WANNA CREATE A MONEY MAKING TRAVEL BLOG?

In this guide, I’ll show you how to start a blog site and give you the strategies we use to make money from our website.

WHO SHOULD READ THIS?

This is for anyone who wants to create a blog or aspiring to be a blogger in the future and eventually convert it into successful money making website. As this is a travel & lifestyle based website, I would explain the strategies based upon this domain.

Just take a deep breath and relax yourself as you’re about to witness the ultimate set of techniques to make it big in the blogging world.

Have you ever imagined that you could travel around the world and get paid for the same?

Well, if the answer is a yes, then don’t stop reading. Travelling, in fact is a dream for most of the people out there who would like to take some time out of their busy lives and runaway to exotic locales to spend quality time and most importantly re-energize themselves. It would be great if you could travel wherever you want, blog about all your travel expeditions and most importantly earn money to travel even more.

This looks quite fancy, however, not impossible. There is nothing impossible in this life as the word impossible itself says “I’m Possible”.

First and foremost, you need to be a content wizard to be successful at Blogging. Content is the heart of blogging. You can’t achieve anything without eye-grabbing content. You can earn money to help you fund your travels and join the ranks of the top travel bloggers.

Key points to note from a road-map creation:

Creating a roadmap for the website is very important. You need to have a clear idea as to what you want to achieve from the website.

Please create a checklist of all the tasks included and set timelines/deadlines for each task.

There are two types of bloggers. Bloggers that journal about their adventures and bloggers that write about informational articles.

One should aspire to create a hybrid blog website as it can include content related to own travel expeditions as well as informational content.

Blog about what you are very passionate about and which interests you the most. This will really help you in writing the content very easily as you have a grip upon the domain.

Please keep in mind about the audience you would like to target with the help of your content. The higher the audience, better the reach and eventually better the traffic.

Learn from your competition. Take the best out of them and make it your own.

Fulcrum for Setting Up Your Blog website:

Firstly, choose a URL from the available URLs, from websites like GoDaddy. Try searching for the URLs which would be related to your domain and people might relate to it much better. Keep it short and sweet to make sure that the user remembers it easily. Once, you zero upon a URL, please buy it before someone else buys it.

Next, buy web hosting from trusted partners like BlueHost etc. Web hosting is basically, where all your website’s files/articles/photos/videos are stored online.

Next, choose the blogging platform where you want to publish your amazing content for the whole world to see it. We would suggest using WordPress instead of Blogger as it has more plugin features and is fast.

Once you’ve signed up for hosting and your domain setup, it’s time to install WordPress.

Log into your CPanel and look for the WordPress logo. Click the logo.

Follow the steps as mentioned in the screen during installation.

Please note that at one step, it will ask you to choose an administrative username and password. The default username is “admin”. I would recommend you to change the username instead of “admin”.

Then, let the installation continue.

In the browser, type www.**************.com/wp-login.php

Here * is related to the name of your domain. Now a login box will pop wherein you need to enter the username and password.

The WordPress dashboard would appear wherein you can choose a theme for your blog website. There are thousands of themes to choose from. Some are free and some are premium for which you need to pay a one-time payment to buy the theme.

The best part of WordPress is, its sheer support for hundreds of plugins which can enhance the website and improve its functionality.

I strongly recommend you to download & use the below mentioned Plugins.

Akismet — The best way to prevent your blog from comment SPAM.

Digg — Add a floating bar with share buttons to your blog.

Disqus Comment System — A more robust comment system.

Google XML Sitemaps — Creates sitemaps which will help search engines to better index your blog.

Google Analytics for WordPress — This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics to your WordPress blog.

iThemes Security — Helps keep your site safe from hackers.

WordPress SEO by Yoast — The BEST all-in-one SEO solution for WP.

W3 Total Cache — Helps keep your page running quickly.

WP Smush.it — Minimize your photo file sizes without losing quality, so your site loads faster.

There are many more such plugins which might be relevant to your website.

At this point, your blog should be ready to go — you’ll make a few tweaks here and there, but the important part is to start scribbling tons of amazing content.

How to make money:

a. Banner Ads

Banner ads are the easiest way to earn money from your site. The only real way to make much money is to have a ton of traffic — it’s really just a numbers game because the more people visiting the site, the more likely someone will click one.

We use Google Adsense for the few banners on the site. They pay the best, so we wouldn’t bother using any of their competitors.

Note: If your site becomes very popular, you can sell adspace on your website to earn more money.

b. Affiliate

Affiliate sales are another popular way for bloggers to earn money. The idea behind affiliate sales is simple — you get a small commission when someone buys a product that you link to. Affiliate sales can be fairly lucrative if you’re getting 300k visits a month, but don’t expect to earn good if you receive 2k visits a month.

The biggest affiliate networks are CJ Affiliate by Conversant, AvantLink, and LinkShare. These sites represent the affiliate programs for companies like REI, STA Travel, Hotel.com, Expedia, RailEurope, HostelWorld, The Gap, and a ton more. Amazon is another huge online retailer with it’s own affiliate program which I use from my end.

c. Develop and Sell a Product

One of the most popular ways to make a good amount of money is to create your own product — usually an ebook or an app. You can create an ebook on just about anything that you’re an expert in — city guides, blogging, travel planning, travel hacking, travel with pets, marketing, social media.

c. Youtube

Create a YouTube channel of your own and create those viral videos which can trickle money into your bank account. You just need a nice video camera and shoot some cool videos. Sign up for the YouTube partner program to make this a reality. This would help YouTube place ads on your videos, through which you can earn money if someone clicks on those ads. The basic agenda is to get the traffic on your videos and eventually on your website.

d. Sponsored Product/Service Reviews

Companies may eventually ask you to post about a product or service and they’ll pay you. Popular bloggers can charge $200-$500+ per post, but it takes a long time before you get to this level.

Generate more traffic for the website in multiple ways:

a. We would recommend having social media accounts in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, & Pinterest.

b. Search Engine Optimization is basically the steps you take so that your website ranks higher in search engine search results. We use the Yoast WordPress plugin for SEO purposes.

c. Use MailChimp for email marketing purposes.

HAPPY LEARNING & SEE YOU SOON IN ANOTHER INFORMATION ARTICLE!