Photo credit: Nomadic Samuel
In the past five years, there has been an emerging trend with the rise of the professional blogger. There are now people who write solely about travel and actually are able to make money doing so.
Young Adventuress, a young American travel blogger, who established Solo Female Traveler as her niche, wrote an article called “So you want to be a travel blogger, do you?” which details the hard work and sweat she puts into her blog every day. It sounds like a glamorous job, but you have to constantly make sure you are keeping up with your social media following (once you establish that), accept freelance work, accept paid partnerships and write blog posts, among other duties to earn enough income to continue traveling full time.
She lays out the steps to travel blog success. Number one is the question: What is your passion? For many people that may be the most difficult thing to figure out. One line she writes nails it on the head: “What do you love so much you would do for free a million times over?” Because that is what happens in travel blogging until you establish a name and a following.
Young Adventuress’ passion is clearly travel, and this leads her to telling people why they should be passionate about it too, and why they shouldn`t listen to the typical American fear that it is too dangerous to travel. She admits that it took her two years to figure out exactly what she loves to write about, but she was persistent and is now one of the top travel bloggers in the world, with over a million annual visitors to her site.
(Source: Young Adventuress)
Her second tip is to have your own niche. So many travel bloggers write the stock articles – “10 things to do in Thailand,” “3 days in Paris” … you get the picture. Young Adventuress takes her time to travel and see each country for more than a few days. She lived in Spain teaching English for two years, so she has a niche there. After Spain, she moved home for a bit, then relocated to New Zealand for a year, she has a niche there as well. She emphasizes that each blogger must provide a specific reason so people read their articles. She is honest, and doesn`t sugarcoat anything, which she calls many other bloggers out for doing.
The next tip she shares is to keep at it. Of course, with practice you get better, so the more you write, the better your articles will become. As you get better and build a larger following, your writing will continue to improve and be more worthy of reading. Another important piece of advice is to set goals – not only setting a goal to keep at it and write a certain number of articles, but setting goals like getting featured on a website or making the top travel bloggers list that year.
The second-to-the-last tip she shares is to be active on social media. Maybe someone will stumble across a picture you have taken on Instagram and then begin to read your blog; many things in social media make travel blogging as possible as it is.
The last two pieces of important information are to be ethical and to produce good content. Many travel bloggers see travel blogging as a way of earning free trips and writing about them. If every blog post you write is a review of a product or trip and you have to write that you loved it because you got it for free, is that ethical? Is that good content? If you were the reader would that be what interested you? Probably not.
Another important note is that it will change the way you travel. Before, you could relax and enjoy your travels. Now, you have to have a camera and a notebook with you at all times. You much be constantly thinking about what blog post to write next, or how to increase your following. Enjoying a night out happens every once in a while, but to build a base of readers, and to make enough money to survive on, it has to be a ful- time job. You may work more hours than a typical 40 hour a week job, and you will most likely get less reward, especially to begin with. But it`s worth it. You get to travel the world for work, how many people can say that?
