Want to be a successful travel blogger?
Maybe travel the world for free?
Swim in passive online income like some kind of Scrooge McDuck?
Well… I’d hate to break it to you, but it’s not as easy as you may think. Yes, it’s possible to live the dream (I am!) and travel blogging can be enormously rewarding even as a hobby — but you can’t create an audience just by snapping your fingers.
Sadly, many people start a travel blog expecting quick and easy results, but then give up just a few months later.
Building a successful travel blog, like so many other things, takes time and effort! But the good news is that once the ball is rolling, it becomes a lot easier to maintain that momentum.
Here, I’ll share with you some of the methods that I used to get Indie Traveller to where it is today. Back in 2013, I got this blog from zero visitors at launch to 15,000 unique visitors a month in just 8 months. This audience grew steadily every year. Now, in 2020, my site gets about 250,000 unique visitors per month.
Setting up your blog
Before I talk about building an audience, you need to check if the foundation of your blog is right. Most blogs use WordPress, but there are actually two versions of it. Make sure you have your own self-hosted version of WordPress with your own webhosting. Without it, it’ll be much harder to make progress.
Don’t use Squarespace or other such platforms, as they are known to be pretty bad for SEO (ranking on search engines).
When you’re starting out, I recommend signing up with Bluehost and using their one-click WordPress install. If you haven’t yet, read my post on how to set up your blog with your own web hosting.
Managing your expectations
With so many bloggers often sharing impressive income reports or showing off high-profile influencer campaigns, it may seem easy to just quit your job and become a travel blogger. But the reality is that you’ll have to persevere if you want to grow an audience.
Looking back, gaining traffic was definitely the most mentally and emotionally taxing aspect of starting a new blog for me.
You should expect to have almost no audience at all during your first couple of months at least.
This can be utterly crushing: I would often spend hours on a single post only to have it read by a literal handful of people. It makes you feel like a nobody, a nothing, not even a tiny blip on anyone’s radar. It sucks.
Building up your blog’s foundations and gaining an audience requires a significant time and energy investment that’s not going to pay off for another 6 months at least. You really have to be a little obsessive in the beginning.
Trying to get Indie Traveller started often felt like trying to create a fire by rubbing some damp moss between some wet sticks… in 100 km/hr winds. You just keep hoping for a post to catch on but you only ever get these useless taunting little sparks (if at all).
But you just have to keep going.
Eventually, if you do things right, your blog will catch on. Once the fire is finally lit you can just make it bigger and bigger by throwing more fuel on.
Keep in mind that traffic can eventually increase exponentially. Gaining 10 visitors in your first month will seem like you have to move mountains; gaining 10 more visitors in your sixth month can feel comically easier.
Make sure you install Google Analytics on your blog if you haven’t already and read some tutorials on how to use it. It gives you absolutely critical information for developing your blog. It tells you how many people are visiting, what they’re reading, and many other essential (anonymized) stats. But… in the first few months, you should resist looking at it every day. Numbers will be so low that they will simply depress you, and traffic increases will look extremely marginal day-to-day.
Try maybe looking at it once a month at most, so you keep your eye on the big picture. (I didn’t, and nearly lost my sanity.)
10 growth strategies (bad and good) I used
While getting that initial foothold on the interwebs is difficult, it does get easier. The key is to try many different approaches. Eventually, the best way is to get ranked in Google, but other approaches can be more effective at first.
Here are the methods I used to gain more traffic and my experiences with each of them:
1. Facebook
After launching my blog, I invited people I knew from my previous travels to follow my page on Facebook β that was an easy win. I think it definitely helps to invite people you know or meet while traveling (or in tour groups) to follow you on Facebook or on Instagram. They can be some of your earliest supporters.
Facebook was a much bigger deal with I started in 2013; while it’s not as relevant today, I still think it’s a decent social platform as it at least allows linking back to your blog. Insta can maybe lead to more fame and adoration, but it has fewer opportunities to promote your own site (outside of the bio link).
As an experiment, I also purchased some Likes via Facebook ads during the early days. I do not recommend this. The likes you get this way are very low-quality and not really worth it. Unless you have a specific product to sell, you’ll be throwing money away by buying likes. If you buy likes through illegitimate channels (like shady ‘buy 1000 likes for $20!’ sites) you also risk hurting your ratio and it won’t help you gain real followers.
On social media, photos and personal posts do best. How-to posts or destination guides don’t get as many clicks or likes, in my experience. Try to build a connection with your audience through images, asking them questions, and linking to interesting posts that aren’t just your own. I recommend not spending too much time on social media in the first year, however. It can be a huge time drain when you need to be making content!
Not as many people come to blogs through social media as you might imagine. For my site, it’s just 2%. When I ask fellow bloggers, it’s rarely more than 5-6% or so (at least, ones who are focused mainly on building a site vs being primarily a social media influencer who gets sponsored).
Nevertheless, the direct interaction you have with your followers can be of great help.
2. Pinterest
Pinterest was not such a big thing yet when I started Indie Traveller. At the time, I used a site called Stumbleupon that was a little bit like it, though these days it doesn’t exist anymore.
I started using Pinterest in 2018 and I now think that it’s a great promotional channel for travel blogs, especially early on. Ranking on search engines takes ages, but you can see results more quickly on Pinterest.
I’ve heard bloggers say something in the order of half their visits come from Pinterest, though these are usually very early-stage blogs. It’s usually a much smaller slice of the pie for more developed blogs.
Still, Pinterest is worth investing in. A great thing about Pinterest is that your pins still hang around for a long time; it’s much less ephemeral than other platforms. It helps to think of Pinterest basically as a kind of search engine. The effort you put in will keep paying dividends as time goes by.

First, it’s important to make beautiful vertical images that people can save easily to Pinterest. Secondly, subscribe to the third-party Tailwind app. I resisted getting this app for a long time as it does cost some money, but then everyone told me to use it and I took the plunge. Then I went “ooooooh, I get it now”. Suddenly I had way more success on Pinterest. Definitely get Tailwind. It’s kind of the secret element to this.
Tailwind is like a marketplace where you can exchange tit-for-tat promotion. You can submit your pins to tribes (groups around topics). The members can share yours and you can share theirs. The more a pin gets shared the more the algorithm will notice.
Some of the biggest tribes are Dream.Pin.Go and _Travel_. I recommend also submitting to smaller tribes that fit your niche. I get way more shares for my pins in Wanderlust Travel – Asia for my Asia content, for instance.
3. Commenting
Commenting on other blogs is not going to be a real source of traffic, but it does get your name out there.
The handfuls of visitors you’ll get from blog comments won’t make your heart beat faster, but they might just be from other influential travel bloggers or devoted travel blog readers, who in turn may share or comment on your posts.
It’s all part of participating in the blogging ecosystem. Don’t be spammy, as no one likes that. But try to be a part of the conversation and different opportunities may come to you.
Although I’ve never done it myself, some bloggers use Facebook groups to comment on each other’s articles in a coordinated way. I don’t know if that kind of astroturfing is something you should do consistently, but it might look nice to have a few real comments to begin with.
4. Adwords
Adwords are the text advertisements that run alongside Google search results. Google regularly gives out free Adword credit for new customers; search around for promotions and I am sure you will find it. I used a 75 GBP coupon (over $100) to run some ads for Indie Traveller. The traffic influx wasn’t great, but I thought every little bit might help.
What I learned is that Adwords is a bit useless to get general traffic with. It’s just too expensive – and you’ll blow through $100 very quickly. Try to connect Adwords traffic to something concrete, like a mailinglist sign-up or something you are offering. Adwords works best for specific action-focused traffic, and is not cost-effective for getting general interest traffic which you can grow organically.
5. Reddit
I posted some of my own articles to /r/travel or /r/backpacking on Reddit with some success. Keep in mind that too much self-promotion is frowned upon and your submissions will be blocked if you go totally balls-out with Reddit promotion. Try being a regular active participant so that you won’t be flagged, and only post the occasional truly worthwhile link to your site. The rule of thumb is for every post you make linking to your own site, you need to make 6 other posts that are not self-promotional. /r/travel can be extremely strict in enforcing its rules, while /r/backpacking is a bit more welcoming to content creators (though it is also a smaller subreddit).
At first I didn’t know about the restrictions Reddit puts in place, so I wasted valuable promotional opportunities on non-important posts. Try to keep your powder dry. Wait with posting on Reddit until you have that super amazing post you know is going to do well.
Reddit can get you a lot of traffic for a day or two. One time I got 10k visitors on a single day, another time 6k from a Reddit post. If your post does well, you will probably continue to see a trickle of maybe 100 visitors a day for a while (mainly people using the ‘Top’ tab on the subreddit) until it finally peters out.
One thing I regret about using Reddit is that I used it too early. I posted my Top Cheapest Destinations post to /r/travel on my blog’s launch day and it went stupendously viral to the point where it reached Reddit’s front page β and major sites like Hostelworld even linked to it from their blogs or social media accounts. It was nuts. Sadly my site was not at all set up to capitalize on this massive influx of visitors: I didn’t have a proper mailinglist signup, no other content of interest, etc. So my site was just a huge siff, and I gained very little from that early boost. The bounce rate was 95%, whereas later promotion of other posts had a bounce rate of around 75% (i.e. people actually checked out other pages on the site and not just the one that was linked).
I should mention that Reddit moderators have cracked down a lot on self-promotion, even when it’s original content. I wouldn’t recommend just promoting random blog posts on Reddit today. However, the preceding can be a lesson in how to create (and benefit from) viral exposure. Perhaps there is some kind of viral post or stunt you can think of that you know will be shared widely on other platforms.
6. Real-world marketing
I thought that since I travel long-term and meet other travelers all the time it’d be easy to promote my site to other travelers. At a print shop in Mexico I even printed out some cards with my blog address on it.
I’m glad it only cost a couple of dollars as I had to throw them away eventually. Turns out it’s super socially awkward to give someone what seems like a formal business card when they’re traveling. Geez, what was I thinking? Not good.
I do recommend typing in your blog URL on people’s phones however, or sending them the URL if you’ve added them to Facebook. A great way to get people you’ve met to share one of your posts is if it’s a story that involves them (e.g. maybe a tour you went on together).
7. Email
Getting traffic to your site is one thing, but retaining visitors is another. Having a mailinglist is a great way to get people to come back to your site. Make sure you have a mailinglist from the very start. Email is one of the last channels that you can 100% fully own. There are no algorithms that will mess with you and no demonetization drama. It’s a true 1-to-1 relationship with your audience that you fully control.
Try to have something to offer to new subscribers. I had a generic sign-up box at first which did OK, but when I added an offer of a free chapter for my book and a list of ‘7 backpacking mistakes’ sign-ups went up by 400%. I typically send out an update to subscribers once a month.
Nowadays I use some self-hosted software to run my mailinglist, but I recommend MailChimp when you’re starting out. It’s super user-friendly and free up to 2000 subscribers.
8. Social sharing
I can be really brief about this one: install something like AddThis or Getsitecontrol so that people can easily follow you on social media or share your posts.
9. Guest posting
This, in my experience, is really the best way to get your blog established.
A guest post is something you’ll write for another blog for free, in exchange for getting a link back to your site within the article. You will usually get a trickle of traffic through this link, but this is not primarily why you should be guest posting! The main point is to get more inbound links to your site (especially from sites that are themselves well-established) as this will result in Google ranking you higher in its results.
At first, I searched for travel sites that openly invite guest posts, but this was not a very productive strategy. A lot of these sites soliciting guest posts are dormant or no longer actually accept them. Many travel blogs that do actively take guest posts don’t openly advertise this, as a lot of guest post requests come from SEO marketers (rather than legitimate bloggers) and are very low-quality and spammy.
A better method is to read and follow some travel blogs that you like. You might notice some of them have posts that are not by the main author; contact them and see if you can guest write for them. Convince them your guest post will be of high quality. Most bloggers are frustrated with all the garbage that spam marketers are trying to get them to post and would love to post something that is at least as good as what you’d post on your own blog.
Shortly after launching my blog, GoBackpacking and eTramping graciously accepted some of my guest posts, which gave me a foot in the door. I tried to link the guest posts to relevant posts on my own site. For GoBackpacking I wrote about travelling in Burma, and hooked this up to my Burma destination guide. I did the same for a post about Cuba. I believe this helped boost the Google page authority for these guides.
A huge benefit of guest posting is that it connects you with other bloggers. eTramping later invited me to participate in several collaborative posts. I later met some of the bloggers I guest posted for in the beginning, making some valuable connections. (By the way, eTramping still accepts external contributions.)
Guest posts can seem like a bit of a time sink as you are also trying to get great content on your own blog, but they do pay off massively.
I quite enjoy participating in collaborative posts as they require less writing (usually about 100-300 words instead of 500-800) and are easier to do (as I don’t have to think so much about an introduction or conclusion). For an example of a collaborative post (one that I contributed to) check out 35 Coolest Hostels From Around The World at eTramping. To participate in collaborative posts you need to develop relationships with other bloggers. It can take a while to end up on people’s mailinglists for contribution requests, so you might just have to write only full-length guest posts at first.
Finally, as your blog gains momentum, you may be invited for interviews. I just recently got asked for an interview with a travel magazine. This is sort of like a reverse guest post, which boosts not only your rankings but also your authority as a writer. These kinds of opportunities, of course, can take a little while to emerge. Be sure to have a good contact form on your site so that people can reach you easily.
10. Search engine optimization
A final traffic strategy to use, which would take a whole other post to dive into properly, is optimising your content for search engines. Learning to use Google Analytics and understanding the basics of SEO can do crazy things for your traffic… eventually. The problem with SEO is that it can take many months, even more than a year, for any changes to pay off. So it’s more of a long game method that won’t be quite as relevant in the very early days.
The most important thing to know about SEO is this: at first, it doesn’t matter, because you are not going to rank anyway.
Google has probably already seen your brand new blog, but it’s not going to list you any time soon, no matter what you try. You are still stuck in what the SEO exports call the ‘sandbox’. Google simply doesn’t trust your site yet; it’s checking to see if you’re still going to be around later, or if maybe you suddenly turn into a spam site. How do you gain its trust, you ask? You just post good content. And you wait.
Something that can speed up the process is to get quality back-links to your site. That’s actually something you can start with right away, for instance by doing guest posts. Don’t worry too much about technical SEO or keyword research at first, though. You don’t want to get into the mindset of writing posts just for search engines anyway, when in the beginning it’s important to show your personality first. Once you’ve been blogging for a while (e.g. maybe 6 – 12 months), you can start learning more about SEO and applying it to your site.
One general thing though: it really helps to focus on blog topics that are quite specific (or even obscure) where you stand a chance to rank due to less competition. If all your posts are generic and high level (something like ‘top places to travel in Thailand’), you won’t yet stand a chance to rank in search.
If you focus on creating good content, include some content that is not already trying to compete with the biggest sites out there, and if you are persistent, then eventually you can start to see an audience grow around your blog. And if you stick with it longer, you may even see your blog grow from a hobby to a hobby-with-benefits and even to a full-time career.
Blogging tools & resources
- Google Analytics – be sure to have this installed from the start!
- Start a blog with Bluehost – good and very affordable web hosting (only $3.99 a month if you click the link here), so you can set up self-hosted WordPress. See also: how to start a travel blog in 10 minutes.
- Tailwind – essential tool to succeed on Pinterest
- Mailchimp – easiest way to start a mailinglist
- Getsitecontrol – widgets for your site which let you easily capture e-mails, promote products, conduct surveys, etc. My site uses about 6 of these in various places, and they’re now key to my growth success. (And it’s much cheaper than services like Unbounce etc.!)
Some links may be affiliate links, meaning I may earn commission from products or services I recommend. For more, see site policies.
This is awesome! I’m afraid I messed up my blog pretty early by making the first 50 posts on “pages” instead of “blog pages” and I had to redo a lot of it, but hopefully since it’s still just 6 months old Google will forgive! Thanks for the info
If the addresses of the posts are the same as the pages, it will be the same as far as Google is concerned π (Otherwise it’ll likely just take a few months to sort itself out.) Good luck!
Wow!! This was great info! I would have never thought about Pinterest and Tailwind. I really appreciate you giving these ideas and sharing. It is nice to know that people out there are willing to provide suggestions and advice for others to succeed. Indeed, building an audience and getting traffic can be a heck of an odyssey. Tell me about it! Thank you for giving me the ideas! I hope it workout for me.
Good luck Zhara! π
Just recently started blogging and I spend so much time on my posts only to get 2 visitors, ha! I like the idea of focusing on building out solid content first and then start marketing yourself more.
Thank you for your post. I recently started blogging. I’ve only gotten to 100 readers. Do you hyperlink?
Great tips Marek. Blogging became very complex nowadays. Using organic SEO and social channels brings many more opportunities. Can not imagine relying on a single source of traffic anymore…
Awesome article. I’ve been focusing on producing and posting quality content twice per week since April & am now starting to think about how I can grow my audience so I can start monetising my blog. I’ve written a few guest posts & am definitely going to be writing a lot more reading this, whilst I’d never even considered using Reddit!
Thanks for a great article,
Jamie Boucher | Bristolian Abroad
Good luck with your blog Jamie!
Thanks for these tips. I hope I can grow my blog to be as successful as yours is!
Thanks, Marek, This is a really wonderful tips. I am also a travel blogger and founding the tricks how to grow my blogs. I am too much happy to read this blog and thanks for the sharing valuable tricks.
I definitely follow your tricks and if I can get success with your tricks I will surely back to you to give you a big thanks.
But keep your good working, I am following you, cheers…..
Thank you for this post! Just recently started blogging and I spend so much time on my posts only to get 2 visitors, ha! I like the idea of focusing on building out solid content first and then start marketing yourself more.
It can be so frustrating! But yeah having more content makes it easier to promote π Good luck with your blog!
Thank you on a detailed impressive guide! Saved your post for the future
Like every time, this is a great article. Whatever is necessary to increase the traffic of your website, everything is mentions in this article. Of all the points I found the Guest Posting & SEO the most spectacular. Thank you very much for these great information.
I am new to blogging and have been reading a lot on this topic of growing the blog audience. I picked a few pointers from your post and was able to “confirm” some others that I have been already trying. Thank you for sharing these tips π
Btw, my new blog is at https://ankurkhemani.com and I would appreciate any tips.
Thank you for sharing the great tips.
Magnificent Article Marek! I have my own blog yet was not getting a lot of crowd consideration. I will follow your referenced ways.
In your post, you wrote a comment. So I wrote here. Lol
Wonderful Article Marek! I have my own blog but was not getting much audience attention. I will follow your mentioned ways… excited to promote my blog and increase my audience!
Thanks for sharing this article!
Thank you so much!, I just started with mine at http://www.artsyvagabond.com. Hope you like it and comments or suggestions are always welcome
Hi, it was nice to read it.
I am going to use your tip on guest blogging surely to increase traffic on my blog @ http://www.mywordaffair.com
Thanks,
Dhiraj
This was a great post and very motifying as I just started my blog. Thank you for the advices.
You’re welcome π By the way, your blog focuses on a single topic which will be of great benefit for search engines! Ranking on Google is largely a matter of time (need to be online at least 1 year) but having a focused topic will help a lot with that.
I’m following your advice in point three and saying thanks for the advice!
You’re welcome! π
Some great tips here, thanks! I am wondering if Reddit is still a good option currently?
Yeah I think it’s gotten a lot harder to share your own stuff. Moderation is really strict now. But if there’s something really amazing to share you might be able to still get through…
Thanks for the response, I’ll give it a try and see what happens!
Kathleen from http://www.dreamwanderrepeat.co.uk
Thanks for the tips, I am just starting out with mine.
I find it very hard to promote a blog and it’s a lot of work !
CΓ©line
http://www.celinesska.com
Thanks for that Marek. Really useful tips. We ran our blog 3 months ago https://planodo.com and we used your guide. Our google position is really poor. How long did it take for you to reach at least first 30?
We ran as well our instagram and facebook channel as you recommended.
Pozdrawiamy π
Czesc! π 3 months might honestly not be enough to see much results. It took a year for me at least to break through with SEO. Google is waiting to see if it can trust your site, that it won’t be gone next week, etc. … it hugely favors established sites to send traffic to. Google also does a lot of A/B testing to see which search results work for their users, and it takes time for it to gather data when you’re still on a low position. The best thing to do is to keep producing content and to keep promoting and to have much patience. I think perhaps you’ll have a slight advantage writing in Polish, as the keyword competition will be lower.
Thanks for the response. I see those first months you need to be very patient and do your job π However, we are writing in 2 languages, maybe later with 3. It will automatically switch if your web browser is in English or different lang. Can I ask which language of web browser do you use?
Hmm, my web browser is set to en-US but I saw your blog in Polish. π Not sure how the automatic switching works but for SEO it’s best if there are separate canonical URLs for each language.
I am about to officially launch my travel blog and looking for tips and advice that I can use and follow to promote my blog. This blog post is so helpful. Thank you. Iβll follow your tips and advice with my blog promotion.
Thanks you are so kind to share your tips and allow us to share our website here… only you can understand how difficult it is to establish even a minute presence.
My instagram is doing well http:/www.instagram.com/MerRyanSG
But we made a youtube channel to extend reach and the results was disastrous – views were negligible and those who came in gave very unfavourable feedback! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLiHpCZp3C3yrVe7jv9N0xA
It can be discouraging….. but thanks for your tips!
YouTube is tough! I myself get only views for things people are searching for (like reviews). Otherwise, it’s a painful process of slowly gathering subscribers…
Love your theme on IG. π
Thanks for this! I’ve been working on my website aguygoesglobal.com for 4 months and was feeling pretty discouraged, but this is helping me get back on track. The amount of patience needed really isn’t talked about enough so I appreciate how candid you were π
Yeah, it can be very tough at first! π Good luck with your blog!
thank you for sharing this topic . really great post
Good information: For me traveling was a decision of too much stress behind a desk and albeit i’m new to this, the lifestyle is so much better! Great information for a beginner! I would love to guest write for you if your open to it. blainesterrain.com
Cheers!
Cool! Just started my blog (http://hitinthai.com/) about Thailand (I’m half American, half Thai) and I want it to get promoted. The blog basically is about what’s hit in and around Thailand.
This is a nice help
This is a great post. I appreciate that there’s actionable tips and an ordering of priorities, because everything seems so daunting in the beginning! You also have some great (specific) advice that I haven’t seen elsewhere. Thanks!
Great tips here! Thanks for sharing Marel, it really helps aspiring travel bloggers like us get started.
What interesting article. There are so many travel companies in South America that we have to learn about Seo and travel blogs.
Thanks very much
Wow! Thank you for an actually honest, well thought out article on the subject. There is so much garbage online like just fix your SEO and it happens magically so it is very refreshing to read something like this.
While I am at it, please come check out my blog too! I specifically focus on budget off-the-beaten-track travel and hard to reach places.
http://www.authentictraveling.org
Hi Marek,
thank you for that article. I find it very useful! I know it might be a little bit outdated, but some things are still relevant! Thanks!
Really informative. I think this covered all the stuff starting bloggers need to know to get their websites out there using social media. Thanks for this! Definitely applying all that I learned.
Thank you for this post! I really haven’t been getting any traffic so far but I will try these ways out in the future π
I found this on the top of my google search so obviously its working for you. Thanks for sharing!
It is so refreshing to hear from someone as successful as you about the struggles in beginning. I started not long ago and it is definitely not a walk in the park. I will use some of the tips you have provided. Thank You, Marek!
This tips very good for a newbie like me. I dont about SEO. I just write, write and write..
And i’m confused how to get many traffic. Google has already answered and leads to your site. thanks for sharing. I will try it
Trying to promote my own travel blog at the moment and have found these tips super useful!
I really enjoy this post. I think that you stated some great points. I would add using a sharing tool, once people are on your blog, like Addthis and having a recommended feed
I know how hard it is I personally don’t get any traffic almost. I get one person a week, so i will try to implement this.
I would love to see a comment on my post, since i put a lot of work into them and i make sure they are the best that they can be
The reddit travel tip is great! I’m going to use it to post some of my travel content from ThisEarthIsBeautiful.com
Thanks heaps! This is quite insightful. I will incorporate these strategies in my blogging routine, let’s see how it goes.
I really appreciate these tips – thanks for sharing. I recently started my own blog (and still struggling to get some traffic) after doing a bit of freelance writing for other people. It dawned on me that I can write for myself and benefit from it directly. It actually feels nice to see something published under my own name, too.
Wow thank you so much for the tips! Been working on our blog for a year, but just slow and mosyly for friends and family. But i like writing more and more and want the blog to become a bit bigger ^^ i also have a question: when wtiting posts to give tips and info, is it best to incorporate them between all the blogposts? My bf wants to have a tips and trick page apart from the posts themselves but i think its better to just post these as posts and divide them up in different categories to make it more userfriendly. Any thoughts?
X
Either way can work! But maybe you can put the tips in separate posts, while also creating an overview post that serves as an introduction and links to your best tips. Best of both worlds…
Nice Post, I have already started some of the points.
thanks for sharing.
Hello, this is so helpful, thank you! Funnily enough, I’ve had the same thing happen with going ‘viral’ very early on. Okay, not properly viral, but our blog was featured on an Icelandic news website and we went from getting 4 viewers a day to 3000. We didn’t know we were going to be featured and it was far too soon, hardly anything else for people to click through to, and as such, the views quickly dropped off and hardly anyone signed up or returned. Grah! Anyway, good tips and I’m off to try to get my head around Google Analytics…
Cheers, PTS
Great post man!
On a personal note, we’ve hitted a wall on Instagram. Without wanting to toot our own horn, we do share cool travel pictures there, but we’re having a hard time reaching and converting people that would benefit from reading our blog.
Having a small amount of followers, we try to reach more people through hastags. But we only manage to bring ‘likes’ and ‘follows’ from other travel bloggers because they’re mainly the ones to use and search travel related hashtags anyways – and unfortunately, if the ‘follow’ is not reciprocal they will unfollow days later.
Any tips?
Thanks for the good read! Really helpful.
It’s hard to say as I’ve not focused on Instagram much myself. The dirty secret of that platform though is that a lot of activity is automated, and some of the big accounts got to where they are now by being pretty spammy. It’s also a platform that’s great for ‘branding’ purposes but bad for getting traffic back to your blog.
Someone said to me that having an original angle for your account can be very helpful. They were telling me about their account having travel photos that always featured their dog, so it had a clear ‘hook’ that made people follow.
Pretty useful article! Thanks Marku π
One suggestion about SEO-tip. I think its worth to mention one very easy but powerful strategy – increase indexing of blog in search engines by ping servers. Quick tutorial how to use this solution (mainly for WordPress) here: http://sometips.wersjatestowa.eu/wordpress-ping-list-for-better-propagate-your-blog-255-servers/
This is by far the best post I’ve read about increasing traffic. Thank you for the thoroughness and transparency. It’s hugely comforting and encouraging to know that my dismal numbers on Google Analytics should increase as I post more. I need to buckle down and get the content out there!
This was great advice. Thank you for sharing!
Thanks for sharing. Just launched our blog last week so this was helpful.
I really appreciate you taking the time to write this post. It helps aspiring travel bloggers like me know how to keep their expectations in check while giving good advice about what works well and what doesn’t. It is reassuring to see that, though you are now one of the most established bloggers out there, even you struggled getting page views up in the beginning.
Congratulations on getting where you are and happy travels!
Great article and really helpful. I never thought of Redit and will certainly try it . What do you think of Pinterest? Many people say that it improves your traffic massively.
My website has only been up for 1-2 months and trying to keep it up to date while working full time is a big task:) .
If anyone has any suggestions comments they would like to offer to me let me know. http://miles-and-philip.com
No experience with Pinterest myself but I’ve heard similar things. Seems like a great channel especially for very visual blogs.
I’ve just finished up writing my first city review, it’s about Naples, Italy. I was wondering, where can I share it and get thoughts and constructive criticism of the article? So far I have great feedback but only after sharing in on facebook, so just friends and friends of friends. I’d love to hear a travel blogger’s opinion on it! Thanks!
In case Commentluv doesn’t pick ip up, here’s the link: http://www.placeaholic.com/what-to-do-in-naples-italy-1987
I hope you won’t consider this as spam. Thank you!
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge (for free!) It’s very helpful. How is it with reddit, if they blocked me as I sent more links to my posts as I commented (didn’t know). Would I see it? My links never get traffic on reddit, not even a trickle :/
This is mainly an issue in reddit.com/r/travel. I guess they get so much spam that you can get blocked easily in this subreddit. The only way to know if you’re blocked is to log out after posting and looking at the latest posts in the subreddit – if your post isn’t there it’s been blocked. Some people say that for every submission you make that links to your own site, you need roughly 10 other contributions that aren’t promotional.
Excellent writeup and tips for newbie travel blogger like me. Currently I have very few posts and I don’t get much visitors. It’d be great if you can check http://krishnandusarkar.com and suggest if I’m doing anything wrong.
In the mean time, I’ll try to implement things you mentioned here one by one.
Such a great post
I never knew about CommentMuv until now and have just installed it on both my blogs!
You’ve also cleared my doubts about Stumbleupon, definitely not a thing for me π
And yes, i do agree with you about SEO. I have been blogging blindly for 2 years on bewilderedinmorocco.com and only now I see how important it is!
THANKS
Hey I got a question regarding FB likes, you said it is utter garbage
I also recently promoted my page on FB it brought me lots of likes but… nobody is active! Not a single person that I gained through FB promo!
Did you buy them on Ebay or you mean you promoted and FB got your fans???
No I bought likes via FB’s own system. It’s been a long time since I experimented with it, though I still don’t recommend doing this as I’ve not heard of much success with this from anyone. I’ve had more success with simply boosting a successful Facebook post. If you see a post get WAY more engagement, you can pay Facebook to get that message in front of even more people, and this can be a good method. Only worth it for posts that have already proven to be popular though.
Buying from an external source like Ebay pretty much guarantees those clicks/likes/fans come from a click-farm in the Philippines, not real followers. Some people do this to make their Page look more popular, but I think this is a short-sighted tactic.
Just kicked off my blog 2 weeks ago so these tips are awesome. I am already using most of the promo methods but some nuggets were totally worth the read. Thanks a ton.
Glad it was helpful! π
Looks like I have a lot of reading to do! Thanks for sharing your tips π
This was great! I am reviving two travel websites in Northern Cali for the Gold Country and Mendocino Coast; your info and style are super digestible π If you’re ever up this way, let me know.
Thanks for the excellent tips. I have been blogging for last 5 months but would love some traffic push. Will definitely use some of your tricks. Btw, would you like to discuss guest post opportunity maybe?
Thanks Manish, glad you’ve found it useful. I’ve actually put a temporary stop to accepting guest posts as I’m a bit swamped at the moment! But I may be up for doing some later this year.
Great write up, gaining steady meaningful traffic is definitely the hardest job, gotta keep working at it!
Thank you so much for sharing this. π I love the analogy of the damp moss as it’s so accurate haha!
Superb. I will certainly follow this and implement. Thanks for the info.
This is really one of the most comprehensive articles about growing the blog audience. I’m still pretty new to this blogging thing, but I’m glad to hear that even some bigger blogger names had a difficult time in the beginning. Thanks a lot for comparing different traffic strategies, as I’m still not sure which of them gives me the best results.
Glad it’s useful. The more established blogs can make it seem like it’s easy, but in the beginning you need quite a bit of patience. π
Some great tips here! It feels like an endless struggle getting my blog off the ground sometimes, but i’m aware that persistence is key!! Thanks for sharing π
Does anyone accept guest post about travelling in Nicaragua Central America?
Thank you so much for sharing this info with us. I really enjoy reading about all the different methods people use to grow their blog.
Hi Marek!
Well, I will tell you, your Google SEO is working great π Found you organically, and really enjoyed this article and your advice. I have been fashion blogging for over a year, but recently left to go on a five month adventure around the world. I have enjoyed learning about the differences between travel blogging and fashion blogging. Biggest difference, is how much quicker I can put together a fashion post than I can put together a travel post. This has given me so much more respect for the travel bloggers out there.
Thanks again for the advice, and I will be back coming back soon!
Chelsea
Ginger Side of Life
Great post! Such motivation as I am just building my blog. Its really inspiring reading this blog. I got a travel blog about hotspots in the Philippines. http://phptourism.blogspot.com/
We are accepting guest posts. Drop us a mail for contact at bddebashis2@gmail.com
Our site is : http://journeyby.com
Super post!
Great blog post! I always appreciate a very detailed, long blog post because I can sink my teeth into it and actually learn something. I rarely get anything out of a short bulleted list blog post. This was helpful for me since I’m in the process of starting a entrepreneurship travel blog.
Thanks for the advice. View counts are addictive! The more you get the more you need π
A lot of great information in this post! Travel blogging really is like having a full time job! Great to see you making it work!
Great post. Thank you for laying it out like this. Very helpful. Safe Travels
Excellent discussion, I really enjoy reading how other bloggers grow , and always find some good advice and reassurance in them =)