Harsh Realities Of Starting A Travel Blog

There are two reasons I wanted to write this post. The first is to tell you honestly how much it costs to start a travel blog and second, the realities of building your communities, views, and return readers.

When I first started my blog, I read so many articles on how to get 100,000 views in one month or setting up a blog for a specific dollar amount. I will give you a break down of my blogging costs and what I use every day to make my blog succeed. Also, I will give you the realities of my first three months of blogging.

OK, the nitty, gritty first: breaking down the monthly costs of blogging

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Blog Expense Report

• You will need a hosting site for your blog, I use Bluehost and it is fabulous! I paid $3.95 monthly for 36 months, billed up front

• I recommend getting a theme for your blog, I use the Oleander theme by Solo Pine and I love the way it looks! It is a one-time fee of $50

• If you need to design a banner for your blog or create pins for your Pinterest boards, Canva is a great place to start! It has pre-made templates if you are just starting and it is free!

• I recommend getting AdSense for your blog if you are wanting to monetize your blog. This is free to do, just create an account through google

• Yoast SEO you must add to your blog, to boost your ratings in Google. There is a free option available, or a one-time fee of $89 for a premium account

• Mailchimp, this is what I use for my monthly newsletter. It is free for up to 20,000 subscribers, after that it is $10 a month

• Sumo is a sharing tool I use on my blog so my readers can share my posts on different social platforms! There is a free option available; the premium option is $39 a month

Monthly Costs:

• Another great tool to use is Grammarly; this will help improve your blog and make it more pleasant for readers to read. There is a free option available, just install on your Mac. Or the premium option which is $11.66 a month

• Hootsuite is a great scheduling tool for your blog. You can try the 30-day free trial, then it is $29 a month. I use this for posting past blogs on Facebook and Twitter.

• Tailwind is a scheduling tool I use for Pinterest and Instagram. I can join Tribes (great engagement communities) for Pinterest and I can save the hashtags I use for Instagram. There is a 30-day free trial, then it is an annual amount of $119

Total: Just above $200

If you pay for premium accounts: Just above $250

I know this sounds like loads of money and it can be overwhelming in the beginning. I highly recommend giving the free versions a try for Sumo, and Mailchimp. They are perfect for beginners and once you start making an income through your blog, you can always upgrade!

Views

Ok, I wanted to share with you my first few months of blogging. I know it can be very discouraging sometimes to see these new bloggers claim to hit hundreds of thousands of views within the first month. But sometimes that isn’t possible (and unrealistic).

Month 1

In my first month of blogging, I set up my ‘about me’ page and had a total of 6 blog posts. I used Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook to market those posts.

Views: Grand total of 40 views!

Now, I admit I was bummed about that number, no lie! But honestly, I wasn’t doing much in terms of marketing my blog and networking with other bloggers. I want to show you all these numbers, not to discourage you, but encourage you! Everyone starts at 0!

Month 2

Ok, Month two I really wanted to step up my game, I posted every Thursday and made sure I was posting on Instagram and Facebook about my blog.

One thing I did in month two is join Tailwind. This really helped my Pinterest boom! Tailwind is a scheduling tool for Pinterest, it is great because it will do most of the pinning for me and saves me lots of time. I can also join Tailwind tribe, which are basically engagement groups for your pins! It will help get your pins re-shared and noticed!

Another great scheduling tool I got was Hootsuite. This is great if you run a Facebook group. You can post pictures or links, and have it post whenever you want! I use this to post older blogs that I don’t want to get lost.

Views: 2,240

This is fantastic and such a great month! I was so excited to see my blog was growing and doing well!

Month 3

Month three I really started researching what makes a blog successful and updated the quality of all my posts so far. I still posted a new blog every Thursday, but I also went back and added more value to my blogs (such as the ones that only have a couple hundred words).

I also went back and updated my SEO – Search Engine Optimization. This further boosted my google rating. I made sure I had the ‘green light’ on Yoast SEO – getting rid of repeated words in the blog and creating a key phrase.

One last update I did on my blog was tagging. I knew nothing of tagging when I first started blogging. What I did was after I had done some research on tagging, went back and changed/added tags to my blog posts. I made sure they were relevant with the subject I was blogging about and what people were searching in Google.

Views: 2,851

I was beyond excited to see this number! I honestly thought the last month was a fluke. But it was great to see my blog was maintaining views and growing!

I hope this blog was helpful to you! As I said before, I wanted to write this to show you blogging takes time and work! Sometimes you won’t get that success overnight, but it will pay off in the end!

If you have any questions, be sure to leave a comment below or you can email me!

• 

•