Unlike with other niches such as health and fitness, when it comes to travel blogging it’s a case of the more the merrier. If you’re thinking about getting into this game then chances are you’re quite surprised to have a fellow travel blogger who has in a sense gone before you encouraging you to go forth as opposed to warning you against it, perhaps as a self-preservation tactic to ward off competition.
It’s different in the travel blogging industry because we’re a community and what you’ll often find is that a fellow travel blogger is only too happy to help a fellow budding travel blogger or even an established fellow travel blogger. So to do my bit to help any budding travel bloggers out there, as much as you may think you could quite easily have it figured out by merely copying other travel bloggers, here’s a roadmap for you to set you well on your way.
Write for yourself
Conceptually this is the easiest way to approach creating content for your blog, but it perhaps goes against a lot of the advice you might get for publishing content on your blog. We won’t put anyone under any illusions – the ultimate aim is for you to be able to derive some value out of your blog, preferably monetary value, and the ultimate travel bloggers dream is that of being able to make money writing about their travel adventures.
So while you’ll likely be drawn to creating content from the point of view of a specific audience which can be monetised, rather write for yourself. Yes, write as if you were going to read the blog posts and that way you’ll always be sure to make it interesting.
As a blogger who has any chance of going on to realise some success, that’s how you have to think about it. You have to cater to a real market which is tried and tested, in which case it’s you.
This means that you won’t necessarily be writing exclusively about all the lovely trips you actually go on, which admittedly might just be too few in any case, but what you’ll also be writing about are all the places you’d love to visit and what challenges you face in your everyday life on your quest to book that next trip and jump on the next flight.
“Listicle” type posts featuring something like “5 Must-Pack Items for a Backpacker Visiting Eastern Europe” and the likes make for just as interesting a read as someone’s first-hand account of a certain place they visited, if not more, but it almost always certainly proves to be more informative and valuable because it actually offers some practical advice readers can not only make immediate use of, but can also come back later to go over again and even recommend and share to other readers.
As much as your travel blog will naturally be about your travel experiences, what it should be geared towards the most are some practical and useful tips and info which give value to the reader.
