How To Start A Travel Blog And Make Money Step-By-Step

Curious about how to start a travel blog and make money?

This guide can help!

There is a lot to understand when it comes to building a profitable blogging business—especially when you’re just starting out.

To help, I break things down step-by-step below. You’ll learn:

• Things you need to do before launching your blog
• How to set up your website in the best possible way
• Ways to grow your website traffic and get readers to your content
• What to actually write about on your travel blog (content plan template included!)
• How to monetize your site and boost your travel blogging income
• And more!

💡Quick travel blogging tips:
-Your blog is a business, and if you want to monetize it, you need to implement revenue streams sooner rather than later.
-Solidify your brand first so you know exactly who you help and how, making it easier to create free content and promote paid offers that resonate.
-Build an email list from the start, as this will help you build a community of fans (vs one-time readers).

🎁 Bonus: Grab a seat in my free Algorithm-Proof Blogging Workshop! You’ll learn a 5-step strategy for creating a profitable blog that continues earning and growing regardless of algorithms—bonuses, Q&A, and limited-time replay included!

Things To Do Before Setting Up Your Blog

Before you start creating content, it’s important to:

• Sort out the legal side of your blogging business
• Figure out how you’ll do your bookkeeping and accounting as a blogger

From there, you can move on to the creative side of things. One of the most important parts of understanding how to make money as a travel blogger is actually spending time solidifying your blog brand.

This entails understanding who you help and how, why you’re the best person to share about your topic, and what you’re working toward. Here are a few questions to get you started:

• Who do you want to help and how through your blog?
• What are your values? As in, how do you want to show up for people?
• What are your goals with your blog?
• What kinds of messaging can you use to convey your brand?
• How can you make your expertise and experience clear to readers to build trust?

How To Start A Travel Blog Step-By-Step

Once you’re clear on the above, you can start getting set up by following this roadmap:

Step #1: Choose your domain name.

My advice for new travel bloggers is to really think long and hard about this, as if you decide to change it later it will be a huge pain.

A few considerations when determining your domain name:

• Do you want to have more of a personal blog or more a magazine-style blog?
  • Example: Jessie on a Journey vs Epicure & Culture.
• Is there an on-brand word or phrase you can put in the blog name to make the main topic clear?
  • Example: Solo Female Travel Society.
• Does the name have longevity?
  • Example: “Twenty-Something Backpacker” and “Studying Abroad in Rome” are names you’ll age out of.
• Is your blog destination based?
  • Example: All About NYC.

To make sure that a certain domain name is available, you can check the domain on Namecheap—which, in my experience, is also the cheapest place to buy domains.

Step #2: Choose & purchase your hosting provider.

Website hosting is one of the most important purchases you’ll make, as it can impact the speed and user experience of your website. A speedy, secure, and easy-to-use website can help you get seen and grow faster, so this is important.

My top hosting recommendation is BigScoots. I’ve been with six different hosts, and BigScoots is hands down the best I’ve experienced in terms of uptime, site speed, and customer service.

Their response time is incredibly fast too. Whenever I’ve had a technical question, their support team usually gets back to me in under 5 minutes with a real solution, not just a canned response.

Getting set up with BigScoots is quick and easy. You’ll simply:

• Choose your plan. If you’re just starting out, their Shared plans are incredibly powerful, but if you want them to handle all the technical heavy lifting, go with Managed.
• Select your domain. You can register a brand new domain name right there or enter your existing domain if you’re moving your site from another host or purchased one from Namecheap.
• Request a Free Migration. If you already have a blog, just open a ticket. Their team will migrate your entire site to their servers for free with zero downtime, usually within 24 hours.
• Install WordPress. From your dashboard, use the “Softaculous” or “One-Click Install” tool to get WordPress live on your site in seconds.
• Activate your free SSL. BigScoots makes security easy by providing free SSL certificates (that little padlock in the browser bar), which you can turn on with a single click in your control panel. Having this is very important for ranking in search results and building reader trust!

BigScoots also backs up your website, which is very important. Personally, I go an extra step and save a copy of my website backup to my computer every Friday. This helps ensure you never lose your content.

Step #3: Choose your website theme.

Now for the fun part! Once you’re set up technically, it’s time to design the site that will house your incredible travel content.

When choosing your theme, opt for something that not only looks great and functions the way you want it to, but is also fast. That often means forgoing bells and whistles like moving photo slideshows or instant-play videos on the homepage, which can really slow things down.

My recommendation:

Opt for the lightweight Kadence Theme, then style it using a travel-inspired Memories or Postcard Kadence Child Theme ($10 off with code “JESSIE”).

For reference, a child theme is a separate theme file you install alongside your main “parent” theme to handle the design and styling. It allows you to customize the look of your site without touching the original theme’s code, so your changes don’t get erased whenever you run a theme update.

Step #4: Get set up technically for safety & speed.

Along with writing engaging blog content, one of the biggest priorities you should have when it comes to your blog is making sure it is fast.

Not only will this offer a better user experience, but it can also help your content rank higher in search engine rankings.

My absolute favorite plugin for speeding up my website is WPRocket. As soon as I set up this plugin, I saw an immediate increase in site speed.

Just a few of its many site speed enhancing features include:

• Page & browser caching
• Lazy-loading of images
• Sitemap preloading
• Database optimization
• Cloudflare compatibility
• And more!

Speaking of Cloudflare, this is the second tool I highly recommend installing if you want a speedy and secure site.

The free tool helps optimize your site while also screening visitors to make sure they’re not malicious bots or something else bad.

Speaking of speed, it’s also worth it to do some research on the best laptops for blogging. A good laptop can be expensive, but it can really help increase your efficiency.

Step #5: Install additional plugins.

There is a plugin for almost every issue you run into and any adjustment you want to make to your website. You can find these by going to Plugins > Add New and either uploading a plugin you purchased or searching for a free one.

A few of my favorites include:

RankMath. A powerful, user-friendly SEO plugin that helps you optimize your content for search engines and track your rankings right from your dashboard.

Complianz. A comprehensive legal plugin that automatically generates cookie consents and privacy policies to ensure your blog stays compliant with global data laws like GDPR.

LinkWhisper. An intelligent internal linking tool that suggests relevant links while you write, helping to boost your SEO and keep readers on your site longer.

Grow by Mediavine. This plugin adds social sharing buttons to your travel blog posts, and also allows you to add clickable Tweets and Pinterest-optimized graphics to your content. I also use the “Spotlight Subscribe” feature to automatically insert calls to action to grab my opt-in freebie, which helps me grow an email list. We’ll talk more about list building later on in the guide!

Updraft Plus. This plugin allows you to create backups of your website.

Step #6: Set up your analytics tracking.

To have a successful travel blog, you need to be able to monitor what is working and what isn’t.

There are two free tools I suggest setting up to track your blog’s analytics. These include:

Google Search Console. This tool helps you better understand how your content is performing in Google search results so you can tweak your content strategy and even update previously published blog posts to help increase their chances of ranking in search results.

Furthermore, this tool lets you know when there are errors on your site that need to be fixed.

Google Analytics (GA4). This tool helps you learn about the demographics and behaviors of your website visitors. Moreover, you’ll gain important insights into how people arrive to your blog and interact with your content.

📹 This GA4 tutorial can help you better understand how to use this free tool to grow your blog and make money:

Step #7: Publish your important pages.

We’re almost ready to write a blog post. Before doing that though, it’s recommended to publish a few important pages, including your:

About Page. Introduce yourself to your blog visitors and let them know what they’ll get out of being a reader, including your top travel blog topic ideas and categories.

Work With Me Page. This is especially helpful if you want to land paid brand collaborations.

Privacy Policy. This page spells out how you collect, use, and store the data of your website visitors and is required by law.

Website Terms & Conditions. Another legal page, though this one shares the rules that visitors must agree to in order to use your website.

Disclaimer. This legal page helps limit your liability; for instance, if you recommend a restaurant in a blog post and then someone goes and gets food poisoning they can’t hold you responsible.

Cookie Policy. You can use a free plugin like Complianz to get cookie consent from website visitors, which is a legal obligation for website owners.

⚖️ Pro tip: If legal pages make you nervous, my friend and lawyer Liz Stapleton offers individual Legal Templates as well as a discounted Legal Templates Bundle to help you get set up. Once created, these legal pages should be linked in your website footer menu.

Step #8: Pinpoint your revenue stream(s).

If you take away only one thing from this guide, it should be this: your travel blog is a business, and businesses make money.

The mistake most travel bloggers make is they start a blog, create content, and then wait for the money to roll in without ever creating an actual profit plan for their travel blog.

Your content is not the business; it’s a tool for growing your revenue streams, building an audience, and increasing brand visibility.

I’ll cover travel blog monetization in-depth a little later in the guide, but a few popular ways to earn include:

• Selling your own products and services
• Affiliate marketing
• Display ads
• Working with brands and tourism boards
• Selling your photography and videography
• Freelance writing and content creation

The sooner you can pinpoint how you’ll make money—and implement it—the sooner you’ll be able to earn from your blog.

You don’t need to wait until you have traffic, either.

📹 For instance, this video shares how to sell products with a small (or no) audience:

Step #9: Get set up for email subscribers.

Growing an email list is essential if you want to run a sustainable blogging business. A few reasons why:

• You own your email list
• You don’t have to battle constantly changing algorithms to get seen by your subscribers
• Along with promoting free content, you can also monetize your email list
• Email tends to have higher conversion rates than other platforms

In my opinion, one of the best ways to get people onto your email list is to create an opt-in freebie; as in, a free resource like a cheat sheet or template that you give your reader in exchange for their email address.

This freebie should help your reader solve a problem quickly, and should be related to your blog brand mission and revenue streams.

For instance, if your blog helps travelers plan unforgettable trips to Iceland, and you sell custom itinerary planning for Iceland, then you might offer a free Iceland travel planning checklist to attract your ideal audience.

Step #10: Create a content plan.

Your blog content plan should be an extension of your mission while also attracting people who would benefit from your opt-in freebie and revenue streams.

In short, everything you create should align and build on one another—which goes for your blog posts too. To do this:

• Pinpoint 1-3 content pillars (main topics) you’ll cover. All of your blog posts should fit within one of these pillars.
• Create content clusters within these pillars. These are groups of blog posts that are related and interlink (literally) to help your reader solve a specific problem.
• Promote a relevant opt-in freebie in every post. This might mean creating one that works across all content pillars, or creating a unique freebie for each.

Going back to our Iceland travel example, you might have an “Iceland Road Trips” pillar and a “Ring Road” cluster with blog posts like Ring Road Itinerary, Tips for Driving Iceland’s Ring Road, and Camping Along Iceland’s Ring Road.

These posts should interlink too. You can do this manually, or use a plugin like LinkWhisper to speed up the process.

Step #11: Design your intentional homepage.

There are a lot of considerations when it comes to your homepage, one of the most important being what people see before they scroll (called “above the fold”).

This begins with your main menu, which should include your most important CTAs and trust-builders:

• About page. This lets people know why they should listen to you.
• Contact page, so people can easily get in touch; this can be nested under your About page.
• Content pillar pages. This brings all of your related blog posts together on one page (example here).
  • You should create one of these for each of your content pillars.
• Opt-in freebie(s). This might be a landing page promoting a single or a few, depending on how many you have. I recommend having the menu button include the word “free” (like “Freebies”) to capture your reader’s attention.
• Revenue streams. This could be a shop selling your products, a resource list promoting your favorite affiliate partners, a work with me page sharing how you work with brands, or something else. Basically, consider your sales pages, profitable CTAs, and high earning posts.

From there, build out the rest of your homepage with your most important CTAs in mind. For instance, right under the menu, I have an on-brand solo travel photo of me—which helps me connect with my readers right away—and a CTA to grab my freebie (yes, again).

Step #12: Write your first blog post.

It’s time to put those creative storytelling skills to work and write your first blog post! A few things to keep in mind as you write:

• Each blog post should be optimized for a main keyword that helps search engines understand what the article is about.
  • Keywords are the queries people type into Google and other search engines, so you can also think of them as questions people have (e.g., If someone searches “Yosemite hiking trails” they are asking “What are the best hiking trails in Yosemite?”).
• Make your experience, expertise, and authority clear to build trust with your reader (known as E-E-A-T).
  • You can do this by sharing personal stories, including your own images/videos, and making it clear why you’re the perfect person to be writing the article.
• Organize your blog posts into a logical structure with clear headings and detailed explanations that fully answer the reader’s question.
  • Also consider extra details that will make it easier for them to implement your tips, such as directions, addresses, maps, etc.

How To Promote Your Travel Blog Organically

There are many ways to increase your blog traffic without spending money on advertising, like:

Understand Search Engine Optimization (SEO) To Increase Blog Traffic

In my opinion, the best way to help your blog posts organically get found is by optimizing your content for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Now, SEO starts with having a speedy site that offers a great user experience.

My secret weapon for this is WPRocket, which I discussed above. If you want a fast site I highly recommend this plugin.

Moreover, you’ll want to optimize your blog posts for specific keywords that people search — so that your posts get shown to them!

For this, I use a tool called Keysearch, which allows you to pinpoint a main keyword you can realistically rank for and optimize your content for that keyword.

Additionally, the tool shows you supporting keywords, common questions, and important sub-topics to include in your blog post to help it rank higher in search engine results.

If this sounds confusing, don’t worry, as Keysearch offers tutorials on how to best use their powerful software.

Bonus: Click here and use code “jessieonajourney30” for 30% off!

Here is a quick Keysearch tutorial showing how I use the tool to find niche keywords I can actually rank for:

Additionally, here are few other important SEO tips:

Optimize your blog posts for long-tail keywords. These are keywords that are longer — three or more words — and more specific, which makes them easier to rank for.

For example, it’ll be easier to rank for “Best family-friendly hotels in New York City” than “NYC hotels”.

Consistently write about the same topics. This not only makes it clear to your audience what you’re an authority on, but also Google — meaning it’ll be easier to rank for them.

Interlink your content. Building backlinks — both from other sites (external backlinks) and from your other posts (internal backlinks) — is great for SEO.

In fact, building backlinks for a post can help it rank more easily. While it takes work to build backlinks from other sites, you can control your internal backlinks.

Pro tip:

When creating your content plan, plan posts that easily link together! For instance, a blog post sharing a Midwest road trip itinerary can easily link to destination guides for each place visited, hotel and tour reviews, and road trip tips.

Update your old blog posts. Having a relevant, factual, and up-to-date website is an important part of any SEO strategy.

Build Blog Traffic Using Social Media

I know Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms can be frustrating, but it is possible to enjoy social media if you approach it the right way.

First of all, don’t try to be everywhere. Instead, focus on one platform at a time and create a repeatable strategy that works before moving on to another. For instance, if you create a TikTok strategy or a Pinterest plan that you can come back to every week, it’ll be an easier and more enjoyable experience.

Additionally, when choosing which platforms to be active on, consider your goals.

For instance, if you want to grow your blog traffic, a platform like Pinterest where people are actually searching for answers to their questions and then clicking away from the platform would be a great option.

Get New Readers Through Collaboration

Whether you’re a new blogger or you’ve been blogging for a while, you can work with other creators — and even affiliates and brands — to cross-promote each other’s content or products.

This allows you to gain visibility, get new blog followers, and increase your traffic.

Pro tip:

Put together a small group of bloggers in your niche that can cross-promote each other’s content. You can have everyone join a private Facebook group where you all post new content on the wall to be shared by others.

For more ideas, check out my guide on how to grow your blog through collaboration.

Promote Your Blog At Events To Gain Visibility

Don’t forget about opportunities to promote your blog during virtual or in-person events!

For instance, if you’re speaking or hosting a presentation, create a slide that showcases a relevant opt-in freebie and a link to grab it.

This allows you to grow your email list while empowering your community. You’ll then be able to let those on your email list know when new content publishes.

By the way, this guide can help you understand how to create opt-in freebies for your blog if this concept is new to you.

Speaking of which…

Share New Content With Your Email List

Wondering what to send to your email list?

Here’s one idea:

Make sure you let your email list know when new content publishes.

Remember, these people are your most dedicated community members; your VIPs. They gave you their digital phone number — which takes a lot more than simply hitting “like” or “follow” on social media.

Pro tip:

When letting your email subscribers know that a new post publishes, don’t just share the title and link and call it a day.

Instead, utilize storytelling email marketing by teasing the content and sharing stories! Here are some prompts for your emails:

• Why did you write the post?
• How will reading the post benefit your community?
• Did what you share in the post have a before-and-after effect on you? What was it?

Weaving in personal stories and making the benefits of reading your blog post clear can really help increase clicks to your content!

How To Make Money Blogging

Let’s start off this section by answering the question:

How do beginner bloggers make money?

When you’re first starting out, it’s smart to focus on branding your blog, creating valuable content, getting blog followers, and overall growing your blog.

It’s also smart to map out your blogging goals and set deadlines to meet them—such as taking your blog full-time within a year or optimizing your site so that you can sell your blog for profit.

Make Money Travel Blogging With Affiliate Marketing

This all being said, one smart way to monetize your blog and get on your way to becoming a professional travel blogger is creating a smart affiliate strategy.

Choose travel blog topics that promote your favorite affiliate partners and encourage readers to purchase through your affiliate link.

A few tips for succeeding with affiliate marketing and monetizing your travel blog include:

Focus on affiliate products you already use and love.

This first step to seeing success with affiliate marketing for travel bloggers is to consider the products you already stand by. This is because the easiest products to promote will be the ones you already have experience with.

Take inventory of what products you currently use that you’d feel good about promoting—and that would benefit your audience.

This will be a great place to start when deciding what affiliate programs to join.

Join affiliate programs that have high payouts.

While Amazon is convenient because it has so many different products listed, the payout amount is very low.

I recommend instead focusing on programs that have a high payout so that it is worth your time to create content around them.

Pro tip:

The best commissions are recurring—meaning you continue to earn an affiliate commission for as long as your referral is a paying customer of the product.

A few brands offering recurring affiliate commission include ZenMate VPN, Backblaze, and Stencil.

Share affiliate links in content that attracts buyers.

Simply sprinkling affiliate links into your content willy-nilly is not a strategy.

Instead, combine SEO with affiliate marketing and optimize your content for “buyer-intent keywords”—as in, words and phrases that people search when they have their credit card in hand ready to purchase.

For instance, you know someone searching for the “best affordable hiking backpacks under $100” is looking to buy a backpack. The word “best” is a very common buyer-intent keyword to add to a search phrase to attract buyers.

Install Skimlinks. Additionally, you can use a tool like Skimlinks to automatically turn your regular links into affiliate links. This can be helpful if you want to start making money right away without implementing a complicated strategy.

By the way, installing Skimlinks is one of my favorite quick win strategies to grow your blog fast.

Want more? Check out this video:

Bonus Ideas For Monetizing Your Travel Blog

A few other ideas for how to be a travel blogger and make money include:

• Going on paid press trips
• Creating an online course using Teachable (tip: here is how to validate an online course idea before creating it)
• Writing and monetizing a blog series
• Selling digital products
• Selling physical products, like published books
• Selling services and experiences, like day tours in your home city, multi-day tours abroad, or retreats
• Opening an online shop using Sellfy
• Making money with webinars
• Becoming an affiliate for Ultimate Bundles and including one of your digital products in an upcoming bundle
• Monetizing your email list
• Pitching a paid brand collaboration
• Creating a profitable automated email sequence
• Creating a free challenge that grows your email list and income
• Sending different types of emails focused on sales
• Running display ads with Mediavine
• Coming up with travel post ideas that promote affiliate partners offering recurring revenue
• Getting featured in the media as a freelance writer
• And more!

Bonus:

Here are 13 ways to increase your travel blogging income.

Additionally, this video shares 14 profitable product ideas for bloggers. I highly recommend launching a product at some point in your blogging career, as doing this can really help you have more control over your earnings:

The #1 Way To Increase Your Travel Blogger Salary

If you want to earn a full-time blogger salary, here is an important note:

One of the main things that keeps travel bloggers from being profitable is not implementing revenue streams.

Please do not make the mistake of thinking that simply creating more content will lead to income. Yes, your content can be profitable — as long as you have an actual profit plan.

My suggestion:

No matter what revenue streams you choose, implement one at a time and really work to set it up for success.

It may seem daunting to, say, create an online course, launch a travel itinerary service, or make an affiliate marketing content plan; however, if you break up your revenue stream implementation into steps or milestones it will be a lot less daunting.

Give yourself time and space to test and tweak.

Check in to see what is working — and what isn’t — with your strategy so you can truly increase your travel blogger salary and experience how to earn money from a travel blog.

What tips would you add to this guide on how to start a travel blog and make money?