Many people dream about what it would be like to travel the world and get paid for it. Blogging about travel might not make you a fortune from the get-go but it can afford you an additional income stream that helps to pay for the travel bug. What’s more, writing about your travels can happen wherever in the world you happen to be.
All you need is a device and an internet connection to post your latest blog from any location. Read on to find out what you’ll need before you book your plane ticket.
Set Up a New Website
To begin with, you will need somewhere you can post your blogs. Some websites take guest blogs from writers but these usually have to conform to certain rules or must be about certain destinations. To get going, you’ll want to showcase what you can do which is why you’ll need your own publishing platform. In the digital age, this means a website. Some writers worry that registering appropriate domain names, adding a website layout and running website security will be too technical for them. However, when you use a reputable web hosting service, you can get the domain you want for the name of your site – something nice and memorable – as well as having all of the technological parts of running the website taken care of. Once the site is live, all you need to do as a travel writer is to start blogging. This could mean writing directly into the site’s user interface or copying in text from a word processor. What could be easier?
Attract Your Readership
With blog posts starting to be published, you’ll want to gain readers. For this, your site should be optimised for search engines. A process known as SEO will help in this regard. Use a fast-loading web service to host your site and add content that features the key words that people search for. This might be the country you’re visiting but think about it from a reader’s point of view. Rather than focusing on ‘India’, for example, why not target SEO terms, such as ‘Indian hotels’? If you do so, and people start finding your site after entering similar terms into their search engine, then you could be paid to write on your site by hotel groups that want outbound links from your site to theirs.
Monetising Your Site
Travel blogs can earn income by featuring sponsored content. You might be asked to write a favourable review of a particular resort or tourist attraction, for example. Some advertisers will also pay to have their adverts inserted into pages on your site. In addition, you might be approached by copywriters who would like to provide your site with guest blogs. If so, they’ll usually be doing so as part of an affiliate marketing campaign and will provide you with a one-off fee for hosting their travel blog on your site.
Conclusion
With so many places to travel to and subjects to write about, blogging for a living is a fun thing to do. Give it a go and you might be surprised at how rewarding it can be, as well.
