How Do I Set Up a Travel Blog from Scratch?
So, you want to build a travel blog?
Starting a travel blog can be intimidating, especially if you go with the self-hosted pathway, which this blog recommends. This page will help you get started and will form somewhat of a checklist to get you up and running. Actually, in the travel niche especially, most of us just want to write and share our stories. I’ve never learned a single line of code in my life, and I hope I never have to.
Hopefully with the information in this guide, you’ll be able to build a successful travel blog from scratch, with maximum fun and minimum tech speak.
Let’s get started, shall we?
I’ve broken down the process I used to start my blog into 3 stages:
- Getting the blog live
- Building an awesome blog
- Monetization
If you’re just getting started, go through each section one by one until you feel like you can go it alone. If you’re an experienced travel blogger, pick out the bits that interest you, and don’t be afraid to share your opinion/feedback in the comments. Like I said, I still have much to learn, so do share your wisdom where you think there’s something to add.
How to Start a Successful Travel Blog from Scratch
- Getting the Blog LIVE
This stage will involve choosing a domain name, finding a web host, installing WordPress and learning how to create content. You should work through the posts listed below, and by the end of it you should have your very own travel blog ready to share with the world. Good luck!
- Domain Name
When you know what you want to be called, go to www.godaddy.com and register you domain name.
- Hosting
Once you have your domain name, go to Bluehost or any other hosting service provider and sign up for hosting. There are certainly others but these are who I am with I find them great – particularly their customer support. I have had two major issues (of my own doing) and without their support I’d have been screwed.
- Installing WordPress
By far the most popular blogging platform for travel blogs is WordPress. This is free and has great support all over the web, so unless you have a personal vendetta with them there really isn’t any good reason not to use it.
Once in the cpanel, go down to the website section and click on “Install WordPress”.
- Building an Awesome Blog
Now that you have WordPress installed, you can start creating your website!
- Setting a Theme
Every website on WordPress runs on something called a “theme”. A theme determines how your website is laid out and makes it easy for you put together a good looking website with a few simple clicks. In this post we’ll talk about how to install a theme, and the pros and cons of using free, paid and custom made themes.
- Elegant themes – I do not personally use themes from Elegant Themes but they are hugely popular in the blogging community.
- Studiopress- I use Studiopress themes for most of my sites, as they operate on the famous Genesis Framework. Travel Blog Startup uses a Studiopress theme because of easy to setup backend. To get a Studiopress theme you’ll be looking at around $100. They’re not the cheapest out there, but they’re certainly good quality. Money back guarantee, too.
- Creating Post & Pages
You’re finally ready to start writing!
Your blog will be made up of “pages” and “posts”.
A page is known as “static” content. It always stays the same, even when you update your site. A good example of static content is your About Page or your Contact Page. These are static pages that almost every blog will have, which never change.
A post is known as “dynamic” content. This allows you to keep adding new information to your site, which is acts like a stream of new stories and updates. Blog posts are considered dynamic content.
- Monetizing Your Blog
So you’ve created your blog, running up, and maybe you’ve even got some traffic to your blog and finally the time has come to monetize your creation.
In many cases monetization is easy, all you need is to find yourself a good site that will help you to create an income from your blog. However the difficulty comes in deciding how to make money from your blog.
There are a ton off different ways you can make money from a website or blog but the key is to choose the optimum monetization method that will allow you to make the most money you can from your current traffic as not all methods carry the same value.
Let’s look at some different ways you can make money from your site then.
- Pay Per Click
This type of advertisement will pay you per click that an advert on your site has – Google AdSense is a great example of PPC. You place the ad code on your site, they will deploy adverts that they think your audience will like and they will pay you for every click that your site generates on that advert, each advert has its own pay out so you’ll never be sure how much you might get paid as it will vary depending on your traffic and clicks you generate that day as well as the cost of that advert.
Each method of monetization will bring in a different amount of cash, it’s up to you to figure out which will work best on your site and your niche. You can always spy on your competition to find out how they make their money, if they have been around for a while they will know what works best within that niche.
Also don’t forget you can use more that one of the methods to make money online, such as fixed cost advertising, pay per lead, cost per mile and other to really capitalize on your income.
Conclusion
Starting a blog is easy, it just takes time and the willingness to learn new skills.
The key to a successful blog is great content and the ability to drive traffic to it, if you can learn these two skills you will be very, very successful online and you will have the ability to make a lot of money from your online efforts.
