Looking to start a travel blog? I just launched my own travel blog at the beginning of this year, with my website officially going live in February 2023! I wanted to share some of the best tips I’ve learned, as I did a LOT of research before my launch date, and discovered so much along the way.
I am constantly updating my website to improve usability as I learn more about what I enjoy creating and what is most helpful for you! I’ve broken down the process into 4 categories: Branding, Hosting, Content and Launching.
Branding will cover everything related to the design of your blog including its name, colors, theme, niche, etc. Hosting will cover your website hosting options, setting up your website and my personal experience. Content will cover preparing your posts pre-launch, other media channels and creating a content schedule. Launching will cover getting the word out and going live.
If you’re looking to start your own blog of any kind, make sure to check out my complete guide to launching your own blog in just 6 weeks!
This post may contain affiliate links which may earn a commission for purchases made at no additional cost to you. I make sure to only link products and retailers that I use myself and recommend. Thank you for your support! Learn more.
1. Write your mission statement
Before anything else, it’s really important to get clear on your overall purpose and intention behind your blog. I understand this can feel like a daunting first step, so I want to clarify: start with a rough draft and edit it as you build out your blog.
Starting with a mission statement will help drive the rest of your blog. I like to think of it as your “North Star” that will guide you through the rest of the steps. You will later leverage this on your Homepage or About Me to help your audience understand the purpose of your blog.
If you’re interested in diving deeper into designing your blog’s mission statement, please sign up for my mailing list! I will be posting more on how to get clear on your purpose and why it’s essential for success.
2. Choose your blog name
Although choosing your blog name feels like the most important step at the beginning, I PROMISE it is really not. You can always adjust this before you launch. My advice here is to choose something specific enough where it is tailored to you, yet general enough where it can cover a wide variety of your interests.
When I was picking my blog name, MLE Travel Diary, I knew I wanted something with my name or initials and something related to travel. I googled a ton of “blog name generators” but honestly felt overwhelmed and uninspired. I ultimately started bouncing ideas off of a few friends and through all the back and forth, a lightbulb went off and my blog name was born.
3. Choose your brand aesthetic
When I say brand aesthetic, I’m referring to your logo, colors, and theme. You’ll want to pick something simple that helps people understand what your blog is all about.
If you have no idea where to start, I suggest spending a few hours scrolling through sites like Creative Market. This will give you a few ideas of what you want your blog to look like and can really help you start to visualize all the pieces.
4. Establish your niche
I suggest starting with 3 main topics that you are familiar with and can write the most about. This will help you narrow your focus and feel less overwhelmed when starting out. You can always change your focus later on as you get more comfortable and see what you like writing about best. In fact, I have already started to pivot slightly from my original three topics!
A really good piece of advice that I love from Ed Mylett is “You are most qualified to help the person you used to be.” So if you are struggling to come up with your topics, think about what past you would have LOVED to read about. For me, it’s literally a post exactly like this! Wondering where to begin when it came to starting a blog.
Hosting
1. Self-hosting vs hosting
Before I chose a hosting provider, I read a lot about self hosting versus using a hosting website, and all the different hosting providers. To be honest, I am not an expert in the difference nor do I know enough about all the different options to give you advice on what’s best. However, I can provide you with my own experience using Bluehost, what I ultimately landed on.
I use WordPress hosted by Bluehost and have had no issues with it. I actually accidentally deleted my entire site a couple days before I was set to launch it, and their customer service was able to get it back. It took less than 48 hours and I cannot tell you the amount of relief I felt when all was said and done. I’m not sure how self hosting works but let me tell you – I know for a fact I do not have the technical background to fix something like that!
2. Pick a theme
As I mentioned before, there are a lot of awesome websites you can explore that have a wide variety of themes. The theme I currently use is Malina. Click here to shop through all of Creative Market’s WordPress theme options. You’ll want to make sure the theme you choose is optimized for mobile, or “responsive.” This means that it will translate to mobile phones and your layout won’t get all wonky.
3. Get familiar with your host and site
Definitely give yourself some time to get used to everything. I cannot even count the number of times I have googled “how to do ___ wordpress.org” or “how do I change the __ on all of my pages wordpress.org.” I still do this at least once a day.
Also, be patient with yourself here. I think the best way to learn is by trial and error, and you’re going to have to make a few mistakes before you start to figure out what’s really going on.
Content
1. Prepare your content ahead of time
A lot of the advice I read, before launching, said to have at least 12 – 15 posts ready in draft mode before going live. I followed this, and think it is great advice. If you have established your 3 categories, I recommend writing 4 – 5 posts in each category to get you started.
Unless the blog will be your full time focus, you’ll likely realize the benefits of batching your content. Sometimes there are weeks where I don’t have the time to write any posts, or I just don’t have the motivation. I usually write 3 – 4 posts in one day or weekend and then have 2 weeks of posts ready to go.
2. Establish your posting schedule
Some really good advice that I followed was the following:
First week: Post every single day after launching
Second week: Post every other day
Third week + on: Post according to your long term schedule
I think this is ideal for three reasons. One, you are pushing out fresh content frequently when you’re starting out. Two, you want to have multiple posts already up on your blog when people visit it for the first time. And three, it will give your readers a good sense of what to expect from your blog moving forward.
From then on out, decide how many blog posts you can reasonably post per week long term. For me, that number is 2 per week. I have some blogger friends who post once a month, and others who aim to post every day. Definitely tailor your schedule to fit your needs.
3. Build out other social media channels
There are so many social media platforms at the moment, it can feel overwhelming to try to tackle all of them at once. I suggest starting with one or two. However, you can definitely go ahead and “reserve” your username by creating an account with each so that your username is consistent across all channels. Speaking of consistency – make sure to also get an email address specifically for your blog, ideally using your same username.
For me, I started with Pinterest and Instagram, but have since pivoted to focus on primarily Instagram and YouTube. I think this is another good thing to focus on growing before you launch your blog.
Firstly, you can start building your community and networking with other bloggers in your niche. Secondly, you can start to generate excitement around your blog launch, driving even more engagement on launch day! I strongly recommend creating a posting schedule for social media as well, but more to come on this in a future blog post.
Launching
1. Set your launch date!
The best advice I read as I was starting my blog was that you cannot wait until you feel ready to launch. Because (big shocker) you will never feel 100% ready and there is always something else you can edit to make your website or content or theme even better. Perfect does not exist!
The sooner you set your launch date, the better. You’d be surprised at how efficiently you can work to establish your blog when you have a firm deadline. For me, I purchased my website on January 18th and set my launch date for February 6. I ultimately ended up shifting my launch date back 1 week, as I accidentally deleted my entire site as previously mentioned haha. But I was able to focus all the energy and motivation I had to get started to make things happen!
2. Post about your launch
I know when YOU’RE excited about your blog launch, you want other people to be excited as well. By posting about your launch, you’re letting other people in on your excitement, which is 100% contagious. Looking back, I didn’t tell that many people ahead of time, partly also in wanting to keep it special for myself.
If I were to do it differently now, I suggest starting to drum up excitement 3-4 weeks before your launch. You want it to be far enough away from the launch where you can continue building that community. But on the flip side, close enough where people are actively engaged and have it to look forward to in the near future.
If you’ve made it this far, I’d like to be one of the first to tell you, GOOD LUCK and congratulations!!! The only regret I have so far about my travel blog is not starting it sooner! It has been so fun to share my adventures and everything I’ve learned about traveling.
If you have any questions about starting your own blog, or about my personal experience, reach out to me on Instagram or email me here! I would love to answer any questions and help out wherever I can.
mariss
