Becoming a Travel Blogger: 8 Expert Tips

Running a Travel Blogger involves more than jet-setting around the world. Here’s what you need to know to get started.

Even if you only blog about traveling as a hobby, it can be a fun way to document your adventures and share your passions with the world. The most important thing is to just get started, but it’s also worth considering additional factors to help you build momentum and reduce your learning curve.

1. Choosing the Right Camera for Your Travel Blog

If you’re running a personal travel blog, using your own photos instead of stock images is ideal. You can use your smartphone in the beginning, but you need to pick the right camera when the time comes to upgrade your equipment.

Assuming that you’ll largely use carry-on baggage, you should focus on devices that are compact and easy to carry around. It might also be worth considering whether you want to be more discreet, which is a good idea if you’re going to regularly visit places where you might not feel as safe with your device.

To make things easier, you can look at these essential travel photography items to take with you. One especially useful piece of advice is to avoid lugging around a lot of lenses.

2. Specializing in a Region or Sub-Region for Targeted Impact

You can blog about whatever and wherever you want, but narrowing down your focus area will make it easier for readers to know why they should come to your website. For example, The Mandagies is one of the best travel blogs you’ll find—and it focuses primarily on the Pacific Northwest.

When choosing your sub-niche, you should pick an area that you’re particularly interested in. That might be the place in which you live, but it could also be somewhere farther afield. You can also choose to specialize in different verticals, such as travel photography.

Your area of expertise will largely evolve as you write more, and you’ll naturally travel where your curiosity takes you. So don’t worry too much about this in the beginning.

3. Balancing Travel and Content Production: A Crucial Schedule

It’s easy to look at travel bloggers on Instagram and think that their entire life involves living out of a suitcase. This is only the case for a select few. And to be truthful, living out of a suitcase (and without a permanent sense of community) becomes exhausting—so you probably wouldn’t want to pursue that lifestyle.

As a travel blogger, you’ll spend just as much time—if not more—creating content and managing your blog. With this in mind, you’re putting yourself at a significant disadvantage if you don’t schedule some time for writing and editing.

It’s worth choosing the same time each day if you can—that way, you can build up a level of consistency. Here are some of the best apps to create a schedule and manage tasks.

4. Building Local Connections: Partnering with Businesses

One of the most rewarding things about having a travel blog is that you can make a positive impact on your local community and support businesses in your area.

Partnering with local businesses has several benefits for both parties. As a travel blogger, you can become well-known locally and have others spread the word about your website. And for the businesses you join up with, they can generate extra income that they might not have been able to otherwise.

Your partnership doesn’t necessarily need to be paid, and you can structure it however you want. For example, you might simply want to create a directory on your website.

5. Make a List of Dream Companies You’d Like to Work With

You probably have a list of brands that you resonate with the most, but have you thought about the possibility of working with them? While you’ll likely need to hone your craft for years, having big dreams makes living your life more exciting.

Make a list of the companies you’d like to worth with. You can also update your list whenever you want and continue referring to it so that you’ve got something to work toward.

Before you take a brand deal, consider the ethics of YouTube sponsorships, as these also translate to blogging. Make sure that everything you do is aligned with your personal and brand values.

6. Focus Most of Your Energy on the Big Tasks

There are a million things that you need to do as a travel blogger, such as customizing your website theme and designing a logo. But the honest truth is that most tasks don’t have a significant impact on the growth of your blog—and generally speaking, the most difficult things are what will move the needle forward.

As a travel blogger, your primary tasks are to gather and create content for your website. You can use social media, but you should care more about outbound clicks than growing followers for egotistical purposes.

If you focus almost exclusively on the big tasks to build your travel blog, you’ll have a much better chance of succeeding in the long run. And to ensure that you do the work, consider these tips on getting Deep Work done.

7. Create Your Own Travel Content Instead of Outsourcing

One of the easiest ways to stand out as a travel blogger is to be authentic and talk about your own experiences. Outsourcing articles works for major publications, but it isn’t necessarily a good idea if your aim is to create and run a personal blog.

Audiences want a connection with you, and you’re the only person who can write in your unique tone of voice. You can always outsource some of the tasks that aren’t so important, but the main aspect of content creation should be done by you. We’ve got a complete content creation checklist if you need guidance.

8. Visit Destinations More Than Once

It’s exciting to visit new places, but you will only have a small level of knowledge if you go somewhere just once. This is why for many people it makes sense to begin by talking about the area that you live in—or somewhere that you frequently visit.

To get a bigger depth of knowledge compared to others, it makes sense to visit destinations more than once. And ideally, you should also go to these places in different seasons. While I definitely should’ve started my blog earlier, one benefit of delaying it was that I was able to go to many of the places I talk about multiple times—which makes me more knowledgeable than most people.

Visiting places more than once will also allow you to verify whether previous recommendations are still accurate. You can also try new things and update your guides accordingly.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Choose the right camera for your travels to create authentic content and upgrade your equipment when the time comes.
• Specialize in a region or sub-region to attract readers and establish yourself as an expert in a particular area.
• Schedule dedicated time for both travel and content production to maintain consistency and ensure productivity in managing your blog.

Start Your Travel Blogging Journey

Travel blogging is trickier than it seems, and you’ll need to consider more than just the travel aspect. Contrary to popular belief, you will probably spend just as much time in front of a computer as you will jet-setting and exploring.

From focusing on the important tasks to partnering with businesses in your area, following these expert tips can help you become a successful travel blogger in a quicker period of time. So take these insights to heart, and embark on your exciting travel blogging journey today!