Do you love traveling? Do you have the inside scoop on the best places to dine, stay or see in cities you’ve visited? If so, then starting a travel blog may be perfect for you. In this guide, I’m going to show you how to start a travel blog and make it profitable.
But first, let’s answer one important question: why should you start a travel blog? You may have heard that it’s not worth it anymore, but I’m here to tell you that it absolutely is worth it.
Why Should You Start a Travel Blog?
Despite what you may have heard, there’s still plenty of room to compete in the travel blogging sphere. And there are plenty of people out there looking for travel tips and ideas.
In fact, travel search terms are up 70% on Google.
If you’re someone who loves traveling and does it regularly, then travel blogging is a natural choice for you. Along with sharing your tips and advice on travel, you also have the opportunity to show off your creative skills.
In many cases, travel bloggers are also:
- Photographers
- Videographers
- Writers and storytellers
Blogging provides you with an outlet for all of these creative activities.
For those who are passionate about seeing the world and learning about new cultures, travel blogging presents an opportunity to do the thing you love most while getting paid to do it.
But learning how to start a travel blog is more than just coming up with a creative name. There are some technical aspects, but don’t worry – I walk you through each step in my guide How to Start a Blog, where I cover:
- How to set up a WordPress blog
- How to install a WordPress theme (I love these feminine themes)
- Which plugins you need
- How to get Google Analytics up and running
- Must-have pages to add
- So much more
Head on over to my guide to get all of the technical details on how to get your blog up and running.
If you’re still not convinced that travel blogging is worthwhile, take a look at these three top travel bloggers who are making 7-figures a year from their blogs.
Top Travel Bloggers
There are tons of travel bloggers out there, but some stand out from the crowd because they have grown their blogs into serious businesses.
I’ve shared my ultimate list of successful bloggers who make $50K per month, but these travel bloggers go above and beyond this and are making $1 million or more per year.
Nomadic Matt (Matt Kepnes)
Matt Kepnes is a well-known name in the travel sphere. He runs the famous nomads blog Nomadic Matt, and he’s now the author of New York Times Best Seller books on travel.
He’s easily one of the top earning travel bloggers on the internet, and his estimated yearly revenue is $1 million+.
His income sources include:
- His own merchandise and books
- Affiliate marketing
- Display ads
- Courses
The Blonde Abroad (Kiersten Rich)
Kiersten has become a travel icon for solo female travelers, and she’s managed to transform her passion for traveling into a million-dollar business.
Along with her blog, Kiersten also has a female-only tour group called TBA Escapes, which generates plenty of revenue.
She also has:
- An online travel shop
- Creative digital agency
But none of these income streams would have been possible without her blog. Her blog, A Blonde Abroad, was her springboard, allowing her to build a reputation and brand that made it ten times easier to grow these other businesses.
And make no mistake about it – her blog still makes tons of money through display ads, affiliate marketing, product sales, brand partnerships and more.
Travel Fashion Girl (Alex Jimenez)
Alex Jimenez runs the famous Travel Fashion Girl blog, which she launched in 2012. When she started traveling full-time in 2008, Alex was tired of feeling “frumpy.” She launched her blog a few years later to help other women travel in style.
Today, her blogging empire generates over $1 million per year. She generates income through AdThrive and affiliate marketing, especially Amazon and LTK.
She also sells digital products like eBooks to help her readers pack for traveling abroad.
How Much Money Can You Make With a Travel Blog?
The median income for travel bloggers is $5,000 per month, but you can easily earn more. The sky is the limit!
That said, it will take time for you to grow your blog and earnings. For some bloggers, it can take 2-3+ years to hit the $5K and higher mark.
My point is that you have to be committed and patient. The goal should be to treat your blog as a real business that you want to nurture and grow over the long term.
3 Strategies to Start Making Money With Your Travel Blog Fast
Blogging is a long game. You have to be patient because it will take some time to make thousands of dollars per month. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t start generating some income fast.
Here are some strategies you can use to start generating revenue with your blog right away.
1. Sell Guides
If you’re an avid traveler, you have something highly valuable: knowledge. Other aspiring travelers want to have the best time when they travel, and they don’t want to waste their time seeing sights that aren’t worth it, dining at restaurants that are terrible and staying in hotels that are far from comfortable.
You can help travelers make the most of their holiday time by creating and selling guides. Put your knowledge to paper (or video) and share your insights.
Guides can easily generate hundreds or thousands of dollars per month.
2. Offer Custom Travel Advice/Itineraries
Guides are a great way to generate income, but you can also generate revenue by offering custom travel advice or building customized itineraries for travelers.
3. Add Display Ads to Your Site
Whenever you see a guide on how to start a travel blog and make money, display ads are always at the top of the list.
In fact, I made $519 in a single day displaying ads on my own blog.
Google is the simplest and easiest ad network to get started with, and you can incorporate ads into your blog right away if you want.
Other ad networks may generate more revenue, but you may need to meet traffic requirements first.
4 Ways to Get Traffic to Your Blog
You’ve started incorporating strategies to make money with your travel blog to your site, but you need traffic if you want to make money.
For many would-be travel bloggers, traffic is a major sticking point.
Where do you even get started?
I’m happy to tell you that with the right approach, you can start getting traffic to your blog much in the same way that I have. What I recommend that you do is:
1. Leverage Pinterest
Pinterest remains one of the top 50 websites in the world, with over 1.13 billion visitors every month. And traffic continues to rise month after month, making the platform a great option for anyone who wants to get organic traffic to their site.
I’ve had amazing success with Pinterest, and some of the actionable tips that you can begin following today to capture this traffic are:
- Create Pinterest boards that categorize your travels
- Work on high-quality images and graphics for your pins
- Contribute to your boards regularly to keep followers engaged
- Pin only your best content to make you go viral
- Follow my guide for creating a Pin template
I have an extensive guide on how to get traffic from Pinterest that will explain everything.
2. Get Active on Social Media
Social media is engrained into people’s everyday lives. The average person spends 2 hours and 20 minutes on social media daily. And if they come across your travel posts and start following you, you can turn these followers into visitors.
For travel, you can post on any platform, but some of the best include:
- TikTok
And if you’re up for it, you can also launch your own YouTube channel.
3. Launch a YouTube Channel
YouTube keeps many travel bloggers doing what they love: traveling. You can teach people how to start a travel blog, but why not go all out and have your own travel channel? People love watching travel-related content, and you can:
- Monetize your YouTube channel
- Direct people to your blog in the video description
Many travel bloggers are also vloggers, and people will join you on your adventure wherever you go.
4. Optimize Your Site and Content for SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is how you can capture organic traffic from the likes of Google, Bing and other search engines. I recommend starting with SEO basics, such as:
- Focus on keyword research
- Optimize your on-page SEO for search intent
- Optimize your content based on keyword research
- Create an SEO-friendly site structure
- Build links to your site
SEO takes a lot of work and time, but with the right approach, you’ll start getting organic traffic to your site.
Top Travel Blogger Tools
You can learn a lot from the top travel bloggers, including what tools they use to make their sites such a success. A few of the invaluable tools to consider are:
- Ahrefs: An SEO-related tool that will help you with competitor research, topic ideas, tracking rankings, keyword research and more.
- Google Analytics & Search Console: Great, free tools to track site users, traffic and more.
- Tailwind: A Swiss army knife of tools for content creators that helps you make graphics, schedule posts on Pinterest or Instagram and so much more.
- Canva: One of my favorite tools that makes it easy to make graphics for my blogs, edit graphics and even create Pins. You can try the free account option to see how you like it.
But the most important thing about a travel blog is simply starting. You need to take immediate action today and begin blogging to get the ball rolling.
