11 Must-know tips for newbie travel bloggers

So, you’ve decided to start a travel blog. Congratulations! Starting Little Grey Box changed my life and starting your own could change your own too. Kicking off a brand new blog is really overwhelming, like, incredibly overwhelming. It feels like it’ll be quite straightforward, but once you actually get into it, it’s wild. There are so many things to think about, plan and execute. It can be crazy trying to work out where to start and what to do next. To help you get started, I wanted to share with you, my must-know tips for newbie travel bloggers. I hope they’re helpful, if not, just forget you ever visited this part of the internet. Scrub me off your browser history and move on.

Planning your trip?
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Hotels: I use Agoda
Insurance: Cover-More
Rentals: Discover Cars
RVs: Motorhome Republic SALE!
Transfers: Welcome Pickups
eSIM: eSIMPAL Use LGB15

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1. You absolutely, 100%, most definitely need a niche

Not sure if you’ve noticed, but there are exactly 1 Kajillion travel blogs on the internet. That’s a super accurate figure, no need to double-check it. If you’re going to start a travel blog in this day and age, you need to stand out. So, before you choose a name, set up a website and ask your mum to subscribe to your e-mail list, figure out exactly what your blog is. It is ESSENTIAL you are razor-sharp, crystal-clear, and totally 100% sure what your blog offers people, why it’s valuable to them and what your niche is.

Homework: Sit down with a cup of tea, pen and paper. Set aside an hour or two to write down all your ideas then hone it in. Define your niche, write down what your blog offers readers and why it’s valuable to readers. Come up with one sentence that perfectly captures what your blog represents.

2. Make sure your name is unique

I’m not a name expert or anything, but there are enough blogs with the following words in their titles: wanderlust, wandering, wander, passport, travelling, travel and nomad. I’m in NO WAY bashing blogs with those words in their names, especially because a lot of people with blog names involving those words are close friends of mine. BUT those words have been used enough now. There are already many well-known, established bloggers with blog names involving those words. It’s time to branch out and be unique so your blog can stand out.

Homework: Grab that pen and paper again. Start jotting down words you like; names, places, things, colours, sounds… anything! It’s important to remember that, once you’re big enough, your name won’t even matter. So, think outside the square. Name it something really weird, if you want to. Once you have it, CHECK that name is available as a registered trading name, as a blog name/URL and is available on social media accounts. You don’t want a name too similar to anyone else’s.

3. Get a clear idea of the layout and feel you want for your blog

Before you even begin the process of setting up a blog, you need to know what you want. Do you want a scrolling theme or a static front page? How are you going to organise your blog posts? Will you set things out by destination, region or continent? Will you have different sections of your site, like ‘packing tips?’ Do you want a minimalist theme? What’s your colour scheme? It’s essential you think through every aspect of how your blog will look and how people will use it.

Homework: Spend some time on the internet, visiting your favourite blogs and discovering new ones. Use them to help you figure out what you like and what you don’t like about blogs, then take the best bits or your favourite bits and bring them together to influence the design of your blog.

4. You aren’t just building a blog, you’re building a brand

Right from the start of your blog, you need to be on-brand. It isn’t just a website, it’s a brand. So, you need to understand all the elements of your brand and what you represent and allow those to flow through every aspect of what you do. A big focus will be consistency. Make sure you set your blog posts out the same way each time. Make sure you use the same colour scheme, fonts and logo. Build a reliable, consistent brand. Come up processes and systems for how you post on your blog and on social media, then STICK to them. I’ve got two helpful posts about how to create consistently good blog content and helpful tips to improve your blog writing. 

Homework: Take some time to put the skeleton of your brand together. Choose fonts, colours and methods for posting on the site and social media. Remember, if you fail to plan you plan to fail (lame, but so true!)

5. You don’t have to be the master of everything

There’s absolutely no way you’re going to launch your blog and be the master of WordPress, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Threads all on the same day. That’s wild. So take the pressure off yourself! Focus on one thing at a time. Sure, you’re going to need social media to support your blog and reach your audience/new readers, but scale back your social media to fit what you can reasonably achieve. Make a plan, for example, to post on your blog twice a week, update Instagram once a day and get one TikTok out a week. Use scheduling to help you. I have a great post about the inner-workings of Little Grey Box and my approach to running a blog full-time

Homework: Do up a realistic post schedule (for the blog and social media). Make sure it’s something you have the time, energy and content to achieve. Each time you meet your target for the week, give yourself a treat! (Food is a great motivator).

6. Success is unlimited, so stay focused on your grind

It’s really easy to look at the number of talented, successful bloggers out there and feel like you’ll never succeed. I do it all the time. You guys, success is unlimited. There’s no limit of success in this world, so someone else’s success doesn’t have any impact on your own. Your success is all your own and it will come to you at the precisely right time. So, rather than looking left and right at what other people are doing, focus that energy on your own grind. Stay focused and consistent. The key to succeeding in the blog game is to never stop and never give up. You have to want it more than you want to stop doing it because you don’t think you’ll succeed. You might want to read this post about how to be a full-time travel blogger… 

Homework: Watch Rocky or Flashdance or 50 Cent’s cinematic masterpiece, ‘Get rich or die tryin,’ or some other motivating shiz.

7. Know right now that it ain’t going to be easy

Becoming a successful blogger is not easy. I want you to know that upfront. I’ve spoken to and met a lot of people who start a travel blog for the supposed ‘fame’ and the ‘glamorous lifestyle’. Many of these people will start a travel blog expecting themselves to find fame and success within a few weeks or months of laughing and when it doesn’t happen, they give up. It’s important to be realistic, you guys. It takes around 3 years for a blog to mature, so get that number in your mind right now and let it motivate you, let it take the pressure off you. You might want to read this post about how I learned anything in life is possible. 

Homework: Set yourself some goals. What would you like your following to be 6 and 12 months from launch? How about 1, 2 or 3 years from launch? What kind of work offers would you be getting? Goal setting is really important and something I do regularly. How can you reach goals you don’t have?!

8. Decide how you want to make money

I’m always asked how much money I make as a travel blogger. I’m not going to go over that again here, I’ve got a really detailed blog post all about that you can read here. There are many different ways to monetise your blog, and honestly, the best approach is usually a mix rather than picking just one. I run display advertising through Mediavine, which quietly earns in the background on every page view without me lifting a finger. I also work with affiliate programs, take on sponsored content and partner directly with brands on hosted trips and campaigns. Each one does a different job. Advertising pays the bills consistently even in quiet months, affiliate links reward the practical, planning-heavy content, and brand partnerships are where the bigger swings come from. The trick is figuring out which mix suits your content and your audience, then not being precious about using more than one.

Homework: Where’s that pen and paper? You need it. Write down every way you could realistically make money from your blog, advertising, affiliate, sponsored content, brand partnerships, products, coaching, whatever fits. Then rank them by how well they’d suit your niche and your audience. Be specific.

9. Sort your affiliate tools out before you actually need them

Right, so once you’ve worked through tip 8 and decided how you want to make money, here’s a practical one to go with it: don’t sign up to fifteen different affiliate programs one at a time like an absolute lunatic. I did this. It was dumb. Every travel brand has its own login, its own payout threshold, its own everything, and you will burn actual hours of your life chasing $4.20 across three different dashboards.

Instead, find yourself one solid affiliate network and let it do the heavy lifting for you. I run Travelpayouts across a mix of my Agoda and GetYourGuide links, set up back in January. It’s not going to buy you a yacht. Most individual bookings land somewhere between a few bucks and fifty. But it adds up quietly in the background while you’re off doing more important things, like writing blog posts or having an existential crisis about your niche (see tip 1). Since January it’s paid out just over $3,300, with another $860 already sitting in the pipeline for August. Small, steady, and boring in the best possible way.

Homework: Before your traffic picks up, pick one network and get your main links set up now. Future you, digging through fifty old posts trying to retrofit links later, will send present you a thank you card.

10. Know that, at some point, you’ll need to jump

My blog wasn’t successful when I quit my job to do it full-time. In fact, it was fabulously unsuccessful. I was earning nothing from it, posting semi-regularly and wasn’t very focused on it. Those issues were the symptom of me not having the time, energy or love to pour into it, despite how much I loved it. So, I quit my job to give it a go. That changed everything. It was ‘do or die’ from that point on, though it never felt like I could fail because I was chasing my dream. There will come a time with your blog where you will be exhausted by juggling a full-time job and the blog. At that point, you’ll need to make a decision. To jump or not to jump?

Homework: Make sure you have a strategy to take care of yourself mentally, physically and spiritually. Running a blog is a lot of work, it’s a business! Adding that to your existing responsibilities can be very draining. So make sure you’re prepared and have a plan to give yourself the rest you need and soul-nourishing required to be creative. You can do it!

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