Travel Blogging Tips for Beginners: How to Get Paid to Travel

Travel blogging isn’t easy. You’re out there exploring the world and having the time of your life. Let’s face it, life on the road is intense and unpredictable!

But if you have a dream, you’ve got to follow it. Building a successful travel blog is very much a matter of mindset and strategy.

That’s why today’s post is all about helping you build those foundations. Below, I share my best travel blogging tips for beginners and help you set up your platform.

To make things clear right off the bat, if all you want is to share your experiences with your friends and family back home, this article isn’t for you.

But if you want to hit the road and get paid to travel the world as soon as possible, keep scrolling!

This post contains affiliate links, and I may earn a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you make a purchase. I only recommend resources that I use and love! Read my full disclosure.

10 Travel Blogging Tips for Beginners

The following tips will set the foundations of your travel blogging business:

Start a business, not a hobby
Choose your platform
Plan your content strategically
Create great content
Consider design too!
Build an email list, ASAP
Promote, promote, promote!
Make sure you have access to the internet
Plan your next move
Pick your mentors (and take it all in!)

Below, we’ll dive into each of these essentials. If you haven’t already started a blog, I have also prepared a detailed tutorial to help you build a brand and start a self-hosted travel blog.

Here are other articles you might enjoy reading next:

Starting a Travel Blog: The Foundations (my full tutorial that helps you create a brand and start a blog)
Travel Blogging Monetization Strategies (I recommend reading this next!)
How Do Travel Bloggers Make Money? (valuable insights from over a dozen professional travel bloggers)
Best Online Courses for Travel Content Creators (my top picks, especially tailored to you!)
Interview with Alyssa Padgett (about her RVing adventures as an entrepreneur)

I’ll add these links again at the end so you have a complete roadmap to follow as soon as you’re ready to set up your first travel blog. But first…

What is a Travel Blog?

A travel blog is a website where the author (or authors) share their stories and tips about traveling. Each website tends to cover a specific destination or publish travel-related articles that are relevant to a targeted audience.

The more focused your travel blogging niche is, the easier it will be to grow an audience online and become known in the industry.

As your travel blog grows, you can monetize it in a number of ways, and many creators make a comfortable living online through the content they share.

How to Get Paid to Travel the World and Blog About It

1. Start a Business, Not a Hobby

You shouldn’t only share fun and inspiring travel stories.

Who’s your ideal reader? What are their struggles?

You’ve got to know your audience and solve their problems.

I always bring up the importance of defining your niche and knowing your audience. This is the deal-breaker, and it’s usually what distinguishes personal blogs from online businesses.

Travel blogging has become insanely popular. Everyone wants to hit the road and make money online. So, more than ever before, your content needs to stand out!

You need to talk to a specific person and solve their pain points to see results quickly.

Will you be offering advice to solo female travelers on a budget?
Will you share your tips for saving and making money on the road?
Or perhaps you’ll teach people how to build a mobile business, like Heath and Alyssa did while RVing full-time for over a decade?
You could even teach women how to stay safe while backpacking like Allison does at She Dreams of Alpine.

See how specific these travel blogs are? Your goal is to find a focus like they have done.

I understand getting that specific in the early days might be difficult. But keep that at the back of your mind so that you can niche down as soon as you find your true purpose.

Pin this for later 🙂

2. Choose Your Platform

This article is about blogging, and obviously, I am biased. But the next thing you need to do is decide on a platform.

Where will you be focusing most of your time and energy?

Some go with social media at first, and others start a blog right away.

While social media can be a great place to build a community, I suggest that your main platform is a blog. A self-hosted website is something you own, and it has unlimited potential to grow with you.

You can start with the basics and scale as you go. But once you have a website up and running, it will be a lot easier to build a community of true fans who will happily follow you around the web.

I am sure you’ve heard of travel content creators who build a huge following on social media and then lose it all overnight. I don’t want that to happen to you.

But the scary fact is that social media accounts get banned, algorithms change, and the popularity of each platform shifts whenever a new one launches.

When you have a website, you have a platform of your own that you can monetize and improve upon as you please.

While Google’s algorithm changes constantly too, you can drive traffic from plenty of other places. I am not telling you to *only* build a blog; I am suggesting that you use a blog as your business’s main pillar.

You can (and should) drive traffic from other places as well! Pinterest, Instagram, and even TikTok are great for building brand awareness.

There’s YouTube (the second-largest search engine on the planet), podcasting… you could be everywhere.

That said, it’s a good idea to spend time on a blog and choose one or two traffic-building platforms at most. This will help you stay on track and avoid feeling overwhelmed.

3. Plan Your Content Strategically

Strategically is the key term here!

Again, it’s not only about telling stories. It’s about serving people.

Ok, let me explain.

You can and should add personality to your posts. Inspiration is a great driver when it comes to building a community online.

You can even have the occasional post where all you do is storytelling. Pinterest would probably be the best traffic driver for that post.

But what I want you to understand is that people go online to find answers to their problems. I’m not talking about anything life-changing here (although plenty of people might be googling “How likely are you to die in a plane crash” as we speak)…. that’s 260 monthly searches to be exact (according to the data on KeySearch).

Anyway, back to the point…

You might not think of yourself as a teacher. I certainly don’t. But I know I can teach about the things I have done, studied, and helped others do so many times before.

For me, that’s blogging and WordPress.
For you, it might be everything and anything about London, for example.

If you live in London, you certainly are a million steps ahead of someone who’s never set foot there before.

What would they want to know that you could talk about for hours without getting bored?

That would be your main topic right there!

And if you’re asking yourself how on heart you’d know what people are searching for, that’s keyword research. There are affordable online tools to help you do that, like KeySearch and RankIQ.

You can even use good old Google at the beginning.

Think about your topics and see what’s out there. Look at Google’s related searches and take advantage of its “people also ask” questions to gather ideas.

The more keyword research you do, the more subtopics you can cover to establish yourself as an authority in your niche, and the easier it will be to flesh out a content strategy for your blog.

4. Create Great Content

Once you know what you’ll write about, it’s time to focus and write.

Produce the best piece of content you can every time you sit down at your computer.

Answer all of your audience’s questions and address every one of their pain points.
Cover every important aspect of whatever you’re teaching.

Also, know that one idea can turn into several articles. By multiplying the content you can create about each destination you visit or each topic you want to cover, you’ll be positioning yourself as a trusted source on that topic.

For example, if you’re writing about Bangkok, know that “The Ultimate Guide to Bangkok” isn’t the only article you can write. In fact, smaller and more specific posts can serve you—and your readers—much better!

Some ideas include “20 Things to Do in Khao San Road”, “5 Best Places for Backpackers to Stay in Bangkok”, or “How to Visit Bangkok on $15 per Day”.

These types of posts will make it easier for your readers to find the information they are looking for and possibly make them stay on your website longer.

Your goals should be to:

answer every possible question your reader has,
draft a winning title people are likely to click on, and
write articles people want to read until the end.

Your content is your most important asset and your readers will appreciate the specifics.

If you cover everything your ideal readers need to know about a certain place, they’ll spend more time on your blog and likely make you more money.

5. Consider Design Too!

User experience is so important these days!

Although design isn’t the only UX factor at all, it can make or break the user experience.

With that in mind, here are a couple of areas in which you can improve to professionalize your travel blog:

Take better photos to illustrate your words and boost engagement

Either take advantage of a premium stock membership or get a top-notch camera to take your own high-quality pictures.

Build a website that is eye-catching, fast, and easy to navigate

I know I’m biased. But I am sure you notice the difference when you get to a professionally looking site vs a crappy one.

I recommend that you build a self-hosted WordPress site using the Kadence theme.

You can get a ready-to-use theme, where I got mine. They have plenty of options to choose from, including travel blogging WordPress themes!

These are built on top of the Kadence framework, so your site will look great across devices, load fast, and be developed with SEO in mind.

6. Build an Email List, ASAP

I’m sure you’ve heard that the money is on the list. Any professional blogger will tell you to prioritize list building right off the gate.

This is because your email list is your community. People who join and stay subscribed are your true fans and will follow you around wherever you go.

While it is true that you own your website (if you build it on a self-hosted platform), you don’t own your traffic. As we’ve seen time and time again, even the most successful bloggers risk losing a big chunk of their income after a Google update.

How do they regain traffic and income from then onwards? At first and in many cases, it’s with the help of their email subscribers.

They double down on email campaigns to pick up that traffic, sell their products, and boost their business back up.

While email list building may be slow at the beginning, it’s worth your time!

It doesn’t matter how long it takes to reach 100 subscribers, 1000, or 100,000. All that matters is that you consistently show up for those people so that they remember you and return to your site.

Emailing will help you form more meaningful relationships with your audience, sell your products and services when you have them, ask for feedback when you need it, and, most of all, stay top of mind and be perceived as an expert in your niche.

Can’t get around to what to tell those people once a week? No problem.

I don’t email weekly, either. Mostly because I, for one, don’t love starting the day with a million emails myself.

I email when I have something to share, and I try to make that a monthly practice at the very least.

A monthly newsletter can be an option for you at the start. If you want to do more, by all means, do it. But if it’s not your favorite thing about blogging, simply stick to a monthly schedule so that people continue to recognize your name in their inbox.

7. Promote, Promote, Promote!

Promote your content wherever and whenever you have the chance.

If you can add social media to your plate, do it. If you can publish several new pins a day, don’t hesitate.

Find out what works for you and double down on it.

Do you have a great travel story? Pitch it to a magazine for publication, for example.

Look for opportunities on Connectively (formerly HARO), get in touch with media companies back home, pitch large travel-related websites like Backpacker, write for other travel blogs to increase your authority…

There are plenty of ways to get your name out there and most of them add to your to-dos, which might be what you’re dreading right now.

That is why the first thing I recommend — something that won’t take you much time at all — is installing a social share plugin on your website.

Let others spread the word for you and help you out in the marketing side of business.

I use Social Warfare on this blog, and I love it! You can decide on the images and captions that your readers get to share for each post and even pick different ones specifically for Pinterest.

I use the paid version myself. Frankly, it’s a steal! But they do have a free plugin with fewer features.

8. Make Sure You Have Access to the Internet

Let’s get back to travel blogging specifically! It is very different from blogging in any other niche.

You will be on the road most of the time, and if you choose to travel off the beaten path, internet connectivity will be a huge issue.

I can’t tell you the number of places I’ve been where internet wasn’t even a thing.

I once stayed in a hostel where the water in the shower came straight from the sea. So you can imagine that Wi-Fi was nowhere to be found!

While most bloggers (myself included) write and publish articles from the comfort of their homes, you—as a travel blogger—will do that from airports, hotels, and remote places with not-so-good Wi-Fi (if any at all).

If you have booked trips to remote locations, you need to be particularly organized to prepare and schedule your content in advance.

9. Plan Your Next Move

While you may be dreaming about freedom (I totally get it!), I have to tell you that travel blogging isn’t just about visiting cool places and sharing your stories about them.

If you’re still with me, I’m sure you’ve already understood that!

Sometimes, you have to follow what’s trending, too. Is a tourist destination getting a lot of hype? You may want to go there so that you can be among the first to create quality content about it.

This means that you’ll have to keep your content needs in mind. Even if you really want to go to that place where everyone else is going, it might be more beneficial to go the opposite way!

Especially at the beginning, when you’re a new blogger trying to make an impact and be recognized in the travel blogging world, your content needs to get its best chances of being found.

Although this is optional, of course, traveling to less popular places—or places that are just starting to be noticed—will help you grow your blog much faster, get traction, and increase your traffic.

You could tend to keyword research and Google Trends to decide your next move. And if you can get to the places people are just starting to search for online, you’ll be among the first to produce relevant, viral-worthy material.

There are many SEO tools to help you brainstorm blog post ideas before you travel, but the ones I recommend most are KeySearch and RankIQ.

KeySearch offers plenty of data on millions of keywords, while RankIQ lists the best low-competition keywords with decent search volume that even new blogs can rank for and generates valuable SEO reports for the ones you choose.

These are also the most affordable tools on the market, and they don’t require a commitment, so you could try them month by month.

Brainstorm on as many topics as possible, and you’ll rack up hundreds of blog post ideas that you can target to grow your blog fast.

10. Pick Your Mentors (And Take It All In!)

Lastly, pick your mentors and learn from them. Take it all in!

Be it courses, e-books, webinars, memberships, or even YouTube videos, I can only recommend that you start learning ASAP.

Being a blogger is wearing all the hats. As the online business owner you are about to become, you need to be confident in your skills.

Always remember that whoever you’ve chosen to guide you in this journey, or whoever you look up to, started right where you are. Trust that, with the right strategy and a great plan, you will get there too.

You can make money travel blogging and live the life of your dreams!

The simple fact that so many people have done it before (and are still doing it today!) is proof that you can do it too.

It takes time, patience, commitment, and strategy. But the majority of top-earning bloggers are just regular people who once had a dream. (Most of them are nice, too, you should try meeting them someday!)

On that note, I’ve gathered a list of the best courses for travel creators that you can check out next.

Wrapping Up

Now you have the strategy, tools, and resources to start a profitable travel blog.

I hope this has inspired you to become a travel content creator and follow your dreams.

I personally love travel blogs and I can’t wait to catch up on your adventures! Please let me know what you’re up to in the comments section below, and also tell me which of these tips was new and useful to you.

Travel Blogging Tips for Beginners: How to Get Paid to Travel

10 Travel Blogging Tips for Beginners

What is a Travel Blog?