Published on December 20th, 2019
Traveling is one of the most popular blogging niches with thousands of content creators all over the world. It is literally impossible to count all of the travel influencers out there because there are so many of them.
This does not come as a surprise because traveling and writing about your experiences might as well be the best job ever. Besides that, quality travel bloggers can make a decent living as reports show that the average salary in this field goes well above $40 thousand per year.
But how do you become a successful content creator in this niche? Keep reading to learn 15 ways to stand out as a travel blogger or influencer.
1. Design A Beautiful Website
Do you know that 94% of negative website feedback was design related? People often judge a book by its cover, so the first thing you need to do is to create a beautiful and user-friendly website.
These are the two critical components as your travel site has to be visually appealing and easy to use at the same time.
2. Invest In Your Project
You don’t become a successful travel influencer just like that. After all, there are thousands of more or less similar authors out there, so you’ll need to invest in the whole project. This includes a couple of the most important features:
- Invest time to take a course and learn about writing and photography
- Invest money in high-quality gear
3. Identify A Perfect Niche
The travel niche is so gigantic that there is no “one size fits all” solution. On the contrary, you must identify the field of writing that suits your interests and content creation qualities and stick to it long-term.
You can choose from a wide range of topics such as traveling and children, cooking, fashion, festivals, adventure, and so on.
4. Determine Your Style Of Writing
Now that you’ve got the basics covered, it is time to determine your style of writing. This is a fundamental aspect of travel blogging because it sets you apart from other authors in the same niche.
But no matter what you choose, do your best to practice and perfect your style of writing soon.
5. Quality Is Essential
When it comes to travel blogging – or any other type of online writing – nothing is more important than quality. This is exactly why the average Google first page result contains 1,890 words.
People who visit your website want to see top-level descriptions and you need to indulge them by creating quality long-form content.
6. Make It Practical
Another thing you need to remember is to make your posts as practical as possible. Readers really enjoy interesting descriptions of tourist destinations, but they enjoy practical tips and suggestions even more.
Jake Gardner, an essay writer who specializes in adventure traveling, claims that users want to get answers to the famous 5W+H questions:
“They want to know who does what, where, when, why, and how. Your duty is to answer all those questions and help travelers organize trips safely and effortlessly.”
7. Go Easy With Fancy Vocabulary
As a travel influencer, you are expected to write attractively and describe different destinations in a way that sounds appealing.
However, we don’t recommend you to use too much of a fancy vocabulary because it might chase a lot of readers away. Keep your vocabulary just a little bit lighter and no one will have a problem reading your posts.
8. Discuss Shortcomings
Although traveling is all about having fun, you should never forget to describe the shortcomings of each destination.
It can be a huge and disorganized airport, a bad hotel, or anything else for that matter, but the important thing is to focus on negative aspects of your travels as well because it helps readers to avoid the same problems.
9. Use Tools
The year is 2020 and you definitely don’t have to do everything manually. There are all kinds of content creation tools to check out online, so feel free to try a few. The platforms we love include:
10. Don’t Forget Unusual Destinations
Just like any other niche, travel blogging also has its trends and “Must-do” topics. We admit it is important to write blog posts about the likes of Paris, New York, Rome and similar, but you shouldn’t miss out on the opportunity to analyze some unusual destinations.
It will make your job more interesting and help you to distinguish the blog from the crowd of similar authors.
11. Don’t Publish Too Many Sponsored Posts
One of the easiest ways to earn money as a travel blogger is to get paid to write a review. However, this cannot be your primary objective because you’ll end up ruining a professional reputation.
Keep it moderate instead and save not more than 20% of website content for promotional posts.
12. Sell Branded Products
The second way to make a profit through your travel blog is to sell branded merchandise.
How come? Well, popular bloggers gradually turn into full-time brands and they can sell things like t-shirts, bags, bottles, and similar through their websites.
It’s a super-easy way to monetize your blogging efforts, so don’t hesitate to use it.
13. Publish Guest Posts
If your biggest goal is to grow the audience, then you should not only focus on creating content for your own blog.
You can publish guest articles instead and grab the attention of new audience groups. It’s a win-win situation as other websites will be glad to host a well-known travel influencer, while you get additional exposure quickly.
14. Keep It Consistent
The best travel bloggers understand the importance of consistency in the blogging niche. If you don’t publish a new post for more than a week or two, rest assured the audience will forget you.
Therefore, you must create a schedule of work and keep the work consistent 365 days a year.
15. Follow Competitors
Although the main idea of travel blogging is to stay unique and independent, you still need to follow the work of other authors in the same niche.
It will help you to identify the latest industry trends and see how some of your closest rivals address their followers.
Conclusion
Travel blogging is definitely one of the best jobs you can get, but it takes some serious work and strategic planning to become a successful author in this niche.
In this article, we discussed 15 ways to stand out as a travel blogger or influencer. Remember our tips and leave a comment if you have other interesting ideas to share with our readers!