What have I learned from 2 years of travel blogging?

*Drums* It’s been 2 years since we’ve started blogging (well, from now on, I’ll say I, because… even though Pepe is my life companion and he’s taking the most wonderful photos of me, he’s not really BLOGGING at all and probably doesn’t have a clue about these blogging mistakes I’ll be talking about in this post). So well, it’s time that I tell you everything I’ve learned from 2 years of travel blogging.

Here’s the first part, which I wrote when Tripsget turned 1: read it here.

I’ve learned that networking is everything

If you want to be a successful blogger and be invited to press trips, sign contracts with brands and be contacted about sponsored posts, getting all this will be 10 times easier if you already know many people in the industry. From blogger friends to tourism boards contacts, you need to know many people to succeed in travel blogging. I’ve spent the whole first year of travel blogging trying to succeed on my own, but it would have been so much easier if I started networking and attending travel-related events from the day-1 of blogging!

I’ve learned that conferences can be fun

Alright, I’ve been to conferences and Expos before and they’ve been ridiculous and extremely tiring. Travel conferences are nothing like that! TBEX is like a giant week-long party, while Traverse is a greatest weekend-break travel bloggers can ever wish for! Few weeks after attending Traverse, I was invited on a press trip, signed a contract for two sponsored posts and got an incredible number of useful connections!

I’ve learned that blogging can be a chore

If you want to be successful and rank in Google (or get a lot of traffic from Social Media), you need to work a lot. From keyword research, to pin creation and Pinterest threads, you will spend A LOT of time doing extra work for your blog. At some point, I even burned out. I realise that I spend only 1-2 hours writing a post and another 3-4 hours optimising it, inserting affiliate links and promoting it on Pinterest. Blogging stopped being fun and I certainly stopped enjoying it at some point. So I realised that I just want to keep it as a great hobby rather than transform it into a part-time job. Since then, I stopped spending so much time optimising posts and participating in threads. Of course, the stats followed as well, but then you need to choose your priorities.

I’ve learned that you can’t put all your eggs in one basket

Bloggers need to diversify their risks. Everybody got really concerned with the recent algorithm changes of Instagram when the posts started getting 1/3 of the likes they used to get. I was also relying on Instagram too much and realised, that it’s better to have a wider portfolio of Social Networks rather than rely on Instagram only (well, it still accounts for 70% of my success, but now I’m way more conscious about it). Right now, I’m trying to work more on Youtube and, of course, the blog.

I’ve learned that in order to succeed faster, you need to invest

If you want to treat your blog as a business and start earning money from it, you need to be serious about blogging from the very beginning. In order to succeed faster, you can invest. If you have money for the initial investment, it’s great. Your life will be so much easier. You can buy a domain with a high authority (instead of building your DA for a couple of years), you can pay for guest posts and have them accepted very fast. Finally, you can pay for promotion of your posts on Social Media.

These 5 things were the ones I’ve learned from 2 years of travel blogging.

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