travel

Experiential travel

Festival travel

Couples travel

Backpacking

LGBTQ+ friendly travel

Traveling for seniors

02. Pick a blog name and secure your domain name

After choosing which direction you’ll take your travel blog, align it with a catchy name to help people discover and remember you. Just like naming a brand, coming up with a blog name should include some creativity and strategic vision of where you'd like to take your blog over the years.

Learn more:

Travel business names

Lifestyle blog name ideas

Travel blog name ideas

For example, if you’re going to be a city-based blogger, include it in your name. If you’re targeting solo travelers, try to pick a name that portrays that, so people know you’re catering to them. Just don’t let your name corner you in, as you still want to expand on topics in your niche.

Tip: Use a free travel agency name generator for travel name ideas.

Securing your domain name

Once you've found the perfect travel blog name, make sure it's yours and only yours. To prevent confusion when promoting your blog , ensure no other companies or individuals currently use your blog name or hold your domain name. Check that social media handles are available and secure them as well. The more easily people can find your blog, the more likely they’ll return.

You might also want to consider using a .blog domain extension , to make sure your blog stands out.

Tip: Secure and buy your domain name with Wix.

03. Select your travel blog template

Photos and videos can bring your adventures to life and invite your visitors to join in on your journeys. And that’s why you should choose a visual-forward blog website template to display your travel blog content.

Make sure it also has an inviting homepage, a detailed “About Me” page, a well-organized blogging section and a dedicated newsletter sign-up section—all great places to share your media.

Below, we've showcased a few of our favorite mobile-optimized travel best blog templates :

Travel blog website template 1 features:

A large homepage image layout to make a powerful first impression.

A mid-page menu to take visitors to your different types of travel guides.

A highly-visible subscriber form to help grow your newsletter.

Travel blog website template 2 features:

A dedicated “Work With Me” to showcase your partnership offerings.

A perfectly-placed blog logo that functions as a return-home button.

An attention-grabbing video background to greet visitors.

Travel blog website template 3 features:

An embedded Instagram feed to seamlessly showcase your social media content.

A video page to display high-quality footage or promote your YouTube channel.

A Live Chat tool to communicate with visitors.

04. Create a blog logo

A logo will help you build a brand around your travel blog. You’ll likely try out a few different tactics over the first couple of months as you cement your blog’s brand, like updating your site layout or changing your photography style. Use a blog logo on your site, professional email signature, and social channels to tie your online presence together with a distinctive trademark throughout the changes.

Tip: Get inspired by these blog travel logos and try creating your own with Wix’s free logo maker tool.

05. Prepare your media

It’s easier to describe a must-see hot spot with images than simply words. In fact, articles with images get 94% more views as opposed to those with none. A good camera can help ensure your images are high-quality and properly-sized to look their best. It might be worth investing in a DSLR, drone, tripod, or other equipment to help elevate your visuals. You can also utilize stock images until you capture new content on your next trip.

Leverage photo tools to assist in gathering and preparing your content, and consider free photo editing software to filter and adjust your shots. What is a blog if not the perfect place to showcase your travel images.

Tip: Use a free Video Maker to craft a compelling video and check out these travel photography tips .

06. Write your first blog posts

Without articles, a live blog is just a website. Before sharing your travel blog with the world, write and publish at least three posts to give new website visitors a taste of the content you offer. This will also help create momentum behind your content creation strategy.

You can be as creative as you'd like when writing your blog posts. However, here are some blog ideas and blog formats you can build on:

The Ultimate [ insert location ] Travel Guide

How to See [ insert location ] in Just [ insert number ] Days

X Tips for Finding Cheap Flights During [ insert season or holiday ]

Best Things to Do in [ insert location ]

Why You Need to Go to [ insert location ]

Cheap Things to Do in [ insert location ]

Packing for [ insert type of trip ], What to Bring

What to Do on a Weekend in [ insert location ]

Awesome Stops on [ insert road name ] to [ insert location ]

Don’t forget to break up your content with rich media to hold your readers’ attention.

Over 80% of travel planning is done online, which means that your readers want to make decisions based upon your content—not just casually look for inspiration. (And if you are part of an affiliate network, those decisions can turn into real money for you.)

To make sure you get a slice of that active audience, make sure you optimize your content for search engines and make your site as visible as possible to these searchers.

Some blog SEO best practices are to:

Research keywords and common terms related to your destination or travel topic.

Include the keyword in the title, URL, a few times in the article in the SEO meta description.

Use internal linking in your blog and website.

Include alt text on images.

Editorial calendar

It’s good to set a regular schedule for publishing new content on your travel blog. It can be once a week or once a month—just keep your posting frequency consistent so readers know when to check back for the latest guides. Also, with new posts going live on the regular, Google will visit your site more often to index pages—improving your SEO.

To start filling out your content calendar, try one of these strategies to brainstorm great content:

Research the specific seasons, holidays or events happening at your destination to brainstorm content. There will be an influx of searches and demand for these topics at key times of the year.

Also, read competitor articles and blogs for inspiration. If you know what people have already said on specific locations or topics, you can add unique value and provide what’s missing.

07. Engage with your audience

Without interested readers, fans and followers, your blog is simply a diary. Use these channels and common methods below to authentically engage with your audience and drive traffic to your website :

Social media

Social media is an invaluable place to grow your travel blog. Up to 50% of travel enthusiasts use Instagram to find local places to explore.

You can use social to discover new audience members by:

Finding which social channels your target audience spends the most time on. See which hashtags they use, locations they tag and which brands and travel creators they follow.

Create content specifically geared to your target audience’s wants and needs. Check out our guide on social media content ideas .

Engaging with your target audience by following them, liking their content and commenting something meaningful on their posts. Here's how to increase your social media engagement.

Using social communities, forums and groups to connect and network with target audience members and fellow travel bloggers.

Tip: A social post maker can help you produce eye-catching, quality content.

Word of mouth

Connecting with potential readers in real life can be a pivotal way to grow your travel blog. Aside from telling your friends and family about your blog, inform people you meet on your adventures that you blog.

Even if travel blogging is not (yet) your full-time job, when you meet people that ask about your occupation, slip in how you just started a new travel blog, and you'd love for them to subscribe or follow. Travelers love staying up to date with the amazing people they meet on their trips, and they’ll likely become new followers.

Once you've gained a few subscribers to your newsletter, you can send email marketing campaigns to engage readers. In your settings, set up an automatic email that dispatches newly published blog articles.

08. Network with tourism partners and brands

Starting a travel blog doesn’t have to be just a hobby. Partnerships with tourism companies, attractions, hotels, restaurants and brands can provide great compensation opportunities, either through an exchange of goods or cash payments.

For example, you can get a free stay in exchange for blogging about the hotel and capturing quality content for them to use on their social media or site. Another example is a suitcase company sending you a free bag to tag them in a post. You might also consider writing content in multiple languages to partner with relevant tourism brands, learn how to start a multingual blog to expand your reach.

How to reach out to brands:

Identify the brand you wish to partner with

Do thorough research on them to understand their audience’s needs

Reach out with a pitch of the exchange of services you can provide

Outreach email template:

Hi my name is [full name],

[Mention something personal you like about this company].

I’m the travel blogger behind [blog name/hyperlink website URL], who specifically covers [list three main topics your blog covers]. My current readers and followers amount to [insert your total reach here].

My audience is mostly [include audience insights and engagement rates if relevant]. I highly believe that it can be mutually beneficial for us to partner as I reach the same audience your brand seems to want to attract.

Please let me know if you're currently looking for new partnerships, as I'd be happy to [insert which services you'll provide, such as a blog post, rich images, social media posts]. In the past, I've partnered with [brand names] and here [insert link], you can see the examples of the content I've created.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

[Signature with your email, phone number, website link, logo and social media channels]

09. Monetize your travel blog

As much as sipping a comped piña colada by a hotel pool sounds extravagant, it won’t necessarily pay the bills. Therefore, you can use any or all of these nine creative ways to make money blogging:

01. Sponsored posts: Most travel blogs publish sponsored posts as their main income source. Agree with your partner on the goal and length of the post and how much you’ll receive in return. The average travel blogger charges an average of $200 per sponsored post.

For instance, a sponsored post about a Caribbean boating service could be about the best way to island hop, and you mention the boating company and link to their website several times in the article and as you review your experience using their services. Just remember to include a note that the post has been sponsored to keep your readers’ trust.

Learn more: How to make money as a travel blogger

02. Affiliate marketing: Many travel bloggers also earn commission from marketing another company's products. You promote their products on your blog, social media accounts, and other platforms using a unique tracked link and make a profit from each sale. To begin, sign up for affiliate marketing programs and send readers to buy from recommended referral links.

Here are some common travel affiliate programs to consider: Expedia Group Affiliate Program , Booking.com Affiliate Program , Amazon Associates , Skimlinks , and AWIN .

03. Advertise: 94% of travel blogs sell advertising . When you're figuring out how to monetize a blog , one of the best ways is to get paid by running ads on your website. Tip: If your site is on Wix, you can add Google AdSense directly to your blog from the app market.

04. Premium content: Consider charging readers for more exclusive information and production-intensive content, like premium guides, digital downloadables or eBooks to open an additional revenue stream. For instance, if you've made a PDF map with all the vegan restaurants in Paris, you could charge readers $5 to download it.

05. Donation: Donations are becoming more popular in the content creation world, so don’t be afraid to ask for them. Accept donations via Patreon, PayPal, Zelle, Venmo, and or even paper checks in the mail.

06. Workshops and courses: You're likely an expert in your niche, especially if you travel often. Share your tips and tricks with readers in exchange for payment with an online course or in-person workshop. The two famous travel couples behind Club Life Design , for example, offer a social media and photo editing course.

07. Freelance: You don't necessarily have to make money from your traveling sites . You can choose to be a digital nomad freelancer and make money doing online gigs while exploring the world.

Tip: Wix Marketplace is a great way to grow your client base by designing Wix users’ websites.

08. Sell photos and videos: Make money selling your photos online. If you own a drone, this can be a great way to sell premium video footage to partners, which isn't easy for them to produce. Here's our guide on how to make money as a travel photographer.

Additionally, many travel bloggers, such as Aloha Jana , make money selling photo color preset filters to others who want to beautify their images.

09. Make and sell products: Sell or dropship branded items like swimsuits, sunglasses and travel gear.

Tip: You can add an online store to your blog to sell directly from your site or create a dropshipping website .

10. Learn from the best (travel blog examples)

Sometimes the best way to start a blog is to see how others have done it before you. These Wix users have created travel blogs websites that make us feel like we’re alongside them for all their travels:

The Bucket List Bums

Bucket List Bums’ clearly understands what her readers want: Information to help them plan their trips. Beyond her high-quality, stunning travel shots, she organizes her blog posts by country under “places,” allowing readers to explore their destination of interest. She also clearly defines how many days travelers should spend in each location, as you can see in this Three Days in Baja post.

Aside from offering her readers value, she gracefully makes her blog work for her, too. She’s added affiliate links to her shop page and also cleverly embeds them into image captions.

Anika Pannu

Anika Pannu’s travel blog is modern and interactive—perfect for her target audience looking to replicate that same experience on their journeys. Beyond immediately capturing her visitor’s attention with a parallax scrolling effect on her home page (featuring video and scroll-triggered motion images), she also provides content details that speak directly to her audience.

For example, Pannu rates her recommended stays with a helpful euro sign rating system, as seen in her A Weekend Guide To Lisbon, Portugal . This allows readers to quickly get a sense of the costs associated with her listings without going the extra mile to find pricing ranges. To grow her brand deals, too, she's smartly created a dedicated partnerships page.

Zion Adventure Photog

Just landing on Zion Adventure Photog’s earth-toned homepage makes you feel like you’re already visiting the eponymous natural park. Since this travel blogger is local to Southern Utah, she helps to provide that inclusive experience throughout the blog.

On the content side, their hiking blog posts all consistently outline the length, difficulty, location, when to go, trail details, and additional info sections. Both regular visitors and new readers alike can easily navigate the posts and get the information they need. They also have a clear call to action to follow them on Instagram to grow and engage their community offsite.

That welcoming feeling extends to their blog monetization strategy as well: They offer various photography services and offer a transparent pricing plan to support their readers’ experience beyond the planning phase.

How to design and customize your travel blog

Customizing your travel blog is a great way to make it stand out from the crowd and reflect your unique personality and style. There are many different ways to customize your blog, but here are a few ideas:

Choose a theme. A theme is a pre-made design that you can apply to your blog. There are many different themes available, both free and paid. Choose a theme that matches the overall style of your blog and that is easy to navigate.

Customize your colors and fonts. Once you have chosen a theme, you can customize the colors and fonts to match your branding. This is a great way to make your blog look more cohesive and professional.

Add a logo. A logo is a great way to make your blog more recognizable and to give it a unique identity. You can create a logo yourself or hire a professional designer to do it for you.

Add social media buttons. Make it easy for your readers to follow you on social media by adding social media buttons to your blog. You can also use social media to promote your blog posts and connect with other travelers.

Add widgets. Widgets are small modules that can be added to your blog sidebar or other areas of your site. There are many different widgets available, such as recent posts widgets, social media widgets and calendar widgets. Choose widgets that are relevant to your blog and that will provide value to your readers.

Add images and videos. Images and videos are a great way to make your blog posts more visually appealing and engaging. Be sure to use high-quality images and videos that are relevant to your content.

Write a compelling bio. Your bio is a chance to introduce yourself to your readers and tell them why you started your blog. Be sure to include your interests, your travel experiences, and your goals for your blog.

Target audience: Keep your target audience in mind when customizing your blog. What kind of travel are they interested in? What kind of tone and style do they prefer? Tailor your blog to their needs and interests.

Make your blog mobile-friendly. More and more people are using their smartphones and tablets to access the internet. Make sure your blog looks good and functions well on all devices.

Use a consistent design. Your blog should have a consistent design throughout. This means using the same colors, fonts and overall layout on all of your pages.

Keep your blog updated. Make sure to update your blog regularly with new posts and content. This will keep your readers coming back for more.

By following these tips, you can create a customized travel blog that is both informative and visually appealing.

How to pick a travel blog name

Here are some tips on how to pick a travel blog name:

Make it easy to remember and pronounce. You want people to be able to easily find your blog and remember its name. Avoid using difficult or unfamiliar words or abbreviations.

Make it relevant to your travel niche. What kind of travel do you write about? Is it budget travel, luxury travel, adventure travel or something else? Choose a name that reflects your niche and interests.

Be original and unique. You want your blog name to stand out from the crowd. Avoid using generic or overused names.

Keep it short and sweet. A long and complicated name will be difficult for people to remember. Aim for a name that is 2-4 words long.

Here are some examples of good travel blog names:

The Wandering Trotter

The Budgeteer

The Luxe Voyager

Adventurous Kate

The Travel Junkie

Nomadic Matt

Off the Beaten Path

The Wanderlust Files

Passport & Plates

A World to Wander

The Globetrotter

Travel Lemming

Once you have chosen a few potential blog names, ask your friends and family for their feedback. You can also do a quick Google search to see if the name is already taken.

Can you start a travel blog writing about old trips?

Yes, you can start a travel blog writing about old trips. In fact, many successful travel bloggers started out by writing about their own travel experiences, even if those experiences were from years ago.

Here are some tips for writing a travel blog about old trips:

Write about your personal experiences. People are drawn to travel blogs that are authentic and personal. Share your stories, your insights and your tips from your old trips.

Use photos and videos. Photos and videos are a great way to bring your blog posts to life. Include photos and videos from your old trips to illustrate your stories and make them more engaging.

Update your blog regularly. Even if you're writing about old trips, try to update your blog regularly with new posts. This will keep your readers coming back for more.

Be specific and informative. When writing about your old trips, try to be as specific and informative as possible. Share details about the places you visited, the activities you did and the lessons you learned. The more information you can provide, the more valuable your blog will be to readers.

Add a contemporary twist. Even though you're writing about old trips, you can still make your blog posts relevant to today's readers. For example, you can share tips on how to save money on travel, how to find the best deals on flights and hotels or how to travel sustainably. You can also write about current events or trends that are related to travel.

Are travel blogs still relevant in 2024?

Competition amongst travel bloggers can be fierce. Travel blogs are still popular amongst travelers but with more blogs available, competition for readership is strong. Travel blogs now also have to content with social media influencers and their travel accounts. All of the things that have always made travel blogs useful and engaging, still apply - you may just need to share your content across more platforms and work harder to build an engaged community.

Other types of blogs to consider starting

How to start a finance blog

How to start a real estate blog

How to start a gaming blog

How to start a health blog

How to start a teaching blog

How to start a music blog

How to start a tech blog

How to start a mom blog

How to start a sports blog

How to start a beauty blog

How to start a lifestyle blog

How to start a travel blog FAQ

Do travel bloggers get paid.

Yes, travel bloggers can get paid. There are a number of ways that travel bloggers can make money, including:

Affiliate marketing: Travel bloggers can earn money by promoting products and services related to travel, such as hotels, flights, tours and travel gear. When a reader clicks on an affiliate link and makes a purchase, the travel blogger earns a commission.

Advertising: Travel bloggers can sell advertising space on their blogs to businesses that want to reach their audience. The amount of money that travel bloggers make from advertising depends on a number of factors, such as the size of their audience and the type of advertising they sell.

Sponsored posts: Travel bloggers can write sponsored posts for businesses that want to promote their products or services. Sponsored posts are typically paid for by the business, and the travel blogger will disclose this to their readers.

Selling products and services: Travel bloggers can sell their own products and services, such as e-books, travel courses and photography prints.

How much does it cost to start a travel blog?

Is it worth starting a travel blog, how much money can you make from a travel blog, do you need equipment to become a travel blogger, how to start a travel blog without traveling, related posts.

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How to Start a Travel Blog: The Complete Guide

Many people dream about traveling the world for a living; and there are people that are actually able to do so that aren’t pilots, flight attendants, or businessmen. These people are known as travel bloggers and they get paid to visit and write about their major passion in life: travel.

Before you think it’s all a dream, it’s time to debunk a few myths and tell some truths about how to start a travel blog. 🏖

Travel Blogging Truths

Who wouldn’t want to be a travel blogger? Travel can be expensive and the idea of having someone else cover your costs is certainly enticing. But it’s not all about grabbing trips to Paris in first class. Travel blogging is just like a job .

Travel blogging isn’t easy. The fact that you’re traveling and getting paid to do so while staying in top accommodations is what most people see. They don’t realize that there are a lot of struggles that go hand-in-hand with figuring out how to start a travel blog.

Here’s what you need to know before getting started as a travel blogger:

• It’s a saturated niche. Everyone wants to ride the wave of being a travel blogger, thinking it’s all rainbows and sunshine—that by virtue of having a travel blog (and a few followers), they can request comped stays at 5-star hotels. But it’s not that easy . There are plenty of travel bloggers that spent a long time building their empire before they took off to the point where they received any special perks (or compensation).
• Many times, you’re behind your computer. Being a blogger is like having your own magazine and being the editor, photographer, writer, and stylist—all in one. Some bloggers have teams now, but in the beginning, it will be just you . Taking and editing photos and/or video, write-ups, SEO , social media scheduling: all these tasks will require a fair amount of time stuck in front of your computer.
• Writer’s block. Companies pay you for content, and to be a successful travel blogger, you have to follow deadlines like any regular job. Creating great content while at the same time, experiencing what every place has to offer isn’t easy, especially when you just want to relax and you’re on a tight deadline.
• You won’t earn a fixed income. As with freelancing in general, you’re only as good as your next project. You’ll also have to think of travel blogging as an expense at the beginning. After all, how will you start writing about places you haven’t been to? You have to invest some money to do the traveling that will serve as the subject for your content.
• If you’re a solo travel blogger, it can be lonely to go from place to place on your own. And since you aren’t in a place for too long, you’ll constantly make and break friendships and connections.
• Not knowing what’s next. Becoming a travel blogger may seem exciting at first, but you have to be constantly planning for what’s next. There may be a time where travel loses excitement or you run out of funds and you’ll need to plan accordingly.

If you just want to learn how to start a travel blog for the sake of sharing your travels, then these truths may not apply to you. Your expectations and ambitions will be based on self-fulfillment (and perhaps sharing your adventures with friends and family) more so than building a brand to appeal to sponsors.

How to Start A Travel Blog

Not scared away by the harsh truths of travel blogging? Here’s how to start a travel blog, step by step:

Choosing a Niche

There are two basic ways to get started: travel then figure out how to start a travel blog , or plan to start a travel blog then do the actual traveling . The motivation for the people in the former situation is likely just that they want an outlet to share their travels to family and friends, while the latter is more suited to those that plan to expand and monetize their travel blog in the future.

Like food blogs , travel blogs are a dime a dozen, so it’s best to start by choosing a niche (especially when you eventually want to earn from travel blogging) that will help differentiate you from the pack, since general travel blogs will usually not fare well when it comes to SEO efforts.

Travel Blogging Sub Niches

There are so many travel blog niches you can think of and fill a need for. To some, their niche comes naturally. For others, it could take a while to make a decision. Here are some questions you can ask yourself when determining a niche for your travel blog:

• Why do I want to blog?
• What am I passionate about telling or teaching to others?
• What are my skills, strengths, interests, and expertise?
• Can I write about this topic for a long time? The niche shouldn’t be too broad or too narrow.

If you’re looking for inspiration, here are some of the more popular travel niches:

• City blogging: Focused on your city (you don’t have to travel that far, and you perhaps know the topic better than most)
• Country-focused: Destinations around the country
• Area/Region: Like South America or Southeast Asia-focused
• Demographic-focused: Like travel blogs specifically targeted to Americans/American passport holders
• Budget travel
• Luxury travel
• Solo travel
• Female travel
• Traveling for work
• Adventure travel
• Family travel
• Empty nesters/traveling for seniors
• Traveling with disabilities

Or if you’re really ambitious, you can even blog about your worldwide journey, as Gary Arndt has done on Everything Everywhere . He sold his house in 2007 and has been traveling around the world ever since (over 175 countries and counting).

To be sure that someone will want to read your blog, search for your competition (to validate if there’s an existing audience for your idea). You might even want to utilize a tool like Ahrefs  or BuzzSumo to look up some of the most popular content in a niche, such as “Traveling in South America,” to get an idea of what other bloggers are writing about. Then ask yourself, can you do this better?

Alternatively, you may want to try and be the first in your niche. If you can, find a gap in the market. If you find yourself asking “Why hasn’t anybody done this?”—do it yourself!

Most bloggers market themselves as brands. Your brand is what you’re known for and known as. It’s what makes people say “That is so XX!” when they see a piece of your content.

Aspects of blog branding include:

• Your blog name and niche
• Your blog’s overall look: the theme, fonts, logo, color palette, images you use, and so on
• The voice of your writing

Coming up with your Blog Name

Your blog name is important because it’s also what your blog is known as (your brand). While you’ll be able to change many things about your blog over time, your name is something you should stick with. Give it a fair amount of thought before deciding on it.

Not sure what to call your shiny new travel blog? You might start with your own name, a play on that name, or a mix of your name and travel-related terms. A few general rules for settling on a blog name (which will also be your domain name):

• It must easy to recall and easy to spell
• It should also be not too long
• It must not contain hyphens or numbers

For more tips, you can take a look at our guide:  How to Choose a Domain Name (8 Tips to Stand Out).

Some brilliant travel blog names to look to for inspiration include Nomadic Matt , which is about a guy who travels the world, Adventurous Kate , a blog about a girl who quit her job to travel the world, and The Blonde Abroad , which is about a solo female traveller who is (you guessed it) blonde. There’s also Tanks that Get Around , a travel blog/travel tank top shop.

Setting up the Blog

A professional blog has three technical elements you’ll need to setup: domain name , blogging platform, and web host.

Choosing a Blogging Platform

There are many free blogging platforms out there, like Blogger, WordPress.com , and Tumblr. Any of these options is fine for a personal blog, but if you plan on monetizing your site, a self-hosted WordPress blog is your best bet .

The other platforms come with their own restrictions, but with a self-hosted WordPress site, you’re free to customize it completely. Self-hosted WordPress also allows you to grow and not worry about having to change platforms later if your travel blog suddenly becomes super popular. Read more about the differences between WordPress.org and WordPress.com .

WordPress powers 43.5% of the internet , is super user-friendly and has flexible customization options. It is used on many different kinds of websites , be they blogs, ecommerce sites, news portals, or business sites. Due to its open-source nature, WordPress is free to use, however creating and maintaining a site might cost you some money .

While the content management system you choose is free (assuming you choose WordPress), you’ll have to pay for your professional domain name and web hosting.

Choosing a Reliable Web Host

The web host is where you store your website’s files. Hosting plans can be as cheap as $4/month and can be upgraded to give you more storage space and bandwidth for visitors as your blog grows.

It’s important to choose a reliable and stable web host that does not have too much downtime. If you’re starting out, you might be better off with shared hosting, which means you’ll be sharing a server with other blogs. The downside is, your blog may load slower because you’re sharing resources with other websites. Also, you might have to spend more time fiddling with your site.

Application hosting , database hosting , and managed WordPress hosting through a company like Kinsta have its advantages for those interested in how to start a travel blog.

Since you’re on the go, the last thing you have time to worry about is downtime or messing around with your server. Additionally, you might not always have access to the best internet connection to fix things. Falling back on a reliable managed host might actually save you money.

You’ll also get access to a variety of tools which can make managing your site a lot easier, such as Kinsta’s custom dashboard .

A few other things to look out for when deciding on a web host:

• WordPress optimized
• Good customer support
• Automatic backups
• Ample storage space

Read more about how Kinsta is different than other hosts.

Customizing the Blog’s Look

After you’ve installed and setup the free WordPress CMS with your web host, you can focus on setting up your blog’s look and feel—an important aspect of branding.

Customizing the following will help your travel blog become your own:

• Theme: You can choose from both paid and free options . There are themes that cater specifically to travel blogs. When you’re just getting started, don’t overthink your blog’s theme. You might want to start with a free one first, because unlike your blog’s name, you can change the design later on .

To help with the process of choosing the blog’s overall look easier, you can make a branding board. A branding board includes:

• Color palette : Have a set of 2 to 3 complementing colors (anything more would be distracting).
• Fonts : 3 at most. Think one for your logo, one for headings, one for body copy.
• Images that reflect what you want your blog to evoke when visitors drop by your site.

Increase Blog Functionality with Plugins

What attracts many users to WordPress is the customizability it offers thanks to plugins, which are codes you can install to add functionality to your site. Since you’re just getting started, defer to the experts. Blogging Wizard shares some of the must-have plugins that can help with SEO, analytics, backups , safety , and speeding up your blog .

There are also some plugins to consider that were created specifically for travel blogs. These include:

You might also want to add an Instagram plugin to show off your travel photos on your blog.

You might also consider installing affiliate plugins , but we’ll talk more about that in the latter monetization section.

Content Creation

The most important part of a blog is the content. Content shouldn’t just be confined to articles (or text); it can also take the form of photos (graphics, infographics), videos, and audio ( podcast ).

Of course, you shouldn’t start with all of these different types of content at once—it can be overwhelming. Instead, you can start adding new content types as your blog starts growing and you get the hang of running it.

To get some inspiration we recommend you to take a look at these guide:

How To Be A Solo Content Marketing Ninja

How to Create Evergreen Content That Lasts (17 Tips and Tricks)With WordPress

5 Things More Important for Your Content Than Content Length

There is no right or wrong way to write. Many people adopt a journal way of writing—telling people about their day or experience, while some go for how to guide types of posts.

The best kind of blogs are the ones that deliver a mix of content types. Many people that read travel blogs are after the information you can give them about a place, while your unique voice (which adds to the branding part of the blog) is what will draw readers to you.

If you plan to travel after setting up your travel blog, you can plot out what content to write, what places to feature, what angles to write about. Ideally, you’ll have at least 15 posts ready to go before launching. This will give you time to consistently release content as you work on your next pieces, while giving readers enough content to stick around and read.

Tips to Optimize Content for SEO

There’s no hard and fast rule for content length and ranking on Google but in general, the longer, the better.

Though the in’s and out’s of proper on-page SEO are outside of the scope of this article, here are a few quick hits for setting up content for success:

• Use headings to organize your article (and to strategically make use of keywords )
• Write titles that people will pique people’s curiosity so they will share your post, but don’t be clickbaity (meaning, truly back up the article with great content). Also, write titles the way people search.
• Use keywords in URL slugs

For a more advanced study of SEO (that’s still beginner-friendly), check out our SEO checklist  and some recommended SEO plugins  you should start off.

Asher Fergusson, a successful travel blogger, and Kinsta customer said that the secret for his rapid growth in organic search rankings was to conduct a controversial research study. After having a nightmare Airbnb experience with his wife and 10-month-old son in Paris he decided to review over 1,000 horror stories to see what’s most likely to go wrong. The resulting article titled, “ Is Airbnb Safe? ” led to being featured on the front page of Reddit and was picked up by dozens of mainstream media outlets. This boosted the SEO strength of his entire website.

Photography

People are visual creatures, which is why platforms like Instagram and Pinterest are so successful and growing at a rapid pace .

Taking great photos or videos that make viewers feel like they are there or will want to be there will attract more visitors to your blog. The photos will also be used for your blog promotion; pretty photographs with catchy titles attract people on sites like the aforementioned Pinterest.

While you’re thinking about images, don’t forget to optimize your images , both for performance and for SEO . You can’t just upload full resolution photos to your blog and expect them to load fast. You’ll need a little help from an optimization tool or plugin. Name your files something meaningful (and short), as Google looks at things like these when it chooses what to index for Google image search. Which tools and how to showcase your photos you can read our guide:  8 Best WordPress Photo Gallery Plugins .

There are three main ways to promote your blog:

• Social media: The easiest way to promote your travel blog is through your own network, but social media, with hundreds of millions of monthly active users, is also known for targeted advertising, meaning that it can help your content reach the people most likely to care about it. Hand Luggage Only’s Instagram is a great example of a beautiful travel photo diary. Another awesome platform where you can promote your content is Pinterest. We wrote a detailed guide on the best Pinterest marketing tips .

• Traditional media: Getting featured on newspapers and magazines is good exposure, even for an online entity. In fact, this is how popular blogger Nomadic Matt quickly grew his following.
• Search engines: The largest potential source of traffic, but comes with a lot of competition.

Writing guest posts is another way to get backlinks to your site from more prominent travel blogs. On another note, collecting email addresses and sending out email newsletters is an effective way to get more views because it gives you a direct connection with your subscribers (unlike social networks, which may restrict reach to your existing followers).

Nomadic Matt, arguably the most popular travel blog, recognized the potential for these tactics but went in a different direction . He pitched guest blog posts to finance blogs on how to save money traveling. He guest posted on entrepreneurship podcasts to talk about how he was able to build a business from his travel blog.

These tactics set himself apart from others, and also introduced his site to multiple different audiences.

Travel Blog Monetization

There are several ways to monetize your travel blog , but when you’re starting out, it can be tough. What many travelers (or digital nomads) do to sustain their traveling lifestyle while working on the road involves accepting jobs as virtual assistants, doing freelance writing, consulting, or offering some other type of service.

Ways to Make Money from Your Travel Blog

Besides using your personal brand to get clients for services you may be interested in offering, there are many other ways to make money from your travel blog:

• Sponsored trips : Work with private companies or brands and tourism boards. Tourism boards usually want press to encourage more people to visit their country. They will usually pay for food, lodging, activities, and sometimes even airfare. Since they want resulting posts to reach a wide audience, this might only be offered to those with bigger followings. Some companies may also invite you to sponsored trips to launch their products—with everything paid for.

• Workshops : After growing a following and being recognized as an expert, you may be invited for speaking engagements or workshops that you can charge for.

Blog not making enough yet? Check out these 65+ ways to make money online on the side while you continue to grow your travel blog up to where hopefully one day it can financially support you.

This guide by Firstsiteguide includes a few more ideas if you are looking to start your travel blog.

How to Start a Travel Blog

A travel blog is a good way to document and share your love of travel, but it also brings about the potential for income. First decide whether you’ll be blogging for passion or profit, then follow these guidelines to help you with the specifics of how to start a travel blog.

What are your tips when it comes to the question of how to start a travel blog? Tweet at @Kinsta and we’ll share the best insights! Or drop them below in the comments.

Maddy Osman creates engaging content with SEO best practices for marketing thought leaders and agencies that have their hands full with clients and projects. Learn more about her process and experience on her website, The Blogsmith and read her latest articles on Twitter: @MaddyOsman .

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This post was seriously the most helpful post I have read!!!! I just need to bust out more content and focus on affiliate marketing now! I’m looking for a course on this. Thanks for the helpful post!

So glad to hear it, Laura! Best of luck on your blogging journey. :D

I’m Happy that I came across this post as I am still on my way building my site as a travel blogger. :)

Glad to hear that! Let us know how it goes :)

This is the one of the most honest and truthful post’s I had read! Thank you!

Hey, thanks for all your tips and tricks. :) Greetings from Vienna

I enter your website regularly almost every day. You have some great articles. I Love Your Suggestions. Thanks.

I just start my blog but with your tips, I can improve my blog so much. Thanks a lot for providing the information.

Very helpful article for those who are willing to write a travel blog to provide very practical help

Much needed blog, I was thinking of starting my own blog but was not sure how to start after reading your i felt quite good of starting new one.

I haven’t seen a post as helpful as this one!!! Just need to create more content and focus on affiliate marketing now! This is something I’d like to learn more about. You made a great point! Thank you!

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How to Start a Travel Blog: The 7-Step Blueprint to Success

Want to learn how to start a travel blog? I’ve been blogging for over a decade, and I’ve learned that to succeed you have to pick a niche, connect with your audience, promote your content, and put in the effort!

To start a travel blog is to open up a world of endless possibilities.

I made my travel blog after I had already started traveling, and it has since changed the trajectory of my life, far more than the actual travel ever did. Six years ago I never would have guessed that I’d be getting paid to travel the world, working with some of the biggest names in the travel industry, and actually making a living from my blog.

If you want to create a successful travel blog, I’ll be honest with you—it’s going to take some work. But if you’re ready to get started, and you want to make money anywhere, travel for free, and partner with big brands around the world, well, you’re in the right place. That’s my specialty.

I started travel blogging eight years ago; since then the travel blogging landscape has changed dramatically. If you can devote yourself to learning some new travel blogging skills and putting them into practice, and if you follow this step-by-step blueprint to making a travel blog, I promise you can pull it off.

Trust me—if I did it, you can too.

There are seven fundamental steps to follow when learning how to start a travel blog. It’s important to do them in order as they will all lay the foundation for building a successful blog. If you’re just learning how to start a travel blog, keep reading. If you’ve already started, skip ahead using the table of contents below.

Pick a Creative Niche and Name

Before picking the name for your new travel blog, pick your niche. Your niche is going to define what your whole travel blog is about.

Let me clarify something— travel is not a niche . Travel is a subject, but it’s not very focused. Unless you’re planning on starting the next Travel & Leisure (good luck), you’re going to want to hone in on a more narrow topic and make it the whole purpose of your blog.

Picking a Niche

So how do you pick a niche? Think small. Pick a certain aspect of travel that you love, and focus your entire blog on that. Solo travel? It’s been done. Budget travel? It’s been way overdone. Adventure travel? Done a lot. Female solo travel? It’s popular, but the market is filled and there are a lot of travel blogs that already cover these topics.

So get creative. Some of the most successful travel blogs are actually about one specific place or idea. (Yes, you heard me—travel blogs can be about a single location.)

Are you going to be an expat in Korea? Learn how to start a travel blog and then write one  just for expats traveling to Korea. Do you love scuba diving? Write your blog  only about scuba diving.

Not convinced? Here’s why:

Would you rather be a small fish in a big pond or a big fish in a small pond? Travel blogging is a big pond, and it’s only getting bigger. Instead of flailing for the first couple years (like many do), start blogging on the right foot. Pick your corner now and dominate it.

A targeted audience of 1,000 people who care deeply about your niche and brand is much more valuable than a general audience of 10,000 who only care a little bit.

When it comes time to sell a product or partner with a travel brand (a.k.a.  make money from your travel blog ), your niche and your targeted audience is the selling point. That’s what is going to give your blog value, and that value is what ultimately translates into dollars.

Picking a Name

Once you have a niche, the next step in learning how to start a travel blog is to pick a name. If you’re not sure what to call it, try this exercise: Write two columns on a piece of paper. In one column, write 20 synonyms for your niche. In the other, write 20 synonyms for travel. Now, sit back with a glass of wine and play mix-and-match. You’ll be surprised at how many good ideas you end up with.

With a few ideas in mind (and that’s the hardest part), it’s time to narrow it down. When you’re starting, the name of your travel blog should be unique, memorable, and easy to spell. You want a name that you can use as a brand without having to explain.

Imagine you’re on a talk show and you have 5 seconds to plug your blog—could you do it? Avoid hyphens or strange spellings—this makes your name more confusing to people when you tell them how to find you.

I picked TravelFreak because it’s short, brandable, and it’s memorable. It should mean something to you and it should bring depth to your style and your niche.

Once you’ve got a few ideas for names, let’s make sure the domain name is available. Your domain name is the address that people will type into their web browser. Use this handy tool to check if the name is already taken. If not, make sure you register it quickly!

Sign Up For Web Hosting

After you have a domain name, you’ll need web hosting. If your domain name is the address, your web host is the actual apartment that you rent.

When I was first starting travel blogging, I used Bluehost  to host my website. They’re cheap, reliable, easy to get set up with, and they have 24/7 support in case something should go wrong. To start a travel blog, it only costs $3.95/mo (and they often run specials making it even cheaper).

They’ll register your domain name and set up your web hosting for you. This is the easiest step in learning how to start a travel blog and getting it up and running!

In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t use Bluehost anymore because my website gets too much traffic. They’re perfect for starting a travel blog but not running a really big one. I spend a lot more money on monthly web hosting, but that’s also because I’m kind of a computer nerd and I like fancy things.

If you’re just learning how to start a travel blog, or if you get less than 100,000 page views per month, Bluehost is an ideal choice.

If you’re ready to get started, just click the blue button above, pick a plan, and type in the name of your blog. The Basic Plan is only $3.95/mo and it has everything you need to get started.

Next, pick your term. You’ll have to pay for at least one year up front, but the longer you sign up for, the cheaper the monthly price. If you’re ever not happy, Bluehost will send you a refund for your unused time, no questions asked. They’re pretty good like that.

Finally, choose your add-ons.  In all honesty, you don’t need any of these. You’ll definitely want a backup solution, but there are free ones on the market that are just as easy to use.

After you’ve registered with Bluehost, you should get an email with details on logging into your control panel.

Install WordPress

Now it’s time to set up WordPress!

WordPress is the software that your website will run on. It’s what actually displays the content of your travel blog, and it has a private backend where you write and publish your blog posts, upload photos, adjust the look, and change different settings. One nice thing about WordPress is that MILLIONS of people use it, and there is a huge amount of community support for it. If you Google anything about WordPress, you’ll find an answer. Plus, it was designed for blogs—it’s truly a blogging platform.

Luckily, Bluehost has a fully functional control panel which makes it a cinch to set up and install WordPress on your travel blog. Click the button that says Install WordPress from their control panel and install everything in just one click!

For more detailed instructions, follow their tutorial here .

When the install is complete, you should receive an email with all of your site login information. They’ll tell you where to go to login so you can start designing your site and publishing blog posts!

Spend some time now starting to learn WordPress. Watch some YouTube videos and read support documentation. Browse around the backend and see what’s what. The more you learn about WordPress, the better off you’ll be.

Choose a Theme

Once you’ve had a chance to look around WordPress, it’s time to design your travel blog. WordPress comes with a default theme which, especially without any blog posts, doesn’t look very good. You might be looking at an empty front page of your new blog thinking, “Oh, no. What have I done? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO NOW!?”

Don’t stress. I’m going to run you through it.

Paying for hosting is unavoidable, but luckily there are loads of free themes available. All you need to do is look through the theme repository , pick one that you like, drop it into WordPress, and voila —your new travel blog looks totally different.

If you’re just learning how to start a travel blog, and you’re on a tight budget, I definitely recommend picking a free theme. There are so many amazing options, like Whitish , Orsay , and Divogue .

If you have a bit more of a budget, my recommendation is to use  StudioPress Genesis  to style your new blog. As a former IT technician, I think it’s one of the best theme frameworks that exists.

Yes, there’s a slight learning curve, but they have great documentation, and they show you, step-by-step, how to set everything up.

Their Altitude theme is an especially good choice for a travel blog, but any of them can be adapted to fit the travel aesthetic.

Once you have your theme, just log into WordPress, go to Appearance > Themes and upload the new theme files!

Depending on the theme you chose, the documentation should lead you through the steps on how to go about customizing your travel blog further.

Install WordPress Plugins

When you’re in the process of making a travel blog, plugins are one of the most important parts. In laymen’s terms, plugins add functionality to your travel blog. WordPress has a repository of hundreds of thousands of them that let you further customize your blog and make it work and look just the way you want it to.

Plus, they’re FREE! Everybody loves free.

Despite having easy access to so many plugins, try not to go overboard. Only use the ones you need. It’s easy to add a lot of plugins for the sake of adding extra features, but each plugin you add makes your site load a little bit slower.

These are the ones (all free!) that you definitely want to install.

Akismet – Akismet usually comes preinstalled with WordPress. Don’t delete it—this works like a spam inbox for your blog by putting spam comments out of sight and out of mind.

Jetpack  – Jetpack is a single plugin with a TON of functionality. Jetpack has smaller “sub-plugins” that add various different functionalities to your travel blog. Traffic stats, beautiful photo galleries, extra sidebar widgets, and more, make this a plugin that everybody with a WordPress truly needs.

Subscribe to Comments Reloaded – When someone leaves a comment on your blog post, you receive a notification. Though it’s a bit silly, they don’t actually receive a notification when you (or anybody) replies. This plugin enables that functionality.

Sucuri – Sucuri is like antivirus software for your website. It scans and secures your website and lets you know if your site gets hacked.

TinyMCE Advanced  – The standard post editing screen is good, but it’s not good enough. TinyMCE Advanced makes WordPress look a little bit more like Microsoft Word, which means you have more control over the formatting and style of your blog posts.

WP Smush – Images take up a lot of space, and especially on a travel blog, they’re going to be the number one thing that slows down your website. This plugin makes the file sizes of your images smaller without affecting the quality of the photo.

Yoast SEO – SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a very important part of travel blogging and makes sure your articles show up in Google searches. Yoast SEO is the gold standard plugin.

Advanced WordPress Plugins I Love and Recommend

If you want to further customize your travel blog, there are some more advanced plugins you can install. Most of them are free, but a couple of them do cost a few dollars.

• Black Studio TinyMCE Widget  – Create and edit sidebar widgets using the standard WordPress visual editor.
• Cloudflare – Speed up and secure your website with fancy technology.
• Easy Social Share Buttons   ($19) – The most advanced social sharing plugin on the market.
• Google Analytics for MonsterInsights – Use Google Analytics for advanced insights into your blog traffic.
• Interactive World Maps   ($21) – Create interactive maps on your travel blog.
• Pretty Link Lite – Clean up affiliate links and track clicks on your blog.
• Q2W3 Fixed Widget – Make a widget in your sidebar appear fixed, even when you scroll.
• Relevanssi – Get more relevant search results from the WordPress search function.
• Page Builder by SiteOrigin – A drag-and-drop page builder for your blog.
• WP Retina 2x – Make your travel blog display sharp as a tack on retina displays.
• W3 Total Cache – Optimize and speed up the loading time of your site!

Begin Writing, Building Your Audience and Promoting Your Content

Your blog isn’t perfect, I know. Think of it as a work in progress. This site has been through countless iterations, and I cringe when I think of how it used to look.

Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, is famous for saying, “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” This is sage advice to remember at all stages of making a travel blog—it’s never going to be perfect. And besides, perfection is the enemy of done .

If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late. Reid Hoffman

What to Write About

Just start writing. This is the most important part. Your blog is nothing without words, so write. Write a lot . Write like a maniac, even when you’re not traveling. In fact, write about travel especially when you’re not traveling.

Travel is a broad topic. That’s why starting blogging from scratch can feel daunting. With such a big canvas, it’s hard to know where to start painting.

So decrease the size of your canvas a little bit. You picked a niche, didn’t you? Good. This is where it starts to pay off.

When you’re writing a blog post, since you already have a niche, you know exactly the type of person that you’re writing for. You might be writing for expats traveling to Korea or for travelers who love to scuba dive.

Whenever you’re starting to write a blog post, try to answer one simple question: what value does this article provide? A three-day account of what you did is not valuable to someone else. A three day recommended itinerary, however, is very valuable! See how it’s basically the same article, but framed a little differently?

Building Your Audience

Let’s look at another example: packing lists. They’re a must when starting any travel blog, but depending on where you’re going, packing lists could have almost anything on them!

With a niche, however, you already know exactly what type of packing lists you need to create.

The fact is, even though your travel blog is all about you, in reality, your travel blog is all about the reader.

Again, what value does your blog bring?  It’s an important question to ask yourself. In order to become successful at blogging, you have to show your readers that you care about them. So give them advice. Teach them everything you know. Once they see that you care about them, they’ll start to care about you.

That’s how you build an audience.

Promoting Your Content

But you have to get your content out there first. Unfortunately, if you build it, they will not come. You have to make people come.

This is where social media channels and SEO come in handy. And since there’s a lot to learn on the topics, I recommend the following articles to help when you’re just starting travel blogging. Don’t read them all in one day, though—it will make you dizzy. Come back, read them one-by-one and digest them slowly.

Blogging Tips

• How to Be Smart in a World of Dumb Bloggers   (SmartBlogger)
• 50+ Professional Bloggers Weigh In With Their Top Advice For New Bloggers   (ConvertKit)
• Here’s How To Turn Traveling The World Into Your Job  (BuzzFeed)
• Make Money Blogging: How This Blog Makes $100K per Month  (SmartBlogger)

Content Creation/Content Marketing

• 7 Steps to Reverse Engineer Enormously Popular Content   (Sumo)
• 17 Trigger Words That Work Like Cheat Codes for Getting Your Content Read   (SmartBlogger)
• A Complete Guide to Visual Content: The Science, Tools and Strategy of Creating Killer Images   (Buffer)
• The Advanced Guide to Content Marketing   (Quick Sprout)

Social Media Marketing

• Drive Massive Traffic From Facebook (For Free)   (Sumo)
• Drive Massive Traffic with Instagram Marketing   (Sumo)

Search Engine Optimization

• The Beginner’s Guide to SEO   (Moz)
• How To Do Keyword Research For SEO   (SEO Nick)
• The Noob Friendly Guide To Link Building (Ahrefs)
• Link Building: The Definitive Guide   ( Backlinko )
• An SEO Driven Approach To Content Marketing   (CoSchedule)

Grow Your Audience and Monetize

Your audience won’t grow overnight. Unless you’re a wunderkind, it’s going to take time, and you’re going to have to learn new ways to promote your content and reach new audiences.

But before growing your audience, stop and think for a minute. Ask yourself why ? Why does your audience need to grow? What direct benefit does that have to you and your blog? Are larger numbers going to make you money somehow?

Big numbers are pretty and a lot more fun to look at. And it’s (mostly) true that the more readers you have, the more brands will want to work with you. But making money from your travel blog isn’t only about working with brands. That’s one way, but it requires a lot of traffic, and it’s not really sustainable.

So, what good is an extra thousand visitors if it’s not directly making you money? This is where so many travel bloggers fail. They get stuck, sizzle out and die, disappearing into the oblivion, never to be seen again.

The problem is that they’re working tirelessly towards an intangible goal—bigger numbers—and they burn out, exhausted and broke, unsure of why their travel blog failed.

Try to think of it this way instead: If you only had 100 people coming to your website every month, how could you still make money from them?

Could you sell a product? A service? Ultimately, you need to sell something . Because that’s what a blog is—a marketing tool to help you sell. Your blog is not, in actuality, the product itself.

Taking Your Travel Blog to the Next Level

If you want to go deeper down the rabbit hole, there’s only one logical step forward—you need an insider’s guide to the business of starting travel blogging.

Superstar Blogging is the premier program for learning the ins and outs of running a travel blogging business, by one of the largest travel bloggers on the internet, Nomadic Matt. His website sees more than 1.5 million visitors every month and he makes a six-figure salary from blogging.

And yes, he writes about traveling on a budget 😉

My article on how to start a travel blog is only scratching the very surface—there is a lot more to learn on each of the topics I covered above, and believe me, Matt is the person you want to learn it from. I took The Business of Travel Blogging Course this year and, even as an established, “successful” blogger, he helped me come to some serious realizations about my business.

This is the course that taught me how to make real money from my travel blog.

I know—it’s not a business until you’re making money. And you might not have made any yet. But if you really do want to make money from your travel blog, you need to make a small investment.

Currently, Superstar Blogging costs just $199—an absolute steal when you think about how starting travel blogging could change the trajectory of your entire life.

Superstar Blogging has 10+ hours of expert interviews with huge names in the online marketing industry like Rand Fishkin, Derek Halpern, and Pat Flynn. It also has four blogger case studies from a selection of the largest and most successful travel blogs out there.

If you want to get serious about creating a travel blog, this is how you do it.

If you don’t want to get serious about your blog, that’s okay, too. But if you want to just figure it out on your own, take my advice— don’t . It will take you years to figure it all out. This course is a direct shortcut to everything you need to know.

I didn’t have this course when I started blogging, but I honestly wish I did. And I’m not just saying that.

Just remember, your travel blog is a direct result of the work you put into it. It’s going to take some hustle, and it’s going to take some knowledge, but you’re taking some big steps towards a very exciting future. I can promise you that.

Travel Blogging FAQs

How do i start my first travel blog.

The best way to start a travel blog is to create a Wordpress.com site and just start writing. Make content and get it out there!

Do travel bloggers make money?

With time, luck, and some marketing savvy, travel bloggers can make good money.

How much does it cost to start a travel blog?

You can start a travel blog for free! There are tons of free hosting sites out there, and that’s a great way to get started.

How do I become a travel blogger?

The way to become a travel blogger is to travel, write about it, and post it online. Once you get started you can learn the skills to grow your blog.

Is travel blogging hard?

Travel blogging isn’t hard, but turning your blog into a successful money-making venture is.

Jeremy Scott Foster

Awesome! Love your blog and brand because it’s all about being free, and that’s exactly what I do over at my blog. Each tip is spot on and I dig the travel blogger network you shared with us. Having a framework, and a strong community in place, makes our jobs infinitely easier. Many bloggers have no idea how to make money online let alone making money blogging and need the instruction of pros and experienced vets to get on the blogging straight and narrow. Well done Jeremy!

I’d add to get serious about personal development. The mental game makes or breaks our money making exploits. Many travel bloggers mean well but think lack and limitation. I’m about stretching out a buck but learning how to make more money will you save money helps you enjoy your travel experience that much more. Also, you’ll never need to return home to work a job or to build up your savings again, if you develop your prosperity consciousness.

I’ve been a professional, full time traveling digital nomad for 43 months. I feel the inner game I played – meditating, getting clear, etc – has been the key to my success. I moved into prospering actions and met prospering folks and made more money and detached more from blogging outcomes by diligently working on my mindset. I got serious about doing the inner clearing and because of that my outer results fell into place quite naturally. It takes time and energy to get your mind right, but hey, I’m Blogging from Paradise so it was ALL worth it!

Jeremy, awesome dude! Looking forward to your updates and tweeting from Bali.

Thanks, Ryan! You make a good point. Personal development is a massive contributing factor. The right head-space is an absolute must for blogging! Congrats on your 43 months, and cheers to 43 more! 🙂

Great tips, but I’m wondering if the TRAVEL BLOG SUCCESS is what you personally used to become a successfully monetized and advertised blog? I assume that you didn’t just take these lessons and instantly become successful at SEO etc…Do you have any simple tips towards attracting new viewers?

Hi Adrian! Learning a new skill like SEO, like anything, takes time and practice. But there are a lot of lessons and some insanely valuable advice, tips and tricks which will help you to become a master at your craft.

Hi Jeremy, this post is very helpful and useful, very recommended to many beginners, Thanks mate

Great starting resource for new travel bloggers like myself. Thanks for taking the time to write this post and keep up the good work. One question how did you put together you sidebar banners? I have seen a lot of travel blogs switching over to this style and I like it. I was just on ytravelblog and I see they have the same style. Is is part of Sumome?

Hi Miguel! Are you talking about the four banners that scroll with the content on the sidebar? I created those banners from scratch and they scroll using a plugin called Q2W3 Fixed Widget. Hope that helps!

That was a great post, so helpful. I have been saying this to my partner for weeks! And everyone around me seems to think I am crazy for getting rid of one thing (I don’t use) a day.

It just proves once anything material things never makes us happy.

Again great post.

Sorry, I was talking about the carry on luggage post 🙂

Hey Jeremy, I stumbled across your travel blog as I was researching into my journey of the world and everything it has to offer. I was hoping you could give me some more insight on the basic necessities for traveling. What i mean whats a decent camera to start off with, and lap top. Do you use go pro to capture your travels as well?

Hey Michael! I actually just published a post on the best DSLR camera for traveling. Check it out here: https://travelfreak.com/best-dslr-camera-for-traveling-canon-eos-rebel-sl1/

Thank you, travelfreak! I opened a lil travel blog a few months ago, this article opened my eyes on that “Travel Blog Success, i will def chech it out!

I hope you like it and find as much value from it as I have!

I’m considering to get this started, as I’ve traveled to a few places and want to write about them as well. What type of companies should I try to work with in terms of marketing/promotions? What should I say to get companies to want to partner with me for advertisements/marketing?

You need to build an established brand and audience before trying to work with companies. You can’t just say magic words to “get companies to want to partner with you.” You shouldn’t be trying to dupe brands into working with you—you need to bring value to the table by providing a very real service to them.

Thanks for Travel blog step. I am flowing your 5 steps blog and It is very good. I have abide by this step and i have success. This blog has been very kind to me. I shall flow your any others blog post.

Great source of information Jeremy. This is really a big help on creating a successful travel blog. Thanks

Hosting with BlueHost, an EIG company, will more likely give you headache – not a successful blog! But I understand that they pay a really healthy affiliate commission for every sign-up you can create. I just find it a shame that travel bloggers still push them just for the money – that’s unethical. Specially since your own site in not hosted on Bluehost.

Hi Juergen, I’m sorry you had a poor experience with Bluehost. That’s never been the case for me. I’ve used Bluehost on many sites for many years and, in fact, I use them currently for a couple other sites that I run. I’ve always been transparent about my affiliate partnerships, and the fact that they pay a commission does not affect whether or not I recommend them. There are plenty of other hosting companies who pay much higher commissions, but I choose not to promote them because I don’t believe in their product.

To assume I promote a company ONLY for the commission is obnoxious and distasteful.

Personally I have always stayed away from all EIG hosts. I’m publishing online since 1997 and EIG’s business practices became common knowledge early on (at least among people who then used the internet for anything else but ‘hobby’). Currently I’m a member of enough blogging groups on FB to read at least once a week a new ‘horror story’ about EIG hosting. Things like excessive down times, Bluehost in particular having terrible support when it comes to security breaches (server getting hacked – not necessarily on the site affected by it, they just don’t know how to contain the spread of hacking attempts), HostGator having trouble with in-coming mail, resource management problems on almost all their hosts, etc.). If you’re interested in the latest downfall of a hosting company, Site5, which was bought by EIG last year, read this post https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2016/11/08/the-sinking-of-site5-tracking-eig-brands-post-acquisition/ Towards the end the author adds some interesting quotes from EIG’s own quarterly business report which highlights their internal philosophy.

I’ve really enjoyed following your blog myself! This line: “(plus I’m kind of a computer nerd and I like fancy things)” is broken up in such a way on the screen that I thought it was going to say, “Plus I’m kind of a big deal” and it made me laugh. : ) Glad you’re doing well Jeremy!

Haha you must be reading between the lines and filling in the blanks. I would totally say something like that 😉

Hope you’re doing great, Kelli!

it is really quite detailed article Jeremy. i’ve just started travel blogging, you are the one of my favourite travel blogs and hope to catch you soon 🙂 Thanks for the all tips and information it was good for me.

I’m glad it helped, Enes. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions! Thanks for following 🙂

Great post and amazing tips you shared to start a travel blog. that is amazing way to make money with blog.

wow, this is one of my best articles I will ever read online about starting a travel blog, I start implementing this great tips to my blog, this article really helps, thanks for this amazing write-up.

I think this is so far the most practical guide to travel blogging I’ve come across! Thanks for sharing 🙂

I recently started a solo adventure blog and I’m loving it! Thanks for these tips! I can’t wait to check out all of these articles when I get the chance.

Wow! so beautifully explained.And your story of being a traveler and then a blogger and then finally making money out of it is awe inspiring .Certainly, it needs a lot of hard work and perseverance.Applause!

I agree these are the essential tips which can only make your blog, but the fact is you cannot achieve the success in one night. One must have to right and work for a but longer then definitely your work pays off.

I’ve just bought a new MacBook Pro and now I figured that all of my blogs’ images appear blurry on the Retina Displays 🙁

Thinking about sitting down and re-editing all of my images now… what do you do about this issue?

Also, what if in 5 years or so Apple brings out new Retina displays (like “Super Retina”), and once again these images look blurry – will you have to re-edit and re-upload once again? Would love to hear your thoughts on this Jeremy.

Cheers, Stefan

Hey Stefan! The same thing happened to me. I recommend the plugin WP Retina 2x, which is listed above under “Advanced Plugins.” Unfortunately you may have to re-upload anything that you want to appear sharp as a tack, but I’d say pick your top 5 or 10 posts, adjust them, and just focus on new posts going forward. Good luck!

Hey Jeremy,

Yes I did some research on the WP Retina 2x plugin before – but maybe it might be better to use a CDN service (faster loading times)? Like Mark Wiens is using SmugMug and it seems a better long term solution than a plugin. What’s your thoughts on this?

I read this article fully regarding the resemblance of hottest and preceding technologies, it’s awesome article.

Nice article. It has helped me get started. Thank you. I have just started a one year journey and was looking for a way to document and share my travels with family and friends more so than anything. Especially at this point. I really like your currently in section under your picture. How can I do that? I would appreciate it if you would share. Thanks a lot.

That’s a custom element I created using the [box] shortcode—check your theme documentation for further info!

can you tell us what wordpress theme you use for your blog? That would help a lot.

I’m using a heavily customized theme that’s out of date. A redesign is coming soon, though, based on the Genesis Framework!

I really appreciate you putting up this guide to help aspiring bloggers, such as myself. Thank you!

So glad it was helpful!

Thank you so much for your post, it is so helpful and full of useful content. We have started a blog and your tips and advice has really helped us. Thank you so much!!!

Nicely done you break up the content with graphics that pop and keep the reader engaged – you walk the walk

Thanks Blossom! I appreciate that!

This is really a great post and you shared amazing tips.

Thanks for the post !

Great post its really helpful for me and i will tell my friends about this blog.!

I think this is so far the most practical guide to travel blogging I’ve come across! Thanks for sharing ?

I’m so glad you enjoyed it and hope you found it helpful!

Great post Jeremy, some really helpful tips on here for anyone starting a new blog or updating an existing one. This is one of the most useful guides and advice I have seen online 🙂

Thanks, Kirsty! I’m glad it was helpful! 🙂

Thanks for sharing with us and i need to know either we can use irrelevant images in our travel blog, like images we have capture our self and thanks for sharing us such important tips with us.

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We get a lot tourist and traveling people here in Park City Utah. Thanks for sharing. Great Guide!

This blog has Some interesting valid points! I appreciate on your blog this is well written and the rest of the website is extremely good.

We want an increasing number of facilities for ourselves such as center of living a conventional life, having all the services readily available to us as well as many more.

Such valuable, real information here. Thanks!

This is truly a very good travelling blog, If you’re looking forward to start a travel blogs, this can be helpful for you to start off. Thanks for sharing !!

Hey Jeremy! Thanks for the great advice here! I’m not so sure about what my niche is yet since I’m honestly not sure what kind of traveler I am and I don’t want to pigeonhole myself into something I don’t want. What are your thoughts on a plan of throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks to then figure out what to focus on?

The whole thought of providing customers with rewards for loyalty may be going on for years. Customers will not likely send feedback until you come up with a request from your different people who’ve bought in you. If bid cost is high for a particular keyword, you just could possibly be unable to obtain the clicks you’ll need in your limited budget.

Hi Jeremy Foster

It’s a very useful article about “how to be a travel blogger”. You have provided a very brief information for a travel blogger. Thanks for sharing this article.

Nice guideline, it actually kinda works for other types of blogs too.

Absolutely! This guide to starting a travel blog could work for any kind of blog–food, lifestyle, fashion, anything!

Such a great article! Real motivator to keep going.

Cheers bro!

I’d recommend using GoDaddy instead. They have great customer support. Bluehost is cheaper however.

They might have great support, but as GoDaddy’s CEO is a known wildlife poacher, I won’t support anything they do.

Read more: https://science.time.com/2011/04/04/godaddy-ceo-on-shooting-an-elephant-im-not-sorry/

Bunch of great tips but i would recommend a different hosting provider. Just my two cents 🙂

Understood! To each their own 🙂

Thanks a lot for your advice. That just help me so much. Thanks

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14 Top Travel Blog Platforms Reviewed – Which is the Best?

I make and work with a lot of people wanting to start travel websites, finding something versatile that was quick to deploy with minimal knowledge of code, was crucial.

There are a few platforms where you can share maps, and travel stories easily. Some of them are specifically built just for travel bloggers which are really awesome, as you can share your stories, connect, and log your trips a lot easier.

The most common website platforms were; WordPress, Wix, Blogger, Tumblr and Weebly, but I found more than 20 when I was looking.

I decided to try 7 different travel blogging platforms.

What I did to test:   Made a post, engaged with some people, and tried to make a journey, story, trip or route to see how each one functions and their pros and cons.

Bloggers Platforms

• Atameo (now Mapify)
• Travellerspoint
• Traveldiariesapp

Squarespace

Comparison table, travel blogging sites.

These sites were all the ones I could find that allowed you to create a travel blog, or allow you to write, upload images or create maps of your trips .

Free Travel Sites

The sites below are all travel platforms that you use to create a FREE travel blog. I tried all of them and my favorite way Atameo because of its ease of use.

Want your own beautiful travel website built by proffessionals? Click here to view our web design packages

Travellerspoint Review

Travellerspoint – Plan your Trip – Book your Stay – Share your experience

Travellerspoint Pros

• It has a big and active community already so you can interact with others.
• It does everything that all the other platforms do.

Travellerspoint Con

• The interface is a little older than others but not hindering.

Atameo Review

Atameo – It’s a travel blogging platform that is built to easily log your trips.

Atameo Pros

• Can add photos and you are able to add trips to your blog.
• Really nice to plan your trips.
• You can’t create a page and it isn’t a very active community from what I can see.

Photler Review

Photler – a place to share your travel photos

Photler Pros

• The system is nice and clean, almost beautiful.
• The platform makes creating sites attractive & very easy.

Photler Cons

• Pretty limited in terms of templates/themes.
• Doesn’t have a lot of creative space
• Requires payment

Triponto Review

Tripoto – Global Community for Travelers

Triponto Pros

• Can create posts and trips.
• It’s fairly well established so it has a real community.

Triponto Cons

• More focused on planning trips
• Write-ups don’t seem to get as much attention.

Livenguide Review

Livenguide – Find a local Guide, search for a Tour, or become a Guide yourself.

Livenguide Pros

• Able to book travels with members, as well as meet up with members from all over the world.
• You can make money while meeting people and exploring countries.

Livenguide Con

• Unable to translate posts and reviews that aren’t in English. Therefore limiting the guides you would be able to work with.
• More about becoming a guide than a travel platform.

Jauntlet Review

Jauntlet – Tell stories of where you’ve been and share plans of where you will be.

Jauntlet Pros

• You can log how far you’ve traveled as well as the days, which allows you to see who the most experienced travelers are.
• You can allow friends to edit your blogs, adding more content and substance to your posts.

Jauntlet Cons

• Site navigation could use some work.
• Finding a person is pretty hard because the search criteria are for cities alone.

Traveldiariesapp Review

Traveldiariesapp – Create your own travel diary to capture and share your travel

Traveldiariesapp Pro

• You can make long and detailed write-ups that are laid out in chapters, this gives the effect of reading a short, personal story.

Traveldiariesapp Cons

• Unable to follow other writers (dairies).
• All write-ups are also anonymous.
• Unable to link to any other blogs or posts that you may have written.

Best Blogging Site to Start a Travel Blog

When starting a travel blog, the first thing most people try to figure out is which site or blogging site they are going to use to make it. There are many options out there, but in this day and age, there is only one winner, WordPress.

WordPress has long been recognized as the go-to platform for making your own website or blog. A lot of companies and businesses have started their websites on WordPress, and it is the platform of choice for almost every blogger across the globe.

If you have already decided to use WordPress, brilliant, if you are on the fence or have heard better recommendations for using other platforms, this post is for you. We will break down why WordPress is the best platform for your travel blog.

It is Free and Open Source

One of the biggest benefits of using WordPress is that it is free. You can use the basic platform and download plugins and themes for free. There are some more advanced themes and plugins that cost money, but for testing and trying out, it is completely free.

As well as being free, WordPress is open source. Open source meaning it is being constantly upgraded, improved and tested, and with hundreds of thousands of people across the globe specializing in WordPress, world-class support is only a click away.

Very Beginner Friendly

WordPress is designed to be used by anyone, and that means ANYONE. Whether you are a 55-year-old mom with zero blogging or CMS knowledge, or a 13-year-old wanting to start a blog on his favorite TV series, you can use WordPress with little to no problems.

WordPress does not require any coding knowledge to use or customize, if you want a new feature on your site, it is as simple as downloading and activating a plugin which will do all the complicated work for you.

WordPress can easily be called a drag-and-drop site, as most of the hard work is done automatically, and the most you have to do is input your information into the relevant box or drop-down, simple.

Themes and Plugins

One of the huge benefits of WordPress is that it allows third-party designers and programmers o upload their own themes and plugins, this means that their library for these aspects is enormous.

There is a theme that will suit any type of blog, blogger, and personality, and each is fully customizable. You can easily take a theme that has been downloaded 100 000 times and turn it into something completely unique.

The plugins are just as versatile. There is a plugin for absolutely everything you may want or need your blog to do or to look like. Whether you want your social media buttons on the bottom of the page, or to keep track of how many clicks you get between lunch and 2 pm on a Thursday, there is a plugin that will do it perfectly.

All these themes and plugins allow you to turn your site into an e-commerce store, a photography site, a hotel booking site, whatever you may need your website to do, you can customize it accordingly.

All these themes and plugins come with their own support system from the designers themselves, allowing you to have every query or question answered, as well as getting inside tips on how to fully utilize each theme or plugin.

Security Features

Considering WordPress is used to start important websites, blogs, and e-commerce stores that handle lots of money and contain a massive database of personal information, the site was designed with high security in mind from the get-go.

If you are still uneasy about security, there are many plugins that will add layer upon layer of security to your site to give you even more peace of mind. Security is not a problem with WordPress, and they ensure, with constant updates, that you are constantly protected.

Ranking in Search Engines

If you are making a blog for your business or company, you will most likely want it to be viewed and seen by as many people as possible. To do this on the internet, you need SEO to optimize your site to make it as search engine friendly as possible.

Once again, WordPress has these bases covered from the start. WordPress automatically ensures your website is fast and responsive and optimized for mobile platforms, keys for great SEO.

If this isn’t enough, there are a host of SEO plugins and tools you can install to ensure your SEO is always at its best. The best one on the market right now is Yoast SEO, which covers all the basic SEO bases as well as many more. Obviously, like most of WordPress, it is easy to use and understand.

Unparalleled Support

It has been mentioned numerous times just how easy WordPress is to use and how easy it is to set up a fully functioning website. There will, however, be sticking points that you just can’t fix, this is the WordPress community comes in.

WordPress has a massive support community that covers absolutely every aspect of the platform, and no matter what you are stuck on, there will be someone who can help you fix it.

WordPress have their own official support forums, online tutorials, and courses, support forums for each and every theme and plugin, as well as WordPress blogs, that go into every tiny detail of every aspect of the site.

WordPress is without a doubt the best platform for your travel blog or any blog for that matter. If you started reading this feeling unsure if it was the right option for you, it is clear that it is not only the right option but the only option too.

Main Blogging Platforms Review

All of the platforms above can be used to start a blog, but the websites/platforms below are specifically designed for you to have more control and customization – which is really important down the line.

If you plan on monetizing your travel blog, I would recommend starting it on a platform that you have control over and own, such as the ones mentioned below.

Tumblr is a good option if you just want to share photos and videos in a very simple and easy-to-use form (lacks things like plugins and customization).

Much easier to use (no coding required, just drag & drop content around). Your website will be a lot less customizable when compared to using WordPress, as you can’t modify the codes to your website.

This platform doesn’t have a free plan really, so it’s hard to get properly acquainted with it or take the leap. It’s easier to use than some of the platforms but it lacks customization. There is also not that much back-end maintenance with this kind of platform.

Blogger is one of the simpler platforms and that’s why it is pretty popular. It’s a platform that many bloggers start out on, then maybe move onto a more customizable platform or something that suits your needs better.

WordPress – More flexibility and highly customizable. Requires ongoing maintenance, higher initial learning curve, and more likely to have a higher financial commitment over the long run. Costs are less predictable, depending on whether you need to hire developers.

Medium is great if you want to share stories with nice imagery and it’s one of the cleanest. But you cannot log trips or connect with fellow travelers on this platform as easily as you can on other platforms.

WordPress is by far the best, I have tried many platforms in my quest to build the best travel website or get links for SEO.

If you not very serious about your blog and its just to show people where you going and what you up to, then I recommend any of the above but If you plan on having a blog for an extended period I would recommend getting good WordPress hosting from Siteground  or any other host which allows you the easy install and setup.

I think all the platforms have their pros and cons. It is hard to say which one of them is the best. However, I will continue to use each platform to log some trips and see if one particularly stands out from the rest.

In the end, I went to WordPress to start my new travel blog.

What do you think?

Is there a platform that you are using that is working well for you, or have I missed something? Leave it in the comments 🙂

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Free Blogging Platforms to Start Blog in 2024 (Top 10 Picks)

Home » Blog » Free Blogging Platforms to Start Blog in 2024 (Top 10 Picks)

Are you a travel blogger looking for the best free blogging platform to share your adventures and experiences?

No need to search any longer, as we’ve gathered a list of the 10 best free blogging platforms that allow you to start your travel blogging journey more easily.

All these free blogging platforms for travel bloggers let you take advantage of an attractive and user-friendly blog site without the need for any technical expertise.

Are you thinking of creating a travel and tour booking website within minutes, without any hassle of coding and hiring highly paid developers?

You can   Get WP Travel Pro  to start creating a travel booking website instantly.

Little things can matter when you are about to start a travel blog like using the Best Tour Operator Plugin that allows you to create a travel website within minutes versus spending money on hiring highly paid developers consuming weeks of time

You can explore and test the best travel agency themes and templates  to find the one that perfectly aligns with your website. This way, you can ensure your website suits your needs and preferences seamlessly.

Starting a blog may seem daunting, but with the right platform, you can easily build your blog and start publishing blog posts that rank highly on search engines.

Several free blogging platforms, such as WordPress, Blogger, and Wix, have themes you can change and easy-to-use interfaces that can help you make interesting content and grow your audience.

When choosing the platform that will best meet your needs and goals, it is important to think about what those are.

Also, with open-source platforms like WordPress, you can add free themes and plugins to improve the features and functionality of your blog.

So, choose the best travel blog platform for your needs and start telling the world about your adventures! 

Without further delay, let’s look at the Top 10 Free Blogging Platforms That Offer Customization and Flexibility for Travel Bloggers right away.

You might be interested : How to Make Money from Travel Blogs in 2024? (Earn More Now!)

Table of contents

Things to evaluate while choosing the best free travel blog platforms.

• 1. WordPress.com

3. WordPress.Org

• 5. Ghost.org:

Disadvantages

9. strikingly, 10. squarespace, conclusion:.

Choosing the best blogging platform is important, as each platform has its own set of features and functionality. But how to find out the best Free Blogging Platform for Travel bloggers?

To ensure that your content is highlighted in the best way possible, there are several things to consider before choosing a platform which are:

User-Friendly and Customizable:

A good travel website builder should have a number of beautiful themes that show off your travel photos in high resolution which is user-friendly and customizable.

Mobile Friendly:

A mobile-responsive design means that your website should be easy to use on any phone, tablet, or desktop computer.

Best travel blog platforms that are free:

Many websites have paid plans, but the best ones don’t have any tricks or hidden costs that catch you by surprise. The free plan can be used to share your travel content in the free travel blog platforms.

Easy to use:

You don’t want to waste your time learning how to code. You don’t need to know how to code to make changes to your website using drag-and-drop tools.

If you don’t want to deal with a slow, buggy website that causes you to be frustrated all the time, go for a website that has a good response time.

Flexibility:

Blogging platforms vary greatly in their features and capabilities, so it’s important to find one that can adapt to your needs. 

You’ll need the flexibility to make adjustments and additions to your blogs as it expands and attracts more readers.

Choose a blogging platform that gives you the freedom to make changes as your blog starts to develop.

Choose a blogging platform based on readability :

To help visitors find content, make your blog easy to read and navigate. This engages them and boosts your website’s search engine ranking, giving you an edge over competitors.

To maximize readability, choose a blogging platform with a simple interface and clear navigation.

In the end, a good travel website should help you share your travel experiences and stories in a way that looks great and is easy to use, without any hidden costs or technical headaches.

Therefore, it is important to choose the best free travel blog platforms that provide excellent customer service and has a user-friendly interface to ensure a hassle-free experience.

With the best travel blog platform, you can showcase your adventures and inspires others to explore the world.

List of Top 10 Free Blogging Platforms in 2024

Building a website can be a daunting task, especially if you don’t know how to do it. Thanks to website builders, anyone can start a travel blog website quickly and easily.

But because there are so many options, it can be hard to choose the best travel blog platform for your needs and level of skill.

Don’t worry we have got you covered with the best free travel blog platforms where you can easily start your travel blog and attract your audiences.

We’ll walk you through various blogging platforms in this guide so you can choose one wisely and start your blog.

Whether you’re just starting out or have been writing for years, we’ll guide you through the maze of Free Blogging platforms for Travel bloggers to find the one that’s right for you.

So, the following are some of the best free travel blog platforms that every travel blogger should know:

1. WordPress.com

WordPress.com is a very popular free blogging platform that millions of bloggers around the world use.

It’s easy to see why it’s so popular: it has a simple interface, a wide range of themes and plugins, and strong customization tools.

The free plan from WordPress.com gives you 3GB of storage space, basic design customization, and a subdomain.

But you’ll have to pay for a paid plan if you want to get rid of ads, use custom domains, or use more advanced features.

• Beginner-friendly.
• No need for technical setup and hosting
• Excellent value for money (There is also a free version.)
• Extremely simple to use.
• Free with a WordPress domain name.

Disadvantages:

• WordPress.com is the rightful owner of your blog.
• There are no customs or plugins allowed.
• There are no advertisements planned for this blog.
• Flexibility is limited.
• Free: Free with 3GB storage and a WordPress.com subdomain.  It has restricted functionality and WordPress.com advertisements.

The $ 4-per-month Personal plan offers a personalized domain, 6GB of storage, and minimal design customization.  WordPress.com advertisements remain.

The Premium plan costs $8 per month and gives you 13GB of storage, access to premium themes, advanced customization options, and the ability to get rid of WordPress.com ads.

• Business – e-commerce:

The e-commerce plan costs $45 per month and has all the features of the Business plan plus the ability to accept payments and sell products on your site.

Recommended for:

Travel bloggers enjoy WordPress.com’s user-friendly design, numerous blogging functionality, and customization possibilities.

Wix is a popular website builder that also offers a Free Blogging Platform for Travel bloggers. It offers a drag-and-drop interface, a wide range of templates, and advanced customization options.

You can use a custom domain, add social media integration, and access SEO tools. However, the free plan comes with Wix branding, limited storage, and ads on your blog.

Creating a blog with Wix is simple and quick. You may pick and choose from a plethora of pre-made best travel agency WordPress themes and handy extras, and you’ll always get helpful assistance from the product’s friendly staff. 

The built-in search engine optimization (SEO) tools and statistics in its blogging platform can help you boost your site’s traffic and conversion rates. 

Wix also offers a secure hosting solution with an uptime guarantee of 99.98 percent.

Both Wix and Squarespace serve as platforms for blogs, but we favor Squarespace owing to its superior user interface, pre-made designs, and other features. 

Even now, Wix is an excellent option for bloggers who place a premium on portability and customization. But it’s important to know that the free plan has a few restrictions. 

You’ll have to put the Wix logo on your site, and your blog will have ads. 

Also, the free plan only gives you a certain amount of storage space, so if you want to publish a lot of content, you may need to switch to a paid plan. 

Even with these restrictions, Wix can be a great choice for bloggers who want a platform that is easy to use and can be customized.

Advantages:

• Easy to customize
• Many third-party programs and layouts are accessible.
• Simple to set up regardless of your technical ability level.
• A good and easy-to-use website builder with drag-and-drop functionality
• It’s set up perfectly for search engines.
• Designs and templates are locked down and cannot be modified.
• Blog Editor isn’t as good as other paid programs.
• To remove ads and WIX branding from your blog, you must select a premium account.

Includes Wix ads, a Wix subdomain, and limited storage and bandwidth.

• Connect Domain:

Costs $4.50 per month and includes 500 mb storage and 1 GB bandwidth, as well as access to the Wix Ascend business and marketing tools.

• Combo Plan:

The Combo Plan costs $8.50 per month and includes a custom domain, additional storage and bandwidth, and the ability to remove Wix ads.

• Unlimited Plan:

Costs $12.50 per month and includes unlimited bandwidth, 10 GB storage, a professional logo, and access to Site Booster and Visitor Analytics apps.

Costs $24.50 per month and includes priority support, VIP support, and even more storage and bandwidth.

Wix is an ideal website-building platform for small business owners, freelancers, artists, bloggers, and those wanting to create an online store. It offers templates, integrations, and features to help users create professional-looking websites.

WordPress.Org is the most popular CMS system. It is easy to use and has a lot of features that can help you make a professional website.

WordPress makes it easy to get your website up and running. You can add a custom domain and connect it to social media sites. 

You can easily add pictures and videos to your posts, and you can change the way your website looks with the help of website builders, plugins, and design templates. 

As an open-source platform, WordPress also gives you a lot of ways to change and grow your site.

• The largest blogging community in the world.
• Extensive online content and resources for education.
• Blogger-friendly platform.
• Easy to customize
• A wide variety of plug-ins developed by third parties are available.
• A number of different drag-and-drop page builders
• A low initial cost set-up
• Exceptional customer service
• Consistent updates
• Simple to discover free tutorials and useful material on YouTube, etc.
• The cost of plugins and extras, like design templates, speed optimization services, page builders, and others, can easily be more than you expected.
• A website with a lot of content (photos, videos, etc.) could become slow very quickly if the person who made it doesn’t have the right skills.
• Free WordPress editions will have WordPress-related ads.
• Beginners may have a bit of a learning curve.
• You cannot use a custom domain name with this platform unless you purchase a premium package.

WordPress.org is an open-source content management system that can be downloaded and installed on a web server.  So, WordPress.org itself doesn’t have any pricing plans.

• Web hosting:

You will need to pay for web hosting to store your WordPress website’s files and database.

• Pre-made themes:

Pre-made themes are a great option for those who want to save time and money on web design. However, it costs from $0 to $200 (a one-time charge).

• Domain name:

You will need to purchase a domain name for your website (e.g., www.example.com), which starts at $2.95 per month.

• Themes and plugins:

While WordPress.org itself is free, some themes and plugins may come with a cost of $0—$1,000 (an ongoing or one-time charge).

• Developer fees:

If you hire a developer to create or customize your WordPress site, you may need to pay their fees, which range from $0—$1,000 (a one-off cost).

WordPress.org is a popular and flexible blogging platform that is used by almost half of all websites on the internet right now. 

Because of this, it’s a great option for both beginners and experts who want to make their own website or blog.

4. Blogger

Blogger.com is one of the oldest blogging platforms that is still used today. It is owned by Google.

It’s not as complicated as some other platforms, which makes it a great choice for people who may not be very tech-savvy.

That’s the main reason it’s one of the Free Blogging Platform for Travel bloggers which can be used to post your regular content.

When you use Blogger.com, it’s easy for anyone with a Google account to set up a blog.

Blogger.com delivers on its promise of a free and user-friendly platform where bloggers can simply publish their views and ideas, even though it may not have as many design elements or themes as its rivals.

• Blogs may be created and published quickly and effortlessly, and coding is not required. 
• With Google’s dependable method, you have the extra benefit of dependability.
• Blogger is entirely free.
• Google services like analytics and AdSense are integrated.
• Excellent speed and Google indexing
• simple blogging tools and features
• There are a few third-party templates.
• limited customization and layout choices
• There are no plugins or other add-ons besides the Google features that are built in.
• The free edition does not get you access to a unique custom domain.
• If your blog doesn’t follow Google’s rules, Google could suspend it or even close your Blogger.com account. 
• As your blog grows, you cannot upgrade to new features.
• You receive low-quality templates with few design possibilities.

Google’s Blogger is a Free Blogging Platform for Travel bloggers, but users may pay for additional features.

This could include buying a domain name, paying for web hosting if they self-host, or hiring a developer or designer to customize their blog beyond the platform’s basic functionality.

Blogger is one of the best travel blog platforms for free but the costs depend on the user’s needs.

Blogger is an easy-to-use platform for blogs.  Its dashboard and interface make it great for new bloggers who want to share their work online.

5. Ghost.org:

Ghost is a free and open-source blogging platform that focuses on speed, safety, and ease of use.  It has a clean, simple design, a built-in editor, and advanced options for personalization.

Ghost is perfect for bloggers who want to write in a distraction-free environment and have full control over their blog. 

But setting up and maintaining Ghost requires technical knowledge, and a third-party hosting provider must be used.

• Performance and durability
• A clean and simple user interface.
• Developed exclusively for blog writers,
• A one-stop shop, no setup required (the closed-source version)
• Insufficient personalization and adaptability
• More expensive than comparable products
• Choosing the (open-source version) involves a difficult installation process.
• Basic Plan:

This plan costs $11 per month, billed annually, and $9 per month, billed monthly, for a single user. 

It includes email support, hosting on Ghost’s servers, a custom domain name, and standard built-in integrations.

• Creator Plan:

This plan costs $25/month if you pay for it once a year, or $31/month if you pay for it every month. 

It has all the features of the Basic Plan and a few more, such as multiple staff users, content only for members, and integration with Zapier.

This plan costs $50/month if you pay for it once a year, or $63/month if you pay for it every month. 

• Business Plan:

This plan costs $199/month if you pay for it yearly, or $249/month if you pay for it monthly. It can be used by as many people as you want. 

It has everything in the Standard Plan and more, like custom integrations, priority support, and help with getting started.

Ghost.org provides a simple and efficient way to create and publish content for bloggers, writers, and online publications.

Medium is a distinct Free Blogging Platform for Travel bloggers that distinguishes itself from the others on the list. 

It’s a community for writers, bloggers, journalists, and experts to share their expertise while earning a commission based on readership. 

Unlike traditional blogs, Medium operates more like a social media platform, with users having a profile but not owning their domain or content rights. Medium is more professional than other content-focused social media platforms like Tumblr, emphasizing long-form content that can be indexed by Google.

What truly distinguishes Medium are its built-in communities of readers who can browse various content categories and subscribe to your profile.

This encourages a personal connection between the writer and the reader, which is uncommon on regular blogs.

Furthermore, Medium has a partner program that allows writers to be compensated for their work. 

This built-in monetization tool makes it an excellent side-hustle option, even if you have no monetization experience. 

To attract readers and generate revenue, you can solely focus on creating unique and original blog content.

• It is a great way to keep people interested.
• It is simple to use and requires no prior knowledge of coding.
• Provides access to their established online community and readers.
• This platform has an easy-to-use design and navigation.
• Medium compensates its contributors based on the amount of readers they have.
• Allows you to concentrate solely on writing.
• If you stop updating your blog, you could lose readers.
• You do not own the domain name.
• Limited monetization options.
• When it comes to personalization and design, it has few options.
• You’re simply blogging on someone else’s platform 
• Very few customization options are available, and the available features are severely restricted.
• Medium is in charge of the audience. 
• There is a ban on promoting your own product.

Pricing:  

Medium is a platform that allows people to freely post their material.  But the website also has a partner program that allows writers to earn money from their posts based on readership. 

Writers must pay a $5 monthly fee to join this program, which gives them access to special features.

Moreover, Medium has a membership program called “Medium Membership,” which gives members access to exclusive content, ad-free browsing, and other benefits for a fee of $5 per month or $50 per year.

It’s worth noting that while Medium is currently free to use, its pricing or features may change at any time. Therefore, it’s advisable to visit their website for the latest information.

Also, Medium has a membership program called “Medium Membership.” For $5/month or $50/year, members can get access to exclusive content, browse without seeing ads, and get other perks. 

Even though Medium is free to use right now, its prices or features could change at any time. So, if you want the most up-to-date information, it’s best to check out their website.

Medium is an ideal platform for writers, bloggers, journalists, and experts who want to share their knowledge and earn money based on readership.

The platform is also good for people who like to read long articles about different topics.

Side Note: If you are interested in creating a new word press travel blog then check out our guide on Steps to Create a WordPress Travel Blog In 2022.

7. Tumblr

The popular microblogging network Tumblr is currently owned by Automattic and hosts over 529 million blogs. 

Tumblr is different from other blogging sites because it works more like a social networking site where users can post multimedia and other content. 

Users can subscribe to other blogs, reblog, like posts, and leave comments on other blogs. Like social networking sites, Tumblr users can add tags to their posts to help their followers find posts about topics that are important to them.  Users can even set up their posts to go out at a later time.

• Easy to use
• Tumblr supports a wide range of multimedia content, including images, videos, and GIFs.
• Tumblr allows users to interact with other bloggers, follow their blogs, and reblog their content.
• Tagging system
• Customization
• Limited audience
• Tumblr’s policies and guidelines can be restrictive, and users may have limited control over their content.
• Lack of monetization options
• Overwhelming amount of content
• Not ideal for long-form content

Tumblr is a free blogging platform that doesn’t require any upfront payment. But, if you’d like to alter your blog’s visual presentation, you can do so by purchasing a unique theme.

It’s open to anyone who wants to utilize Tumblr to share and discover original and interesting posts. In particular, it is well-liked by those who utilize visual or written media to express themselves creatively.

Weebly is another website builder that offers a free blogging platform.  It has an intuitive user interface, several pre-made layouts, and some basic personalization settings.

A bespoke domain, including social networking, and search engine optimization tools are all available. If you want to manage your Weebly blog on the go, you can do it with the help of the platform’s mobile app. With the free plan, you’ll have to put up with Weebly’s logo, ad placement, and a storage cap.

• Weebly has powerful features built in, such as inventory management, shipping that is built in, and more.
• The drag-and-drop builder makes it easy to set up your blog.
• The free package includes ad slots, subdomain names, and 500 Mb storage.
• It provides numerous customization choices for creating your ideal website.
• The free Weebly plan has a lot of Weebly branding.
• A free plan does not allow you to utilize your own custom domain name.

Weebly offers a range of pricing plans to suit different needs and budgets:

Weebly’s free plan includes basic features like a drag-and-drop website builder, customizable templates, and free hosting. However, it comes with limited storage and branding.

• Personal Plan:

Weebly’s Personal plan costs $10 per month (annually) and includes a free custom domain, unlimited storage, and the ability to remove Weebly branding.

• Professional Plan:

Weebly’s Professional plan costs $12 per month (when billed annually) and includes advanced features like site search, password protection, and video backgrounds.

Weebly is a great choice for photographers, writers, designers, and web developers who want to show off their work on a blog with a visual focus.

Strikingly is a free blogging platform that includes a website builder.  Its mobile-responsive design, customization capabilities,

and wide range of themes make it ideal for bloggers who want to establish a modern, professional-looking blog without having to learn to code. 

• User-friendly interface:
• Strikingly templates are mobile-responsive, ensuring that your website looks great on all devices.
• Strikingly lets you make your website stand out by giving you a variety of templates, design options, and ways to change the layout.
• Strikingly has e-commerce features that let users set up an online store and sell things online.
• Strikingly has some options for customization, but it may not be flexible enough for advanced users who want to make very unique websites.
• Strikingly has limited integration options with third-party apps and services, making it difficult for users to integrate their website with other tools they use

This plan is completely free and provides minimal capabilities for developing a basic website or blog.  It comes with 5 GB of monthly bandwidth, 500 MB of storage, and strikingly branding.

• Limited Plan:

The Limited Plan costs $8 per month (billed annually) and has extra features like a custom domain, more storage (10 GB), and the ability to set up a simple online store.

The Pro Plan costs $16 per month (billed annually) and has all of the same features as the Limited Plan plus advanced analytics, unlimited bandwidth, and more storage space (up to 100 GB). 

The Pro Plan also lets you add password protection to pages and make a website with more than one page

The VIP Plan costs $49 per month (billed annually) and has all of the same features as the Pro Plan plus advanced analytics, unlimited bandwidth, and more storage space.

Strikingly is suitable for bloggers and website owners who want a user-friendly platform with basic features and limited customization options.

Squarespace is the most popular closed-source blogging platform. In recent years, it has gotten a lot of attention because it is easy to use and has unique design features. 

With a closed-source blogging platform like Squarespace, the technical parts of running a blog site are taken care of for you, so you can focus on the creative parts. 

Squarespace has become very popular among photographers and other artists who want to make an online portfolio.

This is because the blogging platform offers high-quality photo and video layouts without slowing down the speed of your blog site.

• Mobile friendly
• Add-on for the email system
• You can choose from more than 140 different blog and website themes and layouts.
• Excellent Search Engine Optimization Tools
• Tools for outside branding like Unfold and Video Creator
• great user-friendly page builder
• Addition of a store or online shop
• It eliminates all the hassles and technological worries associated with maintaining a blog.
• Great community and educational resources.
• Low adaptability
• Recurring monthly payment
• The restrictions of a closed-source platform exist.
• Personal plan:

This plan costs $16 per month (or $144 per year with annual billing) which includes Mobile optimized websites, Templates to fit every need, and a free custom domain

• Business plan:

This plan costs $26 per month (or $216 per year with annual billing) which includes Mobile optimized websites, Templates to fit every need, a free custom domain, advanced website analytics, and fully integrated e-commerce

• Basic Commerce plan:

The basic plan costs $30 per month (or $312 per year with annual billing) which includes the same features as the business plan with added two features like Checkout on your domain and Powerful merchandising.

• Advanced Commerce plan:

This plan costs $46 per month (or $480 per year with annual billing) which includes some added features from the basic commerce plan.

For people and companies looking for a user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing closed-source platform with distinctive design elements, Squarespace is a fantastic choice.

In conclusion, these are the top 10 free blogging platforms that offer customization and flexibility to bloggers.

Each platform has its strengths and weaknesses, so it’s important to choose the one that suits your needs and preferences.

Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced blogger, you can start a blog for free and showcase your creativity to the world.

By using these best free travel blog platforms, you can focus on creating quality content and building a community, without worrying about technical details or costs.

There are many free best travel blog platforms available to assist you to get started if you are interested in keeping a travel journal and sharing your experiences with others.

Our plugins are designed to improve the performance and functionality of your website, ensuring that your travel content is showcased in the best possible way.

Check out our plugin collection today and best of luck with your travel blogging journey!

If you liked this article, then subscribing to our  YouTube Channel  for WordPress video tutorials would be the cherry on top.

You can also find us on  Facebook ,  Instagram,   Twitter,  Linkedin , TikTok , Pinterest , Reddit , and our dedicated engaging Facebook user community ,

Further, if you have any queries, please submit them to our  contact page .

Get  WP Travel Pro  and start creating your travel and tour booking website within minutes without any hassle of coding

Yam Bahadur Chhetri is a content writer and vivid contributor to the WordPress community and a WordPress enthusiast with an experience of 7+ years in the relative field. He also loves to develop WordPress Themes, Plugins, and custom WordPress development for clients.

This roundup of free blogging platforms for 2024 is a goldmine for aspiring bloggers. It’s the perfect starting point to find the best tools to kickstart your blogging journey!

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How To Start a Travel Blog: From Creating a Website to Making Money

Quick Summary ↪ This article guides you through starting a travel blog including selecting a niche > Buying a domain name > Setting up hosting > Installing WordPress > Choosing a theme > Enhancing your blog and setting up necessary pages. Starting a travel blog today to potentially earn a steady income.

Do you love sitting on the beach and writing stories about your amazing journeys? Like the idea of sharing your travels with others?

It can be an overwhelming feeling when you know readers will love your blog posts.

Even better, if writing a travel blog generates a steady income you can use it to fund your next adventure.

It’s a dream life most of us would love to live. But is it really possible?

Yes, it’s very much achievable!

Travel blogging can take you places you love to go without worrying about getting back to work. Because this is your work!

As fun-life as it seems, it’s a serious job. Like any other business, it needs lots of work, dedication, consistency and lots of planning.

We have seen a number of travel enthusiasts using some basic business principles and chasing the dream of becoming successful travel bloggers.

Their passion gave them a life they always wanted to have – to explore the world, have fun and make money while doing it.

You could do it too.

Leave the 9-5 behind and travel for a living while writing about it. We’ll show you how.

Our guide on how to start a travel blog extends beyond building a fantastic website.

It explains the reason behind starting a travel blog, how to turn it into a business, how successful travel bloggers make it work, and how to make money out of it.

So grab a cup of coffee and relax!

By the end of this guide, you will know everything you need to know to pursue your dream career.

Step 7: Set up the necessary pages for your travel blog

Reasons to start a travel blog.

Travel blogging has become a very saturated space. Newbies are joining the industry at an ever-increasing rate believing that it is a quick rich scheme and vanish just as fast.

If the “why” for starting a travel blog is only to make quick money, then you may need to reconsider your options.

It requires a lot of work and serious dedication to make it a success. It’s not just sitting on the beach and taking selfies. It requires many, many hours of effort.

Here are some of the reasons to become a travel blogger:

1. Passion is the key

Passion and consistency should be the driving force of everything you do. If you have the passion and the urge to regularly share your travel experiences through writing, photos, and videos, you have a reason to be a travel blogger.

Another strong reason to become a travel blogger is a passion to help others have memorable journeys.

2. Be unique

There are thousands of travel blogs out there, but only a few get attention. Your blog must offer unique travel content that your audience will enjoy.

If you can find a unique voice or viewpoint or offer something other travel bloggers don’t, it should help you gain readership and make a success of your blog.

Curb Free with Cory Lee , for example, is the passionate voice of Cory who travels the world in a wheelchair.

The award-winning travel blogger has been featured on CNN, National Geographic, Los Angeles Times and several other platforms for his heroic and unstoppable journey.

He inspires others who use wheelchairs as well as those who don’t.

He provides tips on how others can fulfill their travel dreams and turn perceived weaknesses into strengths.

3. Give back to the community

Whatever you do and achieve, if you want to give back to the community and help fellow travelers to make their journeys comfortable, you should start a travel blog.

You can help solve travel problems through your tips and guides and offer actionable advice for travelers. The community doesn’t forget when you help them.

4. Support the travel industry

A flourishing travel industry can help everyone grow together. As a travel blogger, if you are willing to play a role to support whatever segment of the industry you are in, travel blogging will pay you back.

For example, one way to help the industry would be to support small tour operators through your blog. Or if you are a wildlife photographer, highlighting conservation issues or other worthy causes can help the world at large as well as your blog.

5. Business acumen

Travel blogging isn’t about publishing your experiences and waiting for people to read them. It’s a complete business that involves planning, marketing, selling, and everything businesses need.

If you can learn the ins and outs of business skills and transform your blog into a successful online travel business, you have a stronger chance of success.

6. Willing to learn

Travel is a source of learning itself. If you believe in learning new things every day, travel blogging is a great way to provide you with that knowledge.

For example, as a typical traveler, you might ask your tour guide a few simple questions about who made the Eiffel Tower and when.

But as a professional travel blogger, you will likely be much more interested in discovering local stories the world does not yet know.

7. Travel and tourism are booming

While these reasons should be compelling enough for you to become a travel blogger, there is one more reason to consider it.

The United States is among the top 5 tourist nations on earth. The country recorded 45 million tourists in 2020, ranking fourth worldwide .

In the same year, the US generated $84.21 billion in the tourism sector alone. This shows a lot of potential for anyone joining the travel and tourism industry.

In 2019, New York ranked 11th in the world for being among the top tourist destinations in the world, attracting 14 million tourists.

How to start a travel blog step by step

When we talk about travel blogging for beginners, it also includes website creation, customization, and optimization.

Here is a summary of what we will explain below, step by step:

• Select a niche for your travel blog. It’s helpful to work on a topic you are comfortable talking about
• Buying a domain is the most basic requirement for starting a travel blog
• Web hosting provides you with a space where you can build your website
• Setting up WordPress as the choice of platform is the right decision you will take for making a travel blog
• Choosing a theme is a way to give your website a look you and your readers will love
• Adding essential WordPress plugins will add the desired functionality and features to your blog

Follow this step-by-step process and you will have a solid foundation to begin your travel blog.

Step 1: Select a niche for your travel blog

Selecting a niche is the first and most important step you should take before setting up your online business. This is the reason we have put it on top of everything else on our list.

The niche is the topic your blog is about that you select to target a specific audience for your content.

For example, The Points Guys specifically blog about how travelers can best use their credit cards to get maximum reward points. Brian Kelly guides on boosting airline points, getting hotel rewards and several other hacks to tell how travelers can save cost and avail different deals.

Similarly, The Blonde Abroad is all about female solo travelers. On her blog, Kiersten (Kiki), focuses on women traveling and their fashion needs which makes her blog a go-to place for females who love adventurous lifestyles.

Similarly, Dan Flying Solo, Y Travel Blog and The Planet D are some of the top travel blogs you can find on the internet.

They all cover specific travel niches which is why they get attention from readers who like to read about those topics.

If this is the first time you are hearing about the term niche, we have a detailed guide that explains niches and how to select one.

Does it mean you should select travel as your niche?

No! We have many reasons not to select it because it is too broad and too saturated.

It would be difficult to compete with established websites that already rank higher and publish massive amounts of content.

An easy way to pick a niche is to break it down. This will give you better control over the subject and you should have less competition and more opportunities.

For example, if you select traveling solo by bicycle as your niche, you may be only targeting people who love traveling solo on their bicycles.

This might sound like creating content for a small number of people. But trust us when we say you will be the only one ranking in the search engines for any query related to this topic.

Down the road, you will be recognized as an expert on the topic and people will follow you everywhere.

Once you have a following and a solid reputation, you can always expand to include other travel niches.

Steps to select your travel niche

Selecting a niche should be easy if you follow these simple steps.

• As a travel enthusiast, make a list of your hobbies, destinations you have traveled to, and places you wish to visit
• Figure out what you enjoy most while traveling
• Find out what your social circle thinks about similar information. You may be the one who enjoys food more than visiting remote places. Or you may prefer to track or hike solo
• Find out what topics people look for that are closer to your hobbies and travel wishlist. Don’t forget to join groups and forums, read blogs and reports for similar information
• Develop a pattern showing commonalities between what people are looking for and what you can do best
• Build a list of topics, narrow it down and pick the one that matches your lifestyle
• That is your niche!

As a reference, you may find topics like solo, family, group cultural, religious, educational, eco, luxury, and so on.

As long as you’re interested in that niche and can produce quality content around it, it’s all good.

Don’t worry if you think you have no expertise in a topic. When you are a traveler, it’s easy for you to do research and gain knowledge on any travel-related topic. It will come naturally after a while.

Step 2: Buy a domain name to make your blog a brand

Once you’re done selecting a niche for your travel blog, it’s time to buy the domain name.

The importance of a good domain name

The domain name is actually your blog’s address. It is the text you type in your browser’s address bar to access the website.

It is also the name of your blog, brand or company. So coming up with a good one will need your attention and some research.

It’s critical to choose a name that is relevant to your niche and that sums up what you’re about.

A carefully chosen domain name should have the following qualities.

It should be:

• Clear and presentable
• Easy to remember
• Easy to spell
• Preferably a .com

As a general rule, if you need to spell your domain name over the phone, it doesn’t work.

Ideally, the domain name and the name of your brand must be similar or at least your brand name should be a part of it.

The Astra example

A relevant example is our own WordPress theme, Astra. Our domain name is www.wpastra.com .

It’s short, memorable and easy to spell.

To understand the logic, you can dissect our domain in two parts to notice “WP” is actually the abbreviation for WordPress and Astra is the name of our main product.

Both words hold great marketing value: WordPress is the most popular website-building platform today and Astra has become the most popular WordPress theme over the years.

So you can imagine what we did before choosing our domain name. We made sure it met all our branding needs.

We can think of a few more examples such as Google, Amazon, Best Buy and Apple. They are all simple, short, and memorable brand names and their domain names are also similar.

See if you can come up with something equally memorable.

You can break rules if you want to

A domain name can be anything as long as it doesn’t imply something different from what your niche is about.

Check out the names of some of the top travel blogs. They are all popular travel brands and they have multi-word domain names:

• Legal Nomads
• Uncornered Market
• Alex in Wanderland
• The Blonde Abroad
• View from the Wing
• Oneika the Traveller
• Never Ending Footsteps

Try not to pigeonhole yourself. Your domain name should give you room to change things a bit when you need to.

Kiersten says on her blog that if she decides to change her hair color, the name The Blonde Abroad would no longer work.

If you think you need more details on the subject, we have a detailed guide on what a domain name is and how to choose one.

How to search for a domain name

Just like you created a list to pick a niche, make a list of ideas that can define what your blog is about.

If you feel you are short of ideas, you can take help from Google search, Thesaurus.com and Relatedwords.org .

In Google search, type any word related to your niche and scroll down at the bottom to see what comes under “Related Search”.

Let’s Google “adventure travel” and see what we get.

Note down the terms that appear. Repeat the process for different words.

Next, look for related words on Thesaurus and Relatedwords .

Note down interesting terms you come across.

This will help you populate your list with some great choices.

Choose the best domain name and verify its availability from a reputable domain registrar.

We recommend NameCheap , Domain.com , SiteGround , Bluehost and HostGator .

You can register your domain for as little as $8 – $15 per year.

If your desired name is not available, keep trying different variations until you find the one you like.

In the next step, we will buy web hosting for our travel blog.

There are many web hosts that also provide domain registration services. Some of them offer free domain registration for the first year.

It’s a smart way to save money wherever possible at the start of your business.

However, we recommend you register your domain and hire web hosting from two different companies.

There are certain advantages to it such as:

1. Your web host might increase the domain renewal price which you will be forced to pay. It can appear difficult to leave a web host and transfer your domain to another registrar (it isn’t)

2. You can choose the most reliable registrar in town with an affordable plan

3. Choosing a separate company for domain registration provides you with better domain security. In case your web host comes under a severe attack, your website can run into trouble and become inaccessible. In such a situation, you can redirect your DNS entry to another web host and get your website going again with backup data.

Step 3: Set up web hosting for your travel blog

A web host is a company that provides you with space to store your website and make it accessible on the internet.

It’s a critical decision to make as your web host should offer speed, uptime, security, regular backups, timely updates and high-quality support.

You can find a web host for less than $3 a month but we suggest focusing on quality over the lowest price.

We recommend Cloudways , SiteGround, GreenGeeks and DreamHost as they are all great hosting partners.

For this tutorial, we will choose SiteGround as our web host.

SiteGround is a reliable web host for any website with managed hosting plans ideal for WordPress.

With SiteGround, you can choose the server location of your choice to target region-specific audiences.

For example, if your travel blog is mainly for the US audience, you would like to host your website on any server in the US.

Why did we choose WordPress? We will explain it shortly.

Buy web hosting

You can follow these steps to buy a hosting plan.

Select WordPress Hosting under the Hosting menu on their homepage.

Choose a plan that is affordable and offers the resources you need.

GrowBig is a wise choice for websites that need power and aim to grow. You can always upgrade your plan down the road.

Press the Get Plan button and proceed.

Enter the required information on the next screen, including payment information.

Select the duration of the hosting service and make any selections you want. If you are looking for maximum discount at the start, choose a longer duration.

Once done, press the payment button and let the system process your order.

After a successful payment, you will receive a confirmation email.

Step 4: Set up WordPress – the most popular blogging platform

WordPress is the most popular platform for any website whether a blog or an eCommerce store.

It’s powerful, flexible, and suitable for every budget and you can literally create a website for free.

It’s a huge ecosystem of free themes and plugins that help you create the most complex websites. The content management system (CMS) dominates with over 43% of websites using it on the internet.

You can set up a WordPress website in no time.

Let’s do it from inside the SiteGround dashboard.

After logging into SiteGround, go to the Websites menu and press the Add New Site icon.

Another way of doing the same action is by pressing the New Website button in the menu bar.

Select Existing Domain from the three options if you already registered a domain name.

Otherwise, select New Domain , choose your domain name and set everything up.

Press the Continue button to point the domain to the SiteGround server.

Press the Select button under the Start New Website option on the next screen. It will show WordPress as one of the choices.

Select WordPress and enter your login information for the WordPress admin area. Press the Continue button.

It will take a short while before you see the message, You Are All Set!

The wizard can redirect you to the WordPress admin through the Log In Admin button or you can type www.yoursitename.com/wp-login.php to access the admin panel.

On your way to the WordPress admin panel, you might come across a new wizard asking you to access a theme library SiteGround provides.

If you are new to building websites and don’t know what a theme is, let’s briefly discuss it here.

A theme consists of files, scripts and folders that you add to your website to customize its appearance and features.

WordPress offers a huge database of themes that you can access from the admin area. You can use SiteGround’s themes or use something else.

We recommend the latter.

Press the Exit button to cancel the wizard at this stage.

SiteGround adds certain plugins while setting up WordPress on your domain. These plugins add specific features to your website.

They also change the way the default admin panel screen appears.

We want to start from scratch and customize the website the way we want.

Therefore, once inside the WordPress admin area, we will need to remove these plugins.

Go to Plugins > Installed Plugins , select the plugin checkbox and press the Deactivate link.

Once done, press the Delete link when it appears under each plugin.

If you want to get familiar with WordPress plugins and how to install them, here is an in-depth tutorial to install a WordPress plugin .

Step 5: Choose a theme and design your travel website

WordPress comes with a default set of themes that lack a number of modern features your travel blog should have.

This is where Astra comes in.

Astra is the most popular WordPress theme in the world with over 2.7 million users.

With the help of the Astra theme and its supported plugins , you can give your site any look you want.

Astra is blazing fast, fully customizable and free to download from the website . You can also get it from the WordPress repository.

Astra is free but also has three premium versions. If you want to know more about what premium offers, check it out Astra pro here.

Let’s get back to our test website and add Astra.

Go to Themes , click Add New , and search for the Astra theme.

Press the Install button and activate it when the option appears.

Astra adds the necessary layout for running a blog. You can give your website a modern look and customize it for any niche without touching a line of code.

To do this, add the Starter Templates plugin.

Go to Plugins > Add New and search for Starter Templates .

Install and activate the plugin.

It’s Astra’s own plugin that gives you access to 240+ predesigned templates .

We will select the one that suits our travel blog’s needs.

To access the Starter Templates library go to Plugins > Installed Plugins.

Click the See Library link under Starter Templates to launch the import wizard.

With the Starter Templates library , you can choose the page builder of your choice from the WordPress block editor, Elementor, or Beaver Builder.

Select a page builder and type “Travel” to see relevant Starter Templates.

Case 1: Create a personal travel blog

For personal traveling experience, Astra theme offers several Starter Templates based on the WordPress block editor (Gutenberg).

We will select the block editor from the list and choose the Travel Blog template.

The next screen will ask you to upload a logo if you have created one.

You can use Canva to design a logo for free or use premium logo design services like LogoContest , Looka Logo Design or Logaster Logo Generator .

You can add the logo now or come back at a later time. It’s easy both ways.

Here are some interesting tutorials from Astra on adding or editing logos:

• How to add a logo, favicon and site title with Astra
• How to create a correct format SVG logo
• Now resize your logo on the fly!

Change the font on the next screen and press the Continue button.

Enter essential information on the next screen and press the Submit & Build My Website button.

You will have a beautifully designed travel blog in a few moments.

Case 2: Create a travel blog to offer professional services

Changing a template is an effortless task with the Starter Templates plugin.

There is another way to access the plugin.

Click on the Starter Templates menu item under the Appearance menu to launch the import wizard (Appearance > Starter Templates).

This time, we will choose the Elementor page builder which offers a huge variety of travel-related templates that we can choose from.

All are great designs with specific needs. We will choose the Outdoor Adventure template and continue with the wizard.

On its way to installing the new template, the wizard will ask you to delete the previously imported template and its data.

Check all of the boxes and press the Submit and Build My Website button.

As you can see, the Outdoor Adventure template lets you offer travel services.

For example, if you also plan to arrange tours and earn money from the beginning, this template is enough to give you a good start.

Step 6: Make your travel blog powerful

Creating a blog is one thing, but optimizing it requires additional features. That’s why we love WordPress for its robust ecosystem of diverse plugins.

Here are some plugins that will make your travel blog journey more enjoyable.

Ultimate Addons for Elementor

If you imported an Astra template based on Elementor, Ultimate Addons for Elementor will help.

You can use lots of widgets and sections that present travel journeys beautifully. It can show your Instagram feed and gives you a lot of control over how you want to show it.

Overall you get 40+ widgets and extensions, 100+ website templates and 200+ section blocks to power up your blog.

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If you haven’t installed Spectra yet, you are missing a lot of advanced features. Spectra is a free page builder that significantly enhances the functionality of the default WordPress editor.

You can customize your website, build beautiful pages and use templates effortlessly with Spectra.

The page builder also offers over 100 prebuilt templates so you don’t need to design pages from scratch.

If you want to take the correct SEO measures from the beginning of your travel blog, Yoast SEO is your go-to plugin.

Yoast is used on over 5 million websites which shows the trust of the WordPress community in the plugin’s performance.

The plugin can improve your technical SEO right off the bat. It automatically creates an XML sitemap and lets you easily manage title, and meta description tags anywhere on your website.

When it comes to better ranking and a high click-through rate (CTR), the schema needs to be correctly handled.

You can publish different types of posts on your travel blogs such as how-tos, reviews, articles, and sell products and services.

Each post needs to have a proper schema to communicate with search engines about the nature of the post.

The plugin can implement schema markup in a few clicks without coding skills. It integrates nicely with Yoast SEO. Together, these two plugins can level up your game without any outside help.

WP Portfolio

As a travel blogger, you’ll display pictures and videos to share your journey.

WP Portfolio is a multipurpose plugin for creating picture and video libraries across your website the easy way.

You can show them anywhere with the shortcodes, change the way how they look and use tons of built-in features to improve the user experience.

SureMembers

Having a loyal community is a very effective way to monetize an online business. Travel is no exception.

You can build a travel-loving community and create a number of compelling reasons to receive payments from them. Reasons such as paid content, selling travel products and services, digital products and more.

SureMembers allows you to create content paywalls and set up secure digital downloads in no time.

With SureMembers you can create multi-level access for members to limit them to anywhere and any way you want. The plugin works perfectly with SureCart , Cartflows and Astra .

Convert Pro

Building an email list is an effective way to remind your visitors of the latest posts or travel plans you want to share through emails and newsletters.

A newsletter is a very effective way to boost readership and sales.

The WordPress plugin provides you with a drag and drop editor for creating opt-in forms that work perfectly on any device type.

Convert Pro integrates perfectly with any email marketing service provider . You can use predesigned templates to create several types of highly interactive opt-in forms.

Presto Player

If you’re a fan of sharing videos, your travel blog should provide a way to easily publish and play them.

Presto Player is a powerful choice that offers a lot of control over how visitors view and share content.

You can attach multiple video sources, show a sticky video player that draws more attention, create video chapters and generate leads via emails.

Presto Player can help you create a Call to Action (CTA) on your videos which you can use to increase user engagement.

The built-in analytics and reports module is a great way to tell how your videos are performing.

Every website requires a set of essential pages that tell people what they need to know.

Among all the essential pages a website must have are an about page, a contact page, a privacy policy and a 404 page.

You can add as many pages as you like, but these are a practical minimum.

WordPress provides an easy way to create any number of pages you want to create. However, this is not always enough.

These essential pages should be well-designed and highly interactive.

Having Astra on your website gives you a number of benefits.

Each template comes with the necessary pages and you can also access a huge library of professionally designed pages.

For example, we would like to create a new contact page.

To do this, add a web page from Pages > Add New .

Once you reach inside the page editor, press the Template Kits button located on the top bar. This will open the template library.

Each kit has multiple pages inside such as contact, about and a homepage.

You can import a complete set of pages or choose any one of them as required.

Alternatively, you can also type something in the search field to reach the desired page templates.

We will type ‘contact’.

Choose any page that suits your needs.

Press the Import “Contact” Template button.

Once imported, press the Publish button.

You can use these predesigned templates and patterns to create a number of beautiful pages this way.

Top travel blogs for inspiration

There are successful travel bloggers and there are VERY successful travel bloggers.

It’s a huge domain without boundaries, which is why we see plenty of travel bloggers making their mark.

Here is a brief list of some of the top travel bloggers who have earned a reputation, built a loyal community and who make a significant income each month.

Nomadic Matt

Matthew Kepnes is the man behind Nomadic Matt – one of the oldest blogs on travel and a true travel guru. He makes lots of money from his blog which attracts over a million visitors a month.

Over the years, Matt has successfully created multiple revenue sources for himself such as Travel Media School, content creation courses, eBooks and travel services.

His estimated yearly income is around 6 to 7 figures in USD.

Global Viewpoint

Jon is behind Global Viewpoint who started a career with a 9 to 5 job. Soon he realized he wasn’t made for a desk job and embarked on a self-growth journey.

He spent nights and weekends establishing his travel blog, and never looked back. He travels to different continents and shares travel tips, photos and videos with his audience.

On Global Viewpoint he makes over $20,000 a month and lives a dream life.

The Planet D

This amazing blog is about the adventures of Dave and Deb, a couple married for 20 years. They entered the travel space in 2007 with a motto “Adventure is for everyone”.

Since then, they have traveled to 115 countries on all 7 continents. Their blog proves that traveling is accessible to anyone, no matter age and income.

They have been featured in famous publications and made it to the Top 10 Influencers of the world list of Forbes

Their estimated income from being a travel blogger hovers around $17,000 monthly

How to promote your travel blog

Now that you have read about how to create a blog and heard a few inspiring stories about successful travel bloggers, let’s now share some tips on how you can promote your blog .

A basic rule is, you have to network, meet people out there and tell the world what you do.

Promoting a travel blog requires you to remain active and utilize certain techniques with dedication to remain in the top rankings.

Start traveling

• Start with your family and friends. They are your most effective promoters
• Use social media and talk about your experiences
• Build an email list and send people inspirational content
• Be regular and publish on a schedule

Take the following route and you will eventually have a successful blog.

For promoting your blog you need to know what’s out there.

Your personal experience matters most. You can’t promote something you know nothing about. So start traveling and gather as much information as you can.

Take photos and shoot videos to share with people later.

Write engaging content

Write content that is yours . It doesn’t matter if your mom is the only one who reads your articles.

It happens to everyone. Be persistent and share your experiences on your site.

Friends and family network is helpful

People in your close network, your family and friends, will help you to read your blogs.

Share your content with them and ask them to give feedback in comments and share it on their social networks

SEO optimize your content

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a crucial part of blog promotion. We mentioned above how Yoast can be helpful to get you started.

You can use its guidelines to optimize your blog posts to attract organic traffic.

We have a detailed guide on how to boost web traffic by optimizing your posts. It’s a helpful resource.

Use social media

Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube are all effective social networks for promoting content.

We suggest avoiding posting similar content on multiple social networks. Every social networking site or app has its own recipe.

Pinterest, for example, is best for sharing photos, and Instagram is best for sharing photos and short videos.

Don’t forget to use social share buttons on your travel blog. It’s a convenient way for your readers to share content.

If you wonder which WordPress plugin is most suitable for adding social share buttons, check out this in-depth best social media plugins guide.

Run ad campaigns

You might like to run ad campaigns to promote your blog. This will give you quick results but will cost money.

Google and Facebook have ad networks that can bring you lots of traffic. Use them effectively to target the right audience for your travel blog.

If you have written a huge post on the ‘X things to do in New York’ or ‘The X best tips to travel with family’, try running a campaign to spread the word.

Ad networks are available on almost every social platform, so use them wisely.

Newsletter will bring people back

Use an opt-in plugin and ask readers nicely to subscribe. If you have what they need, they will follow.

Use these techniques to build your email list and reach your audience effectively.

If you need guidance on how to create an awesome newsletter, here is the best available guide on how to create an email newsletter with WordPress for you.

Attend events and create a network

Social networks are helpful because they allow you to get to know more people online. Equally effective is to attend seminars and other networking events where you get to meet speakers and other famous bloggers and get to learn different things.

When you are a regular at events, you are likely to run into celebrities or influencers. You can build relationships and eventually use their social following to go viral.

Travel Massive , TBEX or similar platforms can give you a great opportunity to build your network and promote your travel blog.

Join travel forums

Don’t forget to join travel forums. They are the ideal places to connect with the right audience.

Engage with the audience and provide them valuable tips. This way you will be able to establish authority and people will want to learn more about you and hopefully, your blog.

How to make money from your travel blog

By now you must have realized that starting a travel blog isn’t about making fast money.

However, it doesn’t mean you can’t do it early. There are certainly ways to speed up the process to make money with a blog .

There is no one method that works for everyone. Every successful travel blogger generates revenue based on their expertise, choices and opportunities.

Below you will find a list that will help you create your preferences to generate revenue as you grow.

Display ads

This is the most common and effective way of generating revenue from your travel blog.

You, as a publisher, can be approached by advertisers to let your audience know about their products and services. They pay you for this.

The wider your audience, the more you can charge advertisers.

You can display banner ads alongside content on your website at different spots depending on your preferences and layout.

An advertiser can contact you directly which is called a direct deal. Or you can sign up with an ad network such as Google Adsense which is the most convenient way to display ads.

Sponsored posts

Brands want to present their products and services to loyal audiences on different blogs and news websites.

Sometimes they ask publishers to review their products or sometimes it is a simple press release that they provide. Either way, brands pay bloggers for publishing content on their websites.

Sponsored posts are a viable source of revenue if you have decent traffic.

Make sure you disclose the fact it’s a sponsored post to your audience.

Not telling them about promotional content can turn into a trust issue down the road and we don’t want that!

Affiliate income

One solid income stream for travel bloggers is affiliate marketing. Bloggers can promote different travel industry products and services on their websites.

Affiliate marketing is when you put a link to their product or service in your content. When someone clicks on the link and makes a purchase, you get a commission.

You can get in touch with brands directly or join an affiliate network for access to plenty of options in one place.

One such network is Travelpayouts . You can reach out to over 100 brands such as TripAdvisor, Booking.com and others.

Membership fee

You can offer exclusivity to your audience by giving them exclusive content.

Yes, content is abundant and you can read anything anywhere. There is still room for well-researched and quality premium content though.

You can create research papers, reports, eBooks or offer travel advisories for a monthly or annual fee. Users who value such content will not hesitate to pay you a small fee in return.

Even a small but active community with a few members can help create a healthy revenue stream.

Sell products and services

You can sell anything as long as it is relevant to your blog. The coolest part about your own product is that you keep every penny.

You can sell physical or digital products. The latter can be scaled, giving you more opportunities to earn more.

For branded t-shirts or mugs, you will need to incur production costs and maintain stock. For eBooks, you can sell as many copies as you want once the book as been created.

Besides, photos, videos and trip management services are also significant revenue-generating items.

Get freelance work

Your passion can get you extra work from admirers. You never know who subscribes to your blog.

These can be from an advertising agency or a corporate client who might contact you for freelance work such as copywriting, photography, or video ads.

This could become your major revenue generator leaving behind every other income source. If you deliver them what they want, they could become your regular clients. The sky is the limit!

Arranging tours

Travelers are not only talented storytellers, but they are also capable managers.

Travel bloggers visit places and look at things in their own way. They have a perspective that is different from the usual travelers.

They can dig deep and understand things better. Their passion can take them to the most exotic places.

Why not take advantage of that extra knowledge and offer it for commercial services?

You can arrange a group, use your industry connections, and establish a reputation. Instead of offering them to the public, you can focus on a small segment.

For example high paying customers who expect comfort, luxury and something adventurous.

Alternatively, you can organize budget tours that will save your client more than they could have imagined.

How much can you earn from a travel blog?

You can earn a lot of money every month if you work hard. Travel bloggers have multiple income sources.

The fact that they are not limited to a few standard ones makes this domain more profitable.

How much you can earn depends on your blog’s traffic, marketing skills, and business acumen and above all, patience!

You can start with nothing in the beginning. Then work your way up to a few bucks until you understand how to use your travel blog to make a handsome amount of money after a while.

Here is a list of a few professional travel bloggers who declared their monthly income at different times.

This will give you some idea of how much a travel blogger can earn.

These travel bloggers have been kind enough to share their income reports with the community.

A number of bloggers are too shy to share their income. It doesn’t mean they don’t earn much money. They simply have different priorities.

FAQs on how to start a travel blog

How do you write a travel blog for beginners.

You can write a travel blog for beginners similarly to how you wrote a few essays and stories back in your school days. It shouldn’t be a huge problem. There are certain tools to help you write a travel blog that people will love.

You can use Google Docs to write your travel blog. Its built-in dictionary helps highlight typos and other errors that you can easily fix.

If you need an extra hand, Grammarly is a handy English writing tool you can use to correct grammar and style.

How do I get content for my travel blog?

You can easily get content for your travel blog by writing about things you know. The information-gathering part actually starts way before you write a travel blog.

Before visiting a place, travelers do a lot of hands-on research about their itinerary, fare, means of transportation, accommodation and what they have to do once there. It all creates a basic structure that travelers follow.

Whether you write your travel blog during the trip or after you leave, it’s easier to use the information you gathered earlier and add spice for readers.

While traveling, we suggest making text or voice notes. They will help you when you sit down to write.

Final thoughts

Travel blogging has become one of the most lucrative areas of blogging. Traveling to places, meeting people, having fun and earning at the same time sounds like a dream job.

Though every traveler would love to become a travel blogger, it takes real commitment, and many sleepless nights to build an empire!

You also need marketing and business skills to create your name in this saturated market.

A unique style, a different perspective and a passion to help the community can help you get the attention of travel lovers.

What does travel mean to you? What do you want to do when you’re a travel blogger? We would love to hear from you in the comments below.

Abhijeet Kaldate is the co-founder and CRO of Brainstorm Force. With a keen eye for detail and a knack for getting things done, Abhijeet oversees the company's operations, managing key areas such as HR, marketing, design and finance.

Disclosure: This blog may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of these links, we may receive a small commission. Read disclosure . Rest assured that we only recommend products that we have personally used and believe will add value to our readers. Thanks for your support!

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How to Start a Travel Blog and Make Money: Step-by-Step Tutorial

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. (We recommend SiteGround )
• Domain name – your blog’s permanent address. For example, ours is themeisle.com .
• The free WordPress software – we highly recommend you use self-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 on your blog, promote it, and maybe even get some extra money online from it.

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

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

Step 1: Pick a niche

Step 2: select a domain name, step 3: purchase wordpress hosting and install wordpress, step 4: choose a travel blog theme, step 5: install helpful plugins for travel blogs, step 6: create and add content, step 7: build your blog’s audience, step 8: how to make money from your travel blog.

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!

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.

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 cheapest StartUp 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!

Your blog’s theme 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. You don’t have to go far to find some cool themes that are good for travel sites. Themeisle offers two such themes with travel-related starter designs – Neve and Hestia . To be honest though, designs optimized for blogging will also fit most websites.

For example, the Neve theme offers some of the following features:

• Over 100 pre-built designs , including ones that are ideal for blogs and websites focused on travel.
• Compatibility with the Block Editor and also with popular page builders like Elementor.
• Lightning fast performance – consistently ranking among the fastest WordPress themes.
• Clean code designed with SEO in mind.
• Fully-responsive.

All these built-in features make it super simple to start a travel blog that will look great, and that will load quickly to keep your visitors and the search engines happy.

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

WordPress plugins help you add new functionality to your travel blog without 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 for all sites, including travel blogs. The most commonly used plugins span several categories, most of which are featured below.

👉 The following links will take you to dedicated articles about each topic:

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

Beyond those popular choices, 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

Author(s): Imagely

Current Version: 3.59.4

Last Updated: July 18, 2024

nextgen-gallery.3.59.4.zip

• Plugins to help integrate with Instagram and Facebook
• Slider plugins to display amazing full-width photos
• A lightbox plugin to allow readers to view your photos in a customizable lightbox

Author(s): Archetyped

Current Version: 2.9.3

Last Updated: July 15, 2024

simple-lightbox.2.9.3.zip

• 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.
• 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.

Author(s): travelpayouts

Current Version: 1.1.19

Last Updated: July 23, 2024

travelpayouts.zip

Learn how to install WordPress plugins .

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

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

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.

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 (gated) 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.

Themeisle Contributor

Karol Krol is a writer, content strategist, and WordPress figure-outer with over 20 years of experience rooted in website building and web technologies. With his expertise underpinned by a master's degree in computer science, he authored "WordPress Complete" - the ultimate WordPress handbook for newbies. His work has been published across numerous industry websites. He leads the editorial team at Themeisle.

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How To Start A Travel Blog in 2024 + Free Printable Checklist

Table of Contents

This post may contain affiliate links to things like tours, hotels, Amazon associates and products. These help me earn a small commission at no additional charge to you.

I’ve always held off writing blog advice due to pesky feelings of imposter syndrome. That feeling of ‘but there are so many bloggers out there, why would anyone listen to my advice on how to start a travel blog?’.

Well, here’s to shaking off that feeling! Sometimes a few measurables can do you good. Hitting 50,000 monthly readers and qualifying for Mediavine ad network made me realise I must be doing something right.

Full disclosure – this post contains affiliate links for my web host company, Bluehost, which earn me a commission when you make a purchase, at no extra cost to you.

I wanted to put together this guide because, despite the stresses and hours I pour into my travel blog, I genuinely love it. My blog allows me to share my experiences with those who are interested, record my adventures and be the sole creative on a project that’s ‘mine’ and that I’m passionate about.  If I can help even a few other people take the plunge and enjoy travel blogging as much as I do, that’s a bonus! Another reason I wanted to put together this guide on how to start a travel blog? 

I made all the mistakes so you don’t have to. 

I started my travel blog back in 2015 as a travel diary but didn’t find my groove until 2017 when I was reunited with a computer, rather than the iPhone 5 that had been travelling around the world with me. I wanted to share my travel adventures with others, especially fellow solo female travellers who might find my words helpful or encouraging. It wasn’t until 2018 that I started thinking about my blog as a business.  If you Googled how to become a travel blogger with notions of fast cast and Insta fame, the reality may be disappointing. Blogging is a ridiculous amount of work and you’ll start out by spending money, not making it. ( How much? Keep reading ). Most of my favourite travel bloggers started out with a genuine love of travel and monetised their blog later down the line. While I believe I started my blog for the right reasons, I could have started it better. I’m mainly talking about the things I didn’t do: the important areas I overlooked and should have worked on from the start. I could have got to this stage much quicker if I’d been smarter at the start. So, how to create a travel blog? Let’s begin…

How to start a travel blog in 2024

In this guide, I’m going to share my step-by-step guide on how to make a travel blog. Most of what I’m going to tell you can be applied to other types of blogs such as lifestyle, parenting, finance and more, but I’ll be including some specific tips on how to become a travel blogger when you’re still working a 9-5.  When starting your travel blog, you’ll want to create social media channels. It’s important to think about your overriding brand and how you can keep it consistent across the platforms. Remember when starting a travel blog that you’re starting a brand, not just a website . 

Related question – how did you teach yourself all this?

Honestly, I didn’t do anything specific, just put in years of time and effort. Many bloggers sell courses on how to become a travel blogger but I didn’t have the budget to pay for them starting out. I read a lot of articles, joined forums and used trial and error in writing my blog posts. The first thing I would recommend when starting a travel blog is…

Define your travel blogging niche

Try to find a travel blog that has no niche apart from ‘travel blog’. Maybe these cut the mustard ( um, what a fab expression ) in 2009, but not these days. You can niche down to solo travel and thousands of people will have done it. Niche down further to solo female travel and hundreds of people have still done it… I’m not saying you need a niche that no one has ever done before. But if you want to bring some fresh content to the blogosphere and find a space and audience for yourself, I suggest you think about…

The value you can bring

When I think about readers who have told me they like my blog, it’s never because I’m the best writer or photographer on Planet Internet and guess what? I don’t need to be. When people reach out, it’s because they’re similar to me – perhaps they’re a solo female traveller or a backpacker navigating the world on a budget – and something I’ve said has resonated with them because I have experience on those topics. That’s all niching really is. You don’t need to attract everyone on the internet, just the right people ( please don’t make me say ‘find your tribe’!!!) The first way to find your niche is to think about the value you can bring. What do you know more about than most people? Maybe it’s travelling with a toddler, maybe it’s cramming mini-breaks into your 25 days annual leave?  Don’t get imposter syndrome! There’s definitely something you know more about than others. Just make sure it’s something you have a genuine passion for otherwise it will feel forced.

Travel blog niches

• Luxury travel 
• Sustainable travel 
• Adventure/outdoors travel
• LGBT+ travel
• Food travel 
• Festival travel
• Travel with kids
• Couple travel
• Specific location travel (your favourite country, home country or city).

I’m sure there are plenty more, too. You could combine two to narrow down further, for example budget solo travel (hello!) or luxury sustainable travel. If you’re struggling, turn your disadvantage on its head. When I started travelling as a freelancer, I had zilch money because who has money starting as a freelancer? I often had the frustrating feeling that I could be travelling better if I had a higher budget. I had to limit myself to living on $500 a month and subsequently, I had to find cheaper restaurants and forms of accommodation. Turns out I was not the only person in the world travelling on a budget. By creating guides of budget tips based on specific destinations, I found not only a niche but an audience. 

Can you have more than one niche?

Absolutely! You can have one main niche but a handful of sub-niches to create content around. For example, I will always be first and foremost a solo female traveller but I’m also a budget traveller, a foodie traveller and I’m now extending into the world of blogging about blogging. There’s nothing wrong with having a few strings to your bow, but don’t overdo it. If you try to cover everything, you’re back to being a general travel blogger. I would say one main niche is ideal and up to 2-3 sub-niches if you can genuinely bring fresh and valuable content on those topics. 

Related question – I don’t know my niche yet but I want to start my blog. Can I start and let my niche develop over time?

Your blog is ultimately going to grow with you over time and develop. I never considered writing about budget travel or sustainable travel but they grew into the blog as they became personal interests. But with that said, I would really suggest picking your main niche as early on as possible. It will affect everything from picking your blog name to buying your domain and knowing what to write about. 

Picking a travel blog name

Welcome to hell. (I’m sure this is the helpful intro you were hoping for). Why is picking a travel blog name so difficult? I’m a testament to this as I first named my blog ‘Backpacks and Beaches’ which doesn’t tell you I’m a woman, a solo traveller or in fact anything . Then I agonised for ages over a new name. My tips for picking a travel blog name would be: Be original. In the world of travel blogging, there are a lot of words that are used time and time again. Look up synonyms for commonly used travel words and see if there’s something more interesting you could use. Note – never use the word ‘gipsy’ (or any other spelling of the word) as it’s nothing short of a racial slur . How to become a travel blogger 101 – Don’t box yourself in. Make sure it can grow with you. Try to avoid:

• Locations: Unless you know for a fact you’ll always be blogging about that place, I’d avoid ‘Adventures in Asia’ or somewhere that will restrict you from creating content about other regions at a later date.
• Ages: I’ve seen blogs with ‘twenty-something’ in the name rebrand after hitting the big 3-0. 
• Specific travel styles: Something broad like ‘luxury’ is fine but names that mention hostels, for example, could be problematic later if you stop staying in them.
• Jobs: A friend recently changed her name from ‘The Bartender Abroad’ as she’s no longer a bartender. You get the idea!

Link it to your niche. This isn’t essential but I would recommend if possible using a name that gives something away. For example, the name of a person suggests you’re a solo traveller whereas ‘we’ suggests a couple travel blog and something like ‘The Adventure Journal’ hints at adventure travel.

Travel blog name ideas:

• Descriptive nouns. Choose a word to describe yourself, for example traveller , backpacker or digital nomad and stick an adjective beforehand for example hungry , German or girl and ta-da, you have a name like ‘Hungry Traveller’, ‘German Backpacker’ or ‘Digital Nomad Girl’ which also describes your niche.
• Your actual name. I also like blogs including the writer’s name, for example, the best travel blog name everrrrr, Where Goes Rose? 

Check the domains and social media handles

To check the domain is available, type into your browser www.(name).com and if you’re taken to an existing website, sorry pal, it’s gone . If it says the website doesn’t exist, you’re all good . If it says ‘this domain is available for x’ this means some annoying company has bought the domain name in the hope that a newbie blogger like yourself wants it. You can see the fee listed and decide how badly you want it. If it’s available and you want to snap it up, do so on GoDaddy.com. The other option is to wait until you set up your web hosting (which we’ll cover next) and get the domain name for free with Bluehost. Check the social handles: It’s a pain when they’re taken. There are countless Instagram accounts just sat there not even being used. Your travel blog URL and social media handles don’t have to be the same but I personally think it’s best to be consistent. Also, potential followers can easily find you across platforms.

Does your travel blog have to be .com?

Well, no. But remember that ‘co.uk’ or the like may look familiar to you but could be confusing to people in other countries. I’d recommend getting a .com domain even if it means adapting your blog name slightly. I originally wanted ‘Where Rose Goes’ which was taken so I switched the last two words around to ensure the .com site was available.

Set up a blogging email address

This couldn’t be easier. You can just create a Gmail such as [email protected] but again, I would recommend checking it’s available beforehand. Of course, it looks more professional to have something @ your domain rather than a Gmail. Once you’ve purchased your domain, you can create a custom domain in Gmail . If you have bought your domain on GoDaddy, there’s the option to buy the email address there.

Picking a travel blogging platform

Next, I’m going to talk about the technical side of how to create a travel blog. Since you can’t become a travel blogger without a website, you’ll want to pick what we call a content management system ( CMS ) in which you can create and publish your blog. The idea is that you can write and edit in the back end and once you press publish, the pages and blogs will post on your website. There are a couple of options to choose from but I use…

WordPress is the oldest and still the biggest blogging platform. Most bloggers use it so it’s easier to find advice when you need it. You can use plugins (more on these later) that provide endless worlds of functionality that their rivals don’t.  On the downside, the plugins and odd bit of coding can be tricky at first but just play around; you’ll soon get the hang of it.

Important note – if you are using WordPress, you need to set up hosting separately. More about this next.

WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org: This stumped me at first. Wordpress.com is a free and very basic version of WordPress that can be good for beginners to play with. However, if you’re serious about starting a travel blog, you will want to upgrade quickly to Wordpress.org which is what most bloggers use for design and functionality.

Squarespace

I’ve enjoyed using Squarespace in the past because it’s more customisable and better for design. You can drag and drop to give it to feel you want which is great if you’re a creative person. However it can be fiddly at first;  I recommend saving constantly in case you move something which messes up the whole page. 

This is a popular CMS I’ve not used but I would be curious to try since it always comes out well in blogging CMS comparisons . Users say Wix is super easy to use and very aesthetically friendly plus there’s customer support. The only downside is that you can’t change your theme (aka your design and look) at a later date.

Picking a hosting company

Unless you’re using a CMS that includes hosting, you will need to sign up with a host when making a travel blog. I’ve never really understood much about the world of hosting but luckily you don’t need to. Hosting companies create a space for your blog on the web.

In 2017, I created my travel blog with Bluehost who have a useful live customer chat feature where you can get help right away. Usually hosting is $7.99 a month but because I’m already a customer and affiliate I can offer you hosting for just $3.95 / £3.02 a month. Click the button below to get started or click here to get your discount and begin .

Note – this rate is for the first three years and is billed upfront in one go. For the following three years, the rate is higher.

Once you’ve followed the link above, click ‘Get Started’. I’ll run you through the next steps. Choosing your plan is the first step.

If you’re just starting a travel blog, the Basic package will do. You can always upgrade later. Next, it will ask you to set up your domain. You can click to do it later at the bottom if you’re still umming and ahhing. If you’re ready to purchase it, you can just type the username you want, for example ‘wheregoesrose’ into the box. Presumably, by this point you have already checked it’s available. If you already purchased it on GoDaddy, simply enter the domain into the box on the right.

It will tell you ‘success’ on the next screen and ask you to make a purchase. Here you are not only buying the domain but the hosting service for the next 36 months.

As you can see, there’s the option to purchase extras. I did the classic thing of being baffled by tech and purchasing their recommended ones (automatically ticked in blue) but the only one really need is privacy protection for 76p a month. Now all you need to do is enter your payment details and you’re good to go.

Linking up WordPress and Bluehost

Once you’ve created your Wordpress.org website, you simply need to log in via Bluehost. In the Bluehost portal, you will be asked your WordPress login details and ta-da – your newly-created travel blog is all linked up!

Log in to WordPress

Since you create content in WordPress not Bluehost, the next step is logging into your new WordPress website. Head to https://yourdomainname.com/ wp-admin and enter your username and password. Now you can play around on the dashboard and see how everything works. Down the left-hand side you will see ‘posts’ where you create articles, ‘pages’ where you can create ‘About Me’ pages and the like, ‘appearance’ where you can customise the look of your site, and loads more. Honestly, it took me ages to get comfortable using WordPress but just keep playing around.

Picking a Wordpress theme

When making a travel blog, you will want to think about the aesthetics of your site. A theme is like a skin for your travel blog. Different themes have different looks and functionality, although you can usually edit things like fonts and colours. WordPress displays a few themes which you can browse but these are fairly basic. I bought my first theme from Theme Forest for $50. There are loads to choose from. Once you’ve bought it, there are no future costs. As of 2024, I’ve changed to Flatsome which I can recommend as a fantastic, fast theme with drag-and-drop page builders.

Divi page builder: I’ve also heard good things about Divi which is a page-building theme that you can purchase from Elegant Themes . This costs $89 per year but allows you to design a much prettier website with front end drag-and-drop features. Follow the instructions that come with your purchased theme to apply it to your WordPress website. From memory, mine came as a compressed file which I uploaded inside WordPress. Next, you can play around and customise it. I didn’t love the fonts that came with mine so I downloaded the Google Easy Fonts plugin to change them. 

Plugins for Wordpress

Even if you pick a lovely theme and customise it, your travel blog won’t have much functionality without plugins. These are pieces of software that add functionality to your website. These can be anything from adding clickable maps to your blog posts, displaying your Instagram feed in your sidebar and a million other things. There are even plugins to protect your website from spammy comments and hacks. Tip – too many plugins can slow down your website so be picky. Some of the most useful when creating a travel blog include: Google Maps: This lets you pull pinnable Google Maps into your blog posts and show routes and locations within a city or country. Sassy Social Share: This adds ‘share it’ buttons so your readers can easily share your blog posts to social media channels like Twitter and Facebook. WP Forms: This lets you insert contact forms so people can send you messages. This is great if you plan to work with brands later on. Yoast: This is a plugin to help with your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), something we’ll discuss later. Click ‘Plugins’ on the left-hand side of your WordPress dashboard. Click ‘add new’ and search for ones you want, then click ‘activate’. Go to the ‘settings’ section of individual plugins to set up the details.

Design your logo

When starting a travel blog, don’t forget to make a logo. Once you have it, you can display it in future content such as email footers, newsletters, media kits, business cards… If these sound overwhelming don’t worry, you don’t need them all right away. Start by just uploading it to the top of your homepage.

How to make a logo when starting a travel blog

Canva – If you have zero graphic design skills, don’t stress. I recommend using Canva which has loads of tools and drag-and-drop design elements. You can make something simple and effective without experience. You can always make a basic logo for now and change it later; just remember to update it everywhere. Fiverr/Upwork – hire a designer for a more professional look. Be sure to view the designer’s past work and reviews first. I had a bad experience when I paid someone $10 to make me a logo that came out looking like something from 90s clipart. People did say ‘What did you expect for $10?’ but who wants to throw money away?

Creating travel content

This is the fun bit when becoming a travel blogger. It’s also the bit that stumped me initially. What should I write about? If you’ve defined your niche well, this should be a bit easier. It’s ideal to create travel blog content around your niche early on. If you’re a sustainable travel blogger, why not write about the best destinations around the world for sustainable travel? If you’re a budget traveller, write about tips and hacks for travelling on the cheap. Creating some big guides on your chosen key areas is known as ‘cornerstone content’ and is ideal when it comes to telling Google what you’re an expert at, thus helping with your rankings.

Content ideas for creating a travel blog

• Destination guides : for these I usually include headings such as where to stay, things to do, where to eat and how to get there. Basically everything you’d need to know if planning a trip to a new place.
• Personal essays: is there something you feel passionate about? I’ve written before about why everyone should solo travel at least once, the effects of technology on travel , and why volunteering can do more harm than good.
• How-to guides: maybe there’s something you’re especially skilled at like packing for a trip or finding cheap flights.
• Packing lists: personally I find these super boring to write but I know lots of bloggers enjoy reviewing products and helping readers with outfit inspo related to their next location.

Related question – ‘Do I need writing experience to start a travel blog?’

Of course it helps. Unsurprisingly, many bloggers are those who love writing or have a natural flair for it. Many copywriters and journalists move into blogging as they want their own platform. In terms of writing quality, there’s strong competition out there.

However there are plenty of successful blogs where, to be honest, the writing isn’t amazing it still works. It depends on your purpose. Some readers want information at their fingertips without an eloquent story first. If the purpose of your blog is to provide information, you don’t need to be a trained writer.

For SEO (we’ll get to this, promise), you do need to write detailed and well-researched articles. But you don’t need to be Charles Dickens.

To keep your followers and regular readers coming back, you’ll ideally be good at storytelling. So yes, writing skills always help!

For me, the best blogs deliver valuable information while also making it fun and enjoyable to read, throwing in a few tales and personal views along the way. This balance can take ages to strike so don’t stress; just practise! 

Tips for well-written travel blog articles

All that said, no one would aim for a badly-written blog, would they? If you’re starting with no writing experience, here are my tips.

Define your purpose and tone

You’ll soon find your voice. While this will likely be consistent across your posts, it’s worth noting that different blog posts can have different purposes. For example, I often write informative itinerary posts which are light on personal details. Then, I’ll write opinion pieces, like my two year digital nomad round-up which are more like personal essays. It’s okay to include both as long as you…

Write great headings

If your guide is purely informative, make sure the heading matches it with phrases like ‘how to’ or ‘where to find’. If it’s a personal essay, use ‘I’ or ‘me’ or personal development terms like ‘learnt’. Use emotive words like ‘complete guide’ or ‘ultimate itinerary’ but avoid ‘clickbait’ (sensational or overly dramatic headings), to entice users to click. These are considered bad practice.

Break up text blocks with headings

For the love of God! When I read back my old blog posts, I’m frustrated to find incredibly long essays with no headings. The average internet reader has an attention span of 4 seconds (I made that up but you get my drift) so unless there are clear headings and photos dividing up the text every few blocks, they will switch off, however engaging your writing is.

Read, read, read

Don’t start a travel blog in the dark. Make it your business to read as many other travel blogs as possible. Never steal ideas or copy blogs but do take note of things you like and dislike whether it’s tone of voice, humour or techniques used to make you feel emotion. Ask yourself ‘how do I feel after reading this?’ then go back and work out what they’ve done to make you feel that way.

Tell a story

Remind yourself you’re not Lonely Planet and you don’t need to be! Be real . If solo travel was getting you down and you were feeling lonely or having a bad day, tell it, sister. I guarantee your readers will relate more than if you half-heartedly play the ‘I feel so empowered’ card. When telling a story, aim to place your readers there. Tell them not just how you felt but the elements that got you there: the smells, tastes and sights. Make your readers feel like they’re with you.

Tips for editing and accuracy when creating a travel blog

This is many bloggers’ least favourite thing. It can be tough if you don’t have an editorial background. The one thing I always do is take my right cursor and run it through my article slowly, reading each word and letter. Come back to an article a few days after writing because it’s easier to spot errors. The most useful (and only) tool I use for proofreading is Grammarly . You can paste text into the website and it will underline any errors and offer edit suggestions. You can also download it to your computer so it will show in all windows, even WordPress. It’s so useful and free, although there’s a pro version which might be helpful if you know you need extra help in this area. 

Useful pages when starting a travel blog

About me page: Write an intro to your website and tell readers who you are. Share personal details and your travel story. Make it natural and chatty by telling people about your passions and travel style, which hopefully will link back to your niche. Optional – work with me: If you’re jumping straight on the hussle for sponsors and brand collabs, you can include a page mentioning your stats, audience demographics and past collabs. Personally, I’d leave this page until later as you probably won’t be working with brands on day one. Menus: Not a page as much but a way to organise your content. You want your readers to be able to browse and find related articles easily. I would suggest a menu with several dropdowns, for example ‘destinations’ where readers can click on the different countries or cities.

How to bring traffic to your travel blog

So, you’ve figured out how to create a travel blog and written your first article? Now how are you going to get your readers? Traffic is important because a certain number of monthly readers will attract advertisers and make you money. More readers also convert to more newsletter subscribers and social followers. But where does this mysterious traffic come from?

Read next: how I doubled my blog traffic in 4 months

Google is the world’s most popular search engine and the one you want to ‘talk to’ in order to attract traffic. Around 90% of my traffic comes from Google. Basically, the higher you can rank on page 1 of Google, the better. When you start blogging, you’ll unlikely rank for a number of reasons, one purely being that Google favours established domains. Don’t give up; old blog posts can jump up over time so even if your article is on page 10, that’s not to say it won’t reach page 1 later. Google are a little mysterious and have never explicitly said what they look for in a blog post and why some posts make page 1 and others don’t. However, many internet search experts have come up with some solid theories that you can follow in order to enhance your blog posts.  

How to get Google traffic: SEO

Search Engine Optimization is a huge industry that essentially makes your website findable via search engines. I would attribute 90% of my traffic and monetary earnings to my learnings and efforts in SEO. Since this is a guide to starting a travel blog, I don’t want to go delve deep in this one particular area. For now, I’m going to direct you to this ultimate SEO guide and share a few beginners tips here. These are:

SEO tip #1: Keywords are your friend. As an exercise, Google something like ‘best brunch in Oxford’ and click on any of the top articles (but preferably mine, thanks!). Do a text search for ‘brunch in Oxford’ in the document and you can expect to see it several times. This is what we call a keyword or in this case, a keyphrase. It’s the idea that when a user searches for a word or phrase, they’ll find the articles that best answer their question and meet their needs. You need to use such keywords to tell Google that your article is that answer. SEO tip #2: Get KeySearch – this helps you find out what people are searching for. It’s useful because otherwise you could end up writing articles that no one on the internet is actually looking for. I pay $17 a month for this service and it’s genuinely the one thing I couldn’t live without (apart from matcha bubble tea, obviously). Note – there’s a pro option but I use the starter pack. SEO tip #3: Write the best answer that answers all parts of the user’s question. This may sound a little vague but it works. Focus on long articles that go in-depth and have an edge over your competitors.

Pinterest is unique because it’s somewhere between a search engine and a social media channel. You can build followers, but you can also search for specific topics and find articles like you would on Google. If you’re wondering how to start a travel blog and get traffic quickly, Pinterest is a gem. Not only can you generate clicks to your website right away (unlike via Google), but it doesn’t assess your articles. If you’re still building up your SEO skills, you can still get Pinterest traffic.

How to get Pinterest traffic: design and strategy 

Now you know about keywords, I’ll let you know they apply to Pinterest, too. This may be a little advanced for starting your travel blog, but I highly recommend the Pinterest with Ell course on Teachable. Pinterest is all about aesthetics so you should create eye-catching graphics with Photoshop or Canva. I use the free version of Canva which is excellent. You can create professional-looking graphics with no design skills.  2022 update – Pinterest is a bit glitchy at the moment as their platform shifts towards story pins and shopping. I prefer to focus my efforts on Google but I’ll update this if things change.

Social media

Social media brings me the least amount of readers compared to Google and Pinterest. If you have a million followers or better yet, followers really engaged in your niche, it can be good but Google and Pinterest always trump it. If you have more than 10k Instagram followers and can access the swipe up feature, it brings a lot more traffic.

How to get it: followers

While Google and Pinterest both bring new people directly to your website, Instagram tools like hashtags and the Explore feed only attract new users to your Instagram profile. That’s why I say that you need a lot of existing engaged followers to attract website traffic from Instagram. For that reason, I don’t have any specific ‘tips’ for using Instagram to drive traffic for your blog. All I can suggest is building an engaged Instagram following and focus on reaching 10k. 

Related question – how long should blog posts be?

I don’t want to say ‘as long as possible’ because I don’t want to encourage waffling for the sake of it. But as long as you are answering the reader’s question throughout, it’s optimum to create blogs that are as detailed as possible. I usually aim for 3,000 words for a city guide or 2,000 words for a specific attraction like a walk or market. I find these do really well compared to shorter blogs I wrote in the past of 1,000 words or less.

Related question – how often to post?

This is a grey area. Sources suggest you should be publishing at least weekly to please the Goog. Some bloggers even say three times a week! Luckily, countless top travel bloggers dispute this information and recall times they’re not posted for weeks and not noticed an impact. It is good for blog health to publish frequently. But quality, well-researched and detailed blog posts perform best on Google. I wouldn’t advise churning out quick content just to post regularly. It’s not the only factor. On a personal note, you are going to burn out and start hating your blog if you force it.

How to track your traffic 

Google Analytics! For the first year after creating my travel blog, I used an analytics tool within WordPress which was quite basic but still a good indication of how my traffic was growing. However, if you want to track the success of different blog posts, you need Google Analytics. You access this separately from WordPress but you do need to connect your Google Analytics to your WordPress . Once you’ve done this, you can see your most popular posts for the day, week, month etc and how they’re changing over time, where your users come from, their demographics, whether they’re on a desktop or mobile… The list goes on!

Cost of creating a travel blog

The question on everyone’s lips! But in terms of the outright costs to start a travel blog, you’re looking at… Website hosting – $142 / $108 for the first three years with Bluehost. If you use my discount code for joining Bluehost, you can purchase them with the money saved. Add on the cost of a logo if you hire a graphic designer. I also pay for KeySearch monthly ($17) and a Shutterstock membership ($30) that gives me 10 photos a month to download.

Related question – ‘do I need to invest in a camera for starting my travel blog?’

My answer here is the same as ‘do I need writing experience?’. Honestly, it’s going to help! But it isn’t a dealbreaker. A lot of influencers will tell you you’re an unmotivated slob and need to ‘spend money to make money’ if you’re not prepared to buy 4 grand worth of their affiliate camera products. Firstly, mobile phones genuinely have amazing cameras these days. If you write engaging content, give useful advice and you’re smart with your marketing, you’re going to smash it anyway.  But I’d be lying if I said we don’t live in a visual age so of course having a camera is a valuable investment. I use the Sony DSC-HX350 Digital Compact Bridge Camera which cost me £300 and has taken every photo on my Instagram feed as I’ve grown from 0 to 12k followers and every photo on this blog as it’s grown to 50k monthly readers.

How to make money as a travel blogger

I wouldn’t advise starting a travel blog for the money because honestly, it can take time and starts slow. But as you build over time, you can start building your blog income streams and even replace your full-time job. Some ways to monetise require a certain number of readers and you’ll need to wait to do, while others can start right away. So, how do travel bloggers make money?

Advertising

There are a few companies that will place adverts on your travel blog and pay you based on the number of times they’re viewed. There are two companies called AdSense and Ezoic which require lower numbers of readers and don’t pay as well. I held out for Mediavine, the best agency to make money as a travel blogger. The old threshold to apply was 25,000 monthly views but this has recently been increased to 50,000. I make $15-25 per 1,000 page views.

This is where a blogger promotes a product or service and if a reader makes a purchase, the travel blogger receives a commission for referring them. Some of the most popular affiliates for travel bloggers include Booking.com, Amazon Associates and Get Your Guide tours. You’d be surprised how many companies offer an affiliate programme. There have been times I’ve been promoting a company just because I like them and think my readers will find them useful, then discovered they have an affiliate programme I could have been benefiting from. Applying and keeping track of them all separately is a lot of effort and admin so I use Travelpayouts to create links to all of them and manage everything in one place! Signing up is free and takes 2 minutes . The good thing about affiliate marketing is that you don’t need a certain audience to begin. You can start using affiliate links to make money as soon as you start your travel blog. Important note – you need an affiliate disclosure so you can comply with guidelines and be transparent with your readers. If you need help writing this, just look at mine at the top of this page. Amazon requires you to mention them by name but most other affiliates do not.

Sponsored content and work with brands

This is one of the best ways to make money as a travel blogger. Once you have an established blog and audience, you can work with brands who might want to promote their products. This can be anything from a meal in a restaurant to a sponsored tour, hotel stay or travel-related product. They may offer the product or experience for free in exchange for coverage or they may also pay you. Either way, this is an advert and you should disclose it appropriately. To pitch brands as a travel blogger , tell them what you can offer in exchange for what you want, for example ‘one Instagram post to 12k followers and one blog post on a website of 200k monthly readers in exchange for this tour’. It’s always a plus if you can be specific about the type of content you’d make and any creative ideas or angles you have in mind. When reaching out to brands, you’ll want to send them a media kit showing your demographics and stats. These can be made easily on Canva.

How to start a travel blog when you’re not travelling

When I got back from Africa in 2017, I spent a year living at home, working full-time, saving money to go remote and building my blog. My biggest struggle was finding things to blog about when I wasn’t actually travelling. Whether it’s down to money, limited holiday days or family commitments, there are a billion reasons why you may not be travelling regularly but still want to start your travel blog. Tips for this include:

Blog about your hometown

I created so many Oxford blogs from 2017-18, even ones about the cafes I’d visit on the way to work and the food markets I’d get my lunch from. Your home city may not seem exciting to you but if travellers go there, it’s got potential. Even if it doesn’t receive international tourists, I’ll bet people stay over for work or the locals look up new places to eat and drink.

Day trips and weekend breaks

If your hometown doesn’t have potential, how far are you from a city that does? If you’re in the UK, it can’t be that far away. I find people are most likely to search for 1-2 day itineraries since you need to be more organised if you have limited time in a place. So if you have just one day somewhere, use that to your advantage and put together a one-day itinerary rather than a huge guide to everything to see and do. 

Interview posts

Not travelling right now? Interview people who are. I was interviewed early on in a series about travel bloggers juggling full-time jobs. More recently, I’ve been interviewed as a digital nomad. People love to be asked for interviews as it brings them new readers. Reach out to bloggers you find inspiring and ask them if they’d link to do an interview-style post for your new travel website. I bet they’ll say yes. Check out my interview archives with other inspiring travellers!

Blog about specific attractions

When creating a travel blog, it’s best to be as specific and detailed as possible. So if you have limited time in a place or you’re in your hometown, rather than provide a vague overview to everything in a ‘Canada travel guide’ style post, why not pick one or two main attractions? Ideas include a specific walking trail, a restaurant review, a waterfall, a food market… Anything! Two of my highest-ranking posts are about a specific coastal walk in Sydney and a stately house near me at home.

Responsibility of becoming a travel blogger

When becoming a travel blogger, you may not have much knowledge about issues in the travel community or the power you hold as someone with an internet following. But as travel bloggers, we have a responsibility to leave places and communities as we found them and not do any damage while travelling or showcasing places or people. Educate yourself on White Saviorism . Don’t promote voluntourism . Don’t pose with children from developing countries for mindless Instagram photos. If you’re starting a travel blog, know it’s not all about websites and SEO; it’s also about responsibility and representation. You have power in the way you shape situations and conservations. Be wise! Make sure to follow @nowhitesaviors for important considerations and @barbiesavior for a satirical take on how not to start a travel blog.

How to start a travel blog questions and tips

Question – when should I launch my travel blog?

From a practical perspective, I would wait until you have an About Me page and at least two articles to launch. From a confidence perspective, whenever you are ready to take a leap! I was nervous about publishing my first blogs even though I had prior writing experience, and I know I’m not the only one. Followers have told me ‘what if no one reads it? What if people don’t like it?’

Try not to stress too much, although I know it’s easier said than done. Countless times I’ve published a personal post then anxiously spent the next hour editing it to sound less opinionated and reduce the risk of offending anyone. Share your blog with a few friends or family members and asking for their feedback before launching on social media. You could also consider sharing your first few blog posts with Close Friends on Instagram until you’re feeling more confident. If no one reads your blog at first, don’t stress. As you start using Pinterest and getting readers from Google, you will attract your ideal audience.

Question – how do you deal with criticism?

A website is a relatively safe place to be in terms of internet hate. I think I had a comment on a blog once saying something I’d said was inaccurate and I took it as a learning curve to fact-check better in future. If people are going to be mean, it will be on social media. How to deal with trolls: In the very unlikely event you get someone heckling or being horrible to you, ignore and block, my friends. What if people think your work is bad? They won’t. We all have self-doubt and imposter syndrome so it’s normal to feel this way. Start by posting what you’re best at, whether that’s a photography blog if you take nice photos or an opinion piece if writing is your main skill. For example, I never posted any graphics to start as I know design isn’t my strongest suit. What if you deserved the criticism? It’s easy to feel defensive and reply rashly if someone critiques you for something you’ve said or done. If what they’ve said is unnecessary or unfounded, ignore them. Take an hour to mull it over. Ask yourself, do they have a point? Perhaps you’ve phrased something badly or posted an opinion without thinking it through. Apologise and learn from it. There’s nothing wrong with seeing another person’s point of view and changing yours. If you have no experience posting to an audience, it takes time to get used to it. Observe how bloggers you admire present facts and opinions and how people respond to them.

Question – should you build a website or social media following first?

There’s no right answer. I launched my website first but in retrospect, I like the idea of finding your groove, travel style and photography style via Instagram and then building your website later. This also means you’ll start with a bit of website traffic when you promote on Instagram. There’s no right or wrong way. However my one warning would be…

Tip – invest in your website above your social media channels

Any wise owl blogger will tell you this. Your website is your baby. You own it. Your Instagram account is a page on a shared social media channel that you don’t own. Your account could randomly be marked as spam at any point, or users could migrate to a new channel. In five years’ time, your readers may be visiting a new social media channel rather than Instagram, but they’ll still be visiting websites.

Tip – you don’t have to start it all at once

Are you even a blogger if you don’t have a YouTube, podcast, clothing line and branded t-shirts? Well, yes. Don’t go overboard and spread yourself too thinly. Most bloggers have a website and one or two key channels, perhaps Instagram or Youtube that they invest in heavily. Obviously, it’s nice to have a solid following across your channels but don’t stress if you build up slowly and if you never have a tote bag with your face on it.

Question – how can I connect with other bloggers?

It feels amazing to connect with people who do what you do and share the same hobbies and passions, plus you can learn a lot from other bloggers. Unfortunately, all too often Instagram is a place for influencers to show off their seemingly perfect lives. But lovely individuals are out there when you look; I’ve made many blogger friends through Instagram. How to find travel bloggers on Instagram – use hashtags like #travelblogger and the related ones suggested along the top bar when you search. Check out if there are any blogging groups in your area. I recently found out there’s an Oxfordshire Blogger Network that I never knew about when starting my blog here a few years back. But IG is more about building friendships than brainstorm blogging strategy. That’s where Facebook groups come in handy. There are groups depending on your niche, for example female blogging groups and ones aimed at SEO or Pinterest strategy. The ones I would recommend include:

• Make Traffic Happen – SEO + Social Media Support – best for SEO tips
• Female Travel Bloggers – best for community
• Pinterest Travel Bloggers Club – best for building Pinterest traffic
• Link Building + Guest Posts + Collabs (Travel Bloggers) – best for gathering backlinks to your site
• Blogging for New Bloggers – best for beginner blogging questions
• WPBeginner Engage – WordPress Help for Non-Techies – best for tech and website help.

Usually, you’ll need to submit your website domain and answer some questions in order to join. Once you’ve started your travel blog, it’s worth joining as many blogging Facebook groups as possible. You can always leave certain ones later if you find they don’t serve you.

Final note from Rose

I’ve just given you 8,652 words of advice but I just want to give you two much more important ones: ENJOY. THIS. If you go into this promising yourself to post 11 times a week, share to every social channel twice a day, hit the Mediavine threshold by the end of the year… Well, this is going to be awful. Blogging is so much fun: you get to share your opinions, be the sole creative and make like-minded friends. It would be a shame to stress yourself out and end up hating your blog and feeling disappointed if you don’t get instant success. You’ll burn yourself out. I say it because I’ve been there. I often find myself thinking ‘I need to publish this by the end of the week’ when usually I really don’t.  Most of all, aim to enjoy blogging and play with your voice and creativity. I didn’t even think about SEO or analytics until two years in and yes, maybe that was a mistake. But maybe it wasn’t because I still love what I do. This is loooong. See you next time!

Free printable checklist

Don’t leave without your freebie. Download your ‘how to start a travel blog’ checklist’ here (it will open in Google Drive).

Follow for more blogging content on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter and YouTube .

I hope you have a better idea of how to start a travel blog! Drop any questions or comments below.

Check out my other blogging guides:

• How to take photo of yourself when travelling solo
• How I doubled my blog traffic in 4 months

Rose is a solo traveller from the UK who has been on the road since 2015. She wants to show other women that solo travel isn't scary and doesn't have to be expensive! Rose has lived in Mexico, Canada and all over Asia, seeking out food, bubble tea and street art wherever she goes!

10 thoughts on “ How To Start A Travel Blog in 2024 + Free Printable Checklist ”

Thank you for taking the time to produce this post. It is great and you make it so easy to understand. Do you find there’s a best time or day to post?

I find weekends are the best time to post purely because people have more time to read blogs and they get views straight away which is always a good start! I don’t worry too much about the time of day for the actual blog post but I would aim to promote it around the best times of day for the different social media channels I use ? hope that helps!

We loved this post so much! We have just started up our instagram (@skintyorkshiretravellers) and are in the process of sorting a blog. At the moment we’re just on the free wordpress.com but debating whether to go self-hosted this early on. We’re very much still in the early stages so these tips were so useful 🙂 Thanks! Hannah + Andy | http://www.skintyorkshiretravellers.wordpress.com xx

Glad you liked it, guys! Yeah it’s not a bad idea to be on a version while you play around and find your groove. Although I sometimes find once you pay for something, you feel more motivated to use it!

Wow great piece of information over there, the way you have used graphs and charts made it so easy to understand the content more clearly. Keep up the good work

Glad you found it useful, Arpita 🙂

“Welcome to Hell” Hahahah!!!! So, so, so accurate. I’m JUST getting my blog started and absolutely agonised over this. (As we all do) But what a relief when I got through that hump.. and onto the next massive mountain of making the website and content. It’s a never ending battle… but very very exciting and enjoyable. I appreciate the wonderful solo travel blogging women for creating these very helpful guides. Hopefully one day, I will do the same!

Hey Kay! Ah haha it’s so true 😉 and truly, it is so much work that people don’t realise! But incredibly enjoyable like you say. Good luck with it all!

Hahahah!!!! So, so, so accurate. I’m JUST getting my blog started and absolutely agonised over this. (As we all do) but Thanks learned and know a lot for sharing everything. Its helps a lot. Thank you very much.

Hi Satta, glad you found it useful!

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How to Start a Travel Blog (Travel, Create & Get Paid!)

Last Updated: August 25, 2024

Back in 2017, I saved up a chunk of money, quit my job, and started traveling.

I had the world at my fingertips and big, shiny plans for the future.

That’s right, I was going to start a travel blog and make money while exploring the earth at my leisure!

It was a complete disaster.

Noeltrain.com was defunct after a couple of weeks and I jammed my failure deep down and kept on traveling.

Fast forward six months.

This time, I decided to do this doing things the right way.

With a newfound sense of determination, I spent countless hours learning everything I could about the industry.

Failure was not an option, and I slowly lifted my new little website off of the ground for good.

Since then, I’ve meandered the earth, sharing my best travel and hiking advice on this blog as I go.

The money I earn from blogging will allow me to continue exploring for as long as I choose.

Life’s been good for me lately, but it wasn’t easy getting here.

That’s why I’ve created this step-by-step guide to help you start your own travel blog.

I want you to breeze past the frustrating roadblocks that I experienced getting my blog off the ground.

Hell, if you keep reading, I’ll give you the tools you need to start making a full-time income.

Ready to get your travel blog started the right way?

How to Start a Travel Blog

Should You Start a Travel Blog?

• Brainstorm Your Blog’s Name
• Set up Hosting for Your Blog
• Install WordPress
• Pick a Theme for Your Blog
• Install Must-Have Plug-Ins
• Start Building Your Blog
• Set Goals for Yourself
• Create Top-Notch Content
• How to Bring Traffic to Your Travel Blog

How to Monetize Your Travel Blog

• Extra Tips & Advice

Cost of Starting a Travel Blog

• More Blogging Resources
• Successful Travel Blogs
• Final Thoughts: Starting a Travel Blog

⭑ BOOKMARK THIS GUIDE ⭑

This guide is packed with valuable information that can help you long after you’ve started your travel blogging journey, so I recommend bookmarking this page for future use.

Many of you are likely travel addicts struggling to decide if starting a travel blog is worth the time and effort.

I had the same doubts for years before I pulled the trigger and started one of my own.

Here’s what I can tell you about my decision:

Saving up money , quitting my exhausting job, and starting a travel blog was the single best life change I’ve ever made. I just wish I’d started earlier.

Why? Because travel blogging has been the most fulfilling journey of my life.

I get paid to explore, hike, write, photograph, and help others do the same.

What more could I ask for?

But for as great as it sounds, understand one thing: succeeding in the blogging industry is more challenging than meets the eye.

To make a decent living, you’ll need to be extremely self-motivated, patient, and willing to invest some time and little money upfront. Sound good?

Great, because I’m here for you .

So, stay tuned for my absolute best advice on how to start your own travel blog and get paid to live your dream.

Step One: Brainstorm a Name for Your Blog

It all starts with a name.

Coming up with a name for your website name can be tough, but don’t overthink it.

The name you choose for your blog is important, in that it will represent you, your brand, and your beloved blog for years to come.

(No pressure or anything.)

Here are some tips that should help you out during the process:

Be Unique (Not Cliché)

The internet is swarmed with travel blogs, so it’ll be your personal challenge to stand out from the masses.

When choosing a name, avoid using clichéd words that will lump you in with the hordes of other people trying to do exactly what you’re doing.

‘Wandering’, ‘wanderlust’, ‘nomad’, ‘vagabond’, ‘adventurous’, ‘roaming’ – overused travel buzz words like these will blur the line between you and other travel bloggers.

Get creative when choosing a name, and don’t be afraid to stand out.

Pick a Name That is Easy to Remember

I recently rebranded my blog from ‘Tenacious Travel’ to ‘The Packable Life.’

While I’m fond of the old name, the truth is that it wasn’t the most memorable moniker for my blog.

‘Tenacious’ is hard for many people to spell and tons of people don’t even know what it means !

By switching to something more simple, I’ve made my blog’s name far easier to remember.

Keep it simple when choosing your blog’s name.

Avoid using hard-to-remember words, hyphens, numbers, or anything else that might confuse your readers when they’re trying to remember your blog’s name.

Keep Social Media in Mind

When choosing a name for your blog, check for username availability across all social media platforms.

In a perfect world, you’ll be able to lock up matching handles across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Twitter has a 15 character limit for usernames, so any blog names longer than that will have to be condensed.

My username across all social media platforms is ‘thepackablelife.’ Lucky me!

Don’t stress if you can’t secure usernames that are an exact match to your blog’s name.

Just do your best to find a username that makes sense for your blog and is easy to remember.

Pick a Name That You Won’t Outgrow

Don’t paint yourself into a corner with a constricting blog name, because doing so might cramp your style down the road.

Names like ‘Wandering Asia Aimlessly’, ‘ 20-Something Traveler’, or ‘The Vagabonding Vegan’ could limit your blog in the long run.

Think about it.

What happens when you stop traveling Asia?

How will you create honest content after you turn 30?

What will you write about if you stop being a vegan?

How will your readers react?

Keep the future in mind, and choose a name that will stick with you forever.

Why I Chose ‘The Packable Life’

Let’s look at the two main focuses of my blog:

• Minimalist travel
• Ultralight backpacking

Now let’s look at how ‘The Packable Life’ relates to all three:

• Minimalist travelers pack everything they need into a small bag and can travel for weeks, months, or years at a time. By promoting a ‘packable life,’ I’m relating to this mobile, minimalist lifestyle.
• Ultralight backpackers share the ‘lightweight and mobile’ approach to conquer multi-day hiking trails. Whether gear is ‘packable’ or not is paramount to the ultralight backpacking culture.

Step Two: Set Up Web Hosting

Once you’ve chosen a killer name for your website, it’s time to start building your blog from the ground up.

The process all starts with web hosting.

Web hosting is the service that provides the necessary technology, storage, and support to make your website visible to the entire world.

Yeah, web hosting is super important.

You and your website need a web hosting provider that offers the following:

• Excellent uptime (your site never crashes or is offline)
• Fast servers (your pages load quickly)
• Great customer service  (fast and helpful assistance on a consistent basis)

For me (and countless other bloggers), the company that delivers on these three aspects is SiteGround .

Thanks to SiteGround , my website has 100% uptime and lightning-fast page load times.

Not to mention, their impeccable customer service has bailed me out of my own silly mistakes on several occasions.

I’ll walk you through the entire process of getting your travel blog started through SiteGround , from the first step to the last.

This all should take about 10 minutes and will only cost $3.95 a month through this link or the button below.

Ready? Let’s get started.

This will get the ball rolling on reserving your domain name and hosting plan through SiteGround .

This is important!

Choosing this option will automatically install WordPress, the world’s best website building platform onto your blog for free.

We’ll talk a lot more about WordPress later.

Since you’re starting a brand new blog and likely won’t exceed 10,000 monthly visits right away, I recommend going with the StartUp plan.

If you need to upgrade to a more powerful plan in the future, it’s easy to do so.

Be sure to double-check the spelling of your domain name and stick with a ‘.com’ suffix.

A web address ending in anything but ‘.com’ will be harder to remember and appear less professional.

‘Domain Privacy’ keeps your personal information private and ‘SG Site Scanner’ automatically scans your website and searches for hacking or suspicious activity.

I use both on my website, but they’re not mandatory to get started.

You can always upgrade later.

This will process your transaction.

SiteGround has a 30-day money-back guarantee for all shared hosting plans, so if you get decide blogging isn’t your style, you can get refunded no questions asked.

That’s it! You’ve officially reserved your domain name and web hosting, and you’re well on your way to starting your travel blog.

There are just a few more simple steps to get your website up and running.

Step Three: Install WordPress on Your Blog

WordPress is a free online website creation tool that is, far and away, the most popular software for building blogs worldwide.

It’s so popular, in fact, that it powers 35% of websites across the entire internet .

WordPress is intuitive, well-designed, and offers countless plugins to fine-tune websites to suit the user’s needs.

You don’t need any web design experience to use WordPress, either.

It’s a no-brainer.

SiteGround makes it incredibly easy to install WordPress on your website.

Let’s walk through it, step by step.

You should land on this screen after you’ve paid for your domain name and hosting. If you’re having trouble finding this page, simply visit your new blog’s web address.

WordPress will give you a choice of free themes (design templates) for your website.

Pick any free theme for now, and I’ll walk you through how to install a professional-quality premium theme for your blog in the next section.

At this point, SiteGround will recommend certain free WordPress plugins that you can install onto your website.

Plugins are meant to add features and will be helpful in tweaking certain aspects of your blog.

Add the plugins that sound useful to your website, and if they don’t work out, you can always uninstall them down the road.

I’ll recommend my favorite must-have WordPress plugins for your blog very soon.

Now, SiteGround will recommend three final plugins to add to your website.

Of these three, I recommend installing Yoast SEO, which I’ll talk about later.

Feel free to install Google Analytics and the Grow Subscribers List plugins, as they’re highly rated as well.

Though you’re likely logged into WordPress at the moment, you’ll get logged out from time to time.

To access your login screen, visit YourBlogName.com/wp-admin .

From there, you can log in and will have complete access to your WordPress dashboard where you can make changes to your website.

Making Sense of Your WordPress Dashboard

Once you’re logged in, you’ll notice a nifty little menu on the left-hand side of your screen.

This is your WordPress dashboard.

You’ll see a bunch of different menu items that give you access to different parts of your blog.

Here’s a list of the most important ones:

• Posts : create, categorize, tag, and edit all of your blog posts
• Media : access and upload images, videos, and other media
• Pages : create, categorize, tag, and edit all of your pages (pages are different than blog posts, think: home page, about me, contact, etc.)
• Comments : approve, deny, and reply to comments left on your blog posts
• Appearance : change your theme, edit code, tweak your menu bar, and add widgets to your blog
• Plugins : add and subtract certain features to your blog
• Settings : change the settings for your blog

You’re not alone if this all seems a bit confusing. Learning WordPress takes a little time, but you’ll get the hang of it soon enough.

Just stick with it and get ready to learn.

Step Four: Pick a Theme

Once you’ve secured your domain and hosting and installed WordPress, you’ll need to install a theme for your blog.

Themes are templates that help users tweak the design and overall appearance of their websites.

Here are a few popular options:

GeneratePress Premium

After struggling with several frustrating professional themes over the years, I finally landed on GeneratePress (and I couldn’t be happier).

It has wonderful support, is easy to learn, is optimized for SEO, and is fairly priced.

Thousands upon thousands of WordPress users trust GeneratePress , and I am among them.

Look no further if you’re searching for the absolute best theme on the market .

Free Themes

As you may have noticed while installing WordPress, there are numerous free themes built into your website, ready to activate.

I don’t recommend using a free theme if you eventually want to make money through your travel blog.

Free themes limit your blog’s functionality and withhold vital features in order to sway users into upgrading to the more feature-rich paid version.

Changing themes and upgrading can be a big hassle, so I recommend choosing a premium theme like GeneratePress straight from the start.

Installing Your Theme

Once you’ve chosen a theme, download it and refer to the installation instructions to upload it to your website.

For most themes, this step should be fairly straightforward, but I’ll go over how to install it just in case you get tripped up.

• Download your theme’s file (usually a .zip file)
• Visit your WordPress dashboard and select Appearance > Themes
• Click the ‘Add New’ button near the top of the page
• Click the ‘Upload Theme’ button near the top of the page
• Click the ‘Choose File’ button near the middle of the page
• Locate and select your theme’s .zip file from your computer
• Click the ‘Install Now’ button near the middle of the page
• Click the ‘Activate’ button that appears when you hover over your theme

That’s it.

Once you’ve installed and activated your new theme, the overall look and feel of your website will be different than before.

Getting your new theme to look the way you want will take a bit of customization and patience.

Don’t worry though.

All professional bloggers go through these exact growing pains when learning a new theme.

Be sure to read the user’s manual and take advantage of support forums when you run into any issues with your theme.

Step Five: Install Must-Have Plug-Ins

Now that you’ve installed WordPress and picked out a theme, it’s time to add some essential plugins to your site.

Plugins are add-ons that add helpful features and enhance the functionality of your blog.

Here are the top plugins I recommend:

If you want your blog to be on the first page of Google search results, install Yoast SEO.

It’s widely used by bloggers worldwide and seen as the go-to plugin for search engine optimization.

Yoast SEO has helped improve my search engine presence massively.

At some point or another, bots will barrage your blog with spammy comments (and they’ll never stop).

The Askimet plugin identifies these pesky comments and deletes them automatically, which is a huge time saver.

Autoptimize

Your blog should load quickly and efficiently, or else people visiting your site might get impatient and leave.

Autoptimize will help streamline your blog and improve page load speeds, creating a better experience for your readers.

Grow by Mediavine

See the colorful share buttons at the top of this blog post? Those were created with the Grow by Mediavine plugin.

Buttons like these give readers an easy way to share your articles with the world, which will bring more people to your site and spread your message further.

Uploading large media files to your blog is a big no-no, as they will slow down your page load speeds.

The Smush plugin automatically compresses media files as you add them to your site, which will speed up your site automatically.

Contact Form 7

On your blog’s contact page, you’ll want to create a form for people to fill out and email you.

Contact Form 7 is the most simple plugin for the job.

How to Add Plugins on WordPress

Installing plugins is a simple process. Here’s how:

• Find the ‘Plugins’ menu item on your WordPress dashboard and click ‘Add New.’
• Type the name of the plugin you want to download into the ‘Search plugins…’ field.
• Click the ‘Install Now’ button.
• Click the ‘Activate’ button.

You’re not going to love every plugin you download . If a plugin is clashing with your blog or simply isn’t working out, just deactivate it, delete it, and move on.

Step Six: Complete the Necessary First Steps

After you’ve installed your must-have plugins, it’s time to put together the skeleton of your website.

These are the steps you should take care of right away to get your blog off on the right foot.

Create an About Page

Travel is very personal, which is why readers want to know exactly who is giving them advice when they’re visiting your blog.

These readers are likely to have several different questions while they’re busy browsing your content.

Who is the person behind this article?

Are they qualified to give me advice?

How much travel experience do they have?

Can I trust them?

What do they look like?

Would I want to travel with them?

A solid ‘About’ page should answer all of these questions, so offer up a candid glimpse into your life.

Include pictures, stories, and unique quirks about yourself.

People should feel like they’ve met you once they’re done reading your ‘About’ page.

Place links to some of the best posts on your ‘About’ page, and make it clear to your readers where they should click next.

Write Your First Post

No need to stress, writing your first blog post isn’t as tough as it sounds.

Choose a memorable travel experience you’ve had, make a blog post outline, write your post, add a few pictures, and edit it.

It’s that simple.

If you’re having trouble deciding on what to write about, make a short post introducing yourself and explaining why you started a blog in the first place.

Tell people about the places you’ve been and where you want to travel in the future.

Email the post to family and friends and share it on social media.

Ask everyone for their honest opinion.

Both positive feedback and constructive criticism will stick with you and help improve your skills.

Design Your Homepage

Your blog doesn’t need to look professional right away, but it will need a decent-looking homepage at some point.

Readers, for better or worse, will judge your website by its homepage, so it’s up to you to leave a good first impression.

Get a piece of paper, sketch out what your ideal homepage looks like, and use your blog’s theme to will it into existence.

You’ll likely need to reference your theme’s user manual and visit its support forum to turn your sketch into reality.

Stumped on your homepage design?

Visit some of your favorite blogs, check out their homepages, take notes on what you like, and start sketching your own unique design from the top down.

Set Up Email for Your Blog

Which email address looks more professional?

• [email protected]
• [email protected]

The answer here is painfully obvious.

People are going to take your blog more seriously once you have an official email address attached to your site, so let’s take care of that right away.

Here’s a helpful guide on how to set up your official email address through SiteGround .

Get Your Blog a Logo

While you don’t have to create a logo for your blog right away, you’ll eventually need one.

A well-designed logo will make your site stand out from the thousands of other travel blogs and will help strengthen your brand.

You have many different options when creating a logo for your site.

Here are a few that I recommend:

Make Your Own Logo with Photoshop : If you use Adobe Photoshop and know the basics, creating a simple logo for your website shouldn’t take long. Browse videos and tutorials on YouTube if you need help learning how to make your own logo on Photoshop.

Cost : Adobe Photoshop is $9.95 a month

Make Your Own Logo with Snappa : Find Photoshop a little difficult to use? Then try out Snappa , an easy-to-use graphic design platform where you can edit photos, design logos, make banners, and more. Think of Snappa as a simplified Photoshop full of useful templates.

Cost : Free for basic membership – $1o a month for pro

Hire Someone to Make Your Logo on Fiverr : If you’d rather not fuss over your logo and want a professional to design it instead, go to Fiverr . There you’ll find hundreds of graphic designers who can make your logo in a flash, often at a very affordable price.

Cost: $10 and up

Install Google Analytics

Ask any successful blogger how they measure and analyze their internet traffic and they’ll all give you the same answer: Google Analytics .

Google Analytics gives you access to all sorts of helpful stats about your blog.

It’ll show you how many people visit your site, what countries they’re from, what pages they’re viewing, how they found your blog, and how long their session lasts.

Consider Google Analytics a must-have tool for your website.

Did I mention it’s completely free?

Signing up for your Google Analytics account is simple and easy.

Step Seven: Set Goals for Your Blog

The process of starting a travel blog from scratch can be overwhelming at times, so set some simple goals to stay focused throughout the process.

To help create these goals, ask yourself a few very important questions:

• What type of site do you want to create? (What’s your niche?)
• What type of audience do you want to reach?
• How do you plan on bringing traffic to your website?
• How will you turn that traffic into income?
• Where do you see your blog a year from now?
• How will you free up time to grow your blog?

Give these questions plenty of thought, answer them honestly, and create a list of detailed goals.

Forge a realistic plan of attack and let it be your guiding light as you grow your blog.

And when you lose focus or motivation, ask yourself these questions over again and use your answers to get back on track.

Step Eight: Create Top-Notch Content

Finally! It’s time to start creating those lovely posts and pages that make your little website so interesting.

But I’m not here to tell you to create just any old average content.

No, I’m here to inspire you to create the best possible content you can offer the world .

Because to be successful in the competitive travel blogging industry, you must crank out killer content that people love to read.

You need to help, inspire, and teach your readers in the most effective way you can.

That is how you succeed in this business.

• Tell a compelling story
• Use wonderful photos
• Make your content easy to navigate
• Be thorough
• Edit your writing
• Relate to your audience
• Entertain your audience
• Teach your audience
• Be yourself!

If creating content becomes overwhelming and you get stuck, visit some of the more successful blogs to gain inspiration.

While enjoying their content, ask yourself a few questions.

Why do I enjoy reading this particular blogger’s content?

What have they done to become so successful?

What sets them apart from other travel bloggers?

How do they connect with their readers?

Once you start to ask questions like these, answers will begin to present themselves.

After you have an idea of the direction you want to go, plop yourself down in front of your computer and get to work.

Inspiration and clarity will point you in the right direction.

How to Bring Traffic to Your Website

Now that I’ve preached to you about creating killer content, let’s focus on something even more difficult: getting all that content in front of an audience.

How exactly are you going to make that happen?

It’s not as easy as it may seem.

Let’s go over all the strategies and tools I use to bring tens of thousands of people to my blog every single month.

Optimize Your Blog Posts Show Up on Search Engines

About 85% of this website’s traffic arrives through Google searches, and that’s not by accident.

To get this type of traffic, I utilize SEO or search engine optimization.

SEO is the science of studying what keywords people search for, writing blog posts around them, and tailoring those posts to rank on Google.

When people search for your given keywords, your post will eventually show up in the results, hopefully on the front page.

Showing up on Google searches isn’t always easy, but it is worth all of the effort you put in.

The traffic you earn through search engines is passive, targeted, and completely free.

Use SEO correctly and people will visit your blog consistently, plain and simple.

Free tools like Google Search Console , Ubersuggest , and Keyword Sh****r will help you dip your toes into the SEO world, but eventually, you’ll want to pay for a service that’ll raise your SEO chops to a professional level.

I use Semrush  for all of my SEO needs. It’s an incredibly helpful tool that helps me analyze my traffic, research keywords, and improve the SEO of my existing posts.

It has been a game-changer for me and can’t recommend it enough.

Try Semrush free for 7-days .

Collect Email Addresses

As a blogger, the biggest gift a reader can give you is their email address.

By trusting you with their direct line of contact, readers are giving your blog a vote of confidence and asking you to send them more quality content.

Gaining new email subscribers is downright flattering.

The beauty of having subscribers is that you don’t have to worry about search engines, social media, or advertisements to reach your audience.

You can contact them instantly with a click of a button and send your content straight to their inbox.

That’s powerful.

I recommend using a service like ConvertKit to help automate your emails, grow your blog, and improve your traffic to your blog.

Use Social Media to Connect with Your Followers

Relying on social media for traffic can be tiresome and time-consuming, and isn’t the most sustainable method out there.

To be honest, I’m not very passionate about social media for this reason alone.

So, then why the hell am I telling you to use social media?

Because social media gives you a chance to connect with your readers on a more personal level.

Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram allow you to join conversations, ask and answer questions, and get to know the people who support your blog.

Focus on social media to develop relationships with your audience and consider the traffic it brings as an added bonus.

Utilize Other Methods

Though SEO, social media, and email marketing should bring in the majority of your blog’s traffic, there are plenty of other ways to get people to visit your website. Here are a few:

• Paid Ads : Many bloggers spend money on ads that will get their content in front of a larger audience. Google Ads and  Facebook Ads are two of the most popular ad services in the industry.
• Referrals : Getting other websites to link to your blog can be a decent source of traffic, and will also improve your search engine presence. The more well-known the website, the better.
• Guest Posting : Writing for other blogs is a great way to get your name out there, so many bloggers create content for other websites, which brings traffic and builds their reputation.

Bringing traffic to your website is great and all, but monetizing that traffic is the key to becoming a successful full-time travel blogger.

Here are a few of the popular methods that you can use to turn your passion into a profession.

Advertisements

Placing ads on your website is an easy way to earn income through your site, though you’ll need a significant amount of traffic to earn substantial money.

Google Adsense and Mediavine are two of the most popular ad services among bloggers and make placing ads on your website straightforward.

Affiliate Links

When you recommend products or services through your blog, you can insert special links that earn a commission when a reader clicks through and makes a purchase.

This is called affiliate marketing, and many bloggers earn the majority of their income through this method.

Here are a few of the most popular affiliate programs for bloggers:

• Booking.com
• Get Your Guide
• World Nomads

Keep in mind, it’s mandatory to disclose to your readers when your blog posts have affiliate links.

Let your audience know that you’ll receive a commission when they purchase products or services through your links at no extra cost to them.

Sponsored Trips/Posts

Once your site starts seeing significant traffic, companies might be willing to collaborate with you to create a sponsored post.

They may ask that you write a post on a specific topic or destination and include links and references to their product within the article.

They’ll pay you, often handsomely, in return.

Be sure to put together a solid ‘ Work with Me ‘ page to attract potential partners for sponsored posts.

Freelance Writing

Many travel bloggers earn income freelance writing for other publications and often get paid well to do so.

Freelance writing jobs usually pay anywhere between $.05 and $1.00 per word, though the higher paying gigs are usually reserved for writers with well-established blogs and/or impeccable portfolios.

Here are a few websites that pay travel writers:

• Matador Network
• Lonely Planet
• Transitions Abroad
• Pathfinders Travel
• National Geographic Traveler
• Backpacker Magazine

Sell Your Photos

If you’re a talented photographer, you can earn money selling photos from your adventures online.

Websites like Adobe Stock , Alamy , and TourPhotos are a great place to get your photos in front of a large audience and collect commissions when they’re sold.

Want to sell your photos without a commission?

Just advertise them on your own website.

Just keep in mind, that once you sell a photo online, it may no longer be yours to use as you please.

Sell Your Services

Once you become a successful blogger, you’ll have developed plenty of marketable skills to offer the world and yes, people are willing to pay for those skills.

Do you love to design websites?

Are you an expert at SEO?

Can you translate another language?

Great! Now advertise those skills through your blog’s ‘ Work with Me ‘ page and find people who need your expertise.

Through my blog, I’ve accepted work helping other bloggers with their websites, arranged SEO consulting sessions, and been paid to guide a 10-day hiking tour in South America.

Create a Product

Another great way to make money is to create a useful product and sell it to your audience.

The types of products you can market on your blog are endless, so get to know your audience and create something that will improve their lives enough that they’re willing to pay for it.

Need some ideas of products to create?

• Online Courses
• Travel apps

The great thing about selling your own product is that you should receive most, if not all, of the commissions from its sales.

Affiliate marketing, on the other hand, only nets a small percentage of sales.

Additional Tips

While I could keep going on endlessly about travel blogging, I’m going to keep it short.

Here are six final pieces of advice that should help you along your journey.

Make Your Travels Inspiring & Memorable

People want to be inspired by travel!

So, don’t visit the same places, do the same things, and write the same articles that thousands of other bloggers have already overdone.

Instead, take part in unique and fascinating adventures and put your own personal twist on them.

If you’re visiting Paris, ditch the Eiffel Tower, and write about the city’s most unusual and offbeat nightlife spots.

Or seek out and share the city’s best hole-in-the-wall restaurants.

Or write about that time you got lost and wandered into a live sermon at a historic church.

The world wants a fresh and exciting perspective, so be the one who provides it!

Help People Solve Problems

Whenever I find myself on a travel blog, it’s because I have a question and I’m searching for an answer.

The same is true for billions of other internet users and will remain true for years to come.

People use the internet to solve problems and answer questions, plain and simple. 

So, share your amazing adventures with people, but also help them create a similar experience for themselves.

Are you writing an article about a historic castle in Lisbon you just visited? Great!

Now tell your readers how to get there.

What’s the address?

Which train do they need to take to get there?

Which stop should they get off?

How much do the tickets cost?

Where can they buy them?

Provide all the thoughtful advice possible to help them create their own wonderful experience.

Be thorough, knowledgeable, and help them through the process from start to finish.

Take Good Photos and Learn How to Edit Them

If you don’t offer your readers engaging visuals, you might lose their focus (and they’ll leave your website).

That’s never a good thing.

The good news is that people are more likely to stay on your blog if you provide them with enough captivating photos to complement your quality writing.

Readers visit travel blogs to visualize destinations, and they’re more likely to keep reading if you give them vivid and inspiring photos.

You don’t need a $2,000 camera to take great travel photos, either.

For my travel photography, I use the lightweight and packable Olympus O-MD E-M10 mirrorless camera and bring a couple of compact lenses.

My camera takes much better photos than my smartphone ever could.

I use Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop to edit all of my photos on my computer.

The learning curve for these apps was a bit overwhelming at first, but I stuck with it and learned them in no time.

Don’t Become Obsessed with Social Media

When I first started my blog, I stressed out way too much about social media.

How can I get more Facebook followers?

Why are people following me on Instagram and unfollowing me a couple of days later?

Why isn’t anyone liking my Tweets?

How the hell does Pinterest work?

Social media is disheartening sometimes, I get it.

I’ve been there. But listen…

Don’t let social media stress you out!

Refuse to let it overwhelm you and take away from the time you could spend creating killer content.

If you let social media distract you from your blog, then you’ll have a lesser product to offer your followers – however many or few they are.

Spend an hour a day tops on social media, and use the rest of your free time creating thoughtful content that engages your readers and helps solve their problems.

When you publish quality content, your posts will rank on Google, people will share your content, and the followers will come naturally.

Find Help When You Need It

After you’ve started building your blog from the ground up, you’re going to get frustrated (and it’s probably going to happen on a regular basis for a good long while).

You’ll see.

Instead of letting these growing pains discourage you, take a deep breath, and find solutions to these problems.

Bury yourself in your theme’s support forum, research ways to combat writer’s block, ask other bloggers for their best SEO methods, and never give up.

The solutions to your issues are out there, and you’ll find them if you look hard enough.

Never Stop Learning

I’ve taken in an insane amount of new information in the two years since I started The Packable Life, and there’s still so much to learn.

This industry is far more complex than I’d ever imagined, and it’s evolving every single day.

You’ll need to be hungry to learn and extremely self-motivated to become a successful travel blogger.

Nobody is going to put together a killer travel blog for you (unless you pay them a lot of money) so it’s your responsibility to figure it out as you go.

Learning the intricacies of the blogging industry will take time and effort, so work hard, ask as many questions as you can, and trust that it’ll all be worth it in the end.

The cost of starting a travel blog varies widely from person to person, so let me give you an idea of how much (or how little) you can expect to spend during the whole process.

You can start a blog for free on various different websites, but I don’t recommend doing so if you want your blog to earn money.

Free blogging sites are often crippled by a limited set of features and a lack of access to helpful plugins.

Businesses will run pesky ads on your site that make their brand money off of your content.

These platforms restrict enough features so that you’ll eventually upgrade to their paid blogging services.

Basic Setup

Based on the steps I walked you through earlier, starting a professional-looking website with the potential to make money is quite affordable.

All you need to invest is $3.95 a month for a basic hosting plan from SiteGround and $50 for a premium theme.

There are really no other significant starting costs.

Serious bloggers should consider these start-up costs a no-brainer, as anyone who puts their mind to it can make this money back easily.

Cost to Start a Basic Travel Blog : $50 upfront and $3.95 a month

What I Pay to Run My Blog

When I first started this site, I paid $100 for my theme and signed up for a $3.95 a month hosting plan.

I’ve since upgraded my hosting plan and signed up for a number of paid plugins and apps that help me run my blog.

These services include:

• $30 a month for email services with ConvertKit
• $25 a month for various WordPress plugins
• $13 a month for hosting with SiteGround
• $9 a month for photo editing with Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom CC
• $5 a month for image compressing with Kraken.io
• $3 a month for VPN services with NordVPN

Cost for My Travel Blogging Setup : $100 upfront and $85 a month

What High-Earning Bloggers Pay to Run Their Sites

As your blog’s traffic and income grow, so will your monthly costs.

And while the prices of many plugins, apps, and software are fixed – hosting plans and email services get more expensive as your visitors and subscribers increase.

High-earning travel bloggers with large amounts of traffic (100,000+ visitors a month) spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a month to keep their sites up and running.

A small price to pay to live the dream and earn a living while you do it.

Cost for Elite Travel Blogging Setup : $200+ a month

Blogging Resources I Recommend

Here’s a complete list of all my go-to blogging resources.

These are the websites, apps, and tools that have kept me afloat as I’ve pursued my passions over the last couple of years.

Without them, The Packable Life would be far more stressful to maintain.

As I mentioned earlier, I use SiteGround to provide hosting for my blog.

They keep my site live 24 hours a day, use fast servers that load my pages quickly, and have incredible customer service.

Business of Blogging

If you want to learn how to blog from the best in the business, sign up for Nomadic Matt’s Business of Blogging course .

I highly recommend it to beginner bloggers who want a detailed look into the business side of the travel blogging industry.

GeneratePress

Choosing an airtight theme to help your blog stand out is so very important.

GeneratePress is one of the most widely trusted WordPress themes on the market, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Adobe Lightroom & Photoshop

I’ve edited every single photo on this website with Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Photoshop .

Every. Single. One.

Cropping, adjusting colors, adding text – you can do practically anything with these two apps.

Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop have a bit of a learning curve, so if that intimidates you, use a website like Snappa to edit photos, make banners, and design logos for your website.

Who needs a real-life editor?

Grammarly automatically scans your content, runs a top-to-bottom report, highlights mistakes, and makes helpful suggestions to improve your writing.

Gaining email subscribers is insanely important if you want to make money from your blog.

ConvertKit will help you capture email addresses and create timely targeted messages to all of your subscribers.

If you want your blog pages to load quickly, you’ll need to use optimized images sitewide.

I use Kraken.io to compress my images and shrink their file size by over 80%.

Using a VPN will thwart cyber thieves who try to steal your personal information (passwords, credit card info, data) from unsecured networks.

I use NordVPN daily to protect my blog and my online identity.

Successful Travel Bloggers

Looking for a fool-proof way to become a better travel blogger that costs absolutely nothing?

Here’s how:

Visit the top blogs across on the industry and spend hours surfing their websites.

By exploring the best travel blogs in the industry, you’ll notice many of the tips and tricks these bloggers have used to become so successful.

Immerse yourself in your favorite blogs, take notes, and ask yourself:

What can this blog teach me?

Here are a few bloggers that inspired me to start a website of my own:

Expert Vagabond

Matthew Karsten, the Expert Vagabond , is an incredible photographer who seeks out thrilling and obscure adventures – the types of trips many travelers would shy away from.

He has been a huge inspiration to me and my blogging journey.

Nomadic Matt

Nomadic Matt Kepnis is a blogging powerhouse, plain and simple.

In fact, he’s widely viewed across the industry as the most successful travel blogger alive.

His blog is clean, thoughtful, and has an insane amount of quality content.

Wandering Earl

Derek “ Wandering Earl ” Baron has been traveling non-stop since 1999, and he’s been keeping track of his adventures in an honest and refreshing way.

His blog is heartfelt, personal, and completely ad-free.

Nomad Revelations

João Leitão created Nomad Revelations in 2003 as an outlet for his aimless wanderings, which have since taken him to 100+ countries.

His destinations are well off the worn-down tourist path, which makes his blog a fascinating collection of adventures that take place in far-flung destinations.

The Broke Backpacker

When Will Hatton started The Broke Backpacker , he could barely even type. Since then he’s worked his tail off – blogging, hustling, and budget traveling around the world.

He’s scrappy, hardworking, and determined – all the characteristics you need to become a successful travel blogger.

Ready to Start a Travel Blog (and Get Paid)?

There you have it.

I’ve given you all of very my best advice on how to start your own successful travel blog and make money with it in the future.

That was a heap of information all at once, so thank you for sticking around to take it all in.

How does the thought of starting your own blog make you feel?

Overwhelmed? Excited? Intimidated? Motivated? Confused? All of the above?

That’s how I felt too. I get it.

So, channel all of that chaotic energy into starting your own top-notch travel blog to share with the world today .

Don’t put it off any longer.

The longer you wait, the more silly excuses you’ll make.

And remember that creating a successful travel blog isn’t going to be easy.

The entire process is bound to be one of the biggest learning experiences of your life.

The journey will be frustrating and challenging at times, but incredibly rewarding if you’re willing to put in the work and stay the course.

Ready to take the leap and start your own successful blog today?

Noel Krasomil

Affiliate Disclosure : Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and make a purchase, we may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Affiliate links help support this website and keep it 100% ad-free.

21 thoughts on “How to Start a Travel Blog (Travel, Create & Get Paid!)”

Thanks for this! I love outdoor trips and hiking! I better pack the hiking pants, socks, tent, and packable backpack I got from https://coalatree.com/products/nomad-packable-backpack-black and start blogging my time outdoors! This will really help me launch my little blog!

How can one start a travel blog without having traveled extensively prior to it’s creation? In 4 days I’m heading to Halifax, Nova Scotia from Quebec and I’m planning a trip to Europe or Asia next year.

Write about destinations close to home that you know well… while you may not consider these places ‘travel’ destinations, they will be for most other people that know nothing about your home.

Hello Noel, can’t wait long for the pandemic to end then you will come to Indonesia, especially Lombok and will write about tourist destinations here

I’m excited too! I’ve always wanted to visit Indonesia.

Thanks for these insights! This has been something poking around in my head for awhile and I am glad to see some prods in the right direction! I don’t know if I am ready to start “today” unfortunately, but I do think I am ready to start seriously evaluating and researching how to make my future launch successful today!

Glad you found my post useful, Josh. My advice would be to start stirring up the waters now to test if blogging is something you eventually want to get started. Think about what the main focuses of your blog would be, brainstorm potential names, and check out some of the blogs that already exist in your potential niche. Burying myself in travel blogs and mulling over names eventually helped gave me the courage to try it out. Approach this all at your own speed and, maybe one day, you’ll launch a blog of your own. Keep me posted!

Dude! About 3 years ago I follow your previous blog and searched endlessly, to no avail. Glad z) I found you again!

I have found the content on your site to be so useful, detailed and with tips on travel that others gloss over. I was also pleasantly surprised to see this post as well. So helpful! My husband and i recently retired and i wanted to document our travels and videos, not specifically for earning $ (which would be nice!) but to keep as our own memoirs of trips. I had started down the path with Wix but have found it to have kinks / things that don’t work so i might migrate over to WP while there isn’t much content on the site now. Thanks for generously sharing your tips! BTW, also thx for answering my other question on your TDP posts.

Karen, thanks so much for all three comments! I’m glad you appreciate my attention to detail. I’m a bit of a perfectionist sometimes, and I don’t like leaving out important details. I highly encourage you to start a blog, even if you’re not trying to make any money. It’s a great way to keep your friend and family up to date on your comings and goings and is a great place to revisit all of your old travel memories. Stay away from Wix! Haha. Wordpress is the way to go, as everything is so customizable. What’s your blog called?

All righty! That will be my next project to switch to WP! We’ve been putting stuff up mostly on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/yyzwanderers/ and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9DThdEsrsl_-l7ur-QcF0g The blog site is http://www.yyzwanderers.com

Just returned from another trip and rethink of reblogging again, maybe more seriously. Thanks for all the details, ‘will digest n take steps today. -digbytravelsnaps-

Awesome! Persistence is key. Stick with it and never stop learning. Best of luck!

Very useful posts, I plan to create a travel blog while traveling next year.

Thank you for sharing such good information about starting a blog and giving tips as much as you can.

I want to start a travel blog! I’ve been reading up on it for years and every time I begin… I stop. I’m going to start one this month. Thanks for the article.

Amazing list. One way to unwind and have fun is to travel. The business class flights to East Africa were enjoyable, and I was able to save money for extra excursions and gifts for friends. The cost of the ticket usually makes the trip pricey. I can now travel more and broaden my horizons because I always know where to seek for cheap and comfy flights when I’m packing.

The folks over at The Packable Life have put together this helpful blog article detailing the steps necessary to launch your very own travel blog. It’s a detailed article that walks you through everything from picking a niche to writing posts to promoting your blog. The post’s design is also pleasant to the eye, with tidy visuals and illustrative examples. In conclusion, if you’re thinking about creating a vacation blog, this piece is a great place to start.

The blog post provides a helpful guide for those interested in starting a travel blog. The post provides step-by-step instructions on how to get started, from choosing a platform to writing content and building an audience. The post also provides helpful tips for those who want to make a career out of travel blogging.

Anyone who is interested in sharing their travel experiences via the internet will find this guide to beginning a travel blog to be an invaluable resource. The author offers actionable advice on a variety of topics, ranging from selecting a specialty to constructing a following.

What an interesting journey! I appreciate your determination to overcome failures and achieve success. I’m looking forward to your advice on how to establish a fantastic travel blog in 2023.

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• Website Planet

How To Start a Travel Blog in 2024: It’s Easier Than You Think

• Before You Begin

Choosing a Sub-Niche

• Solo travelers
• Women travelers
• Empty nester/couples-only trips
• Region-specific trips
• Activity-specific adventures like road trips or backpacking
• Luxury travel
• Work/business traveling
• Family adventures
• Accessible travel for those with disabilities
• “Off the beaten path” adventures
• Retirement traveling

Who Do You Read?

Who will be your reader, do you have a budget and a plan.

• Choose a Good Domain Name
• Choose a Reliable Web Hosting Service

• Install WordPress and Set Up Your Travel Blog

Choose a WordPress Builder and Theme

Consider These Useful Plugins

• Set Up and Customize the Most Relevant Pages
• An About Me page. Give the reader some insight into who you are, why you do what you do, and what kind of personality you have.
• Contact page. This can be as simple as displaying your email address to setting up a detailed contact form. Make sure to be specific about what types of inquiries you’ll respond to, though.
• Privacy and Disclosure pages. Privacy pages notify your readers about the use of cookies and if you collect any other personal data (such as emails). You’ll also want to add a Disclosure page if you work with certain brands or earn a commission from any sales made through your blog.

• Photo and Video Gallery. You’ll probably want an attractive gallery page of your best travel photos. Or, if you don’t have enough content to create a gallery right away, do what I did and include an image carousel widget at the bottom of each blog post.

• Revise, Test, and Publish Your Travel Blog

• An Easier Way To Get a Travel Blog Online

You’re All Set To Start Your Travel Blog Journey Today

Can i host a travel blog for free, why is choosing a niche for my travel blog so important, why use wordpress if a website builder is easier, why is squarespace the best website builder for starting a travel blog.

• You're All Set To Start Your Travel Blog Journey Today

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Travel Blogging for Everyone

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Blogging on TravelFeed is free - no credit card required

Use your own domain

Use your own domain in our optional site builder plans

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Optimized for travelers

How does custom maps, automatic categorization by destination and destination search sound?

Craft beautiful posts

Take advantage of powerful editor blocks such as maps, photo galleries, Instagram embeds and more

Powerful AI tools

Our AI Blogger helps you create high-quality travel blog content in minutes with the power of artificial intelligence.

Fast by default

TravelFeed uses edge caching to serve your articles super fast to your readers in every corner of the world

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Your blog is fully customizable with our site-builder - no coding skills required

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Create posts on the go

Use our mobile app to create travel stories on the go and post them to your blog

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Want to know more? Read on for some of the advanced features your blog will have access to.

Plot your trip

Outline your trip on a map before you go . Your blog entries will automatically be tied to your map. Embed your map in your blog entries to add extra colour to your ramblings.

Add photos and videos

Pictures speak a thousand words. Embed your travel photos into your blog entries and invite your readers into your adventures. Unlimited photo and video uploads ensure your visitors don't miss a thing. You can also embed photos and videos uploaded to other sites like Youtube, Vimeo and Flickr.

Track your visitors

We love knowing who visits our websites and we're sure you will to. Integration with Google Analytics ensures you get access to detailed information about who visited your site, what articles they read and how they got there. Integration with Feedburner allows you to keep an eye on how many subscribers you have.

Make it look good

Choose one of our slick, professionally designed templates, created by some of the best web designers around, including the likes of Cameron Moll, Jon Hicks, Phu Ly and John Oxton. Or if you fancy yourself, use your own custom design.

The list goes on

• Your own subdomain (https://( yourblog ).travellerspoint.com)
• Submit your entries by email, the feature also known as moblogging
• 21 languages supported ; English, Czech, Dutch, Danish, French, German, Hebrew, Irish, Italian, Romanian, Spanish, Norwegian, Welsh, Estonian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Finnish, Swedish, Chinese (traditional and simplified) or get in touch to add support for your language!
• Let your friends and family comment on your entries, without becoming members
• Backup your original images so you can retrieve them if your memory card is stolen or lost
• Add multiple authors to your blog
• Not keen on prying eyes? Password protect your blog

Perhaps you just need to try it. Starting your own travel blog on Travellerspoint is free !

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30 Best WordPress Travel Themes 2025

Exploring WordPress travel themes and website templates can be exciting, especially if you’re building a website to showcase travel experiences, offer travel services, or create a blog documenting adventures. With its vast array of themes, WordPress offers options explicitly tailored for travel websites, each with unique features, designs, and functionalities.

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Travel tour, trendy travel, travel time, bootstrap 5 templates.

Bootstrap One Page Templates , Bootstrap 5 Templates ,  Free Bootstrap Templates

This comprehensive guide will help you navigate some of the best travel themes available, what to look for in a theme, and how to choose the right one for your needs.

What to Look for in a WordPress Travel Theme

Before diving into specific themes, it’s important to know what features are essential for a travel website:

• Booking System Integration : A built-in or easily integrated booking system is essential if you’re offering travel services.
• Gallery and Portfolio Options : Visual appeal is paramount for travel websites. Therefore, a theme with robust gallery and portfolio features is not only necessary but also a key element in attracting and engaging users.
• Blogging Features : If you plan to blog about your travels, ensure the theme supports a variety of post formats and has a clean, easy-to-read layout.
• Speed and Performance : Fast loading times are crucial, especially for image-heavy travel sites.
• SEO-Friendly : The theme should be coded with SEO best practices to help your site rank well in search engines.

Vitour is perfect for elegantly showcasing your trips, offering beautiful pages to highlight your excursions and destinations. It is ideal for travel agencies, tour operators, holiday booking websites, and booking firms seeking a distinctive and straightforward search tool.

This innovative and comprehensive WordPress theme is specifically designed for the tourism industry, making it an excellent choice for tour operators and travel agents specializing in day tours, tour packages, vacations, hiking, camping, and more.

• One-Click Demo Importer
• Advanced Search Functionality
• Travel and Tour Booking System
• Frontend Dashboard Page
• Fully Tested with WordPress 6.x

Travelami is a contemporary WordPress theme tailored for travel agencies, operators, and travel blogs. Its creative graphics lend a sleek, modern, and clean look suitable for any business. Whether you’re in hotels, resorts, honeymoons, cruises, or other tourism-related services, this theme fits perfectly.

Built with responsiveness in mind, Travelami ensures your website appears stunning and operates seamlessly on any device, capturing bookings from customers on desktops, tablets, or smartphones alike.

• Fully equipped with Typography and Shortcodes
• Compatible with WordPress 6.x
• Supports WooCommerce
• Optimized for Gutenberg
• Flexible template layout with a Layout Builder

Embark goes beyond being just a theme—it’s your comprehensive solution for a travel agency website. This feature-rich WordPress theme enables you to highlight your tours, handle bookings, and turn website visitors into satisfied travelers, all through an intuitive platform.

Seamlessly integrate a robust booking system into your site where clients can effortlessly search, compare, and book tours, streamlining the booking process and enhancing conversions.

• Manage your schedule from any device, anywhere
• Complete support for WooCommerce
• Designed for various types of Tour Companies
• Custom Tour Grid features
• Includes Conversion Forms
• Choose between Boxed or Wide layout options

Attention, travel enthusiasts! GoTravel is an outstanding WordPress theme designed for tourism and travel, allowing you to quickly establish your travel or city tourism venture. With just a few steps, you can launch a modern travel blog, create an impressive online presence for your travel agency, and more.

Users can effortlessly plan holidays, trips, or tours and book directly through your website. Showcase tour destinations stylishly and categorize them for easy holiday booking management.

• Highly Customizable
• Extensive Administration Interface
• Responsive and Retina Ready
• Booking Functionality
• Integration with PayPal
• Tour Custom Post Type

MagPlus is a versatile Blog, Magazine, and Newspaper WordPress theme that provides you with the tools to write and edit articles effortlessly. Crafted with various niches and professions in mind—whether personal, professional, blogging, or editorial—this theme offers great flexibility.

Utilize the one-click import feature to quickly bring in any demo site. Comprehensive guides and videos cover every aspect of this theme, and our dedicated support team is always available to assist you.

• WordPress Live Customizer
• Visual Composer Plugin
• Template Block Builder
• Advanced Typography Options
• Custom Post Video Playlist

Travel Tour is more than just a theme—it’s your gateway to establishing a successful online travel agency. This all-inclusive WordPress theme provides everything you need to showcase your tours, manage bookings, and convert website visitors into globetrotting clients.

Effortlessly manage your tours and travel packages with an intuitive interface, allowing you to add, edit, and update information to keep your offerings fresh and appealing.

• Full RTL Support
• Secondary Navigation Menu
• Unlimited Sidebar Options
• Custom Skin Color
• SEO Optimized

Discover your own path to heroism with Litho! This high-performance, creatively integrated WordPress theme is optimized for seamless integration with Elementor.

Crafted for both high performance and superior SEO, Litho is a versatile and responsive Elementor WordPress theme designed for experts and novices alike. Easily customize your site with a variety of stunning demos and layouts.

• Versatile mega menu
• Enhanced pagination
• Parallax and video backgrounds
• Infinite color customization options
• Personalized sidebars

Since its initial release, Jevelin has continually improved and is now one of the most popular multi-purpose WordPress themes available. Users consistently rate Jevelin positively.

With a growing library of high-quality, professional website designs that can be imported into your WordPress site with just a few clicks, Jevelin enables you to launch a wide variety of websites quickly and easily.

• Powerful Admin Interface
• User-Friendly Drag and Drop Page Builder
• No Coding Knowledge Required
• Change Main Accent Colors for Each Page
• Auto-Adjustable Mega Menu

The Altair WordPress theme is your launchpad to a stellar online travel presence. Stand out from the competition with a design that inspires wanderlust and functionality that simplifies travel planning for your clients.

Streamline the booking process with an integrated optional booking system, allowing clients to search, compare, and book tours directly on your website, saving time and boosting conversions.

• Instant AJAX Search
• Off-Canvas Mobile Navigation
• Advanced Search Option for Tours
• Installable Google Web Fonts
• Free Theme Updates and Support

Transform your travel agency’s website with a powerful combination: a feature-rich Responsive Travel Management System (TMS) and a stunning Multipurpose Travel Theme.

Effortlessly add, edit, and update your offerings through an intuitive interface. Enable travelers to search, compare, and book their dream vacations directly on your site.

• Full Localization with WPML Support
• Google Maps Integration for Hotels and Places
• Visitor Ratings and Reviews System
• Multiple Blog Types
• Responsive Design

Tourigo – Tour Booking WordPress Theme is an excellent choice for presenting tours and destinations in a sleek and organized way. It is ideal for travel agencies, tour operators, trip holiday booking websites, and booking companies requiring a unique and user-friendly search function. This innovative and comprehensive theme is specifically crafted for the tourism industry.

• Elementor Page Builder
• Niche-Specific WordPress Theme
• Compatibility with the Latest WordPress Version
• Elementor Header & Footer Builder
• Professional Support

Triprex is a WordPress theme designed for tour and travel agency needs. It incorporates the latest features to meet modern demands, offering various destinations, tour packages, and essential services like hotel search, visa processing, transportation rental, and tour activities. This theme smartly presents the comprehensive services of a travel agency.

• Optimized for Speed
• Global Tour Destinations
• Transportation Rental Functionality
• Booking Day-Long Activities
• Integrated with WooCommerce
• Simple Customization

KALLYAS is more than just a theme—it’s a revolution in website building. This top-selling favorite allows you to create stunning, professional websites without writing a single line of code. Say goodbye to complex coding! With KALLYAS’s intuitive interface, you can visually design your website, placing elements precisely where you want them.

• Compatible with WordPress 4.6 and above
• Built on Bootstrap 3 Framework
• Ready for Translation
• Includes DummyData
• Unlimited Homepage Variations

Etalon is an easy-to-use WordPress theme, perfect for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and business professionals. It comes bundled with premium add-ons like WPBakery Page Builder and Revolution Slider. With numerous shortcodes, building your website will be a breeze.

• Constructed with HTML5 and CSS3
• Smooth CSS3 Animations
• Well-Organized, Clean, and Valid Code
• Professional Pre-Built Page Layouts
• Includes Demo Files

Kalium is your all-in-one toolbox for creating a phenomenal business website. This powerful and versatile WordPress theme enables you to build stunning websites effortlessly. Impress potential clients with a visually captivating portfolio that showcases your skills and experience.

• Includes Advanced Custom Fields PRO
• Includes WooCommerce Product Filter Plugin
• Supports Multisite
• Extensive Theme Options
• Custom Skin Generator

Valley is a comprehensive WordPress theme for managing tours and travel, brought to you by Team ThemeXpert. It includes custom post types for creating destinations, tour packages, and adventure trips categorized by region.

Travelers can conveniently search packages by region, time, and price directly on the website and book with ease. Valley features an intuitive booking system, allowing travelers to book any package, tour, or adventure with just one click.

Aucapina – the auto camping & ski rental theme is ideal for renting camping cars or villages. It boasts a clean, attractive, and user-friendly design that captivates travel enthusiasts. Our theme excels in promoting ski resort businesses and seamlessly handles customer bookings.

Owners of camping car rental businesses will appreciate the precise auto online booking tool and the capability to implement conditional pricing. Easily set flexible pricing using our intuitive interface for conditional pricing options.

Meet Brando theme, your ultimate solution for creating an engaging and feature-rich single-page website. This modern masterpiece combines professional design, seamless responsiveness, and an array of features to enhance your online presence.

Impress visitors with a website that embodies contemporary style. Brando’s sleek design, captivating visuals, and intuitive layout ensure a memorable experience.

Discover the Bellevue Hotel WordPress Theme, an ideal option for your upcoming website project that we’re confident you’ll enjoy. Tailored for hotels, it’s equally suited for vacation rentals and bed & breakfasts.

Bundled with one of the top Hotel Booking WordPress Plugins, Bellevue also includes multiple WordPress Booking Calendar add-ons as a bonus.

Introducing Tripo theme, your gateway to a captivating and modern travel website. Tailored for travel agencies, tour operators, and travel businesses, this contemporary masterpiece offers an ideal platform to showcase your services and ignite wanderlust in potential clients.

With a design that reflects the latest trends in the travel industry, Tripo features a clean and stylish aesthetic that ensures a memorable visitor experience.

H-Code is a robust, responsive multi-purpose WordPress Theme designed for businesses, creatives, and ecommerce websites. It empowers you to unleash your creativity in limitless ways to craft your ideal website.

With years of experience in website design and development, ThemeZaa is committed to delivering unique, high-quality designs. Our themes are developed using the latest modern coding techniques and structured frameworks, ensuring easy scalability for your development team.

CheerUp offers luxurious design options crafted to excel on various types of blogs and minimal magazines. Its modern design choices are not only aesthetically pleasing but also ideal for food blogs and recipes.

Whether you’re passionate about travel, fashion, entertainment, health, fitness, lifestyle, or any other genre of blogging or magazine, CheerUp caters to all.

Ekko presents an engaging and contemporary design, ideal for businesses aiming for a modern appeal. Creating a strong initial impression with your users is vital for your business website.

Ekko offers a comprehensive array of practical features, over 50 demos tailored to various industries or niches, and is robust enough to support small businesses and corporate entities alike.

Webify is a clean, highly adaptable, and fully responsive WordPress Theme (try resizing your browser), designed for business websites and individuals looking to showcase their portfolios elegantly. It offers numerous options to customize layouts, styles, colors, and fonts directly from the backend.

Create your own unique look or choose from 14 predefined templates. With font, background, and color choices, along with a dynamic template builder, you can quickly create the website you envision.

Goyto is more than just a theme—it’s your comprehensive toolkit for creating a robust and visually impressive travel agency website. This feature-rich WordPress theme enables you to streamline the booking process for your clients with an integrated booking system (depending on selected extensions).

Travelers can conveniently search, compare, and book tours directly on your website, enhancing conversions and saving time.

Gillion comes pre-packaged with over 15 high-quality, fully functional website demos ready for quick customization and deployment. It includes six versatile multi-use demos that extend well beyond typical WordPress capabilities, along with six specific-purpose sites ready for immediate launch. We’re confident you’ll find Gillion to be a perfect fit for your needs.

Trawell is a meticulously crafted professional WordPress theme for travel blogs, designed to effortlessly create stunning travel guides, blogs, or magazines. Packed with smart features essential for every travel blogger, it simplifies the journey of sharing travel adventures.

BRIDGE is a versatile, responsive, retina-ready WordPress theme suitable for a wide range of users. Whether you’re a creative professional, part of a corporate team, a lawyer, a medical doctor, or a freelancer seeking a modern portfolio or personal blog, Bridge is the ideal choice for you.

Crafted as the ultimate toolbox for web building, TheGem offers a plethora of design elements, styles, and features to help you create stunning, high-performance websites within minutes—no coding required. Spend your time exploring your creativity instead of dealing with code.

Travel Time is your comprehensive solution for building a dynamic travel website. This versatile WordPress theme covers every aspect of the travel industry, offering an ideal platform to share your wanderlust and inspire others with captivating content and beautiful layouts.

A suitable WordPress travel theme can make a significant difference in the success of your travel website. Whether you’re a blogger, photographer, or travel agency, there’s a theme out there that will meet your needs. Consider your specific requirements, test out a few themes, and don’t hesitate to invest in a premium option if it offers the features you need. With a suitable theme, your travel website will be up and running quickly, ready to inspire and engage visitors worldwide.

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Free Bullet Journal Printables

Free Travel Journal Printables

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Discover the magic of free Bullet Journal printables designed to ignite your wanderlust and enhance your travel adventures.

In this lineup of free travel journal printables , you’ll find resources from talented creators who share your passion for exploration and creativity.

Whether you’re planning a cross-country road trip or documenting cherished memories from a weekend getaway, these printables offer a delightful way to capture every moment. Packed with vibrant designs and practical layouts, they make organizing your travels both fun and efficient.

So grab your favorite pen, and let’s embark on a journey where planning meets inspiration, one printable at a time!

Incorporating printables into your Bullet Journal is like giving your creativity a set of wings. They’re not just pretty designs on paper; they’re a powerhouse of organization and inspiration, especially when it comes to travel.

Imagine having a dedicated space in your journal where you can meticulously map out every detail of your upcoming adventure. From packing lists to itinerary templates, travel printables provide a structured way to prepare, ensuring nothing is left to chance.

This level of planning allows you to embark on your journey with confidence, knowing that you’ve thought of everything from your flight details to those must-see local attractions.

But the magic of travel printables doesn’t stop there. They transform into a canvas for preserving your most cherished memories. As you wander through bustling markets or marvel at breathtaking landscapes, your journal becomes a living scrapbook filled with ticket stubs, sketches, and personal reflections.

Each printable you fill out is a snapshot of your journey, capturing the essence of your experiences in a way that photos sometimes can’t. With spaces to jot down the day’s highlights or unexpected delights, these printables help you relive every moment long after you’ve returned home.

Moreover, using travel printables is an excellent way to make the most of each day on your travels. They serve as a daily guide, keeping your plans in sight and your goals in focus.

Whether it’s setting intentions for the day, jotting down places to eat, or listing activities to try, these printables ensure that you squeeze every drop of joy from your adventure. The flexibility to personalize your journal with stickers, doodles, and color codes enhances the experience, making each page uniquely yours.

In essence, printables in your Bullet Journal are more than just tools—they’re companions on your journey, inviting creativity, fostering reflection, and helping make every travel day count.

But before I share with you some of the finds for travel journal printables, let’s talk about actually using printables in your Bullet Journal.

This post may contain affiliate links. They will be of no extra expense for you, but I receive a small credit. Please see my  Disclosure  for more details. Thank you for supporting Masha Plans!

How To Use Printables In Your Bullet Journal

Adding printables to your Bullet Journal is pretty easy, but there are a few tricks to it. So, to ensure you do know how to do it and don’t feel intimidated by the task, here is how you do it.

And if you need a step-by-step guide, even with a video, be sure to check a link at the end of the post.

It’s all about making sure that printable fits snugly in your journal as if it were meant to be there. If the printable is already cozied up to an A5 size (the Bullet Journal’s best friend), you’re golden. If not, just make sure you toggle printing settings to A5.

Another part of adding printables is using the right supplies, so here are some of my top recommendations:

• High-quality printing paper. Especially if you’re planning to use any markers on your printables, you need to have a high-quality paper. Otherwise, it will damage your pens. I prefer using HP Premium Paper .
• Paper cutter. You can definitely just use scissors, but I find that you always get cleaner cuts if you use a paper cutter like this Firbon paper cutter .
• Corner rounder. I find that most journals have rounded corners, so it would be a fun idea to cut your printables the same way. You can do it yourself with a pair of sewing scissors like I do, but I would recommend using a corner rounder instead.

You really only need good paper and a pair of scissors, but if you want more, get these. It’s really a great investment if you’re planning on using a lot of printables, plus they all are pretty affordable.

Now that using printables is not that scary anymore let’s look at those journal printables you came here for.

There are plenty of different travel journal printables, and I've got a large variety here for you. I also gathered printables from different creators so you can check different styles and aesthetics.

Let's dive in!

Masha Plans Free Printables

We're starting with a set of printables I've created for your travel journal. One is a page to help you stay on top of your daily journaling when you travel, and another is a set of stickers.

You can already get these and 50+ other free printables in the Resources Vault , and if you don't have your access yet simply click "get free printables".

Travel Notes Printables

I love how these travel notes come with different types of grids, so you can find one that you like the most. Travel notes also have a pretty vague header, so you can come up with different ideas on how to use these pages.

Free Printable Travel Pages

Here are a few beautiful free printable travel related pages, perfect to use in your Bullet Journal. I believe a travel bucket list and a packing list are the staples to have!

Free Printable Travel Journal Page

Here is a well-organized travel page to help you plan a perfect trip, since it includes all the information you need to ensure you get the best experience from it.

Free Travel Journal Template

This is an entire printable travel journal that includes many valuable pages to plan and record your next adventure. You can use them in your journal, or you can create an entire journal just from these printables.

Free Travel Bullet Journal Printable Stickers

Having pre-made pages is useful, for sure, but what about some stickers? Using these, you can create a customer travel page you want and add a colorful and fun decoration to it.

Free Printable Travel Journal

This set of printables has several pretty useful pages, like emergency information and things to do page. I also really like the cottage core feel of these printables with the beautiful flowers used to decorate them.

Free Printable Travel Checklist

Having a proper packing list is the secret to a great trip; you don't want to be in a constant state of anxiety that you forgot something. This printable will help you plan out everything you need to look your best and always have all you need for the best adventure.

FREE Travel Tracker Printable

Tracking your trip is always a fun idea, and I love having a visual representation of all the places I've visited. These printables give you a world map and a USA map to add to your travel journal and start ticking off places one by one.

Travel Journal Printable

A cute and doodly set of travel journal pages, and I absolutely adore this style. It will help you plan your trip, but it also adds a lot of fun with coloring and customizing these spreads.

Travel Journal Template

Last but not least is this printable page, which gives you an outline of the month so you can have a clear idea of where your trip fits. It also gives you ample space to plan the places to visit and things to do on your adventures.

Free Printable Travel Journal Pages

In case you got lost with all the options out there, I just wanted to mention once again that you can find travel journal pages and other printables in the Resources Vault .

If you don’t have access yet, you can always sign up in the form below.

Once you confirm your subscription, you’ll get the password to get 50+ free Bullet Journal printables, stickers, and worksheets to use right away.

If you’ve never used printables before, be sure to check my post How To Use Printables In Your Bullet Journal .

It’s pretty basic, and you can find all the supplies you need in my post Supplies For Using Bullet Journal Printables .

More Resources

Are you looking for more ideas and inspirations for travel pages or even maybe just more free printables? I’ve got you covered!

Check out these posts next:

• 15 Travel Journal Layout Inspirations
• Top Travel Journal Supplies for Your Next Adventure
• 60+ Free Bullet Journaling Printables

>>> What other printable pages are you looking for? Share with us in the comments!

Hope this post was interesting. If you find it so, please share! If you enjoy my content and want to show your appreciation, please consider supporting me with a cup of coffee .

And remember: Keep Bullet Journaling, and Don’t Be A Blob!

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