Introduction
Starting a travel blog is not necessary starting a business, it could simply be a wish to sharing your experience. We started this travel blog in 2019 to share with others our travel experiences. Before going anywhere, we would check travel blog to help us organise our holidays and what we would do in it. Later, even as we became last minute travellers, we are still checking online for other experiences, only this time it is from today to tomorrow. Anyway, after using so many travel blogs to help us, we decided to do the same.
We originally created TheDailyPackers to share our travel experiences, so that other wanderers could use our experience along their journey.
At first, we both had our own job and the travel blog would only be something we did on the side from time to time. But with the challenge of 2020, we got plenty of time and really invested in our travel blog.
We had no ambitions about living from it, and after a year we still did not make any money out of it, even though we started to add some affiliations and ads to it.
Also, it is me (Alex) who is mostly doing the travel blog while Tina focuses on her Yoga studies and site. And to remind you, I am an Automotive Engineer, project manager and international businessman. I have ZERO experience and training about web design, journalism, writing and so on… I even make lots of spelling mistakes while writing the travel blog.
Another important thing is that starting a travel blog is something that everybody can do, and the amazing thing is that you do not need to bring up tons of money upfront to do so.
Anyhow, this is how we started.
Table of Contents
Step 1: Establish your Audience
The first step to start a successful travel blog, especially at the beginning is to determine who will be your readers. There are tons of travel blog businesses out there and starting with a chosen market will help you grow faster.
To be honest, we did not even consider this step when we started, we just opened it for us and did not have any wish to make it a business. If you are in this set of minds, you can just go to step 2 right away. And let time decide what your travel blog will become. It will be fun! If not:
- Think about what type of article you will be writing about. Travel is a huge category with so many possibilities:
- Solo Traveller, Couple, Family
- Budget, Mid-Range, Luxurious
- Vacations, Adventures, Cultures
- What will your main audience be? Of course, you will have people for everywhere reading your blog, but the most of them will be coming from one group of audience.
- Men? Women? Couple?
- Which age?
- Find out other travel blogs you like to get inspired by them. And find how you could write on a similar topics but being different at the same time.
Step 2: Find a name that suits you
Finding a great name is not an easy task. Especially, once you have it everywhere on your travel blog, it will not be that easy to replace it.
- Make it stand out of the box: There are tons of blogs already using common travel word. Nomadic, Adventurous, Wandering, Wanderlust and so on. They are all over used terms.
- Make it short and easy to remember: We would recommend not to go over 4 words. Your readers need to be able to easily type it without making misspelling.
- Make it last over time: Avoid having a date in it, or a time frame as you do not know what the future hold for you. Also, try to be as general as possible. Today you may write about luxurious travel but tomorrow you could be camping.
- Synergy over the web: Check that your name is available (NameCheckr) on all the social platforms you will be using. Using a .com domain name is also the most recommend.
We first made a list of various names we could have used, then checked them out and in the end, we opted for TheDailyPackers:
- The Daily: to refer to a journal that will be publish on regular basis
- Packers: From Backpackers as we are most of the time travelling with backpack or hiking with one.
After much though about it, we love the name, but over time it might prove not that easy to backpack luxuriously 
But it isn’t a big deal and in the end the name might not be that important. The most important will be the content you are sharing with your readers. So, don’t lose too much time to pick up a name and start writing ASAP.
Step 3: Set up your domain and hosting
Introduction
If like us, this is probably your first website and you are not from IT, some terms might be confusing.
- Domain: is the URL of your website, or simply the address. For us it is: thedailypackers.com. You will need to buy this name annually to be able to use it.
- Hosting: is your host. The server (the place) where your website will be store. You will need to rent a space on a server via a Host.
Bluehost
The creation of your domain and its purchase will be directly done from the hosting company you chose. We checked quite a few of them, but in the end, we are super FAN of BLUEHOST. It works well, has great support and is cheap! When we started, we didn’t want to pay tons of money and that’s why we opted for them.
EXCLUSIVE OFFER: If you sign up for Bluehost through my travel blog, you will just pay $3.95/month rather than $7.99! So, click here and get started right away.
Now let’s see step by step how to power up Bluehost.
We would recommend the same plan we opted for. The Basic one for $3.95 per month. And once your Travel blog gets significant amount of people visiting it, you can upgrade your plan.
Click on select, under the Basic Plan, and head to the next page where you will have 2 options:
- Start a new domain.
- Or transfer your domain to Bluehost if you already have an URL.
Be careful and check multiple times for spelling errors. You do not want to register the wrong domain.
We recommend starting with the Basic 36-Month Plan. It works out to be $3.95 per month, rather than $7.99 a month, saving you money over the 3 years that you could use else where or on another plugin.
Fill in your payment information and you are good to go!
Step 4: Setting up WordPress
Basic parameters & Activation
WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms. It is a brilliant free platform for beginners and has tons of plugins to help you design your travel blog.
Now that you signed up for Bluehost, chose your password for WordPress. And then pick a theme. No need to worry about this, it can be change later and it is just a placeholder for now. (In case, we are using ASTRA).
Once you picked up your theme, click on START Building.
Next, you will have to set up your WordPress account and whether your website is business or personal. Go ahead and pick business
Fill in your website’s name and description. Again, don’t worry too much. You will be updating it later to make it SEO (search engine) Friendly.
Next, opt for the static welcome page, and then hit the “not now” on the next screen (you don’t want the entire internet knowing your address just yet) and again the “not now” for WooCommerce. (Which is a store/sales plugin and you won’t need it now)
And there you go; you can now start designing you SITE!
Connect to your site/Travel Blog
But first, let’s connect to it. To do so, type http://yourdomainname.com/wp-admin into your browser, and you will see this screen:
Type in your username and password, and you will be logged into your WordPress dashboard.
On the left-hand side of your dashboard, you will see:
- Posts: where you write, draft, and publish your travel blog posts
- Pages: where you build static pages on your site.
- Comments: where you approve, spam, or reply to comments on your travel blog posts
- Appearance: where you change the look of your travel blog, install new themes, edit your menu…
- Plugins: where you install and update plugins
- Settings: where you can alter your site settings and users.
Settings
Head to Settings where you can parameter lots of items on your site, but the most important are:
- Reading:
- Your home page displays a static page.
- Homepage: Home
- Posts Page: -Select- do not set one up to be able to design it the way you want with Elementor
- Permalinks:
- Common Settings: Select Post name for the permalinks. This is important for SEO.
Step 5: Theme, Logo, and Plugins
WordPress Theme
Now, let’s pick up a theme. As mentioned earlier, we recommend ASTRA that works well will all plugins on WordPress. The free ASTRA is enough for your travel blog at this point, and you can find it right away in WordPress.
Logo & Design
Next, you will need to build your own logo. Nothing simpler with CANVA (Or CANVA PRO). It is a super friendly platform with tons of pre-made graphics and elements. We are using it every day, and any edited picture on our travel blog is made on CANVA PRO. Which is way easier than Adobe Photoshop. Once you have your logo, set it up on your site. The logo will appear on your web browser, next to the opened page.
Elementor Pro
Now for the design of your site and even your article, we would strongly advise to get Elementor Plug-in right now. We find it to be easier to use than the regular WordPress editor. We would even recommend getting right away the PRO version, not losing time to find additional plugins to install when everything is within Elementor PRO. This way, your site will be running faster.
Elementor PRO Pricing starts at $49 per year for 1 site. At first, we did not pick it up and where looking for additional plugins to do the job. In the end we had tons of them and founded that it was too much to manage. So, we turned to Elementor PRO. $49 a year represent $4 per months. We spent long hours on WordPress and Elementor and found this investment reasonable.
With Elementor PRO, you will have access to Template where you can fully design:
- Header: Upper part of the entire Travel blog where the menu is
- Footer: Lower part of the entire Travel blog.
- Post design: where you can design how will looks all your post
- Popups: To create your own popups and cookie bar.
- Various pre-made elements that you can create and then use through your site.
To install Elementor, go to the plugin section on WordPress, and install it. To get the Pro version, you will need to go to Elementor Page, create an account, and buy. Once done, you will download the plugin in. Zip.
From there, head back to Plug-in in WordPress, and select Add New on top of the page. Drag the Elementor Pro Zip file to install it. Then simply activate it and connect your account to it.
Other Plugins
Free Plugins:
- Akismet Anti Spam: To protect your website against attack and spam.
- Rank Math: To improve your travel blog post and page and rank better in Search Engine. Rank Math is the easiest one and much more efficient than Yoast, especially with Elementor.
- Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights: to follow up the traffic of the site
- MC4WP: Mailchimp for WordPress: For Sign-up and sending Newsletters.
- Smash Balloon Instagram Feed: To insert Instagram picture
- Sticky Header Effects for Elementor: To have your header stay on top even when you scroll down
- WooCommerce: If you want to setup an online store
Paid Plugins:
- Jetpack: To back up your site. You do not need it right now but could be a great option later.
- UberMenu: To create dynamic menu (see on the laptop version)
Step 6: Create your pages, header, footer, and template
Header & Footer
Now that you have Elementor Pro, head to Template on the left side of the WordPress Menu. And create first a:
Those will be present over your complete website. Once you created them you are good for everything you will be creating later (Pages and Posts)
Tutorial : https://elementor.com/blog/header-footer-builder/
Post Template
To create the design of your posts. This is not the post or article itself but the design around it. For example, ours has on the side a small introduction about us and some other things on the side, it also has on the bottom, latest posts, and comment section. Those are all design here.
Tutorial : https://elementor.com/blog/design-your-single-post-template/
Pop-ups : Cookies
All Websites are using cookies, and all site should follow GDPR compliance in Europe as well as CCPA in USA. This isn’t that simple to know what to do, but an easy thing to be on the right track is to create a small pop-up banner for cookies telling your visitor that your site is using them. In a second time, you will also need to write a privacy and terms policy page (but this can way now).
Tutorial: https://docs.elementor.com/article/514-how-to-create-a-cookie-consent-popup
Pages
Now, head to page, click “Add New” and start designing the core page of your website. We started with:
- Home: The main pages of the blog and where your reader will land
- Blog: Where all your blog articles will be. At first, you do not need to create sub-categories or anything.
- About Us: Where you can write about you
- Contact: How to get in Touch with you
Those pages were what we used at the beginning and later, we created more and more to developed our Travel blog.
Menu
Head to Appearance and select menu. You will later add this menu in your header. You can start with a simple menu without sub-item.
Tutorial : https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-add-navigation-menu-in-wordpress-beginners-guide/
Step 7: Create Contents & Track it
Create Articles (Posts)
You can now head to Posts > Add New and start writing your article. With Astra and Elementor. You can first setup your post:
- Title
- Categories: To later order your post on your travel blog
- Status: If you want to publish right away or schedule. There are some SEO basics that say, it’s better to publish at the same time every day or week. But you are not quite here yet. And even after a year, we don’t do it often.
- Tags: We don’t recommend using them, as google is apparently not fan of it.
- Featured image: The image that google will display. We also use this as our top picture
- Excerpt: What will be seen on google
Then Click on Edit with Elementor and start your post.
With time, you can create a Post template that you simply load every time you write a new blog post. This will save you lots of time.
SEO Ranking
With RankMath, it’s really easy to know where you are on your SEO. Just find the SEO section on the top left side dashboard and follow up the advice Try to get the rank mark as high as possible.
Tutorial: https://rankmath.com/blog/elementor-seo/
Step 8: Get connected to the World
You will also want now or later to develop and share more your travel blog.
- Open accounts on every platform right away to get the same name everywhere. Even if you are not going to use them now, at least you get them your name. You would not want someone else to get your name.
- The Social platform we are using
- Facebook Page
- Youtube
We are still growing our audience, and up to know, Facebook and Pinterest seem to be some of best tools to get traffics.
How Much Does It Cost to Start a Travel Blog?
Well, if you followed up our advice, you should be at a cost per year:
- Bluehost: $48
- Domain Name: $20
- Canva Pro: 125$
- Elementor Pro: $49
So, the blogging is costing you $117 and the design $125. So, starting without Canva Pro could also be the better choice to lower the cost.
$117 per year is $9.75 a month.
“Don’t focus on having a great blog. Focus on producing a blog that’s great for your readers.” – Brian Clark
