Blogging Advice From Experienced Travel Bloggers

“Building your email list can be an important part of successful blogging. Make sure you set up your list with a company like Mail Chimp or Aweber when you first start and encourage people to subscribe to receive your latest posts or newsletter. An incentive helps – we created a free ebook for subscribers to our list and quadrupled the list in a few months.”

“Be interesting to someone other than yourself.”

“Write what you are inspired to share, not what you think will bring you success. Your own unique voice and story, your slant on the world is what people are following and this is the only true what to differentiate yourself from other bloggers.”

“Travel blogging is fun, and the secret’s out, you can make money from it. However, it doesn’t come from a two week trip getting drunk in Thailand. If you wanna run a popular travel blog, be a real traveler! Explore real places, go further and go beyond. Make people wanna check out where you’ve been, what crazy stuff you’ve been up to recently. Sure it’s fun to see Angkor Wat in Cambodia but every man and his dog has been there, how about the Bagan temples in Burma – now there’s something I’d read about.Top 5 lists seem to be the bread and butter of travel blogging and i actually quite like them, they’re punchy and easy to navigate. But don’t let them dominate your blog, be diverse, be inspirational, be fun, be controversial even. You don’t travel to be one of the crowd, so don’t write like one of the crowd either. Good luck guys, and just stick with it.”

“The best advice we have for new travel bloggers is to find what you love about travel that is unique from other people. Let your personality shine through and don’t copy what everyone else is doing. It is great to be inspired by others but it is important to be unique and tell the experience in your own voice. Most importantly do it because you love it. Travel blogging isn’t only about travelling. It takes a lot of hard work to share your stories day in day out. Make sure you are blogging for the right reasons. Not because it looks like an easy job.”

“So many big companies are looking to humanise their brand with a relatable voice, and we as bloggers have a distinct advantage of already being human, and having a personality-based brand. Don’t be afraid to embrace all of who ‘you’ are as a blogger. By this I mean tweeting, posting and sharing information you are passionate about and trust, be it inside the travel sphere or outside of it. This will enable you to become a resource for your followers.”

“When you’re just starting out, focus on making connections with other bloggers.  It may sound trite and corny, but trying to figure out CSS, social networks, commenting etiquette, and Google Analytics can drive any ordinary person insane.  I remember watching my stats in my first three months, desperately willing every number to get higher and higher, obsessing when I didn’t get any comments on a single post or excited when got a lot.  It was a lot of heartache and headache for no reason because, to be quite frank, when you’re just starting out, you’re not going to have great stats (and that’s okay).

The best thing I did in the early stages was responding to comments and finding other fun, like-minded travel bloggers.  Some of those people remain good friends three years later.  As our blogs have grown, we still keep talking to each other, sharing advice and help, and whenever we meet up, it’s always a great time.  You’ll forget about those early posts and how many numbers you had in the first few months but you’ll never forget the people who helped you out and shared your frustrations in your early days as a blogger.”