This guide outlines how to start travel blogging as a career, and turn your passion into your job.
Almost anyone can start a blog and become a self-proclaimed travel blogger, but how to start travel blogging as a career? For the lucky few, this dream is already a reality. These influencers fly around the globe and get paid to write about their most daring escapades and wildest adventures. If you have the same passion, purpose, and drive, you can, too!
How to start travel blogging as a career: 6 steps
Turn travel blogging into a career and quit your day job in just six simple steps. Will this transition take time? Of course! Will it require effort and resources and understanding of how to start travel blogging as a career? Absolutely! But if you stick with it, you’re sure to see promising results.
1. Manage Your Expectations
Most travel bloggers don’t talk about how to start travel blogging as a career because, if they did, they’d likely lose a significant following. Travel blogging is one of the most demanding jobs in terms of organization, productivity, and self-management. It’s not all hammocks and cocktails on the beach, although influencers would have you believe otherwise.
Therefore, it’s important to manage your expectations and know that the job will never be all sunshine and rainbows. In fact, you might work harder on how to start travel blogging as a career than you did in any other job — and few people will ever know it.
2. Find Your Niche
Figuring out how to start travel blogging as a career to make money is as simple as finding your niche. Your blog must offer a certain level of expertise on a specific topic for it to be valuable. More importantly, that topic must be in high demand among your target audience, so conducting a bit of market research is a must.
For instance, you might want to write about backpacking through Europe. However, if general interest in the topic is declining, you might want to choose a different niche for long-term success in how to start travel blogging as a career. Make sure you’re passionate enough about the topic to write about it for the foreseeable future. Otherwise, you may have to change gears, rebrand, and lose some of your followers a few years in.
3. Challenge the Competition
What kind of competition do you have in your niche? Conduct a quick internet search to determine how many other travel bloggers are already offering information on your topic of choice. What kinds of details do they provide? Is there another angle you can take in how to start travel blogging as a career to engage their target audience? Maybe you can use your unique experiences to fill some knowledge gaps that other professionals are leaving on their blogs.
This strategy is key in how to start travel blogging as a career to securing a solid following and turning your travel into a career. There are plenty of other influencers just like you vying for the same audience’s attention, so competition is understandably fierce. Your job is to write even better content than your competitors so that you can earn some money, too.
Ultimately, if you craft relevant, valuable posts, your target audience will be more likely to like, share, follow, and subscribe, giving you a better chance of success.
4. Write Regularly and Well
Getting the basics right is integral in how to start travel blogging as a career to establish yourself as an industry expert. After all, few readers are likely to trust someone who can’t spell or use an apostrophe correctly. Writing well will also set you apart from competitors who aren’t as diligent about editing for grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Sharpen your skills and craft quality content by consistently writing blog posts. There’s no hard and fast rule in how to start travel blogging as a career regarding how many posts to make every week. However, maintaining a consistent schedule and stockpiling articles to post at a later date is a good idea because it will help you gain a bigger audience much faster.
Proofread and edit to make sure your writing is the best it can be every single time. As long as you’re putting out high-quality content, your following will grow, and so will your confidence.
5. Partner With Brands
If you’re active on social media long enough, you’ll likely gain a large enough following to interest brands that resonate with your content. Odds are high a few will reach out and request that you partner with them to promote their merchandise or mission statement. If their values, beliefs, and purpose match your own, consider forming an official partnership. Then, you can start earning revenue from sponsored content, affiliate links, and more.
Of course, forming brand partnerships isn’t always so easy in how to start travel blogging as a career. Often, bloggers will have to search for and deliver pitches to numerous brands before sealing the deal. Snoop around social media for potential leads and attend travel trade shows and blogging conferences to discover more networking opportunities and further monetize your blog.
6. Hire Help
Once you partner with brands and start generating significant income, consider outsourcing some of the work. Maintaining a blog is hard work and requires a wide variety of skills — not to mention a lot of time.
You’re not just a writer. You’re a social media manager, web designer, photographer, marketer, videographer, and editor. Whether you’re unfamiliar with search engine optimization or simply don’t have enough free time to monetize the blog on your own, hiring a helping hand might be a good idea as your following grows.
Turning a Hobby Into a Career
Many people think of blogging as a hobby or an activity they enjoy during their leisure time. However, if you want to understand fully how to start travel blogging as a career, you must start treating it like work. Shift your mindset and think of blogging as a professional job, something that you could see yourself doing for a living.
Envision it, manifest it, and embrace it as your dream of how to start travel blogging as a career becomes reality. No one promises an easy journey, but if you put in the effort, it’ll be more than worth it in the end.
