Any tips for a beginning travel blogger?

[ByeBye]

I'm sticking my toe into blogging. Initially I was going to do it on facebook but I hate facebook except for the ease of keeping a connection to those I am invested in but don't interact with on a frequent basis. I wanted to share my travels, ongoing life experiences on the road, etc with family and friends.

As I visualized how that would look I didn't like it so....here I go. Main purpose isn't to make money, obviously if I was looking at FB as a platform. I know nothing about making money there except marketplace, however I don't have an allergy to $$ and abundance channeled to me via mindfully presenting my current/ongoing world w/ no hawking/begging sounds wonderful. Won't take much to make a difference. I'm set up w/ low overhead. Largest is vehicle maintenance and fuel.

I have chosen a blog name, domain name and registered it .com, .org and .net. That's as far as I've gotten.

Any sage advice/pointers based on personal experience would be greatly appreciated. Not asking for your trade secrets just help a noob get started.

 

[Van-Tramp]

I've been blogging my experiences for 8+ years now (Link in sig below). There isn't much too it to be honest. Just get a web host, install WordPress, and start blogging away.

It is good you are not concerned about making money from it, because you won't. Just have fun documenting your experiences.

 

[lenny flank]

I've been travel blogging for almost four years now. Mostly so my friends and family can keep track of where I am.

The Electronic Nomad:
https://lennyflank.wordpress.com/

I did make money from it, in the sense that it served as the basis for my vandwelling book and my books on visiting Civil War and Revolutionary War battlefields.

But as far as making money directly from a blog, you have a better chance of winning the lottery.

 

[MrNoodly]

If you want to make money, you'll need to stand out from the gazillion other travel-related blogs out there. You'll need a unique and sustainable hook. For example, there's "Rolling in an RV—Wheelchair Traveling" by Karen and Tony. They tell of their travels and rate places by wheelchair accessibility. And Bob started out giving information on the how and why of living this lifestyle. RVSue blogged about the places she stayed and showed photos of her dogs. She had tons of followers. (Maybe she still does even though she doesn't travel much anymore.) There are a bunch of young, good looking, adventurous #vanlife people. There are Mexico specialists, Canada specialists. There are people with ultra-low incomes and others who seem to have bottomless wallets.

So, what might you offer? Do you see an information hole, or a different angle, a different message you can present? And are you up for creating new content regularly, like weekly? Do you have enough to say? And are there enough people who care so you can generate revenue?

I blog mostly for my own enjoyment. I have a few followers and the occasional person who found a Google link for a particular topic. I ran ads for a while, but made less than $3.00 a month. So I dropped the ads and just do it because I like to.

 

[maki2]

One technique that works to get readers quickly engaged in a posting is to begin each posting with a great photo. That captures the audience much better than launching into text.

Always have a good title for each posting, put time and thought into creating that title. They matter, it is important for any type of journalism.

As with any creative writing follow the rules you learned in high school. Use an introductory paragraph, use a middle, use a closing paragraph that sums up what you wrote and/or leads to the next subject you are going to be posting about.

Have a sidebar or header bar with links and also tag your various post with subject and put a list of those tags into the sidebar or header bar. That way if people are interested in a particular topic you cover they can get to it quickly and see other post you have written regarding that topic. It is also important to create hidden tags for the subject of your blog in the formatting of it. That makes your blog jump up in the results when people do web searches using keywords. Good tags and keywords are critical to building a following. Much has been written about how to incorporate them if you don't know how to add them to your blog formatting.

Have fun! Enjoy the journey and the journal.

 

[ByeBye]

Thanks folks! I'm going to check out all your blogs and hope to start this learning curve climb.

I'm not really interested in learning much coding so I'm considering blogging platforms other than Wordpress.
Just started looking today so got a bit to go.

Tbh, I've got a lot of irons in the fire at the moment as living arrangements aren't healthy, for me, and looking to get on the road ASAP. So I'm listing/selling, cleaning out a 10x20 storage room loading up the truck w/ all my tools and anything else that looks like it needs to go with me, etc.

So, I working on computer in AM till it warms up a bit then outside stuff in afternoon and listing items in the evening. On my 11 day of a run of the flu and am just now able to work a few works w/o feeling like death warmed over, lol. Anyway enough sob story.

I am excited about the blog and, sorry, I'm not going to say I'm not going to gather any abundance, including $$ from it. If I do that I'm sure I won't so I'll just make sure I'm having fun and I have passion for it.

Do what you love and the abundance will follow if you can visualize it, methinks. But I'll not be swayed by the love of money, I'm fairly confident of that.

Blogging platform software recommendations, anyone???

 

[ByeBye]

Hmm...interesting info maki2. Thanks, appreciated.

 

[maki2]

You will do just fine with wordpress, learn how to use their support area, it tells you exactly how to do various types of things with your blog.

For example....I mentioned using tags for defining the different types of postings that have related subject matter. Wordpress is calling that function adding a category-page.
Here is the link from wordpress for how to do it.
https://en.support.wordpress.com/category-pages/

I am sure you will think of a number of categories you might post about, you have already mentioned a few of them.
As you travel you will be engaging in your own particular activities and going to different places that offer the opportunity to do the types of activities you enjoy. I don't know you so it could be most anything for example, it might be fishing, photography, visiting local breweries, flea markets, car shows and races, tractor pulls. It is good to feature a range of activities if you can, it livens up a blog. Or you can stay focused on one of two things which will bring a smaller readership but increase the intensity of focus.

Blogs can generate income in various ways. Some do it through having ads posted, some people do it to links to Amazon asking people to use that link if they make purchases. My blog ended up helping to establish an income to supplement my retirement but not in those two ways. My blog was about things I was making and showing how to do them. Then one day I was making something for a party activity for some girlfriends and showed what I was making and people began asking to buy them. So I started selling them. I create new sets of what I was making most years and show them. But over the years the photos from the blog post have spread around the internet and that means when people do a search for that category of the items I make the images of my work show up in the first page of search engines. So I do have a lot of sales without having to write a lot of new blog postings

Be sure you add your name, date and copyright symbol to your photos, also add a title when you post a photo such as the location or the subject matter. The payback for doing that is increased traffic to your blog.

 

[ByeBye]

Again, maki2, great info and thanks. I'm still not sure about wordpress. I don't want to spend much time w/ site design. May have to look at bartering w/ someone for some help.

I've always been good at finding niches and even niches within niches for non-traditional income. Been a collectable vinyl record buyer/seller since 1994. Pre-intrawebz used to travel the entire Eastern half of the US setting up at Record Collector Conventions/Show, driving about 40K mi per year.
I did this as a full time job and made better than average money. When internet started popping in circa '98-'99 exploited eBay while it was a sellers market, selling my inventory and brokering other dealers who were not web savvy.

When eBay become more of a buyers market circa 2001 I started as Amazon Third Party Vendor selling primarily books and Entertainment media, CD's, DVD's, etc. Do to the difficulty of gauging the value of a book, hit and miss alot, I paid Verizon $100 monthly for satellite connection, dial up slow, brought an AirCard, a barcode scanner and a subscription I can't remember the name of that I could check the Amazon resell potential of a hundred books in an hour. No more buying books that wouldn't resell, no waste. It was 3 years before I heard/saw anyone doing the same. It was a small windfall. Any who, I've got a knack if I'm invested so we see if I can get invested.

 

[MrNoodly]

...Use an introductory paragraph, use a middle, use a closing paragraph...

Mmmm, I disagree. I see blogging as entertainment, not a an English composition assignment. I see it more like storytelling. Let the story lead the structure. But, like a good story, there should be a little something at the end to reward them for spending part of their life reading your words. I'm not talking about dramatic endings or big surprises. Just a little thought, a turn of a phrase, something to put a nice period at the end.

 

[maki2]

Different approaches. Sometimes blogs are about people who are telling a story. But other times in a personal blog you may be presenting a DIY set of instructions or if you are discussing a topic where you are presenting an opinion about something or maybe you are writing a review. A personal blog may need many styles of writing to cover a variety of topics. But fortunately our basic education did cover most of the common styles and even sometimes personal journal writing depending on the teacher's own interest.

 

[ByeBye]

After some more research I think I can handle Wordpress.org

 

[RoamerRV428]

Tioga George. great blog and good spot to learn etc