13 Travel Blogging Tips For Beginners To Earn $$$ Faster
Some of the links may be affiliate links, and at no cost to you, I earn a small commission if you make a purchase. I only recommend stuff I love and use, and the income goes back into making this little blog successful!
Looking for a few FREE detailed travel blogging tips for beginners? Need a bit of motivation to get started?
It has been one year exactly since I started this travel blog, and from then to now, I am making $4K in revenue ONLY from affiliate marketing a month and bringing 33K people to my site monthly.
I mention my stats not to brag, but to say – I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t through quite a few blogging courses, an SEO coach, a great community of travel bloggers I joined, and just testing and trying out different things.
The goal of this post is to share some actionable best practices for new bloggers and debunk a few myths:
- It won’t take forever to make money with a travel blog.
- There’s no need to focus on social media to be successful – I use zero social media.
- And it is a real job – nontraditional, I’ll give you that, but you can make money online!
13 Travel Blogging Tips For Beginners
I was reading a few articles on “how to get started with a travel blog” and “travel blogging tips for beginners” just to see what was out there… and all I saw was doom and gloom about how it takes forever to make money with a travel blog and that it’s not worth it.
That’s not true – and if that’s the case for some, it’s because they’re not doing it right.
After flopping around for a few months trying to figure SEO out on my own, I decided to try out a course I had been researching – and that made all the difference in my results.
Join the Weekly Info Session:
➡️ How To Scale Your Travel Blog ⬅️
Here are a few tips from the extensive course and community that I found useful early on.
Take what you need, and check out the weekly info session to see if the course is something your blog would benefit from as well.
1. Narrow Down Your Niche
Your niche is what your blog is about, and it will inform your blog name, brand and what you write about. It’s a bit counterintuitive, but the more narrow and specific your niche is, the better.
One of the common mistakes bloggers make at the beginning is writing about everything and picking too broad of a niche – like travel or road trips.
Example: I started out with Europe travel as my niche, but that is too broad, and there was a lot of competition in that niche. I narrowed it down further to road trips in Europe as a solo girl traveler because that was more focused.
You want to be more focused because you want to show Google that you are an expert in something specific. As you grow your audience and Google
❌ What Beginners Do
Beginners write about their life. So, as they travel, they write one post about Thailand, one about Germany, and another about tips while traveling with their cat. This is fine, but this dictates to Google that you are a “jack of all trades, but master of none” and will not rank you as high in the search.
✅ What Beginners Should Do Instead
Be more focused in the beginning by writing 4 – 5 posts on a specific topic related to your niche. So if your niche is about traveling in western Europe, build a ‘fortress of posts’ around each topic. This means writing back-to-back posts about a country you travel to:
- Cutest Italian Coastal Towns
- 2 Week Road Trip In Italy
- Which Is Better: Amalfi Coast or Sicily?
- How To Tip in Italy (Not Like A Tourist!)
- Renting A Car In Italy: Common Mistakes
2. Invest In Your Blog
Trying to learn all of the tips for blogging to set you up for success, in the beginning, is a crazy task, especially because in the blogging space, you don’t get to see the impact of the things you are doing until a month or two down the road.
❌ What Beginners Do
A lot of bloggers waste years paying for $50 classes with one-off tips here and there, trying out different tactics that work for one person or another, and eventually giving up because the progress is either too slow or not at all.
✅ What Beginners Should Do Instead
Invest in yourself and in your blog by learning white-hat SEO skills from the beginning.
My recommendation is to check out the Info Session for Scale Your Travel Blog and see if it’s something you are ready for.
- Beyond the course itself, the most useful part of this program is the Mastermind group of travel bloggers who are very active and giving when it comes to helping you think through a lot of the decisions that come with building a travel blog.
- The second most useful part, at least for me, is that the class is not stagnant. The Monthly Group Coaching calls are like continuous education, with guest speakers on the most relevant topics the group is struggling with.
3. Focus on SEO
The goal is to get Google to trust you. For beginning bloggers, you should write content and structure your blog in a way that makes Google happy – with good SEO tactics as the backbone.
❌ What Beginners Do
- Promoting Posts Through Pinterest – The effort to learn Pinterest is not worth the return on investment.
- Social Media – More than likely, your family and friends are not our ideal customers. Unless you have a strong following on your social media (think 5K followers or more), it’s not worth the effort.
- Paid ads – These are Facebook, YouTube, and Google Ads. Again, you need to know how and when to use them properly; otherwise, it is not worth the money or effort for beginners.
✅ What Beginners Should Do Instead
In the beginning, when you don’t have the organic traffic you need, focus on the right keywords, write optimized on-page SEO content, and leverage affiliate marketing to make money.
All tips and tactics to do this are taught in Scale Your Travel Blog Course.
PRO TIP: Focus on the right keywords and SEO consistently in the beginning, and shoot for 30K people to your website monthly through organic traffic – this will take about 50 -80 posts.
After you’ve reached about 30K sessions to your site, work on building your email list, creating an eBOOK or other digital products later on, and selling it to your subscribers.
4. Get The Right Tools
So if you’re making SEO the foundation of growing your blog, you’ll need the right tools. Most new bloggers either invest in too many tools, none at all, or don’t know how to use any tools effectively.
Here are a few tools I use in combination with the best practices I learned in the Scale Your Travel Blog Course to really get my shit straight.
✔️ Keyword Research (Free Tools)
- WhatsMySerp – Tells you how many people look up that key phrase in a month. This essentially shows you the volume (aim for 60+).
- Moz.com – Tells you the Domain Authority (DA) of websites—yours and your competition. DAs 30 or lower are considered a low authority, and as a new blogger, you can compete for the same keywords.
✔️ On-Page SEO (not YOAST)
Most beginner travel bloggers think that having downloaded the Yoast Plugin to their site will automatically watch and fix their SEO. Yoast should be considered more of a checklist of high-level on-page SEO, but it is not smart enough to fully optimize your post.
Think about it, Marketing departments in corporations pay high salaries for people to learn and apply SEO to their copy. An app will not give you the same quality control or knowledge to differentiate your posts; you have to learn the skills yourself because Yoast misses a lot.
➡️ Join the Scale Your Travel Blog Course Info Session ⬅️
✔️ Backlinks
If you’re looking to travel blog and get your Domain Authority (DA) off the ground quickly, backlinking is key. Building links from high-authority websites to your travel blog is one of the best ways to boost credibility for your website and help increase your DA.
Aside from posting regularly and over time, here are a few travel blogger tips for beginners who want to get backlinks effectively:
- Guest Post for related, but not identical, websites and travel blogs
- Contribute to Round Up Posts where you contribute 1-2 paragraphs for one link;
Whilst these methods may be time-consuming, it will pay off in terms of growing Domain Authority.
5. Optimize Your Schedule
When it comes to travel blogging tips for beginners, this one is an often-looked-over tip for beginners, but very important. There’s no way around it; you must get comfortable with a cadence for writing, posting, doing research, and exploring.
Here’s how I split up my week:
- Monday: Keyword Research & 3 Post Outlines
- Tuesday: Write Post 1 & Publish
- Wednesday: Write Post 2 & Publish
- Thursday: Write Post 3 & Publish
- Friday: Write a guest post & include backlinks to posts you published that week.
- Weekend: Travel, Relax, Explore, Reset.
6. Post Regularly
When you are a travel blogger, the key to keeping your blog active and relevant is writing posts regularly to engage an audience.
As a travel blogger, you can share travel tips, advice, and anecdotes that your readers can relate to or aspire to experience themselves.
Blogging typically requires more than just travel photos and a few hundred words on a page about your experience.
Posts should be thorough, include answers to frequently asked questions about that topic or destination, share your tips and hacks, and include vivid pictures to highlight the key aspects of your trip.
7. Write Posts That Get Traffic
There are two types of posts – posts that focus on getting traffic to your site and posts that focus on affiliate marketing and making you money. You will need to write both types of posts to have a successful blog.
Pro Tip: 80% of your posts should be for traffic-related keywords. 20% of posts you write should be affiliate posts.
Writing posts that get traffic has a lot to do with finding the right keyword and writing a post that ranks in the top 10 search results of Google so that people see and click on your post.
8. Write Posts That Make Money
Affiliate posts are the quickest way to earn money as a beginning blogger. You will want to target keywords where the ‘user intent’ is to purchase something.
You can’t simply drop an affiliate link into a blog and hope it converts; there is some thought that goes into it. The goal is to write a blog post for a keyword that converts to sales.
Best Keywords to Target for Affiliate Marketing:
👉 Best of…
👉 How to… (ex. How to set up a Travel Blog with BlueHost)
👉 Reviews… (ex. Medical Insurance Review)
👉 xyz VS abc…(ex. Delta vs Frontier)
9. Focus On Your Backlinks
Ah, the thing nobody wants to focus on but has to! Backlinking is when another website includes a link to your site on their website. This means the other website trusts you, and Google should trust you too.
Backlinking aims to build credibility and increase your Domain Authority (DA). The more backlinks you can get, the higher your DA will grow. Time also does this as you continue posting.
Here are a few ways to get backlinks in order to be most effective:
- Guest Posts – Writing a blog post for someone else’s website and getting a couple of backlinks from them. Find websites that are related to but are NOT identical to your specific niche. Request a personal guest post by pitching them.
- Round Up / Collaboration Posts – A blogger is looking for a bunch of different answers from random people. For you, this usually means 1-2 short paragraphs for 1 backlink.
- The value here is the low effort on your part.
- The crappy part is that the “link juice” back to your site is not as valuable as from a guest post because your link is competing with the 20 other people collaborating on that post.
❌ NOTE: Avoid link swaps, link exchanges, or buying backlinks. This will hurt your SEO, and it is something that Google does not like or condone.
10. Update Old Content
For travel bloggers who are just starting out, it’s important to understand the value of updating old posts.
While obviously, it’s nice to create fresh new content and keep things interesting, a travel blogger’s followers will appreciate the extra effort put into sprucing up older posts with updated information.
👉 PRO TIP: Focus on updating and optimizing for SEO posts that are almost ranking on the first page of Google.
Doing this not only shows dedication to your craft but also demonstrates a consistent commitment to providing quality travel tips to your readers.
11. Optimize Your Website (E-A-T + Speed)
If you’re at the start of your journey, set up your website in a way that optimizes for E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust) and Speed.
Make sure to check your page speed for desktop and mobile for free. Here are a few tips for beginning travel bloggers:
✔️ Do not use Elementor or other page builders. Page builders such as Elementor slow down your site a lot.
✔️ Consider switching themes to something leaner like Kadence (this is in WordPress)
✔️ Format your pictures to 1200 x 800 JPG size. Limit their size so that they don’t slow down your site.
✔️ Videos are also big files and can slow down your site significantly, so understand the value, pros, and cons before inserting a video into your post.
12. Write Authentically
There has been a big uproar about Chat GTP and other AI tools like Jasper.ai that can be used by bloggers to supplement their writing. Tools like these are also great for when you want to produce a lot of generic content quickly.
👉 My Advice: These writing tools are great for rewording things you’ve written or to get you over an intro or closing paragraph you have writer’s block with. Always fact-check everything from an AI writing, and do not rely on AI to write your posts for you.
One final word to the wise, Google can track when AI generates writing, and it does not give extra browny points for that.
13. Adjust Your Mindset
Let’s talk about a positive mindset versus a toxic mindset when it comes to travel blogging—or running any good business, for that matter.
✅ Shift the ‘WHAT IF’ mentality from Negative to Positive
Our battle with imposter syndrome and compare culture is real and something I struggle with daily. Learn to get out of your head, and instead of thinking negatively around the “What If” statements, think positively: So what if I suck at first – it’s a good learning opportunity.
✅ Learn that everyone’s journey is different.
The common things that are true for every blogger are the strategies of SEO, Keyword Research, learning the Google algorithm, and making it happy. What’s different among bloggers is what makes our own journeys different – things like:
- Your niche compared to other bloggers
- The time investment everyone has to offer their blog
- World trends (like if a country shuts down due to war or a pandemic, your traffic will tank)
- Research abilities (ie. keyword research experience vs. no keyword research experience)
- Financial investment (ex. some bloggers pay ghostwriters, or keyword research tools that are more advanced than the free tools I shared above.)
✅ Continue Your Education
Spend time listening to podcasts, reading blog posts, reviewing top trends, and watching videos to continue educating yourself. The best thing to do is to learn SEO and apply it to your blog consistently.
➡️ I learned SEO in this Scale Your Travel Blog Course. ⬅️
✅ Ignore your day-to-day stats. Focus longer term.
I recommend focusing on a monthly cadence of reviewing your DA, traffic, and income.
Ultimately, if you focus on the tips I mentioned above for beginner travel bloggers and invest in learning SEO, you will do just fine.
✅ Be disciplined when working for yourself.
Stick to your to-do calendar and tasks. Focus.
- Stay motivated and know your “why”
- Celebrate the small wins – the wins you have control over.
- Set daily attainable goals! (Ex. The goal is to write 500 words each day)
Successful Travel Blog Examples
These blogs have seen success when following the best travel blogging tips for beginners and are part of the large Scale Your Travel Blog Community of bloggers who have made it big!
- Mike & Laura Travel – making $50K a month with digital products and affiliate marketing
- Travel Mexico Solo – making $40K a month from affiliate marketing
- Emily Embarks – making $10K a month from affiliate marketing
FAQs: Travel Blogging
Even with the 13 travel blogging tips for beginners outlined in great detail above, I still get alot of these questions. Here are my two cents.
How do I make a successful travel blog?
Focus on a formula that makes Google happy. This includes your authenticity in traveling and sharing your unique perspectives, a tenacity to keep writing, and a good course that goes beyond vague information.
I recommend Scale Your Travel Blog because there are so many success stories coming out of this community, my own included.
➡️ Sign Up Here for the Free Info Session ⬅️
Note: Before investing in a course like Scale Your Travel Blog, be sure to join one of the free info sessions. It will give you a good sense of what to expect and what is included.
How do I start my first travel blog?
Well, start by following all of the 13 travel blogging tips for beginners outlined above, and remember:
👉 DO FOCUS on finding good keywords, writing optimized quality content, getting backlinks, and building your email list.
👉 DON’T FOCUS on growing your Instagram, creating pins, and working with brands that don’t fit your niche.
Do travel bloggers make money?
There are a lot of travel bloggers out there who make a lot of money on a monthly basis.
Here are a few I know personally, one of who is my teacher and coach (Laura from Mike & Laura Travel).
- Mike & Laura Travel – making $50K a month with digital products and affiliate marketing
- Travel Mexico Solo – making $40K a month from affiliate marketing
- Emily Embarks – making $10K a month from affiliate marketing
These are regular people like you and I who invested in the Scale Your Travel Blogging Course. But don’t take my word for it, sign up for the free info session and see what’s included and if it’s something that would fit for you.
Is travel blogging worth it?
Some people wonder if travel blogging is worth it. I think it’s worth it, but it depends on what you want, your goals, your interests, and your available resources.
Travel blogging can be a great way to share your experiences, connect with like-minded people, and potentially make money. But it is also a competitive field. Many travel blogs are out there, and standing out from the crowd can be difficult.
Getting your blog to the point of earning money will take effort, but it doesn’t take forever. And definitely not as long as people say, especially if you follow the 13 tips for beginner travel bloggers above.
Conclusion: Travel Blogging Tips for Beginners
This post aims to share some actionable best practices for new bloggers and debunk a few myths about travel blogging taking forever to make money or if it’s a pursuit worth spending time on.
These are the 13 best travel blogging tips for beginners I wish I had had when I started. Check out the pro tips and my best advice under each one above.
- Find a unique niche for you.
- Invest in your blog & in your skillset
- Focus on SEO
- Get the right tools
- Optimize your schedule
- Post regularly
- Write posts that get traffic.
- Write posts that make money.
- Focus on backlinks
- Update old content
- Optimize your website for E-A-T and Speed
- Write authentically
- Shift Your Mindset from toxic to positive.
