Blogging Resources (to start a Travel Blog)

Are you interested in learning how to start a travel blog? Great! You’re in the right place!

Blogging is a lot more work than most people think! Myself included, to be honest.
Over the years, I’ve had a few free blogs, including a few on wordpress. I mostly used these blogs while I traveled to update friends and family on what I was up to. It was pretty easy to add a post every few days, upload some pictures, and voila, I had a blog!

If you’re new to blogging, start here!

So when I when started travelling with my boys, I figured why not start a blog about our travels? I wanted it to be more than just a journal though, so I signed up for a paid site and that’s when I realized I didn’t really know too much about blogging after all! (Spoiler alert – it’s not as easy as keeping an online journal…)

And so the learning began. Besides the basic steps to starting a blog, choosing themes and plugins, and getting everything set up, there’s also legal pages you need and ways to promote your blog. It’s not an overnight process but there’s plenty of people and resources to help you along the way!

In fact, it can be a bit overwhelming sometimes as there is just SO much information on how to start a travel blog, or a blog in general. It’s easy to jump in and feel like you’re in over your head.

But don’t worry! There are just a few basic steps that you need to start, and that will get your blog going. After that, everything else is just one step on the learning curve.

>>One piece of advice though – tackle just one thing at a time!

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To get you started, here are some of the resources that I used to start a travel blog. It’s not a definitive list, but through trial and error, what I ended using to get this blog up and running.

Hosting

Bluehost: Lots of people recommended Bluehost and they provide a fairly complete package so I went with them. It’s inexpensive, very easy to set up and I’ve been happy so far.

Some other options (although I haven’t tried them) are Siteground, Dreamhost and HostGator.

Plugins

Plugins are the fancy things that do the behind the scenes stuff for your blog. Many are optional but they do add something that the program wouldn’t normally be able to do by itself. There is literally a plug in for almost anything you can think of. And it’s tempting to add all kinds of plugins to your site, especially if they’re free ones! But after a few hard lessons, I’ve learned that plugins will slow your site down, so less is better in this case. Here are few that you should have.

  • Yoast SEO or All in One SEO
  • Akismet Anti-Spam
  • Cookie Notice
  • W3 Total Cache

And these are just nice to have, but not necessary.

  • Add to Any Share Button
  • Pinterest Widgets
  • Smash Balloon Feed (although this DOES slow your site down)
  • Smush (compresses your images to speed up your site)

Courses

You don’t NEED courses – you can learn everything on your own but it will take a lot of digging around and figuring things out. I usually like that approach, but – there’s lots to learn when building a website, never mind the ‘extra’ stuff, like promoting, marketing, sharing on social media, all that work to get traffic to your site. (Now if you’re just doing this as a hobby, that’s ok! You probably don’t need any of the ‘extra’ stuff, but chances are, you want to promote your site, so that you can monetize it.)

There are literally thousands of courses out there. There’s quite a few free ones but others can be pricey and I hesitated to spend the money. But I’m glad I did – the ones I took were well worth the investment. Take your time and do some research to find the course that’s right for you. The courses listed below are ones that I’ve used and would recommend.

Blogging Courses

  • Blogging for New Bloggers has a FREE course that is designed to grow your traffic and make money blogging. I’ve taken a few courses from these guys and really recommend them!
  • By far, one of the best general blogging courses I’ve taken was Blog by Number. All of Suzi’s courses are easy to follow and provide excellent value. The Blog by Number course goes over everything from setting up hosting to creating posts and pages. Once you’ve got a few posts published, the course goes into adding widgets and getting your site ready for analytics. It’s a comprehensive course that will get your blog up and going!
  • Another absolutely fantastic course is Scale Your Travel Blog. Whether you already have a blog or you’re just starting out, it’s a comprehensive course that includes a section on how to set up your blog properly from the very beginning. The course then concentrates on scaling your blog with proper SEO, from finding good keywords to improving older blog posts, as well as a section on earning money with ads and affiliate marketing. And while the course itself is excellent, the coaching that’s included is invaluable.

Pinterest Courses

  • Pinterest for New Bloggers is run by the same ladies who offer the Blogging for New Bloggers course I mentioned above. I found it easy to follow their recommendations and really like the way they set up their courses. This Pinterest course gives you step by step instructions to create the best pinterest profile and how to make pinterest work for your blog. There’s a FREE course and a premium version.
  • If you’re looking to take Pinterest to the next level, this Pinteresting Strategies course is excellent and will definitely increase your pinterest traffic!

Legal Stuff

  • The Legally Blog course is a FREE course to show you what’s legally required from you as a blogger and how to protect yourself and your blog -and it’s created by a lawyer!
  • This Legal Bundle Pack is also a really good value and gives you legal pages that you can put on your blog.

Free Stock Photo Resources

Hopefully some of these resources have been helpful and now you are ready to start a travel blog!

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