Tripsget’s Birthday: what I have learned from 1 year of travel blogging

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Hello, everybody. This time I would like to tell you what I have learned from 1 year of travel blogging.

*update from 2020*: it’s been a while! I also wrote two more blogging-related posts about my mistakes and things I wish I had known. Make sure to check them out:

When we decided to create this blog with Pepe 1 year ago, I was new to travel blogging. I didn’t even have my favorite bloggers or blogs I was following, nothing at all. I only knew that there was not enough information every single time we were traveling abroad. Planning a trip to Asia was probably the biggest struggle ever, and after that comes our road trip around Balkans. Finding relevant and useful information was hard to get even before, and that made me think about starting the blog, where I would write about our travels and mention the information that I couldn’t find before.

So I created an account on Blogger and started writing, but soon Pepe persuaded me, that WordPress.org is definitely a better idea. I argued first, but then… agreed. That’s how my blogging life has officially started. Choosing a WordPress Theme was a pain in the neck. I chose a free design but after 3 weeks, that was already not enough and we bought a paid one. I still think it’s not enough either, but I haven’t seen any better options…yet. Changing the theme was quite challenging and some of the designs (featured photos) just looked horrifying with the new design, so it was a lot of work, to change many of them.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_style=”3d” style=”square” message_box_color=”danger”]Mistake 1: Not spending enough time to find a theme you like and not buying a theme right away[/vc_message][vc_column_text]

From the very beginning, I knew that the cheapest hosting option didn’t include much storage space, that’s why all the photos featured in the posts were uploaded from Flickr. That was a great solution in terms of storage, but we missed a really important factor – image SEO, that could bring us many more visitors if we uploaded photos to the blog and indicated the attributes and keywords properly. This only occurred to me last September, so since then, I was trying to upload photos to the blog. However, I still count edit all the previous posts and replace the images.[/vc_column_text][vc_message message_box_style=”3d” style=”square” message_box_color=”danger”]Mistake 2. Screwing up all the Image SEO and using Flickr[/vc_message][vc_column_text]Also, I only had a faint idea about general SEO for the blog, and I started doing ridiculous things thinking I actually do everything alright. Only after 4-5 months, I figured an idea about backlinks and link juice and even later – about keyword density and content optimization. I’m not blaming myself for not knowing basics of SEO from the very beginning, nope, I actually read some literature about it, that I didn’t understand. It’s quite hard and it’s not for everybody. I’m happy that I managed to figure it out now, at least a little bit. My advice after 1 year of travel blogging: read as much as possible, check the posts by our fellow travel bloggers, where they explain SEO in an easy way. I hope that one day I’ll manage to create a small basic SEO guide for travel blogging beginners.
[/vc_column_text][vc_message message_box_style=”3d” style=”square” message_box_color=”danger”]Mistake 3. Not paying enough attention to SEO (not only image SEO)[/vc_message][vc_column_text]

1 year of travel blogging what I have learned

For some reason, I thought that teaming up with other bloggers is not for me. Moreover, I didn’t know almost anything about Facebook groups for travel bloggers. When I finally found some groups and joined them in November, I was astonished by how much valuable information these groups have! I was so disappointed that I didn’t know about them before. Now, after 1 year of travel blogging I would like to share with you 2 of my favourite Facebook groups for travel bloggers:

Female Travel Bloggers

Bloggers United[/vc_column_text][vc_message message_box_style=”3d” style=”square” message_box_color=”danger”]Mistake 4: Not being a team player from the very beginning [/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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I didn’t pay much attention to Pinterest and didn’t know that it’s actually one of the most powerful sources of traffic for blogging beginners. However, just creating beautiful catchy pins doesn’t help. You need to join some Facebook groups for Pinterest and participate in various Pinterest threads almost every day. I did that for 3 weeks and our traffic tripled! However, once you stop doing that, your traffic will slowly decrease. Participating in Pinterest threads is definitely not the best activity, and it really resembles procrastination and waste of the time, but in case you want to be noticed, especially at the earliest months of your blog, it makes sense to participate. Don’t forget about Flipboard and Stumbleupon, sometimes they also bring a decent amount of people to your blog.

I participate in them from time to time, for example, when a new post is up. Doing it all the time is way too time-consuming, though.[/vc_column_text][vc_message message_box_style=”3d” style=”square” message_box_color=”danger”]Mistake 5: Neglecting Pinterest, Flipboard and spending too much time on Twitter[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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I didn’t know much about various affiliate networks either. I started joining them in November, as soon I entered various Facebook groups, and by that time I already had quite a solid Social Media following: around 20000 people. Why I regret not doing it before? Well, it’s possible that I would have received some nice offers even before. Now, with more than 37000 followers on Social Media and 1 year of travel blogging, I receive offers from time to time.

The networks, where I received at least 1 offer include:

Inzpire.me
Buzzoole[/vc_column_text][vc_message message_box_style=”3d” style=”square” message_box_color=”danger”]Mistake 6: Not joining affiliate networks right away[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]I always considered myself shy. That means I really don’t enjoy approaching people, talking to them and offering some sort of services. I was always waiting for offers, where people would approach our blog first. Of course, there were various offers, especially offering affiliate partnerships. However, that was nothing compared to others bloggers’ tales. Nobody has offered us a week in Maldives or at least a weekend in Italy yet, but it’s also because we never actually pitched for tourism boards. I was always insecure about our traffic and social media following and avoided pitching to hotels, agencies and tourism boards because I thought what we have is clearly not enough. When I carefully went through the information in β€œFemale Travel Bloggers” I realized, that many bloggers started successfully pitching, when they had one-third of our traffic and following. So I would have probably started pitching earlier.

[/vc_column_text][vc_message message_box_style=”3d” style=”square” message_box_color=”danger”]Mistake 7: Not pitching to hotels and tourist boards[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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1 year of travel blogging what I have learned

The lamest thing you could do (as a travel blogger) is probably comparing yourself to the others. I confess I do it very often and I hate this in myself. You won’t get anything but disappointment from that, because there will be always someone who has reached way better results than you, even within the same amount of time. Travel blogging is not a competition, you should not blame yourself for not working on the blog hard enough to get to 10, 100, 1000 visitors a day. As long as it isn’t your only job or your only source of income, don’t worry, you will slowly get to what you would like to reach. All you need is time, motivation and patience.[/vc_column_text][vc_message message_box_style=”3d” style=”square” message_box_color=”danger”]Mistake 8: Comparing yourself to the others[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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Well, travel blogging is a job for some people. And I have never seen it as such. For me, it was always a hobby, and a tiny bonus for my CV (additional skills, you know). However, for some reason, I was sure that we will have plenty of offers straight away. Of course, I didn’t and it was stupid to think so from the very beginning. Offers come when you are of potential interest for various companies and to reach that, you need to work on your traffic, engagement, and content.[/vc_column_text][vc_message message_box_style=”3d” style=”square” message_box_color=”danger”]Mistake 9: Hoping to get plenty of offers right away [/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

After 1 year of travel blogging, I understood many things. Blogging is amazing, but if you want to see a serious outcome, prepare to work hard. Participate in various threads to grow your social and referral traffic and social media following, pitch to the hotels and tourism boards. Take some time to study the basic SEO and don’t spare time in order to create beautiful pins and images. And most importantly, don’t compare yourself with the others.

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35 thoughts on “Tripsget’s Birthday: what I have learned from 1 year of travel blogging”

    • Thanks a lot for your comment, Katie! I would recommend a group called Pinterest for Travel Bloggers. As for the image SEO, you just need to set the alt and the name of the photos properly (using your main keyword for the article). I’m planning to expand this guide very soon πŸ™‚

      Reply
  1. Great information for anyone starting a travel blog. I did a lot of the same things and realizing what a community can do for you is great. I am glad someone wrote something like this for the new bloggers out there!

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    • Thanks a lot for you comment! That’s exactly what I was thinking – there is not enough information for the beginners, so I decided to help a little bit. I wish I encountered something like this when I was just starting πŸ™‚

      Reply
  2. This is wonderful! Great insight. My friend walked me through the startup process, but as a new blogger, it’s great to see the mistakes and steps you took and learned from. Great read!

    Reply
  3. I found this post extremely helpful, I have been blogging for just over a year and I have done/still guilty of making some of these mistakes. I would be really interested in reading a post on how you grew your social media..really struggling with that and not sure what I am not doing/doing wrong. Thanks for sharing all these tips and keep up the good work πŸ™‚ x

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    • Thanks a lot, Veronica πŸ™‚ I’m planning to expand this guide and will def write about Twitter and Instagram (my most successful channels). I’m still a beginner of YouTube, though πŸ™‚

      Reply
  4. Congrats on 1 year! There are some great lessons you learned and I will be taking those into account for my own blog. I definitely neglect Pinterest and need to do that more often! And am considering switching my blog over to WordPress.org!

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    • Thanks a lot, Anna! Yes, Pinterest is definitely a must – it brings soo much traffic comparing to other channels. Switching to WordPress.org is a bit hard, but it would definitely benefit you in the future

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  5. You’ve made strides in just one year! Great work! I’m learning a lot and picking up tips from this post as well. I def need to up my Pinterest game and SEO knowledge.

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  6. Super impressive you have gain so many followers all in your first year! Great work, and helpful advice for new bloggers. πŸ™‚

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    • Thanks a lot, Jackie! It wasn’t actually so hard to start gaining them, the biggest problem now is to keep them growing as fast as they were πŸ™‚

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  7. Great post! You seem to have learned quite a bit in this year, it makes me thinking I should maybe invest more.. but then again, I have a full-time job as well, and not Always the energy to devote so much time to social media and all that!

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    • Thanks, Brigitte! Well, that’s true, having a full time job and working hard on Social Media is very hard. However, it’s not impossible. I was working full-time until last November and still managed to achieve quite a high social media following. Working on Pinterest with full-time job is way harder though (

      Reply
  8. Not focusing on Pinterest was also my mistake in the beginning! I thought Facebook is important, but with their algorithm, it is not a great traffic source. I also didnΒ΄t set up other social media accounts, i only started with instagram many months in…but there is so much to learn all the time that I donΒ΄t have time to regret what I did, I need to work on what I already know is necessary πŸ™‚

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    • I totally agree with you, Karin! Facebook is extremely hard these days, if you’re not paying to show your posts to your followers. This freaks me out a bit, too. Seems like as a beginner, you just can’t be successful on Facebook.

      Reply
  9. Thankyou for these tips! I started my blog in January and constantly compare my blog to other bloggers! You are so right in saying that it will take time and patience! Keep up the good work ?

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    • I think in the beginning comparing is good, because you sort of have examples of great work, but at some point it’s necessary to stop comparing, otherwise you’ll end up being sad. Good luck with you blog, Tracey!

      Reply
  10. I’m also at my first year of blogging and facing a lot of struggles, but I’m sure that when you want something bad enough and work hard on it, it will happen. It was very nice to read about your first year of travel blogging experience. Happy travels!

    Reply
  11. Ahhh this has been super helpful! I just started my travel blog this week and I’m so overwhelmed I don’t really know what to focus on first! I requested to be added to some facebook groups! I’m just a little confused with pinterest – i added myself to a travel tailwind tribe but I have only written 2 articles so I don’t have too much to pin just yet. I only have like 380 followers on pinterest – once I start pinning my pins to tailwind hopefully this changes! And then trying to figure out wordpress is a huge learning curve. I am currently stuck on social media feather! Code is so confusing – do you have any good posts from yourself or elsewhere that can help with social media feather? I only want it to show my twitter, facebook, and pinterest profiles, not linked in, google plus etc, SORRY for the long comment I must be venting!!!! THANKS AGAIN !

    Reply
  12. Thank you for this, it was reassuring. I’ve just started out and really I just want to write. I can’t get my head around SEO and social media! I’ll look forward to your other posts…

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  13. Thank you very much for this post. Also I should probably tell you that the Pinterest trick works since I found this article of yours because of Pinterest!! I have just started travelling and want to establish a travel blog. Your tips are extremely helpful for a beginner. Grateful to you πŸ™‚

    Reply
  14. Great advice! I found you guys on pinterest actually – haha! I launched 3 weeks ago and it’s been a blast learning from people who have been around for a while. Building my page up while I’m stuck at home. Thanks for posting!

    Reply
  15. Wow this was such a wonderful and detailed post! I’ve been blogging for quite some time now but enjoyed reading this and getting some amazing insight!

    Reply

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