Would you like to turn into a travel entrepreneur and support yourself and your family with your blog’s income?
Great!
But do not jump into establishing your WordPress travel blog just yet. To begin with, you have to develop a business mindset towards your travel site.
Just before you log a single traveling experience, you need to be able to describe what is unique about your travel site/blog. You also need to be able to recognize the people you are trying to connect with.
A different way to say this is:
You should select a niche
Choosing a niche will allow you to stand out from thousands of various travel blogs. It will help it become possible to attract a laser-targeted audience who share exactly the same interests as you. The significance of selecting a travel blog niche.
Many travel blogs fail to create money because they do not stick to a niche. Often such sites/blogs end up staying side projects or some random travel journals. These types of blogs do not have a unique value proposition or any target audience.
If you are just looking to make an online travel journal, there is absolutely no problem if you do not have these. But if you need to create a full-time income from the blog, you should require to choose a niche.
Real life examples
Monica from The Travel Hack clarifies:
Unfortunately, ‘The travel blogging’ is just a saturated niche therefore if you wish to create it, you need to aim your niche even further to a specific area of travel.
Consider combining two niches for example:
- Travel + fashion
- Travel + cooking
- Travel + children
- Travel + reviewing boutique hotels
- Travel + fitness
- Travel + spas
- Travel + festivals
Basically, Monica is indicating to club your passion for traveling with the other one of your passions to produce an ultra-specific niche.
Monica’s site’s niche is definitely travel. However, she targets those who have full time jobs and are trying to plan weekend journey travels.
So her niche is weekend+travel.
I understand the idea of combining two niches will look weird in the beginning, but there are a number of successful travel blogs that have done so.
Here's just another instance, ‘The Travel Bite’ blog.
At The Travel Blog, blogger Rachelle Lucas unites travel with food.
Exactly like Rachelle and Monica, you too, should transition from truly being a traveler to a specific type of a traveler (blogger). Thus, think out of the box.
Think about mixing 2 niches.
For example, you are able to specialize in covering travel+festivals. Better yet, you are able to specialize in covering food festivals. If the above mentioned brainstorming does not help, use some hints from Jessica from Global Girl Travels:
- Budget travel
- Solo travel
- Female travel
- Travel photography
- Adventure travel
- Luxury travel
- Around-the-world travel
- Traveling for work
- Food destinations
- Music destinations
- Off-the-beaten path travel
- City or country guides
While selecting a niche does force you to cater to a narrow segment within the broad travel-loving crowd, it is also the only real way to connect strongly with this particular segment and to become their go-to resource whenever they plan their travel journey.
When you connect with a niche of travel fans, they will purchase stuff according to your recommendation. They trust you once you recommend:
- Travel gears
- Tour packages
- Hotels
- Restaurants
- Flights
The many these users trust your recommendations, the more your earning potential will likely be. Before you proceed into the blog setup part, take a moment and fill out the following template:
I am a travel blogger who covers ___________ travelling. I want to connect with those who _____________.
Together with that, you are ready to begin working on your own WordPress travel blog. Let us see an easy 3-step method to create a travel blog with WordPress web development.
Step #1: Get the website up and running with a domain and hosting
You are able to name your own blog whatever you like, but it is best to avoid terms such as traveler, vagabond, trip, adventurous, and more because the market is filled with blogs with names containing these terms.
A simple way is to use your name as your website’s domain name.
Where to register your domain name?
When you have zeroed in on a name, then go to Namecheap and register it. It is one of the most famous domain registrars that offer competitive pricing and some good customer service.
Which hosting service to use?
After the domain name, you will require to purchase a web host. Jerry has reviewed a lot more than fifty web hosting companies at WHSR and written this very helpful WordPress web hosting guide.
Based on that, for your requirements, I would advise going with either InMotion Hosting or even SiteGround.
Also, there are various WordPress hosting companies where you can try the services for free, before purchasing one of their paid plans.
Step #2: Select an outstanding travel blog WordPress theme
When you have chosen a domain name and hosting, your next thing is to select a theme for the travel blog.
Free WordPress Themes
Here are two best completely free themes you are able to start with:
Free theme #1: The Minimal
I would easily call The Minimal probably one of the most used and balanced WordPress travel themes. It’s a clean typography and includes an amazing homepage slider. It is responsive as well, which means it looks good on mobile and tablet devices too.
The Minimalist comes packed with helpful widgets such as the popular posts widget, the recent posts widget, the social media links widget and as well as the author bio widget.
In case you had to do the work of setting up and placing all these widgets that makes sense, you would simply take a long time. This theme utilises these widgets amazingly and has these at the perfect places.
Also, there are two menus, which means you’ve more control over your website’s navigation. It is very likely that when you install this free version theme, you will love it so much that you might like to update to the pro version.
The pro version prices $59.00 and comes with six amazing page layouts as well as some other pro functions.
Free theme #2:Nomad
The Nomad WordPress theme is just another good option to consider during custom wordpress development. It is responsive and includes a slick slider on the homepage. Also, it has around four featured articles under the slider. I just like the provision of the advertisement slot in the theme’s header. You are able to use it to advertise offers from your partners.
Also, it has a widgetized area which you can use to provide more information to your reader.
Paid WordPress themes
Along with the above free themes, here are three paid themes for your own consideration: I had a tough time finding these themes, and that is not because there aren't a lot of great WordPress travel blog themes, but as there are way too many. And selecting the one which strikes the perfect balance between usability and design is quite a task.
I hope that you love the following picks:
Paid theme #1: The Trip
It is a great travel blog theme which comes packed with a highly powerful page builder. The Trip’s page builder enables you select one of the in-built page layouts and insert design components from the builder’s library to design amazing site pages within hrs.
It supports WooCommerce and includes an elegant store web page. You are able to use this to sell your products and affiliate products. Another interesting quality of the theme is that it enables you schedule backups. Hence, the theme will automatically take a backup of your content on the dates or days you decide. The backup function saves you need to install or purchase a separate plugin for taking backups.
Themefurnace also enables you examine drive the theme before purchasing. Just visit the TestLabs region, sign up, and you can also use the theme on the supplier’s test environment.
Paid theme #2: Travelop
It is an amazing WordPress travel blog which utilizes plenty of white space. Its design is simple on the eyes and also helps the reader concentrate just on the content.
It comes with three blog designs: list, masonry, grid. You also get three header styles. I checked out the demonstration and also the blog/site layouts seem amazing. If you do not like full width themes, then you can select the boxed layout choice. You are also able to position the sidebar as you wish.
When I assume from a blogger’s view, I would not ask for more than exactly what this theme gives. Obviously, it does not come with the bells and jingles of themes which have web page builders and all, but you do not always require all that problem.
Additionally, if you love minimalism, one more theme that you need to check out is EightyDays from Greta Themes.
It is not like Travelop but come with a very zen feel to it, thanks to white space. You are able to snag EightyDays for $40.
Paid theme #3: Hermes
This will stun you! After you check out the theme, you will find out more than 39 layouts. All these demos independently show how flexible Hermes is. You are able to use Hermes to produce any type of a travel blog and create it look as active or as minimalist as you would like.
Also, you get a page builder, so you can possibly design customized designs from scratch.
3 Functions which make this theme a good option for a travel blog.
Feature #1. Pro vision to accept paid listings through Wiloke Submission
It makes it possible for any user to signup for an account on your own website and submit content regarding their products or services. Thus, you can use this plugin to allow advertisers such as inn-keepers, travel gear vendors, transport services travel agencies, to write content including their products and services, and also charge them for publishing. This is an amazing way to monetize a travel site/blog
Feature #2. A beautiful ratings widget
After you pursue a niche, your own followers believe your recommendations and reviews. And also a beautiful ratings widget is all you require to spice up your own reviews. Hermes has you covered here.
You are able to let your readers contribute their ratings to the products and services you discuss on your website. This could include a lot of social proof to your own reviews.
Feature #3. An elegant poll widget
Even better publishers utilize polls to engage readers. Hermes includes a very simple poll widget that you can use to add polls to some portion of your website.
Step #3: Essential plugins for your travel blog
There are not any distinctive plugins which add travel blog-specific feature to any WordPress website. But here are some tips that are going to help improve your blog’s search engine optimisation and its overall user experience.
SEO by Yoast
This WordPress plugin will help you optimize your own content for target keywords.
WC Total Cache
It helps optimize a website’s performance. Primarily, it is a cache plug-in which serves a visitor cached copies of your site.
Thirsty Affiliates
It helps you beautify your affiliate links.
