How to Start a Travel Blog

You don't need to be a geek or a good writer to start a travel blog.

What you do need is some focus, travel content and the ability to inspire readers to travel.

For example: "How cool would it be, if you're sitting in your car and an elephant shows up in the rear-view mirror? Visit Addo Elephant Park."

Anyway, there are three basic ways to run a travel blog.

1. You do all the traveling yourself, and chronicle your adventures in a personal travel journal or travelogue.

2. You choose a destination (maybe your own city), and you hammer the sh** out of it in post after post.

3. You make it a travel news blog, and you write about what's new at popular destinations.

Whatever the choice, there are some basic rules that every travel blogger has to follow.

Selling travel needs visuals - as in lots of pictures and videos. Also, the monetization part is complicated compared to other sectors, but we'll get to that later.

For now, let's just focus on setting up the blog and deciding what it will be about.

Most everyone who travels extensively has their own travel journal these days, and social media micro-blogging has made sharing your experiences even easier.

You're sitting with your feet in the soft white sand of America's best beach. So do you enjoy the day out on the beach, or focus on taking some great shots of the beach for your blog?

Well, you can consider yourself a travel blogger if you see buffalos attacking lions, and the only thing you can think of is that it's going to be a big hit on youtube.

The point is that blogging has become an integral part of the travel experience, and it's ridiculously easy to get started.

You can setup a free hosted sub-domain blog in minutes on wordpress, posterous or any of the other blogging platforms.

You can take pictures and videos, post them on flickr and youtube, you can blog about it and share all of it on social media.

If you travel a lot and you're going to keep posting regularly, no one cares about your grammar and spelling, whether it is a free or paid host, or what the site name is.

You might want to pick up a few tips and tricks about photography, though.

Most people don't have the time or resources to travel all the time and blog about it.

In this case, what you want to do is stick to your last - which in this case is your own city, or maybe your state or country if you have done a lot of traveling in the past.

But as a general rule, it works better if you blog about a specific destination or city.

You can eat at a different restaurant every day and post reviews. Remember, though, that it's the pictures that will do all the talking.

The text is just meant to provide basic details and play off on what the pictures show.

You could, for instance, put a caption like 'Eat Me' or 'Bite Me' for these pictures from Crif Dogs.

You can go checkout hotels and attractions and things to do in your city, and write authentic reviews.

Given enough time and regular posts covering all aspects from a visitor's point of view, your blog becomes an authority as a travel blog for the destination in question.

It's not hard - just keep your eyes open, go around to all the places a visitor would like to see, and blog about it.

With so many blogs and websites and travel guides devoted to each destination, getting traffic to your blog may seem a little hard at first.

As for the monetization, you can make some money off Adsense. But it's vital to entice visitors to buy vacation packages, car rentals, airline tickets and hotel bookings.

For this, you need to sign up as an affiliate with the big online travel agents (Expedia, Priceline, Orbitz, Travelocity, etc.) and add the sponsor text and banner links to your blog.

You can also sign up directly with the big airline and hotel companies, like Southwest and Marriott.

But if you like to travel frequently or you can become a destination expert for your own city, the rest of it will work out soon enough.