This article is in response to questions on how I set up this website and how I go about writing this blog.....I so hate the word blog.

Some History

I started to keep a diary on my first driving trip around Europe, mainly because I tend to have a bad memory. I wanted to write down where I had been during the day and my experiences. It was also a nice closure to the day to sit down with a glass of wine and recall the day's events.

Work colleagues also wanted me to give them updates, but at that time, I wasn't on any social media platforms. I simply sent an email once a week with a PowerPoint Presentation with photos and words describing my week.

I received positive feedback from colleagues & friends and this gave me encouragement once I joined Facebook to post my trip updates online.

My preference is to write long articles of my trips, rather than regular short posts. With Facebook, you never know how many of your friends you will reach with your posts and so felt they were possibly going into an abyss.

Social media is also censoring posts on certain subjects such as my recent article on travel vaccinations which ultimately takes away our freedom. I want to write freely, without someone telling me what I can and can't do as this smacks too much of big brother. I therefore decided to create my own website.

Although this website is a journal of my travels, it's not strictly a traditional travel blog. While I am writing about my travels, I will also be delving into deeper diverse subjects.

Travel blogs are very popular, they have been for many years. They have become a saturated market with lots of high level competitors with quality really high. It is however, easier to set one up presently compared to the past.

Try to have a clear idea of what you want your website to be about. What is your purpose, are you trying to highlight your own photography, give people accurate information & itinerary details of what to do in every location, or are you giving people a history lesson. I would not recommend following my path of having no clear purpose before starting. Friends liked my past travel reports and I wanted to document my journey, this was enough for me, but probably not for you?

It's important to find your niche within the travel blog universe. If it is your goal to earn a living from your writing, without a plan or strategy in place, you may struggle. Although I didn't undertake any planning myself, my articles seem to be evolving naturally depending on my thoughts and what I experience as I travel.

I'm Not A Natural Writer

For all of you out there that feel writing is difficult and out of your comfort zone, I agree. This was the reason I had to make a start, to get past this obstacle of not being a technically good or lucid writer. Ultimately, I believe it doesn't really matter, as my flaws as an amateur writer is a part of my style and character, and who I am.

Once you make a start, you have no option but to continue. Coming up with ideas for successive articles is not super easy, but as I mentioned earlier, many ideas will simply come into your focus with little effort. By simply getting on with the process of travelling, experiencing, researching and actually writing, you will find you have momentum, the trick is then to keep it going.

I find that the best way of keeping ahead of the curve with future articles is to take notes on my smartphone. Simply create bullet points for each idea or potential article. Once your list has developed somewhat, you can then arrange your ideas into some sort of order.

How I Write My Articles

Unlike many travel writers, I'm not under a deadline to publish regularly. The reason many push out so many articles is because they have chosen to monetize their website. Their ultimate goal is to get as many followers, readers, likes or subscribers as possible in order to maximize advertising and other forms of revenue which are dependent on audience size.

This model requires regular posting of new articles at least once per week, but often, multiple times per week. If you are running your journal as a business this is a requirement. My journal is for personal use, as I never wanted it to dominate my travels. I therefore made a decision to publish new articles every 3/4 weeks.

I have always hated adverts on television and radio and completely despise them when I'm browsing the internet. This resulted in keeping the design very simple without the need for a menu and strictly no adverts of any sort.

I have always used a Windows PC but as I'm traveling I had to downsize everything and chose an 8 inch Windows tablet and Android smartphone. After much trial and error, using the tablet was just too painful to write full articles. I changed my workflow to writing them on my smartphone instead.

Unlike many bloggers, I do not start one article and continue to completion. I prefer to work on multiple articles as and when I'm inspired to add content or edit them, wherever I may be. As my smartphone is always with me this seemed to be the logical tool to use.

I have written all my articles on buses, trains, in bars & restaurants and even on a beach. Whenever I have some down time, such as waiting for buses or trains, I open up partially completed articles and read, refine, edit and add new paragraphs.

Sometimes I'm simply walking around and instead of finding and opening up a partially completed article; I will quickly dictate a voice note or even better a voice transcribed note into a simple note taking app on my smartphone.

I have set up a template in Microsoft Word Mobile on my smartphone and then as I come up with ideas for new articles I simply save the template with a new name and start writing. I save two versions as Microsoft Word tends to crash often in my experience, especially when connected to the cloud. One is saved on my smartphone and I frequently overwrite its identical version synched to the cloud.

The templates I have set up include html tags, which is basically the language of the internet. When my article is about 95% complete, I download the synched cloud version onto my Tablet for final editing. This includes adding images, spell checking, correcting any formatting errors and using an FTP (file transfer protocol) program to upload the article onto my website in order to view a live online version for final checks.

Here comes the smart part, on my smartphone, I have downloaded the UK English Language pack (part of the Google Android operating system), which allows me to speak to my phone and magically it transcribes my spoken words into text with about 95% accuracy.

This works totally offline without an internet connection and so is perfect when you don't have a data plan while travelling.

When I showed this to a fellow travel blogger, they were gobsmacked and immediately downloaded the Dutch language pack and immediately starting testing it. A German PhD student writing his thesis was equally stunned and also started to use this feature straight away. I cannot understate the efficiency gains made using this automated typing system.

After putting all this effort into launching your website and thinking everyone will be interested, think again. Most people are not interested in your website. This surprisingly, also includes family and friends, as the majority simply won't have the time. They may occasionally browse a few articles, but essentially they are not your target audience or market. Your travel blog will be aimed at other travellers like yourself, many that will be completing substantial trips. If your aim is to earn a living, your website will be aimed at advertisers and publishing companies.

Article Ideas

What should you write about and what pages should you include? There are some basics such as an "About Me" Page that are essential. Your readers will want to know who you are and why you are writing articles and have a website. Make sure your personality comes through by being genuine, wart's and all. Also remember, reader's need a reason to continue coming back to your website, so curiosity and inspiration play an important role in your articles.

I have personally chosen not to have a comments section with each article as managing comments and especially spam comments, has become a full-time job for some websites. Instead, I have a simple contact form that gives readers the option to send me individual comments.

When you first launch, you should have at least two articles published in addition to your about page. Also make sure your readers can easily contact you.

If you are aiming to go professional, you will probably need in excess of 30-40 article ideas in place or partially written to satisfy 6-8 months of demand and reader expectations.

You should look for stories in everything you do as you travel as you never know what ideas may stick or merge with others.

It goes without saying that if your website is just for your own personal use, then there is some latitude in your style of writing and the number of spellzing & grammers mistakes! If submitting an article to an established magazine then you have to be airtight in this area and also be prepared for rejection as standards are high.

Being a real writer is demanding, a grasp of sentence structure, story-telling, how to correctly use verbs & nouns all need to come together for an interesting article to succeed. This is the standard expected from the big boys.

As the world has become a smaller place and many more of us are traveling, many of the obvious travel destinations have been covered. Other travel bloggers and established publishing houses have probably been to all the famous destinations and created very professional articles. If you simply write about these destinations as others have done, your future in professional travel journalism is likely going to be very short.

Depending on the type of travel writing you will be covering, it may also be necessary to complete research before you depart. Knowing the history of a country or individual regions, you are able to ask deep questions to locals. By making connections with local people, you are able to get a perspective that may differ from other articles already published and write from a unique point of view.

Branding

Branding is especially important if you want to monetize (earn money) at some point.

Branding is much more than just a name and a logo, for the sake of this article I will cover just the basics. It's extremely important to get the name correct to begin with, as this will symbolize what you and your website is about. Complete a search for your chosen name across all social media platforms and secure them all. Try to avoid having different names on different platforms; often with a hyphen or slightly different wording as this will confuse your audience.

Also make sure that the name chosen is not similar to other existing websites as this will confuse people when completing a web search. You will most likely also lose traffic and possible future revenue.

The shorter the name, the better, this will aid with brand recognition and importantly make web searches easy. If you can also come up with a name that is catchy this will also help people to remember your website more easily. Ideally your chosen name will be with a ".com" suffix as this is the default for most people when searching. One last point, if you plan on selling your website/blog to another business, if it is known by your name this will make it less attractive to a buyer. For example "ugo-and-his travel-stories.com".

With this banker to backpacker website, the reasoning for the naming probably comes across as being quite obvious. I wanted to show my transition from working in banking to now backpacking around the world. When I tell people the name or give them a business card, everyone gets it pretty immediately, usually with a rye smile. I also wanted to create a little controversy as banking has a bad name and wanted people to question me.

With my other website, around the world with 80 questions, I wanted to create some familiarity between it and the famous book and many versions of the film, "Around The World in 80 Days". I remember watching this film as a kid, clearly it had an impact. The name also tells the reader exactly what it is about with hopefully an element of curiosity.

With regards to imagery and logos for both websites, I chose to go down the illustration route to keep things fun and light hearted. I outsourced part of the design to a woman in the Philippines who I found on Fiverr, although it cost considerably more than £5. I then refined the design myself adding the stylised wording, changing various elements, colours and adding the trail to show the various forms of transportation in homage to the original film.

I also leveraged the design and had double-sided, full colour business cards printed very cheaply in the UK. Why double-sided?....because I have two websites and the miniscule extra cost in having them done. Think of what extra valuable information you could put on the reverse of yours. I hand these out to people I meet on my travels that I think may be interested in what I'm up to. Why is this important?

When you mention a name, website or destination, many people simply forget. If they have a business card, they often keep it or will take a photograph of it if travelling light. They are now more likely to remember you and visit your website. This is probably one of the cheapest methods of promotion available. If you have a nicely designed card, people will often come up with a comment and ask questions, which also helps with brand recognition and conversation. You may also notice that the colours etc., are exactly the same from card to website. This is what a brand must create from the start, consistency.

Imagery

Images are a really important part of a travel blog, more so if you are looking to monetize your website. Traveling to exotic destinations is almost a must in order to compete with the best. Many of the more professional travel bloggers have made large investments on the latest equipment. A camera with multiple lenses covering wide-angles and a zoom for objects at a distance. A drone to capture photos and video from the air is another tool, together with a microphone, tripod, stabilizer, lighting, filters.....the list goes on and on. I personally would keep things simple to begin with and ramp up as required.

I rely on my smartphone camera as this is with me all the time, to take photographs which relate to my journal articles. I also use stock photography websites, where you can often download for free, some spectacular images.

Preparing the images for your website will take a little work, with resizing and making sure they're not too large in file size being Important. This is to make browsing faster especially on smartphones for your readers and also for Google ranking purposes, which gives websites a speed and accessibility score.

These are links to the main stock image websites I use. They all allow you to freely download fantastic images often without attribution for both personal and commercial use:

Basic Website Design & Hosting

For the vast majority of people wanting to set up their own simple travel website, I would suggest using the free WordPress platform. It has free beautiful templates and a very solid content management system which allows quick and easy updates.

WordPress probably has one of the shortest learning curves as there are so many free online training videos. If you need to get outside help with design or maintenance, again it's the easiest and cheapest platform to do so due to its popularity.

I would avoid hosting your website with certain platforms, strangely for me, this includes WordPress itself. They have recently removed the blog from someone that had been on the platform for over 10 years. Why, because they didn't like what was written on one particular article.

Many other platforms use proprietary systems, which make it difficult to move your content at some future date if you choose to. Your monthly fee can also be quite high with some platforms and your control of design is more limited. Do your research carefully and ideally take some independent advice.

Advanced Website Design

If you are in the fortunate position to afford the services of a website designer & coder, this will save you lots of time and heartache and allow you to concentrate on the fundamentals of your blog/business.

For those of you that want to create a more unique website, rather than relying on a pre-built template that other businesses are also using, you can use a website creation platform.

These online software platforms make it easy to drag and drop elements such as images, text blocks, headings and links which you can then customize choosing your own fonts and colours etc.

This is a lot easier than writing your own HTML code but does still entail a learning curve. Here are links to some of the best platforms:

For my particular situation, I prefer to control everything myself, as I have multiple websites, each with different requirements. The learning curve was long, but I'm now able to fix and do most things myself which affords me lots of freedom.

Promotion

Once your website is live, you will need to begin promoting it. If you have taken branding seriously, then you'll have the same name available for your website as well as all social media platforms which gives consistency to your brand.

You should collect email addresses from your visitors and create an email list from the start. Social media websites go in and out of fashion with some audiences, so it's best not to put your eggs solely into one basket. You also don't have complete control over your posts.

At the start, you won't have too many followers and so it's quite easy to contact people individually. Once your website grows, you will need to invest in software which can easily manage your communications on a regular basis. A popular online service called mailchimp gives great flexibility with a small learning curve and enables you to schedule sending newsletters, website updates and special offers to your subscribers.

Monetization

The idea of traveling around the world and writing about your experiences, offering advice in return for making a full-time living is probably an ideal job for thousands upon thousands. Just one problem, the travel blog area is a really crowded space as so many people have been doing this for many years.

It is also likely to take many years before you are able to make a decent income and the effort involved in promoting and updating your website will be substantial.

Most travel websites choose to monetize their content. They will have adverts within articles which brings in revenue as well as other forms of sponsorships, collaborations and affiliations. Many of the more professional websites have managed to earn enough money to fund worldwide travel with some staying in luxurious places for free.

Call me a cynic but I don't see objective journalism when I read an "independent" travel article from someone staying in a five-star hotel, in a private pool villa overlooking an ocean and it's been provided completely free of charge and their review is "completely without bias"!

I have chosen not to go down this route and would also not write articles for a publication "in exchange for exposure"......one of the oldest publishing tricks in the book.

Some suggest monetizing as soon as you launch your blog to get your readers used to seeing adverts etc. Others say it's best to wait until you have a large enough audience, ultimately the decision is yours. One thing to consider, is that by monetizing early it should allow you to continue traveling which is the fuel for future articles.

It seems that the best method to monetize your travel website is to have multiple diverse streams of revenue. This is because some will work better than others, but the overall effect is a growing income stream.

Monetization Examples

Affiliate marketing: You recommend products and services you like or preferably use on your website with a link, usually to Amazon. If someone uses your link to make a purchase, you receive a small commission.

Adverts: These are usually placed between paragraphs while others will pop-up and flash. I find these abhorrent and would not recommend you use them unless you are desperate for income.

Ebooks: Many go down this route of revenue generation by creating an ebook (a digital book) about a certain destination or subject in very fine detail. This is put on their website as a downloadable PDF, while some chose to print a physical book. There is also the option of putting your ebook onto Amazon with its huge reach.

Sponsorships: Companies may approach you to promote their product in exchange for a fee. This can be a lucrative revenue stream should the product or service be something you would use yourself and of interest to your readers.

Ambassador: A brand ambassador is similar to sponsorship, but you will be promoting a brand rather than an individual product. However, this usually covers a longer period of time and is usually more lucrative than a single sponsorship deal.

Online Courses: While not necessarily connected to your travel blog, many have created online courses and earn a very reasonable income from them. Your course can be promoted on your website even though they are normally hosted on an outside platform such as Udemy, Skillshare and Teachable.

Photography: Is another popular revenue generator but the quality of your photos has to be very high. The revenue you can expect from a few of the major online stock photography websites is usually only a few dollars per download. You therefore need to sell many images to earn a decent income.

Travel Writer Characteristics

What are some of the characteristics or traits of a good and seasoned travel writer. I only have a few of these under my belt at present but am working towards some of the others.

Writing Skills: To break into professional writing and to be taken seriously by the publishing houses you need the basics of your trade.....above average writing abilities.
Preparation: Research the history, religion, politics and culture of the country you are visiting as this gives you a base level of understanding. But you should follow your instincts and your heart as your journey goes down unexpected routes. This is when the magic happens.
Determination: It should go without saying that being a travel writer is in many respects a very glamorous job, so determination should be the easiest of traits. This should keep you going even when the number of likes you receive is not as expected.
Ageless: Fortunately we live in a time where age, whether extremely young or old is irrelevant to being a good writer. Finally a career open to all ages.
Active: You need to immerse yourself in the culture and that means talking to local people and doing the things that they do. This should give you an edge with your writing as opposed to being a tourist that only sees things on the surface.
Unique: There are so many excellent travel blogs in existence so make sure yours is different and you have your own unique selling point or preferably points. I do believe benchmarking is important, so see what others are doing and take inspiration and copy some of the their good ideas.....but then make them your own.
Balance: A writer needs to finely balance taking the reader on an epic journey using creative words and avoiding exaggeration. Not everything is amazing, unique or life changing.....be real, your readers will appreciate it.
Engagement: Following on from Balance, it's important to engage the reader as you are asking them to join you in the most passive form of entertainment (reading), when compared to watching a film or listening to music.
Emotion: If you just inform your readers of basic information regarding your destination you are most likely, missing the point. You need to paint a picture with a thousand words....yes it's a cliché, but true.
Publish: This may seem obvious but until you put your articles online or in print form, it's all talk. You can edit an article forever and be a perfectionist but until you publish in some form, you are not a writer.
Courage: It's very easy to write articles similar to other writers in praise of a destination. True courage, comes from writing what you really believe and experience, even though it may be negative.
Aspiration: You will most likely not be the world's best writer today. But by actually making a start, there is a certainty that you will improve and at some point may become a better or accomplished writer.
Style: A final piece of advice, is to write as though you are speaking to a friend. You wouldn't want to alienate a friend by using certain types of language, equally you don't wish this upon your readers.

Conclusion

We are living in a truly interesting and creative time, where virtually anyone can set up a website or blog. You will be entering the world of publishing, where your blog is the modern version of the paper magazine. You will be the writer, editor, photographer, public relations person, videographer and IT specialist. Some of these elements will take longer to become proficient in or master than others. Eventually you will have a set of skills that are fully transferable to many other fields and of use to others in the digital realm or to use on your own future web based projects.

Be prepared to be transformed by your travels and writing. When we open our hearts and minds to the countries we visit and the people we talk to, we let go of the ego and truly experience a different way of seeing things and possibly changing the way we live our own lives.

I wish you all the best in your future projects in whatever format they may take......begin by taking your first steps by making plans.

HOMEPAGE

Get in touch

If you have any comments, questions or just want to say hello.....let's chat

How to create a travel blog