Want to become a successful travel blogger? Learn how to grow & improve your travel blog with the best tips I’ve learned after ten years of professional full-time blogging.
Continuing from my previous article about how to start a travel blog, it’s time to step it up a notch and share my best secrets for how to become a professional, successful travel blogger.
The word professional meaning you earn a good living from blogging.
I’ve been running a successful adventure travel blog for 10-years now. For the first year it was mainly for fun, but then I began to take it more seriously.
These days blogging is my sole source of income — and I earn six figures a year.
There’s nothing wrong with blogging as a hobby. In fact, that’s as far as most people get. But if my overflowing email inbox is any indication, many of you are dreaming of turning travel blogging into a job.
While it’s more difficult than most people think, this article is for those who are ready to attempt it anyway, regardless of the work involved.
What Is A Professional Travel Blogger?
What does it mean to be a professional travel blogger? Well anyone can start a blog and become a “blogger”. The barrier to entry for blogging is small, which has both benefits and disadvantages.
For example, there are currently thousands of personal travel blogs online — so standing out from the crowd is tough.
However, my definition is those who earn a good portion (or all) of their income from travel blogging are considered professionals. This list is MUCH smaller. If I had to guess, I’d say only a couple hundred people make decent money ($2000+ per month) directly from their travel blogs.
Fortunately, I happen to be one of them after years of trial & error attempting to turn my passion for travel into a business. Which is why I’ve decided to share some of my best secrets with you today.
My suggestions here are certainly not the only roadmap to building a successful travel blog, they just happen to work for me.
Building An Audience Is Key!
While I could go into the different ways travel bloggers make money, that’s not what this particular post is about.
Everyone and their grandmother asks me how I make money from my travel blog, but the question they SHOULD be asking is how did I build an audience.
Because the hard truth is you’ll only earn income with your blog once you have a decent audience. Readers come first, money comes later.
So today we’ll cover a few different techniques for building an engaged audience on your travel blog, as well as unique tactics for getting yourself noticed by companies looking to work with bloggers.
Tips For Building A Successful Travel Blog
1: Create Useful Travel Content
Writing a diary of your travels for family & friends is easy, but other than them, no one else cares. If you want strangers to read your travel blog, you’ll need to provide something more useful.
Budget travel tips, food recommendations, details on what to do or where to stay, photography inspiration, video entertainment, beautiful flowing narrative, humor, etc.
Yes, you should always “follow your passion.” Otherwise, you won’t enjoy what you’re doing. The key is to follow your passion while also providing something of value to your readers.
What are people searching for? It’s time to do some research.
What questions related to travel are being asked in online forums, Reddit, and Quora?
If you already have readers, what are they asking in comments & emails? Give people what they’re asking for!
I received a bunch of questions about what GoPro accessories I travel with. So rather than waste time explaining it to each person individually, I wrote a huge article showcasing the best GoPro accessories for traveling.
Turns out lots of people were looking for this information. The article gets shared a lot and continues to receive steady search traffic from Google.
Why? Because it’s useful! It’s answering a frequently asked question.
Even if you’re sharing an entertaining travel story, including useful tips about how readers can enjoy a similar experience will keep them coming back for more.
2: Do Interesting Stuff!
At face value, it seems pretty basic. But when I say do interesting stuff, I mean do REALLY interesting stuff.
Sensational, fascinating, or challenging stuff. The kind of stuff that gets noticed.
Writing about your drunken full moon party experience in Thailand? Maybe a 1 on the 0-10 awesomeness scale. Kayaking in Greenland? Walking across India? Camping in Antarctica? Vacationing in Yemen? Sailing the coast of Africa?
These activities are MUCH higher on the awesome scale, the topics are unique, and as a result, they’re more likely to be shared with a larger audience.
Your whole blog doesn’t have to read like Buzzfeed, but make it a point to include some truly epic, original stories from time to time.
3: Guest Posting On Other Blogs
When you first start your travel blog, no one will know you exist. A good way to change that is to write guest posts on other popular blogs with large audiences, and siphon some of their readers over to you.
Not only will you reach a targeted audience this way, it also helps with your branding and credibility as an authority on travel.
However, before you go pitching other blogs for guest posts, first check to make sure they even allow them. It helps to have some kind of relationship with the blogger too.
Cold pitches to someone you’ve never spoken with are less likely to work.
You can see examples of my own guest posts here, here, and here. All these articles sent me traffic I probably wouldn’t have had otherwise, introducing my adventure travel blog to new readers.
There’s also SEO power in backlinks from popular sites to yours.
My advice is to be picky, and guest post on blogs that you think will provide the best return on your investment in time. Because time is limited when you’re trying to become a professional blogger!
4: Keep Active On Social Media
Staying active on social media is important if you want to earn your living from blogging. But it can be a huge time suck too. My advice is to be efficient with social media, don’t waste hours and hours there.
I generally jump on once in the morning to schedule posts for the day, then once more in the evening to respond to comments.
It also pays to research the best times to post for each social network. You can find this info in your “insights” or “analytics” areas, or use third party tools.
For example, I’ve found that posting to Facebook at 5am & 8pm EST gives me the best results, while on Instagram, 9pm – 11pm works better. What works for me may not work for you though, and it can change. Always be testing.
Remember to be social on social media too. That means actively responding to comments, and sharing other people’s content if you think your followers will enjoy it.
Here are specific tips for each network based on my experience.