How To Start A Travel Blog And Make
Money
By Shalu Sharma
Copyright:
Copyright 2013 Shalu Sharma. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.shalusharma.com
No portion of this book may be modified,
reproduced or distributed mechanically, electronically, or
by any other means including photocopying without the
written permission of the author.
Disclaimer:
Whilst every care is taken to ensure that the
information in this book is as up-to-date and accurate as
possible, no responsibility can be taken by the author for
any errors or omissions contained herein.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction to travel blogging and
how to start it
Chapter 2: Why everyone should have a travel
blog
Chapter 3: Things needed to start a travel blog
Chapter 4: Registering a domain name
Chapter 5: Setting up custom domain with
Blogger
Chapter 6: How to set up hosting
Chapter 7: How to set up WordPress using cpanel
Chapter 8: Changing WordPress theme
Chapter 9: Installing WordPress plugins
Chapter 10: Creating travel content
Chapter 11: How to create posts
Chapter 12: Search Engine Optimisation for your
travel site
Chapter 13: Off page SEO
Chapter 14: Track your website traffic
Chapter 15: Things to do after publishing your
post
Chapter 16: How to promote your travel blog
using social media
Chapter 17: Commenting for traffic
Chapter 18: Travel sites to join
Chapter 19: How to make money from your
travel blog
Chapter 20: Hot tips
Message from the author
Chapter 1: Introduction to travel
blogging and how to start it
Travel Blogging is something which is gaining real
traction on the internet at the moment. However, many
people don’t really realize exactly what it entails though.
In this book, I will show you what travel blogging is all
about and more importantly, the skills that you need to
succeed with your travel blog and make money from it.
So what is travel blogging? Well, as you can
probably guess, it is writing about travel. Generally
speaking, the majority of people who get into travel
blogging have a specific goal in mind. Basically they
could be writing about a specific location or a type of
travel (perhaps a trip around the pubs of the world!).
Basically at the heart of it, you are going to be a like a
journalist who will be publishing. However, there is so
much to travel blogging than publishing about your travels.
Of course, at the heart of travel blogging is your
content creation. This isn’t just about the written word; it
will be about taking photographs, videos, making
recordings etc. in order to get people to visit your
website. In short, you need to be the �jack of all trades’.
This is completely different to newspaper journalism
where you may only be doing the writing. As the owner of
a travel blog, you have to be responsible for editing your
content, and even come up with the titles. In short, you
will be putting A LOT of effort into the blog. Don’t worry,
this book will go through all the steps needed to create
your travel blog, how to promote it and use your blog to
make money.
But just creating the blog is not where it all ends. In
order to have a successful travel blog, you need to put the
effort into marketing. This means forging connections with
people that you want to advertise on your website and
those who will be willing to promote your website;
bringing in people who want to work with you to help
come up with content, allowing you to stay at their hotel
for free, or offering free tours for example. You will also
need to work out how you can draw customers and readers
to your site for example by carrying out Search Engine
Optimisation and using social media. There is a lot to do,
and I have not seen a successful travel blog which doesn’t
have a good marketer behind it. I will teach you all the
tricks of the trade - from setting up your site, to do your
own marketing and making money.
Your blog is so much more than sitting around on a
beach getting a tan and writing about your experiences.
There is a LOT of work to put in. This isn’t the life for
everybody, but if you can make it work, it will be a good
life and you can make money from it.
Starting a travel blog sounds wonderful doesn’t it?
But how would you start a travel blog? Who wouldn’t
want to write about their experiences whilst lazing out on
a beach in some of the most beautiful locations in the
world? I know I would. Of course, before you head out on
all of those big adventures you need to start a travel blog
first!
Before we dive into travel blogging, I want to make
one thing clear. Only the smallest minority of people
actually end up making enough money from their travel
blog. Of course, there is no reason as to why you shouldn’t
be in this small majority. Be aware though that there will
be times when you don’t make any money at all, and you
will need to put in some extra effort to make your travel
blog work. Believe me; you will pretty much need to put a
large part of your spare time to your travel blog right at the
start. So without further ado, let’s take a little look at how
you can make a travel blog work.
Firstly, you are going to need to decide on the niche
that you will be operating in when it comes to travel. Yes,
there are a number of successful blogs out there which
seem to cover everything related to travel. However, don’t
expect to hit these glistening heights just yet. Your aim is
to write about a specific subject, this is what will be
drawing the visitors in. For example, you could dedicate
yourself to writing about a specific city, or perhaps for a
specific market e.g. backpackers in Europe. There are a
lot of options out there, just aim for something that you
think you know well enough to write about it.
Once you have your subject matter in mind, it is time
to register your domain name and hosting. Yes, there are
plenty of options out there for running your blog for free
(Blogger or Blogspot and WordPress.com being the top
ones here). However, you do need to be aware that the
monetization options on these types of sites are very slim.
In addition to that, you don’t really own the website. They
can take it away at any time. It is probably going to be far
better in the long run for you if you opt to register your
own domain name and sign up to your own hosting. This
shouldn’t cost you more than $100-150 a year for a basic
package. Once you have your hosting in place, you can
install some blogging software. I suggest WordPress as it
is extremely popular and easy to customize once you know
what you are doing.
Once that is installed, it is time to pump out your
travel related content. You will need to make sure your
content reaches these standards:
В·
It is well-written. If English is your second
language, try to get it checked over by somebody before
posting it online.
В·
The content is unique. After all, you want
your website to be the only place where that specific
piece of content can be found.
В·
It needs to be interesting. After all, you
want people to read the content and keep coming back for
more - right?
В·
You need to update the blog regularly. This
means setting a schedule and sticking to it. You want your
regular visitors to know when to expect new content. I
suggest, trying to get something new up on your travel blog
and least twice a week.
The next step of your travel blog is trying to get
visitors to your website which I will go into depth here.
You will need to look into concepts such as Search Engine
Optimisation (SEO) and use social media to drive traffic
to your site. You can always outsource these, but honestly
you would probably be better off doing it yourself. It isn’t
as difficult as some people try to make out. I have
mentioned the essentials and the core elements of SEO
along with everything else that you need to do for your
blog.
Finally, you need to look into ways to bring some
money from your site. There are plenty of ways in which
you can do this. You could sell advertising space to
people who operate in your niche, look into options such
as Google AdSense or even write your own books. There
are plenty of different methods which you can use. You
just need to come up with the right ones for your needs and
your readers. I have gone through some of the best ways to
make money from your blog.
I admit starting a travel blog is not as easy as it
seems and travel blogging or any blogging as a matter of
fact can be quite a complex and multidisciplinary thing.
You will need a number of different skills to make it
work. Thankfully for you, all of the information that you
need is here in this book. You will need to put in some
effort and I am sure if I can do it - anyone can. You will be
surprised how easy it is to make a travel blog work if you
know what you are doing.
I hope you will be able to get your travel blog up
and running by following the instructions in this book.
Hopefully, I will give you a nice little push in the right
direction and show to you that it isn’t as difficult as some
people make it.
Chapter 2: Why everyone should have a
travel blog
Why do some people think that only those travelling
to foreign countries should have a travel blog? My belief
is that - this is completely wrong! Let me explain why.
Most of us travel everyday! If you step outside your house
and go to another place, you are travelling aren’t you.
Okay, let’s take this. You go out of your house and get in a
car, taxi, bicycle, bus or any other mode of transport and
you travel to your destination which could be your school,
collage, work place, office, bank etc. What does this
mean? It means you are TRAVELLING! You haven’t
travelled to a foreign destination but nonetheless you have
travelled. Even though you have just travelled a short
distance in the same town or city or even in the same
country but nevertheless you have travelled.
Now what is exactly stopping you from taking
pictures, making note of things you find on your way? In
fact, you are missing out on a great opportunity to
showcase your town or city you are living in. Most
countries are travelable. Unless you are living in
Afghanistan then I am afraid there are not many people
who want to go on holiday to Afghanistan. But if you
happen to be living in any other city of the world besides
the obvious conflict zones then you should be running a
travel blog.
Let’s say, you live in London or Delhi for that matter
or any other place in the world, there is an opportunity for
you to start a travel blog. Now London is a great city and
has lots of things to do, places to visit, has excellent
restaurants and so on. Same thing with Delhi! Now you
don’t really have to be travelling and holidaying in other
parts of the world to run a travel blog on London or Delhi
- you just have to be living there. Whenever you take a trip
to anywhere within your town, just take your camera with
you! Most places will have lots of things that can be
photographed. A great thing about travel blog is that,
pictures means a lot. In other types of blogs; words and
descriptions are important but in travel blogs, photos don’t
just talk they “shout”. Let’s say, you have 5 photos on
Buckingham Palace in various angles, you can have a great
blog post on Buckingham palace. You could write a short
description of each of the photos along with a short note
on when to visit and things to do around the palace etc and
there you have it – a blog post that most people will want
to read and see the pictures.
What I want to say here is that, it’s a lot easier to
maintain a travel blog than a blog about health for
instance. A health blog will require lot of facts and figures
and anything written on the blog will have to be properly
researched. While in the other hand, travel blogs is about
places, food, things to see, things to do, places to visit,
what the roads are like, what the people are like and so on
– it’s about fun. You can specialise in one place and that
is the place you are currently living in.
Obviously if you are travelling to a lot of places
then it’s even better. This means that you will be
showcasing your travels to the world. This also means that
you have lots of material to post and you will be able to
cover a lot of topics in your blog.
Even if you are not travelling abroad, you still
should own a travel blog. Now most people usually go out
to eat, go somewhere nice over the weekends with their
families and friends, go shopping, play in the park, and go
to the museum or somewhere else. Aren’t these “leisure”
activities that you could write about? You could be
writing exactly what you have been doing, places you have
been going, food you have been eating and things you have
been doing. Showcase your “local area” to the world on a
travel blog.
I hope by now you have understood what I am
getting at. I hope I have convinced you to start a travel
blog even though you are not travelling like a professional
traveller. If your city has something to show for - go for it.
If you live in a place that is popular amongst the tourists
then even better and finally if you are a traveller and love
to travel and you should DEFINITELY start a travel blog
and you could be earning some decent money from the
internet and even funding some of your travels.
However, there are a couple of things that is worth
noting. No matter which niche one wants to blog about,
it’s very saturated. There are tons of people blogging in
every niche imaginable and travel is one of the hard ones.
But in the same breath, I would also like to tell you that its
one of the most enjoyable and one of the most profitable of
all niches. And the good thing is - there is room for more.
People love to travel and love seeing photos of places,
people and food. In addition to all this, people are hungry
for information. There is no such thing as too much
information in any niche. In fact, a travel blog is something
that you will never run ideas of. Let’s say, you want to
publish a blog post and you can’t think of something to
publish then you could always publish some photos. For
instance, a friend of mine visited the Golden Temple in the
city of Amritsar (India) and I asked her if she could share
some photos with me. She sent me tons of photos of the
Golden Temple at various angles which I published on my
blog and it went down well with my readers. You can see
that these pictures speak for themselves
(http://www.shalusharma.com/pictures-of-golden-temple).
For these types of posts, all you need is some photos and
you have a great blog post for people to enjoy.
Finally, for those who are travelling and wish to
start a travel blog, there is no other time then to start your
travel blog NOW. No matter how boring a traveller is,
their blog is always worth visiting. What I am saying is
that there is no such thing as a boring travel blog. People
want to see photos and learn about other people’s
experiences. So you should also be a running a travel
blog.
So whatever the case may be, I hope I will be able
to take you on your journey to start a travel blog from start
to finish. However, travel blogging like blogging in any
industry - it’s not easy. Success will not come overnight
and it could take months (depending - if not years) but I do
know that you should start making money in a few months
of starting it. It may not be a lot but even if you start
making a bit of money from it, it’s an incentive to grow
your blog into something substantial and sustainable for
the long run. But there are certain things you need take
care of which I will explain in the book.
So get going and stop wasting time and read the rest
of the chapters to start your own travel blog.
Chapter 3: Things needed to start a
travel blog
If you want to start a travel blog you will need a bit
of money but not a lot. Something that most people will be
able to afford any way! You can always start for free but
there are certain things that “free” blog fails to address
when using a professional content management system and
hosting services. Don’t worry; everything will be clear as
you read further.
The things you will need for your travel blog
Domain name
You will need to register a domain name with a
registrar, a company that allows you to register domain
names. Domain name is what people will type in the
address bar of a browser.
The first-level set of domain names are the top-level
domains (TLDs), including the generic top-level domains
(gTLDs), such as the popular domains such as com, info,
net and org. then there are the country code top-level
domains (ccTLDs such as co.uk, in, fr and so on.
The best ones to go for is DOT COM ones as it is
globally recognised. I don’t bother with others TLDs such
as NET, INFO or ORG but they are still very good. I
prefer not to choose country specific domains because my
feeling is that it’s very restrictive and you want the whole
world to read your travel blog and not just the people
living in one country. It beats the idea of a travel blog in
the first place.
You can always start your blog without registering a
domain name by choosing a free blogging system such as
Blogger but my opinion is that it will never take off. Just
invest a few dollars and get yourself a domain name. They
don’t cost too much anyway. For about 10 US dollars a
year, you can own your domain name for people to
remember easily.
You will have to choose good blogging domain
name, something that people can remember. I blog on my
own name ShaluSharma.com and I think there is nothing
wrong with that. There are many popular bloggers not just
in the travel industry who do that. You can always include
the word “travel” or “trip” in your domain name.
Whatever the case may be; choose a short, no-hyphened
domain name.
Blogging platform
You will need a blogging platform in the form of
content management system such as WordPress or
Blogger. There are numerous blogging platforms but the
two most popular of them is none other than WordPress
and Blogger (owned by Google). The great thing about
blogger is that, you can use a custom domain name and get
rid of the ugly blogspot.com extension which comes with
every Blogger blog you create. Another great thing about
Blogger is that, they are able to handle large amounts of
traffic coming to your blog so you do not need to worry
about using a lot of resources and getting web hosting.
However, if you want to use WordPress on custom domain
then you will need to get hosting.
Web hosting services to hosting your travel blog
This is where the website will be hosted and
available to the World Wide Web. Web hosting
companies have servers and you will hire some space on
their servers to host your website for people to see.
Hosting comes in different formats from PHP, Java, Ruby
on Rails, ColdFusion, or ASP.NET but to be honest
understanding these are not important. Most hosting
companies provide details on how to host, set up and even
help you if you can’t do it yourself (at a charge of course).
What is most important when choosing a hosting company
is that they are reliable, have good uptime meaning that
their servers allows your website to be publicly
accessible and reachable through the internet. Basically if
they have 99.99% uptime then their downtime is only 1
minute per week.
I used to use shared Hostgator but then I got a
message from them saying that I was using a lot of
resources. It meant two things, my site was getting a lot of
visitors and/or I was using too many plugins. In my case, it
was both. I now use dedicated hosting owned by a popular
blogger friend.
I suggest you start with Hostgator and if your site
becomes big then you will have to go for the next step and
get dedicated hosting.
Social media presence
You will need social media account such as
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google account (Google+
and YouTube), Pinterest etc. Social media has grown big
in recent years. More and more people are spending their
time on the various social media platforms and you will
need to tap into that to get your travel blog noticed.
Basically if you are not on social media, you just don’t
exit.
Time
Travelling is one thing and taking time and churning
out blog posts is something different. You will need to
allocate time for creating/writing posts and maintaining
your blog. It can be time consuming but once you have
everything set up, it won’t take much of your time. But you
do have to be constantly thinking of things to post
otherwise traffic will dry up.
Camera for photos
You definitely need a camera. I have a Canon
PowerShot A810 at 16.0 megapixels and it does a good
job of taking good photos and videos. But then I am not a
photographer. But if you are taking excellent photos of the
places you will be visiting and publishing it on your blog
then this will highly increase your ratings as a travel
blogger. But to the average travel blogger, the best camera
is the one you already have.
Content
You need content constantly to “drip” feed your
blog. The content could come in the form of blog posts
(lots of words describing the place), photos, videos and
infographics. The content you post on your blog will
define your success as a travel blogger which in turn will
make you money. Without the content, there will be no
travel blog.
Laptop and internet connectivity
No matter where you are in the world, you need to
keep your blog and your readers updated. So you will
need a decent laptop and internet connectivity to publish
your blog posts. So this means that you will need to carry
your laptop around with you and stay connected. Most
hotels around the world are now providing wifi and
wireless connectivity. If not there will be internet cafes
which you can use to publish at least for blog posts that
carry videos and photos.
You will learn the individual steps from registering
a domain name to setting up your travel blog and creating
contents to promoting them in the next chapters.
Chapter 4: Registering a domain name
Registering a domain name is easy. For a price of a
cup of coffee and a donut, you can buy a domain name
(which you will of course have to renew every year).
When registering a domain name, you can use your
own name like I do or create something that relates to your
travel. Let’s say your name is Andrew - you could register
a domain name such as AndrewTravelstories.com or
something similar. The best strategy is to use a domain
name that you can brand it and others can easily
remember. Some of the best travel blog brands are
legalnomads.com, wanderingearl.com, Wayn.com and
aluxurytravelblog.com. Basically, you will have to think
of something that you can make it popular, create a brand
around your blog, and something that will allow people to
get an idea of what the blog is about.
I have always registered my domain names from
Namecheap or Godaddy but my first preference has been
Namecheap. I will go through step by step of registering a
domain name through Namecheap.com, well known
domain name registrar and my preferred choice.
Head over the Namecheap.com and create an
account with them. Once you have done that, go to their
homepage and type in your desired keywords to check if
the domain name is available or not. You will see a large
box and this is where you enter the name you want for your
travel blog and press the search button. It will tell you if
your desired domain name is available or not in the dot
com along with other TLDs. If dot com is not available,
then you will have to come up with another name or if you
want, the domain name in the dot net, or org or info, you
can always opt for those. I suggest you try another name
and get a dot com.
Make sure that you have a name that is
“rememberable”, try not to have any hyphens or numbers;
you could include the word �travel’ or �trip’ and keep it
short and simple.
If you find your desired domain name, click on the
box on the left hand side and press �add to cart’. This will
take you to the shopping cart.
In the next step you will need to enter the Registrant,
Administrative Contact, Technical and Billing contact
details.
Fill all of them and move to the checkout by saving
and continue. Next, they will ask if you want your domain
to auto-renew or not. You can choose either way, it’s up to
you. I don’t auto-renew as I like to be in control and any
way they send me email well in advance for me to renew.
They will ask you if want to enable �Whois Guard’.
Basically if anyone wanted, they can find who owns the
domain name. If you don’t want others to know about your
address then don’t enable it. I personally have no
preference. But they give you a free �whois’ guard for one
year anyway. This is entirely up to you if want it or not.
You can then either pay by PayPal or credit card.
My preferred method has always been PayPal.
Once the payment goes through you will see that you have
a domain name under MY ACCOUNT.
You now have a domain name!
You can also use Godaddy. I am a customer of both
of the two registrars but to be honest I prefer Namecheap
as it’s a little simpler and it does not give me a lot of
options at the checkouts.
Once I made a mistake with when buying a domain
name with Namecheap and I contacted them over their chat
support and they cancelled the registration straightway and
that won me over. A registrar that has 24 hour telephone,
email and chat access will always be popular amongst
domain buyers.
With Godaddy, the registration process seems
confusing as they start giving you a lot of extras to buy. I
know what to buy and don’t want things thrown at me. In
addition to all this, I prefer the Namecheap interface a lot
better. Setting up Domain Name System or DNS in short
(you will learn in the later chapters) seems much easier
with them. But it’s all down to personal taste.
The next steps for you include getting hosting and a
blogging platform.
Chapter 5: Setting up custom domain
with Blogger
This chapter is for those who do not want hosting.
Using Blogger is a good idea since you do not have to
worry about web hosting (from places such as Godaddy or
Hostgator) and all you will need is a domain name.
Great thing about Blogger is that, it allows you to set
up your blog using your own domain name and hence
getting rid of the ugly extension such as
yourtravelblog.blogspot.com. However to get this to
work, you will need to map your domain name to work
with Blogger by editing the CNAME record for the
domain name. Unfortunately it can be quiet intimidating at
first and in addition, all domain registrars will have
different interfaces. If you have used Namecheap then it’s
fairly easy to set up. But whatever domain registrar you
have used, you still can map your domain to work with
blogger. Here’s how to map your domain name if you have
bought the domain from Godaddy. Here’s how to create a
CNAME record for your custom domain you might have
bought from other registrars.
Here’s a step by step guide if you have bought from
Namecheap (my recommended choice from the previous
chapter).
First, log in Blogger using your Google account and
create a new blog which you will later map to your
registered domain name. When creating the blog on
Blogger, give it a name that is same to your registered
domain name or at least something that is similar.
Here’s one I that I created visitbihar.blogspot.com
which I will use a custom domain youbihar.in, a blog
related to a place called Bihar in India.
В·
Once you have created your blog on
Blogger, you will need to go to your domain name
registrar to change the Domain Name System
(DNS)/CNAME setting to point to your domain name to
get rid of the blogspot.com at the end.
В·
Once you have created your blog, go and
have a look, even write a welcome page to get started.
Create an about �me page’ and put some photos of
yourself? Give the blog some �basic content’ to start off
with.
В·
Once that is done go to go to Blog >>
Settings and then click on �+ Add a custom domain’ Point
your own registered domain to your blog.
В·
Type in your domain name you had
registered earlier in the �Advanced settings’ and click
save. Let’s say your domain name is
AndrewTravelstories.com so type in
www.AndrewTravelstories.com and hit the save button.
At this point you will be given instructions on how to set
your Domain Name System (DNS) settings and the
CNAME.
Don’t worry, it’s not that complicated. All you need
to do it head over to your Namecheap Registrar and
change the settings as mentioned in the instructions given
below.
В·
Login you Namecheap account and go to
�All Records Host’ and change the following settings in
the three columns as seen in the picture below.
Column 1
Host name:@
IP ADDRESS/ URL:
http://www.Andrestravelblog.com
RECORD TYPE: URL Redirect
MX PREF TTL: 1800
Column 2
Host name: www
IP ADDRESS/ URL: ghs.google.com.
RECORD TYPE: CNAME (Alias)
MX PREF TTL: 1800
Column 3: SUB-DOMAIN SETTINGS
Host name: 5xxif6bosfsm
IP ADDRESS/ URL: gvwwbmchj7tstkix.dv.googlehosted.com.
RECORD TYPE: CNAME (Alias)
MX PREF TTL: 1800
В·
Once done, hit the �SAVE CHANGES’ at
the bottom of the page. Now all is done.
Congratulations, your blog is now ready. Your job
is done, it will take a while approximately 24 hours
before DNS is full propagated so don’t worry come back
to your blog later to check if everything is OK.
Chapter 6: How to set up hosting
I currently use Hostgator for hosting my site.
Hostgator says that they are the world’s best shared web
hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated web
hosting services. In fact, in many aspects they are right. I
had to communicate with them in the past via email and
chat and they are quite responsive. Some other good
hosting companies include Bluehost, ipage, Godaddy and
so on. The reason for me choosing Hostgator is that they
have �cpanel’ and they have good tutorials on their
instruction page for using cpanel
http://support.hostgator.com/articles/cpanel/cpanel-videotutorials. Choose the shared hosting with Hostgator.
When you set up hosting with Hostgator, remember
your billing account will be different to your hosting
account. You can find your billing details here gbclient.hostgator.com/login. If you wanted to change your
billing details then you can do so there. The login details
will be your user name which will be what you specified
at signup with Hostgator. Here are the billing details again
https://gbclient.hostgator.com/login.
Once you have bought hosting from them, you will
get an email something like this from them in your inbox.
“If you have already submitted payment, your
account will be setup within 20 minutes. If you have yet
to make payment you may do so by going to
https://secure.hostgator.com/billing and logging in with
primary email address / password specified at time of
signup. Please note that setup for semi dedicated
accounts may take from 2-8 hours setup time”.
All you need to do is “wait” and within a few
minutes you will receive the DNS details for your hosting
up with them. You will get this email with all the details
of your hosting and how to set up direct your domain name
with them.
Welcome to the hostgator family!
Your Domain: yourdomain.com
Your Username: ………………
Your Password: ………………
Your sites IP address:
Your name servers:
DNS1.hostgator.com
DNS2.hostgator.com
---------------------There is a file called hostgator.html in your
public_html folder. This page will give you basic links
on getting started. You're welcome to delete this file or
if you upload an index.html file in public_html, then the
hostgator.html file will not come up by default. Please
read http://www.hostgator.com/gettingstarted.html for
all the information needed to manage your account.
Please Note: Any e-mail sent by your account within 12
hours from now, will not be delivered to the recipient.
After 12 hours time, and any applicable DNS
propagation, mail should arrive as normal.
Sincerely,The Hostgator Team
Read through all that and now what you need to do
is head over to Namecheap (the place you registered your
domain name) and set your DNS up for hosting. Once
logged in Namecheap, go to your account and click where
it says �Number of domains in your account’. Find the
domain name then click on it. It will take you to a page
where you can modify details about the domain name. Find
DOMAIN NAME SERVER SETUP on the left under
�General’.
You will be then taken to a page where you set up
the DNS provided by Hostgator in their email. It will
usually be 2 DNS entries. Copy and paste the DNS details
they sent you in their email and hit save button. It will take
up to 24 hours for the changes to take effect but most often
its less.
You have now set up your DNS though your
registrar and you are now ready to set up WordPress for
your domain via the cpanel. If you are using other hosting,
make sure they have cpanel as it makes it easy to set up
WordPress through the click of a few buttons. The idea
behind using cpanel is that it makes it easy for webmasters
to administer their site easily through a user-friendly
interface.
Now log in cpanel (Hostgator will send you details
on how to login your cpanel) – it is usually something like
this �yourdomainname.com/cpanel’ and set up
WordPress as shown in the next chapter.
Chapter 7: How to set up WordPress
using cpanel
You can now log in the cpanel
(yourdomainname.com/cpanel) of your hosting account
and you will see something like this.
In order to set your WordPress, first go and check if
the domain has been added or not by going to �Addon
Domains’ from the cpanel (see pictures below). If not,
then click on Addon Domain and add your domain name
there. Remember if your domain is already there then there
is no need to do this step. If your domain is not there, then
create an “Addon Domain”.
Then go to �Fantastico De Luxe’ from the cpanel.
Fantastico De Luxe can be used automatically to install
scripts such as WordPress through the click of a button
listed on the left. When you are installing a script, MySQL
databases are also created for storing information for
WordPress to work properly making the whole WordPress
set up process easy and automatic.
When in Fantastico De Luxe, click where it says
WordPress on the left, then �New Installation’ and then
select the domain name from the dropdown menu “Install
on domain” and remember to choose the domain name
(yourdomainname.com) and not subdomain. You will be
asked to enter details such as admin nickname, email
address, password.
Tip: Do not use admin nickname as �admin’, choose
something you like your name or something else and use a
difficult password combining letters and numbers.
WordPress will now be installed. You can now login
youdomainname.com/wp-admin using the admin nickname
and password.
Chapter 8: Changing WordPress theme
When you first install WordPress, you will have the
default WordPress theme. You can change it to something
that is nice and fits in your niche. First things first, use a
premium theme if you are serious about blogging. I use the
�socrates theme’ created by social media expert Joel
Comm and Dan Nickerson. They have excellent support.
Free themes on the other hand have no support.
However, in the beginning, you can always look for
free themes by going to your admin control board and
scrolling to �Appearance’ and clicking on the �Themes’. In
the centre of the page you will see �Install Themes Tab’.
The way to upload a theme is in the following order
>> Dashboard >> Appearance >> Themes >>
Install Themes >> Upload or Search >> Activate theme
You can always search for some decent themes
within the Appearance dashboard by entering a theme
based on specific features. Here are some premium
quality free themes you can use.
http://wpshower.com/themes/sight
http://www.woothemes.com/products/mystile
http://www.woothemes.com/products/skeptical
http://www.woothemes.com/products/snapshot
http://www.moonthemes.com/themes/the-postminimal-and-simple-free-premium-wordpress-theme
http://www.moonthemes.com/themes/gabix-highly-
professional-premium-wordpress-theme
http://wordpress.org/themes/atahualpa
Some of the best premium theme includes:
Elegant Themes
ThemeForest Themes
StudioPress Themes
Theme-Junkie Themes
Thesis Themes
Genesis WordPress Themes
TemplateMonster Themes
Woothemes
Chapter 9: Installing WordPress plugins
You will need to install plugins. They are tools that
help you to extend the functionality of your WordPress
blog. When you will install WordPress, you will find
default plugins and, in addition you will be able to find
plugins from the WordPress repositories. You can find
plugins by typing in keyword of the function along with the
word "WordPress Plugin" you are looking for.
The easiest way to install a plugin is by searching
the WordPress plugin directory. You can then download
the plugin you want as a zip file and then upload it by
going to the dashboard of your WordPress site in this
order
Dashboard >> Plugins >> Install Plugins >> Add
New >> Upload >> Install a plugin in .zip format >>
Activate
Choose your file and then upload and activate. Then
find the uploaded plugin in “settings” and change the
settings as specified in the instructions on the plugin
website.
Another way is to find the plugin by doing a search
where it says “search plugins” under “Plugins” and then
activating it. Let says you want to install the plugin “digg
digg”, so type that in and you will get a list of plugins.
Choose the right one and then install it.
There is another way to install plugins - which is by
using FTP, but it’s much simpler to use the two methods
described.
The most important plugins you should install are;
Digg Digg – Buttons for sharing posts to social
media sites.
Akismet – Already installed by default, it will
protect against comment spam.
Google XML Sitemaps - Creates a sitemap for your
site so that search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing to
index your blog.
W3 Total Cache – This plugin improves the speed
and user experience of your WordPress site.
WordPress Related Posts - Provides extra blog
posts in the same category for readers.
WordPress SEO by Yoast – One of the most widely
used SEO plugin in the world. It will help you in on-page
SEO (read chapter on search engine optimisation) by
giving suggestions and will create an XML sitemaps (You
don’t need Google XML if you install this).
Commentluv – A plugin that will allow someone to
leave a link with a comment. Will increase comment
activity on your blog.
Chapter 10: Creating travel content
When your blog is set up, you will need to start
posting content. Your first post should be about yourself
and about the blog – a kind of introductory post.
In addition to all this, you should create some static
pages. These pages should tell the readers about the blog.
Most common pages are; about me, contact and your
destinations. When the blog becomes established, you can
further create pages such as guest posts, advertise, plan
your trip (if you are offering it) and so on.
Create static pages
Pages are easy to create from your WordPress
dashboard. Go to PAGES – ADD NEW. While in
Blogger, there is a section where is says PAGES, click on
it and start a new page – see picture below (Blogger �left
side of image’ and WordPress �right side image’.)
Your “about me” page should be about you, who you
are, why you travel, where you have travelled and so on.
Here is mine http://www.shalusharma.com/about/. You
can see that I have added a little about myself and some
photos of the places I have travelled. In fact, this page has
been liked very much and have generated a fair bit of
tweets, likes and comments.
A “contact page” is a must. If your theme has a
contact generator use it, if not you can use something
called �contact me forms’ such as contactme.com or
foxyform.com (free). When someone contacts you from
these forms, you will get an email forwarded to you email.
Alternatively if you don’t want to use these forms, you can
just create a page with your email address in it (nothing
too fancy).
Creating blog posts
Once these have been created, you can now start
posting your content. There are some tricks to creating
blogs posts and travel posts are no different. You have to
make sure that you follow certain rules so that they rank
well in the search engines (read the chapter on search
engine optimization). Briefly, make sure you use images,
write at least 700 word posts, use alt tags, descriptions
etc.
The great thing about travel blogs is that it can be
very pictographic. You can include some great photos and
people will love it.
Types of travel blog posts could include
Your travel pictures
Videos (upload on YouTube first)
Itineraries
Advice about a place you visited
Pictures of the week
Travel tips
Food posts are very popular - think about it, we all
love to eat
Hotel and restaurant reviews
Reviews and experiences of travel booking sites
Reviews of airlines
Things to do in a place
Places to visit
Personal experiences
Guest posts
Travel videos from YouTube
About the culture of a place you visited
Travelogues and travel stories of other travellers
Interviews of other travellers
And so on…..
There are no shortages of posts you create, you will
need to be creative and think out of the box. I wrote a blog
post about my personal experiences of ghosts and then
included haunted places to visit in India and so far has
generate huge interest. You can see the post here
http://www.shalusharma.com/types-of-ghosts-andhaunted-places-in-india/.
But remember one thing - in order to survive and
thrive, you must keep the focus on the visitors of your
blog.
Chapter 11: How to create posts
To create a blog post in WordPress, go to create
POSTS, ADD NEW. Enter your blog post name, you can
change the Permalink if you wish but in most cases, I don’t
do anything. If you are using the Yoast SEO Plugin then
enter all the details such as focus keyword, SEO title,
meta description and meta keywords. These parameters
will help you rank in the search engines.
If you have written your blog post in Microsoft
Word, you will need to strip off all sorts of formatting. So
open a �notepad’, copy & paste it there and then copy and
paste it back into the �post’ field. You can then do the
formatting here. If you are including images then make sure
that you include a small description and add “alt tags” to
it. When the post is ready, make sure you preview it,
choose a category and then hit the publish button. If you
have not created �categories” then you can add a category
here by clicking the �+ Add New Category’.
Once published, you should go to the post and check
if everything is all well or not. If not, then go back and edit
it. If everything is perfect, you will need to let the world
know that you have published the post. Read the chapter
on what to do when the post is published.
Creating a blog post on Blogger is much easier. All
you need to do is go to “New Post” and create a post by
adding a title and the body of the blog post. Remember to
add “Labels” which then acts like categories.
Remember it’s all about producing compelling
content so that people want to follow you, tweet your
work, subscribe, comment on your blog and come back for
more.
How often should you post
From my personal experience, I have realised that if
I post twice a week, I can maintain a good readership
without losing interest. On the other hand, if I post once a
week, large amounts of traffic is lost. This means that the
ideal number of posts a week should be twice or more.
Chapter 12: Search Engine Optimisation
for your travel site
What exactly is SEO? SEO is a process whereby the
rankings of a site are increased so that it is more visible in
the search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing. Just by
producing interesting content and publishing great photos
does not mean that visitors are going to come rushing to
your site. You will need to do both “on page”, “off page”
and “off line” promotion of your site.
On page SEO
Here are some of the things you need to do for “on
page SEO” for maximum benefit from the search engines.
Try to write a blog post that is more than 700
words. Basically longer the better! I have realised that
articles longer than 1000 words seems to rank well in the
search engines better. Make sure they are original content
and in your own words.
Include some images in the post and use “ALT
Tags”. This can be done by highlighting the image and
clicking “Edit Image”. You can then enter details about the
image including the alt tags.
Use keywords in your articles. Let’s say if you are
writing an article on “Travel tips to Ireland” then you
want to rank a blog post about for travel tips to Ireland. So
your title and URL permanent link should contain the
keywords “Travel tips to Ireland” e.g.
www.andrewstravelblog.com/travel-tips-to-ireland. Best
URLs should be less than 255 characters. In addition,
make sure that you certain keywords such have travel tips,
travel tips for Ireland, visiting Ireland and so on.
Keyword density: You should use your keywords
several times in your blog post. However you must make
sure that you do no over use it or underuse it. No one
really knows what the ideal keyword density is but using a
concentration of keywords around 1% seems appropriate.
Bold, underline and italics the “keywords” at least
once.
Use keyword words and phrases in the first
sentence and the last sentence.
Use H1, H2 and H3 Tags. In most of the cases,
your title of the blog post is the H1 tag. So you will have
to include H2 and H3 tags. This can be done easily by
selecting the title and clicking the Heading 2 and Heading
3 for H2 and H3 under Paragraph. These seem to be
important for posts to rank well in search engines. For
example, you can write a blog post on “Travel Tips to
Ireland” (H1 tag) and make sure you have some
subheadings with the right keywords in it and chose H2
and H3.
Write a description. This is what is seen in the
search engines and its very important since this is where
people will decided if they want to click on your link or
not. If you are using WordPress SEO by Yoast Plugin then
you can easily do this. Make sure you add “meta tags”, a
focus keyword, SEO title and “meta description”. You can
check by saving the post and you will get an idea if your
post is on page optimised or not (see image below).
Use internal links. Make sure you link to some of
your other articles/posts to relevant keywords.
Link to an external site. There is no harm in
linking to an external site that is of good quality. Let’s say
you are writing an article about Ireland, and then there is
no harm in liking to the official Irish tourism board.
Include a video. If you have a video then you could
upload it to YouTube and then add this to your blog post.
If you don’t have one then you can always look for a
relevant video. This makes your visitors to stay on your
site for longer.
Remember when you are writing your blog post;
make sure that you are writing for your readers and not for
search engines. It is very easy to get carried away with on
page SEO but use it appropriately.
Use these on-page SEO techniques for both
WordPress and Blogger.
Chapter 13: Off page SEO
Off page SEO is things you do for the site that is
away from your webpage. In order to promote your site,
you will need to get some quality back links to your site.
There are several ways you can do this. Three most
important elements of off-page SEO include; link building,
use of social media and social bookmarking.
Link building
Building links (back links) to your site and blog
posts in an important part of SEO. There are several
ways you can quality links to your site. One brilliant way
is to write guest posts on other sites. You will need to
approach similarly related travel blogs and ask them if
you can write guest posts for them. You can look for other
travel sites by going on to Google Blog Search. Guest
posts not only allow you to build quality back links but
also allows you to gain more exposure for your blog and
in turn more readers.
There is a section on building backlinks through
commenting on other blogs in particular those blogs that
have Commentluv plugin enabled. Make sure that when
you comment on a blog; you read the post and make an
intelligent comment.
Links from blog directories: You can submit your
blog to blog directories. Remember, quality of the blog
directory is important and not quantity.
Join forums and add a signature: Another way to
get back links to your site is by using signatures (with
links to your site) from forums. Just make sure that these
are travel forums and not any forum.
Links from article directories: Although article
directories have lost their value in recent years but
nonetheless they are still useful if used sparingly. Some of
the best article directories include ezinearticles.com,
articlesphere.com, isnare.com and goarticles.com.
Other places to get back links and make money
include Squidoo.com, Hubpages.com and Infobarrel.com.
These 3 sites allow you to write articles for them and
include back links and at the same time earn money from
affiliate programmes.
Social Media
There is a section on the use of social media. If you
are not using social media for promoting your site then you
are missing out on a great deal. I suggest you read that
chapter thoroughly and get on the social media bandwagon
to promote your travel site.
Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking too has lost some credibility in
the eyes of major search engines but is still relevant if
used appropriately and sparingly. A lot of traffic can be
generated using bookmarking methods if your blog posts
are compelling.
Some of the most important bookmarking sites
include:
stumbleupon.com
digg.com
reddit.com
scoop.it
delicious.com
friendfeed.com
slashdot.org
diigo.com
chime.in
newsvine.com
Off line promotion
One important aspect of website promotion missed
by many webmasters is “off line” promoting. Start of by
telling your friends, family, and colleagues about your new
website. In fact, they will perhaps be the first ones to visit
your website. Ask them to leave comments on your site.
Use visiting cards. You can get some visiting cards
printed and hand out to people you meet.
If you drive a car then get a car magnet for people
to see when you are driving around.
If you are really serious then you get can give away
key chains, calendars, mugs, T-shirts with your web
address printed on them. But make sure you do this
sparingly and watch your pocket. Last thing you want is to
spend too much money.
Use postcards and flyers. You can always use
postcards and leave them places where people visit in
large numbers such as pubs, barber shops, stick them on
shop windows etc.
Attend travel events and travel meet up groups.
Not only you can make some new friends but also meet
people who enjoy travelling. One place you can do this is
travel.meetup.com.
Organise your own travel talk events. Why not use
a free site such as craigslist, gumtree or something similar
in your country to organise meet-up and talk events to
share ideas and travel tips. You can use this opportunity to
promote your site and at the same time meet fellow
travellers.
Chapter 14: Track your website traffic
In order to figure out where your traffic is coming
from and which keywords is not doing well, you will need
to install a traffic tracking tool. The most popular is the
Google analytics. You can sign up using your Google
account. Here’s how to set up Google analytics. You will
need to install a tracking code for it to work.
I prefer to use StatCounter. All you need to do with
this on your WordPress site is �add your project’ and
follow the instructions. You will need to install their
StatCounter plugin to work. Once you have set up a
project, you will be able to know which keywords are
being used to find your site, which blog post is doing well
and which you will need to work on. StatCounter will tell
you everything from popular pages, incoming traffic,
where traffic is coming from, and keywords used to find
your site etc. Don’t forget to set up a “tracking cookie” to
block counting your own visits from the �settings’.
Another way to look at website statics is directly
from your cpanel. Log into cpanel and click on �Awstats’.
You will be able to monitor all your web statics from here
including search keyphrases, links from others sites, types
of browsers being used to come to your site etc.
You can also install a WordPress plugin called
Jetpack to monitor your site. However in order to see your
stats, you will have to login your WordPress dashboard. In
fact, this plugin has been considered as one of the best 10
statistics plugin for WordPress.
Blogger has its own �statics’ so you will not have to
install anything if you plan to use Blogger. This is one
reason why I like Blogger. In order to look at your website
statics on the Blogger platform, you can login into Blogger
and clicking on �Stats’. Make sure that you check the
“Don't track my pageviews” so that your results don’t get
skewed.
Chapter 15: Things to do after publishing
your post
Once you have your post published, you will need to
let everyone know that you have published a blog post.
Unless you have thousands of subscribers to your blog,
you will need to tell people yourself. Here’s a list of
things you must do to get the word out and distribute your
latest blog post.
First check if everything is OK
Once your post has been published, make sure you
go to your post and check everything is OK. The last thing
you want is others finding out your mistakes. You should
be checking for spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, if
images are aligned properly or not etc. If something is
wrong, don’t worry too much about it – just go and edit
and republish it.
Ping your site
Pinging is a way to tell search engines that your site
has been updated. There are many sites that allow you to
ping your site for instance, just-ping.com,
feedshark.brainbliss.com, pingmyurl.com, pingomatic.com
etc. Just choose one and enter your URL or RSS feed of
the site (not the latest post) and press the ping button.
Post on Facebook
First things first, go to Facebook and write a small
description about the blog post and post the link and the
description on your status. If you have images in your blog
post (make sure you always have one), Facebook will
pick it up. Sometimes, Facebook does not pick up your
images so you will have to debug the URL of the post by
pasting it here
http://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug. Once it is
debugged - then post it along with your description. As
mentioned in the chapter on social media, you will need to
post on as many groups and pages as you can. You can
even write asking others to comment and share it.
Post on LinkedIn
Don’t underestimate the power of LinkedIn, login
and post it there. Your friends and colleagues will know
about and even share it.
Post on Google+
Google+ is making a huge impact when it comes to
social media, so make sure you write a small description
and paste it on Google plus. Make sure you write a good
description.
Post on Twitter
Whatever you do, you have to post on twitter.
Although space is limited to 140 characters on Twitter so
make sure you write a good description about the post and
then post it long with the URL of your latest post. You can
use a URL shortener to make the URL short such as
https://bitly.com or http://goo.gl.
Post on Digg
Although Digg has changed in recent years, you can
still post on Digg. There are no guarantees that it will get
any traffic but it’s still worth posting it there.
Post on Friendfeed
This is another site that allows you to post news,
photos, files, articles to share with you friends. Make sure
that you post it here as well.
Post on Blogengage
Blogengage is another great platform that allows you
to share your articles and get votes. The more votes you
have the better it is. If you participate in their voting
process, others will vote for you too getting your articles
to thousands of people. Brian, who runs this site, is very
good at what he does. You can also subscribe to his paid
programmes where he sends your articles to various
social media and bookmarking sites.
Curate on Scoop.it
Scoop it is a content curation website that allows
you to share articles with others. You can create topics of
interest and share your blog posts here. (Here is mine
http://www.scoop.it/u/shalusharma). You can see that I
have created topics of interest and this is where I curate
my content. If you scoop other people’s work then they
will do yours too. You can find a list of other content
curation sites here
http://www.howtomakemoneyonlineideas.com/2013/09/list
of-content-curation-sites.html.
Post on blokube.com
This site has worked well for me. I always post my
latest blog post on this site. It’s similar to Blogengage
where other bloggers can vote for you. You will get votes
from others if they like your post. Try to be active on this
group and you will make some friends who in turn will
vote for your submissions.
Post on Pinterest
As mentioned in the chapter on social media, you
must post your latest post on Pinterest if you have images.
If you have some amazing pictures then it will get repinned many times - in turn getting you traffic.
Comment on Commentluv enabled blogs
Make sure you comment on at least 20 Commentluv
enabled blogs. Now there are two types of blogs that you
must comment - the travel and other blogging niches.
Travel niches are important for you so that you get
relevant back links to your latest blog post while you must
comment on non-travel blogs so that your fellow bloggers
can comment back on you blog. You will frequently need
to do this in order to build relations with all types of
bloggers in various niches.
Submit to Justretweet and Easyretweet
Justretweet.com will help you get tweets, Facebook
likes and Google pluses. While Easyretweet.com will also
get you more retweets. They are free but also have
excellent paid credit systems that you can buy which will
help you gain more follows on your Twitter account.
Create a mini post on WordPress.com
WordPress.com allows you to create WordPress
blog with the extension yourtravelblog.wordpress.com.
Here’s one of mine
http://shalusharmaindia.wordpress.com/. Write a small
post about 200 words and then post it here and make sure
you link some relevant words back to your post on your
main blog. You will get a backlink. Make sure the small
post that you create is of good quality otherwise your
backlink to your original post will not be counted.
Basically, you are creating a smaller unique version of the
original post.
Create a mini post on Blogger.com
With your Google account, you can create some
Blogger blogs with the extension blogpost.com. Again
similar to what you did with WordPress.com; create a
blog with a similar name to your original blog. Write a
smaller version, different to original post, link your
original post and then publish. This will again give you a
relevant back link to your original post helping you to rank
higher in the search engines.
Create a mini post on Tumblr.com
Again repeat the formula applied with
Wordpress.com and Blogger.com this with Tumblr.com.
However, good thing about Tumblr.com is that you don’t
really need to create a blog post. You can just post a link
and they will create small mini version of your blog post
along with some photos. Take a look at my Tumblr site
http://shalusharma.tumblr.com/.
Submit to bookmarking sites
Now I would like to extend a word of caution when
using bookmarking sites. There are lots of bookmarking
sites but most of them are low quality. You must try to post
your links to relevant travel related bookmarking sites but
unfortunately there are not many. Few of them include;
dishtip.com, travelervoice.com and wegbook.com. Some
non-travel but good bookmarking sites include
delicious.com and diigo.com.
By now, you should have a clear idea what I am
getting at. You are telling the world that you have created
a blog post and they should come and see it. Make sure
you do this in a proper fashion particularly when you are
creating mini-posts. You must write original content to
link to otherwise you will get penalized by the search
engines.
These are the minimum things that you should do get
the word out about your latest blog post. Read the next
chapter “How to promote your travel blog using social
media” on getting more traffic.
Chapter 16: How to promote your travel
blog using social media
If you are not on social media then the reality is that
you don’t really exist on the web. You have to create
accounts to at least some of the major social media sites
and use it every single day. You don’t have to spend a lot
of time using it but nonetheless, the more you are active on
these sites, the better it is for you. Social media is now the
new trend and it is here where people are choosing their
time to spend. Remember the Arab Spring where the
people of Cairo (Egypt) decided to topple Hosni
Mubarak. Twitter and Facebook had a major role in
rallying people to Tahrir Square. The whole thing went
viral. What I am saying is that you too need to look
carefully and decide if you want to take your travel blog to
the next level or not. If you don’t then, don’t worry about
being on the social media at all. But if you want to
connect, engage and get your word out about your site then
you just have to be using these social media sites. If you
want to drive traffic to your site, you just cannot ignore the
importance of social media.
Which sites are most important? Some of the most
powerful social media sites that exist include Twitter,
Pinterest, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube and
Stumbleupon. There are others such as Tumblr, Delicious.
Apsense, Digg, Plurk, Plerb, Empire Avenue and so on.
You will also need to keep an eye on new social media
sites that are coming out and create accounts with them.
You will have to go to each one of these sites and create
user names that match your site and your brand.
Let’s look at each one of them in more detail.
Facebook
Facebook is the most popular social media sites in
the world. In fact, who in the Western world is not on
Facebook. It is estimated that about 1.11 billion people
are using it. What does this mean for you? This means that
you can connect with millions and millions of fellow
travellers around the world.
First of all, you will have to create a page for your
blog on Facebook. In order to get some fans, you will have
to invite people. Get your friends and family on board.
Start sharing your photos and your blog posts and ask
people to comment and share them. The more people you
have on your fan page, the better it is. Don’t underestimate
the power of the fan page. Link the fan page on your site
and ask your visitors to like the page. Your most loyal
visitors are the ones who will join.
Look for other travel fan pages of other travel
bloggers and join them. Make sure that you too share
photos, important news items and other links on their fan
page and get some attention. If you are active on other
pages then their owners will also join your fan page too. If
they don’t then you can always ask them. Most of them
will gladly reciprocate besides they don’t want to lose any
active member of their page.
You might also wish to join lots and lots of pages
and groups that allow you to post your latest blog post.
What I am saying is that you need to drive traffic to your
page as more traffic the better it is for the growth of your
site. So go out and ask to join Facebook groups where you
can post the URL of your latest post. What this does is drive traffic to your site and increases the number of
shares.
Here is a list of Facebook groups and pages you can
join and share. If people like your pos, they will look at
your post and comment and even share them giving you
more shares. Just make sure you don’t spam these sites.
When sharing your blog post make sure that you write a
good description so that people know what they will be
looking at when they visit your site.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Shareyourstoryher
(mine)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/131858403627595
https://www.facebook.com/groups/TweakYourBlog/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/readnsurf/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/storytogo/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/TweakYourBlog/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/BlogPromotion/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/288501427891992
https://www.facebook.com/groups/smashingbloggers/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/SharingPost/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/195290580490030
https://www.facebook.com/groups/share.your.like/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/mitthakkar/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/commentingtribe/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/106283719487431
https://www.facebook.com/groups/bloggingworld/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/EmpoweredTribe/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/spamit/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/BloggingPanorama
https://www.facebook.com/groups/474266215995593
https://www.facebook.com/groups/boostyourproduct/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/45708766174/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/LibertyBloggers/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/148326591939692
https://www.facebook.com/groups/submityourlink/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/148192631914648
https://www.facebook.com/groups/StylifyYourBlog/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/147562331963034
https://www.facebook.com/groups/thebloggersgroup/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/491376720908684
https://www.facebook.com/groups/lanroni/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/504017279646566
These are just a few, you will have to go and find
some more. Most of these groups allow you to share your
blog posts in any niche.
Here are some travel related groups and pages. You
can also create your own groups and pages.
https://www.facebook.com/TourIncredibleIndia
(this one’s mine. Feel free to share your blog posts)
https://www.facebook.com/traveltalesfromindia
https://www.facebook.com/travelwithkat
https://www.facebook.com/acouple.travelers
https://www.facebook.com/TravelSenseIndia
https://www.facebook.com/pages/AdventureTravel-Group/143890345711
https://www.facebook.com/terralutravel
https://www.facebook.com/yTravelBlog
https://www.facebook.com/groups/208005822708495
Remember Facebook now allows you to use
“hastags” like this # so use it wisely. For instance you
could write a status about your travels in Africa then you
could use hastags for your words like #travels, #safari,
#animal, #Africa but use it so that it does not look spamy.
Twitter
Twitter has grown so much that you just have to be
on it. I was able to get a desired name as I registered quite
early however did not use it very much. Only when I
realised that I had an account and I should have been using
it that I too jumped on the bandwagon. Here’s mine
https://twitter.com/bihar
Now I use it every day. Create an account for your
business and start sharing, tweeting, following and
sharing. The trick here is to tweet intelligent stuff. Since
you are limited to sharing messages of up to 140
characters, you need to write well composed tweets. If
you are sharing a link of a website then you can always
shorten it by using a service called bitly.com or even
Google ULR shortener (http://goo.gl). They allow you to
shorten long and ugly links and when someone clicks on
them, it will go straight to the desired website.
You will need to start following fellow travellers
and retweeting their tweets. They will take notice of this
when you retweet. What you want is that they follow you
too and they will certainly follow you back if you are
tweeting good stuff. Over a period of time, you will gain
followers which you need to keep working on it.
Make sure you have great background and profile
photo of yourself. A good photo of you travelling or doing
something crazy is a great idea. Your bio will need to be
well polished, noteworthy so that it inspires people to
follow you.
You should be tweeting on a regular basis and stay
engaged with others and make sure you sure you use the
“At sign” @ to respond to another tweeter. Make sure you
follow similar people in your niche and other fellow
travel bloggers as they are the ones who will help you to
retweet your posts and follow you back.
There are two very good websites that allow you to
get more retweets. They are JustRetweet and Easyretweet.
I use both of these tools quite extensively. These websites
will allow you to retweet other blogger’s content and in
return you get offered credits which you can use to get
retweets. Both of them are free services but their paid
accounts allow you to get featured, get more retweets and
more followers. Recently JustRetweet has integrated
Facebook and Google +1 which means than you can now
get more retweets, Facebook likes and Google +1′s under
one platform.
YouTube
YouTube is the biggest of all the video sharing sites.
When you are travelling, make sure that take plenty of
short videos to upload on YouTube. People love to see
videos of other places. You could personalize them by
being in the video. When you upload it on the site, make
sure you include your website in the description box so
that those seeing it will also have the option to go to your
website for further information. There are a couple of
tricks that you must take into account. Give the video a
good name and make use of tags. For instance if your
travel video is to the Taj Mahal then you could make the
video name as �The Taj Mahal in Agra India’ and use tags
such as Taj Mahal, Taj Mahal India, Taj Mahal Agra, Taj
Mahal Agra India, India, visiting Taj Mahal etc. This will
enable searchers to find your video.
Stumbleupon
Stumbleupon has great potential to make your latest
post go viral. One problem with Stumbleupon is that, users
don’t stay on the page for very long but it has the ability to
get the page to thousands of people. If you went travelling
to Africa and you took some photos of tigers, this has the
ability to make the post go viral. However, you will have
to use it sparingly. This means that you also need to post
other people’s content in the ratio of 80:20 (other peoples
VS your own content).
Pinterest
Pinterest is a very extremely popular photo sharing
site. First things first, you have to join this site as soon as
possible and start sharing your photos. As a traveller, you
are bound to have photos. I suggest you start sharing them
for others to see. In addition to this, you will need to
“share”, a process called “pinning” other people’s photos
and start following them. Once they notice that you are
following and sharing their photos, many would want to
follow you back. Over a period of time, you will have
large numbers of followers. Significant numbers of my
traffic comes from this site. In fact, travel is very popular
on Pinterest and you will have no shortage of photos to
share. Another great thing about Interest is that it’s easy to
share your photos from your post. All you need to do is
copy and paste the URL of the blog post on click on “Add
from website”, it will automatically choose your photos
from the post and all you need to do is pick a photo and
give it a description.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is also picking up as a social site for
promoting your website and your latest post. I have large
number of connections and when I post something
interesting, many would comment and share it again. So
you must not ignore LinkedIn. It’s not just a site for finding
other professionals or job searches; it can be used for
sharing blog posts too. Try to get as many connections as
possible.
Google Plus +
There is no denying that you have to have Google on
your side to make an impact in social media. Google has
jumped into the social media fray and is trying to beat
Facebook. Google+ has stepped in and is playing a huge
role in search engine results. If you are a webmaster, you
must join Google+ and claim something called Google
Authorship. You can read more about it here
https://plus.google.com/authorship. The idea is simple,
you connect your blog to you G+ account and when
someone searches a term and your blog is found, it will
show a photo of you on the side of your content. Tests say
that people are more inclined to look at those sites that
have photos. Just make sure that you have a good head
photo looking in the camera. Here’s mine
https://plus.google.com/106951039499200340945 and
you can see how my content is linked to my photo.
Don’t you think it makes a huge difference? There
seems to be a trust factor when there’s a photo of yourself.
Here are the steps to claim Google authorship.
Sign up for Google+ with your Google account and
enter your photo that has good head shot, try not to have
any side photos etc. The clearer - the better. You will
have to enter a byline. Once you have done that, you will
need to link your website to Google+. You can do this by
going to http://plus.google.com/me/about/edit and looking
for “Contributor to”. This is where you add your blogs.
You also add it to the “Links” section. Wait for a few
hours and check by typing your website into Google.
You can see from the image below that I am
currently a contributor of two websites and both of them
feature my photo alongside my content. Ever since I have
done this, my traffic has doubled. So whatever you do, you
need to claim your Google authorship right now. I suggest
stop reading this and go and do it now and then come back
and read the rest of this book.
In addition, add this code to your page using a text
widget (and replace yourpageID with your own ID).
<a href=”https://plus.google.com/yourpageID”
rel=”publisher”>Find us on Google+</a>
Here is mine
https://plus.google.com/106951039499200340945/posts
so I can replace yourpageID with
106951039499200340945.
Stumbleupon
I am going to be very frank with you. Stumbleupon
has not been a great traffic generator for me. Simply
because I have not been spending a lot of this time on this
website. The trick to do this is follow and use
Stumbleupon frequently. In addition to this, the traffic from
this site is of low quality virtually seconds. This means
that people stumble from one site to another in a matter of
seconds. But anyhow, it’s still a useful site and you must
join it. Make sure that you promote other people’s work as
well in the ratio of 80:20 (other’s VS yours) to work.
If you want to send your posts automatically to
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn then you could automate
this process by using programmes like twitterfeed.com or
hootsuite.com.
Here are some other sites you can join; Scoop.it,
Delicious. Apsense, Digg, Plurk, Plerb, Empire Avenue
and Tumblr.
Chapter 17: Commenting for traffic
One important aspects of SEO is to get links from
relevant sites. Getting links takes a lot of time and
perseverance. Some of the few ways to get links of high
quality is guest-posting on other blogs, doing press
releases, submitting to high quality directories and
requesting links from other blogs.
Commenting on other travel blogs that are similar to
yours is a great way of getting links – fast and easy.
Commenting on other blogs serves for two purposes.
Firstly, to get links and secondly to get commented back
on your own blog. When you comment on a Commentluv
enabled blog, you can have your link embedded in your
comment and you can choose from up to 10 blog entries.
If you want to enable Commentluv plugin on your
own blog you will have to buy from commentluv.com. You
can always use a free version from here
http://wordpress.org/plugins/commentluv/. The premium
version has many features that will allow others to share
your content and get more traffic. I suggest you start with
the free version and if you like it then you could buy the
premium version.
To comment on a blog, you must read the content
and write meaningful comments. If you write good
comments and chances are that the blog admin will
approve your comment and they might return the favour by
commenting on your blog.
Blog comments are important as it shows that your
blog is popular and advertisers like it. You don’t
necessarily have to comment on Commentluv enabled
blogs, you can always comment on popular and high
profile travel blogs as this is where many sponsors are
looking. If you comment on popular travel blogs, then you
might be approached for guest posts, by sponsors and
advertisers.
Some non-commentluv enabled travel blogs are
http://www.theflyingpinto.com
http://gobigorgohomeblog.com
http://www.govisithawaii.com
http://www.wanderingearl.com
http://www.govisithawaii.com
http://www.vagabondish.com
http://gobackpacking.com
http://www.lostgirlsworld.com
http://thevacationgals.com
Popular commentluv enabled travel blogs
http://www.camelsandchocolate.com
http://www.crazysexyfuntraveler.com
http://www.bruisedpassports.com
http://www.heatheronhertravels.com
http://www.30traveler.com
http://www.gawaya.com
http://www.brendansadventures.com
http://migrationology.com
http://www.ytravelblog.com
Remember, you can comment on any Commentluv
enabled blogs both in the travel and non-travel niche. I
make a point to comment on non-travel niches as well as it
helps me build relations with other bloggers who in turn
comment on mine. Comments on a blog are an indicator of
its popularity. Many travel bloggers don’t bother
commenting back but a blogger in the �blogging’ niche
knows the importance of comments hence they don’t want
to lose you as a commentator. So it’s likely that they will
too comment back. Now you have a relationship with
another blogger where both of you exchange comments on
each other’s blogs.
Here are some Commentluv enabled non-travel
niches that I comment on a regular basis. To find more,
just do a search on Google “Commentluv enabled blogs’,
there are plenty of blogs to choose from.
http://www.aha-now.com
http://hitenvyas.com
http://www.mygirlyparts.com
http://www.bloggingcage.com
http://www.speakingoflove.net
You can do a search here for more Commentluv
enabled blogs. http://www.commentluv.com/buycommentluv-premium/commentluv-global-search-engine/
Things to remember when commenting for traffic:
Read the blog post first
Leave meaningful comments and not just a few lines
Comment on both travel and non-travel sites with of
high quality (you can check its high quality by its page
rank, I usually go for page rank of more than 3)
Final thoughts
Remember, Google keeps changing its algorithm all
the time and who knows in the future, commenting for
traffic maybe seen as something bad in the eyes of Google.
But as of now, it’s a very popular way to get backlinks for
your site. In fact, very high ranking and popular blogs are
using this system. Remember not everyone will comment
back on your blog. Don’t worry too much about it. Even if
they don’t, keep reading other blogs and keep commenting
to get back backlinks. However, some high profile
bloggers will comment back if you have compelling
content. For instance, Sharell Cook of �About India’
http://goindia.about.com commented back on my blog and
even tweeted the post. So you see - it’s all about
producing great content so people can’t help themselves
tweeting and commenting on your blog.
Chapter 18: Travel sites to join
Travel blogging has come of age. More and more
people are logging their thoughts about their travels. Who
wants to read out of date travel books. Travel blogs are
now the way to go. They provide up-to-date information
on destinations.
If you have a travel blog then you must promote
yourself and your blog. In addition to promotion and if you
are an expert in a particular destination then you must let
that known to everyone. In order to do this, you should
join travel sites to connect to fellow travellers, get travel
information or advice, to exchange ideas, to give advice
and tips to others, to get help about a destination you want
to travel to. There are plenty of travel sites and forums you
can join. Let’s look at some of them.
Lonelyplanet
Once owned by the BBC, it is the biggest travel
book publishers. They happen to be the biggest publishers
of travel books such as travel guides in both digital and
tradition publication. Their site allows travellers to join
and take part in the discussions. You can ask questions,
give your tips and join in and meet other travellers.
TBEX
TEBX is a gathering of travel bloggers, sponsors,
media people and content creators. They have something
called a “speed dating” session in which travel bloggers
look for sponsor. In the year 2012, there was more than
3000 bloggers seeking sponsors compared to about 200
the previous year.
Frommers
Frommer's produces guidebooks on travel series
and it happens to be one of the most popular travel guides
in the USA. They say that they cover over 3500
destinations worldwide. You can join their site and take
part in the discussion on their forums on various
destinations. You can ask questions and offer tips. It’s
another great way to meet and make online friends.
Tripadvisor
According to their site; they provide holiday
reviews, photos of holiday destinations, hotel reviews,
travel advices for hotels and vacations etc. They are huge
and if you join, you can help your fellow travellers and
offer advice, post photos and reviews - you will soon get
a reputation as a traveller. So join and participate as a
regular contributor and get some exposure and they might
even ask you to become a travel columnist and get paid to
share something that you enjoy.
Travellerspoint.com
Many travellers are showcasing their travel stories,
photos, videos, review accommodation here. It’s a great
place where you can meet other travellers and showcase
your photos. They even allow you to create your own
travel blog which you can use to post photos and videos
again gaining some exposure for yourself as a travel
blogger.
Fodors Community
The Fodors community is traveller’s community that
allows you to take part in discussions and share travel
experiences and other travel related issues with other
travellers.
Travel blog exchange (Travel Blog Exchange)
This is a networking site for travel bloggers. It’s a
great place to meet and connect with other travel bloggers.
In addition to this, you can share your latest blog posts by
joining appropriate groups on the site. Here’s my account
over there
http://www.travelblogexchange.com/profile/ShaluSharma.
Virtualtourist.com
Similar to other sites, VirtualTourist is a community
where travellers along with locals share stories, photos,
ideas and travel tips. You will have to create an account
with them using your Facebook and then you will be able
take part in the discussions. They have a huge membership
of about 1.2 million. They are now part of the
TripAdvisor Media Group.
Some other forums for you to join and take part in
travel discussions:
http://www.silvertravelforum.com/forum
http://www.travelblog.org/Forum
http://www.travelforum.org
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/index.php
http://www.travbuddy.com/forums
Chapter 19: How to make money from
your travel blog
Once you have started getting some traffic, this is the
time you can start monetising you blog. Some people are
of the view that once you start getting around 500-1000
unique visitors a day then its time you started to look at
various ways to make money from your blog.
There are plenty of opportunities to make money
from your travel blog. It’s just about tapping the right
resources to make it work. Here are some possible ways
to make money from your travel blog.
Here’s what a blogger in the travel industry is doing
to make income:
Adsense
I am sure you have heard of Adsense before. The
idea is that you create an account with Google Adsense
and insert HTML codes in strategic places on your blog
and when someone clicks on these ads, you get paid. The
trouble is that it, you need a lot of traffic to make decent
money from it. Most webmasters don’t make a lot of
money from it at all. And in addition to all this, getting an
Adsense account is getting harder. However it does not
mean that you should not use it, you should still include it
by all means. In fact, the links and banners presented to the
readers of your blog will be contextual and it will add
value to the readers.
The trouble with Adsense is that, it does not fetch
you a lot of money. In order to make some decent money
with Adsense, you will need some significant targeted
traffic of more than 5000 unique visits a day. If you don’t
then you might consider not using Adsense at all.
If you are unable to get an account with Adsense,
you might wish to try some alternatives. Basically, many
people are looking for alternatives to Adsense all the time.
These could be for many reasons, for instance they were
banned from it or can’t get an account approved. Why give
up, try some alternatives to Adsense.
http://www.viraladnetwork.net
http://www.affinity.com
http://site.pheedo.com
http://www.revresponse.com
http://www.text-link-ads.com
http://adscendmedia.com
http://www.reachli.com/landing
http://www.qadabra.com
http://www.ranksider.com
http://www.sponsoredreviews.com
http://www.viglink.com
http://mylikes.com
http://cpmtree.com
http://www.crankyads.com
http://www.publicityclerks.com
http://www.infolinks.com
http://www.chitika.com
http://www.tribalfusion.com
http://kontera.com
http://www.clicksor.com
http://skimlinks.com
Writing, including copywriting and researching
There is a great demand for writers. Once you have
established yourself as a travel blogger, you can sell your
writing services for a fee. You can charge anything
between $10 to 25 per article. In fact, there is a huge
demand for quality writers. You will need to create a page
offering your services. Currently, I am also offering
writing services to other travel bloggers and companies
and I charge $10 for a 500 word article. Most of my
clients approach me directly from my website. You can
also offer editing services. You can do a press release on
places such PRlog offering your services.
Photography - Sell you photos
When you are travelling a lot then you will naturally
be taking a lot of photos. You are not going to upload all
of them in your blog. Did you know that you can sell your
photos and earn some cash? You will need to create
accounts with sites that sell photos and you can upload
them and start earning photos. Some places where you can
sell your photos include fotolia, istockphoto, alamy, 123rf
and so on. Just do a good search where you can sell your
photos. In addition to all this, any photos that you upload
on your site should be watermarked and you can write a
short note saying �buy this photo’. There is a great
demand for photos for use in travel commercial projects
and you have them right in your hard drive - so sell them.
Videography services
This is similar to the previous one where you sell
your photos. If you are good at videography then you
always indicate where you are travelling next and have a
page set up where you can say that you are selling videos.
Just let everyone who is watching your video that they can
buy your videos if they wanted to.
Sponsored guest posts - Publishing for payment
This is one of my biggest earners. When someone
approaches you for guest blogging and mind-you, you will
get in hoards. You can charge money for guest blogging.
Serious bloggers and travel businesses interested in
getting backlinks will be the ones interested. Those who
are not serious will not even bother replying back.
Travel companies will too approach you for guest
blogging – charge them money. Another technique is to
allow fellow travel bloggers “free” guest posting meaning
that you don’t charge them money while you can always
charge for commercial links. This means that your fellow
travel bloggers can publish without a fee while you charge
companies for publishing their guest posts.
In addition to this, you can approach companies and
individuals asking them to pay if you published their
articles with links. You will be surprised how many
companies will respond to this and how many will
actually want this. In order to do this, you will have to
look for travel SEO companies and email and tell them
who you are and what you can do for them.
Selling text links on existing posts
This is another one of my best sellers. Travel
companies will usually approach you for “text links” from
existing blog posts for SEO purposes. Some of these
companies are very fond of pages that have page ranks of
at least 3. Once you have page ranks on these posts, they
are potential money makers. Although, Google does not
like link selling but what you need to do is phrase the
words around the linked keywords in such a way that it
blends in and does not look like a “sold” link.
For example, if you have a post called “A Visit to
Johannesburg” and you detail everything about your visit,
stay, food and so on. You can add link a paid text link
saying that you bought your ticket to South Africa well
before you went there. The underlined linked words do not
look spammy and blends in well.
Affiliate sales
There are many travel companies out there that will
allow you to become affiliates and sell their products for
instance you can add affiliate links to companies that sell
tickets, holidays, hotels, hostels etc. Some examples
include wegoaffiliatenetwork.com, travelaffiliatepro.com,
affiliates.bookhostels.com etc. The way to find out is just
by going on to popular travel sites and checking if they
have any affiliate programme or not. You can always join
’commission Junction’ that has a range of travel sites
under their umbrella affiliate system. You will have to
apply for individual companies from the ’commission
Junction’ dashboard.
But to be honest, I haven’t made too many sales from
affiliate programmes. People are now very savvy; they
prefer to shop around till they find the cheapest fair and
hotels to stay. Hence affiliate sales are not really that
worth it. But it’s still worth trying it out. People don’t
come to travel blogs to book hotels and buy tickets, they
come to find information, look at pictures and gain
information. What you need is to sell something that they
are looking for.
Information books sell quite well. Join Amazon
affiliate programme and link to products that people might
buy like cameras, travel books, travel accessories etc.
You can always write product reviews and place your
affiliate links into the blog post. When someone likes the
product, you will get paid if they buy from your site.
Out of all the affiliate programmes I have joined,
Amazon seems to be the best.
Sponsored social media
If you have a large following on social media, you
can sell your services such as tweeting or mentioning the
product or services on your Facebook page or status.
These don’t make a lot of money but everything counts.
More and more companies are looking for individuals like
you and me to tweet and mention their products to friends.
Just search for �get paid for tweeting’ on search engines.
In fact, there’s a website specialised just for paying you to
do so. You will need to create an account and set your
price on sponsoredtweets.
Web design and development
I currently offer website setup services. I have had a
few enquires so far and have sold a few. So once you have
well versed in WordPress or any other system, you too
can offer some of your own services. Even if you sell one
or two of these a month at a rate of $50 dollars, you still
can make some decent side income over a period of time.
Holiday planning services and tours
I am currently offering customised tours to India and
so far it has gone very well. I get about 20 enquiries a
month out of which 5 want to go ahead and about average
of 2 to 3 actually buy the tours. These tours are real money
makers. You will need to show to the world and your
readers that you are expert in your chosen travel niche.
Remember, you cannot do this on your own. You will need
to connect with a travel company that you have used or
know very well. They will organise the tours and you get a
commission out of it.
Since I am a native of India and have travelled to
many countries around the world and publish posts on a
regular basis, I have gained confidence amongst my
readers which then translate to potential tour sales.
Write an ebook
Don’t worry; it does not seem as hard as it sounds.
If I can do it, anyone can. If you have gathered enough
information and have enough photos of a particular place,
then you can create mini guides. Great thing about ebooks
is that it does not have to be big; it can even be a few
thousand words. People don’t want to read pages after
pages. You can compile premium quality information and
pictures and sell it. The best way to do this is via Kindle
Direct Publishing (KDP). It allows you to sell ebooks on
all Amazon stores. There are people who are churning
ebooks every month and making thousands of dollars a
month from the comfort of their home. In our case, we
want to make money by travelling around and sell travel
information. Let’s say you visited Sharm El Sheik. You
could compile an ebook of places to visit, travel tips,
where to eat, how to get best deals and so on. Write the
ebook in Word, format it according to KDP, get a cover
made or make it yourself and upload on KDP. Publish a
blog post about it just like the way I have done it here
(http://www.shalusharma.com/india-travel-survivalguide-for-women-ebook/) and do some press releases.
The great thing about Amazon is that they have their own
search engines and it also promotes the ebook for you. Of
course, if you have a big ebook then you can also consider
publishing its paperback format via createspace (an
Amazon company).
Sponsored content - In exchange for trips, food,
accommodation, products, services or payment
I often get approached by �clothing’ companies if I
would be willing to write a blog post about their online
shop or review their products. I will browse through their
products online and if I like it, I will review their product.
Not only I will get free products, I get paid to write about
it and the readers get to learn about some interesting
products. However, don’t go overboard with this, only do
reviews of products you like. In addition, if you are
visiting a particular place, you can look up hotels/hostels
and other places to stay in the area and ask them if they
want publicity in return of a discount and even free
lodging. Some business owners would be happy to let you
stay for free or at discounted stay in return for blogging
about them. It’s mutually beneficial for both of you.
Similarly, you can do this for restaurants, trips, products,
services etc. There is no harm in phoning around and
asking for discounts and free stuff in return for reviewing
their products.
Selling goods online
Let’s say you found a product and you tried and
tested it. You loved it so much that you can sell it online.
Buy lots of it at cheap rates and then sell them on your
blog by setting up a shop on your blog or even at other
places. However, you will have to be extra careful as you
will have to post items to your buyers. But if you can get
some sales going then you can be earning some decent
money.
Offer services such as house-sitting
This is where you will go to someone’s house and
stay there for a while but at the same time you will have to
look after somebody. There is a mutual agreement between
you and the landlord that you will live there rent free in
exchange for looking after their pets or someone else or
even doing some household jobs. You can always
advertise this on your blog or contact people directly
offering your services. Here are some places where you
can find some home owners; trustedhousesitters.com,
ultimatehousesittingguide.com, housecarers.com and
mindmyhouse.com. However, you will need to be careful
as you don’t want to end up with dodgy people.
So you see there are numerous ways to make money
from your travel blog; not only passive income but also
you can get a range of goods from businesses that are
looking for bloggers like you and me to write blog posts
about.
Remember, it’s not a get rich quick thing, it takes a
lot of time but money can certainly be made from your
travel blog. Don’t rely on just one method - diversify your
income potential. The trouble with most bloggers
including travel bloggers is that they get dismayed about
their income. I can understand that you will need to put in
a lot of effort to make decent money but it’s possible. If
you produce compelling contents and share it as I have
mentioned, you will make money from your blog. There
are many who make 1000’s of dollars from their blog and
some even fund their travels with the money generated
from the income so you can do it as well. Trust me, I
would not be running my travel blog if I was not making
money from it.
Chapter 20: Hot tips
Here are some hot tips for your travel blog for you
to grow your blog.
Blogging tips
- Build relationships with other bloggers.
- If you can use a premium theme for WordPress use it.
- Personalise your �about me’ page. Make sure you
have plenty of photos to make it personal. People tend to
associate with personal photos.
- Be honest, genuine, give a personal touch to your
blogging.
- Find travel sites and request for guest posts. Just
email the webmaster and ask.
- Write great content that people want to share.
- Write compelling headlines.
- Backup your site weekly.
- Always reply to each and every comment and
thank the commentator.
-Submit press releases for any new product or
service your release. Get some eye-balls rolling!
-Capture subscribers by using Feedburner or
Aweber.
-Always have a banner and logo for your website.
Search engine optimisation
- Install webmaster tools or something similar like
stat counter to monitor your traffic.
- Create a sitemap on both blogger and WordPress.
- Pay attention to online SEO – e.g. write
descriptions, meta-tags etc.
- Install the Alexa tool bar, it will help you lower
your alexa ranking (good for your blog – the lower the
better).
- If you are using WordPress install Commentluv
plugin. If you don’t want the premium version, install the
free version.
- Comment on both travel and non-travel
commentluv enabled blogs. Most bloggers in the blogging
niche will visit your blog if you comment on their blogs
hence lowering your alexa ranking.
- Always have at least one image in your blog post
and add an “alt” tag to it.
Social Media
- Start a Twitter and Facebook page/group for your
site.
- Share other people’s blog posts and tag them so
that they know that their post is being shared by you.
- Increase Twitter followers by tweeting, using
hastags for important words (e.g travel), tweeting
frequently, tweeting interesting tweets and sharing good
stuff.
- Increase your circles on Google+.
- Be active on Facebook and post your stuff there.
Money making tips
- Join Amazon affiliate programme – Money is less
compared to other programmes but its reliable.
- Write book or travel product reviews and insert
affiliate links.
- If Adsense does not approve your blog, look for
alternatives.
- Don’t put too much ads, looks cheap.
- Look for advertisers and sponsors. Don’t be afraid
to email.
- Charge money for commercial links but be
cautious – don’t go overboard.
- Phone hotels and lodgings for discounts in turn for
free advertising on your blog.
- Ask for donations for your next trip. You can raise
funds using websites such as firstgiving.com and
gofundme.com.
Message from the author
I hope this book will be useful to you to start your
own travel blog and make money from it. It does seem a
little hard in the beginning but once you get started, you
will find that it’s not that hard at. Once everything is set up
particularly WordPress or Blogger and once you have
published a few posts then you will realise that it’s not
that hard at all.
But remember, you will need to do everything from
publishing great content, photos and videos and sharing on
various social media sites as mentioned. In addition, keep
emailing other travel companies for advertising and many
would respond and buy links and advertising space on
your blog. Don’t just rely on one way to make money, try
different things. Diversification is the key to making
money from your travel blog. Money will come in the form
of cash, gifts, vouchers, clothes, free food at restaurants,
free lodgings, freebies and so on.
If you have any issues or want to ask any questions,
don’t hesitate – just email me on
http://www.shalusharma.com/contact and I will try my
best to help you out.

How to Use WordPress

Social Media for Small Business - ONE

How To Get Clients - Rob Cubbon

Blogging in WordPress

How to Start a Successful Blog in One Hour Steve Scott Copyright

How to Enhance Your Internet Presence - Squarespace

Getting Started with Global2 - Primary Tech

How to Increase Website Traffic - 700 Tools - Gold Coast Business

How To Make Money Blogging - Not found, error 404

Weebly.com First Steps Weebly is the easiest way to build your own