Starting a travel blog: My blogging journey

Happy Wednesday everyone! Tomorrow my travel blog will be two months old so I figure now’s a good time to act on my promise and write about my blogging journey so far. I can’t believe it’s already been two months and I’m so so grateful that I set up the blog! Blogging is the only thing in my life that HASN’T been cancelled because of the coronavirus. It’s given me something to do and is keeping me sane amongst all this sitting around at home. That said, I can’t wait to be able to travel again and make some new content for you all!

When I was starting up my blog, I read loads of posts about how to start a successful travel blog. My favourite was by Never Ending Footsteps, because I felt like it was easier to understand than any of the other posts I read. I also love how she highlights that you need to find your niche and that it’s okay to be different; in fact, your differences will be your selling point!

Anyway, I hope that this series of posts will help any of you who are also wanting to start a travel blog. Or maybe you’ll all think it’s boring, who knows. If you are starting up a travel blog, please get in touch! I’d love to connect and share experiences.

PS: If the prospect of this blog bores you, why not check out one of my other posts? You can find them here (in a new-and-improved layout!).

Deciding to start a travel blog

As I’ve mentioned before, starting a travel blog is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Actually, I was reading posts about how to start a blog a whole year ago just never had the confidence in my writing to do anything about it! It wasn’t until I finished studying (again) that I started thinking about it again. I found that really helpful post by Never Ending Footsteps which made it feel like something way more achievable and I had nothing to do for the summer. Turns out that’s the perfect combination for starting something!

Anyway, over the Christmas period I started writing some blog posts. Honestly it was easier than I expected to write some good quality, interesting stuff (well, in my biased opinion, anyway). I managed to write out about 30 blog posts over the space of a month! With that much work I kind of had to go ahead with it! Of course each time I post one of my blogs I spend ages editing it to make sure it reads well and the focus is less about my stories and more about travel tips… But it definitely helps to have a basis there for each of the topics I want to write about.

The hardest part: naming your travel blog

Literally every article you read about starting a travel blog says “choosing a name for your blog is the hardest part”. Honestly they’re 110% correct. Having to decide on a name was the main thing that put me off really starting a blog. It’s all well and good to write some content but having a catchy name is super important.

I was actually totally set on a completely different name (Funny Aussie Travels) and was going to publish my blog with it, buy the domain name, etc. Until I showed my mum the video I made about Coolangatta with the (future) website and Instagram/Facebook username on it. She said to me “oh is your blog only about funny stories travelling around Australia?” and I was like “no?” so we started a whole discussion about what I should actually call my blog. She also told me she didn’t think I was funny so thanks for that… But with the help of her and my sister, we came up with Global Pawprints. Which is way better and I bought the domain name the very next day.

I really love the name Global Pawprints!

Global Pawprints is the kind of name I was secretly hoping for but wasn’t creative enough to come up with on my own. I didn’t want anything with “Nomadic” or similar in it because that’s way overused. But I did kind of want a cute aesthetic name (lame, right?). I didn’t love the name ‘Funny Aussie Travels’ because it felt like just a bunch of words rather than an actual name… But it did match the writing style I was going for. Really I should have asked my family for help earlier. It would have saved me a fair bit of time and stress!

Also, with the content that I’ve been posting so far and the way my writing style has evolved, I really think that Global Pawprints represents my niche. That niche being wildlife-lover-goes-travelling. I actually got complimented on it the other day! To be honest I thought the wildlife-focus might be a bit much so it’s nice to know you like it!

The fun-est part: making a logo and header

Once I had the name, it was super easy for me to create a logo and header for my site and social media. Most of those “how to start a travel blog” posts say you can pay someone to make it but if you have the skills you might as well do it yourself. I used Adobe Photoshop to create all of my banners and logos. I used their free trial, though, because I’m WAY too poor to buy Adobe.

When we came up with the name Global Pawprints, I immediately had a picture in mind that I wanted to use. I also knew I had to include some pawprints (tracks) from an Aussie animal. And so my banner came together:

The main picture on the right was taken in Tasmania in 2017 (post coming later this week!). It captures one of the highlights of my life: when a wombat crossed the walking track right in front of me! Wombats are totally my favourite animal. Of course, I then had to stick with the wombat theme for my logo. Therefore, I chose to use the front and hind pawprints of a Common Wombat. Finally, I filled out the rest of the banner with a nice, green, Tasmanian forest. My mum actually took both of these pictures so shout-out to her!

The boring part: which WordPress and hosting your travel blog

I wasn’t going to include this at all because it’s pretty boring and straight forward. But it’s extremely important for if you want to start a blog!

WordPress.com or WordPress.org?

I decided to go with a self-hosted blog from wordpress.org rather than wordpress.com. I actually debated for a long time which I should go with. In the end I decided on self-hosted even though it involves spending money. While I don’t see myself becoming full-time travel blogger right now, I like the idea of earning a bit of extra cash off this one day. If my blog takes off, it could also be a good backup for me, given that the wildlife industry is so difficult to get into. And once you’re in it, you don’t get paid much!

Hosting

I chose to host my site with BlueHost because literally every blogger suggested it for anyone who’s starting out. By buying through an affiliate link I got a discount, but I had to buy three years’ worth of hosting. To host the blog for three years on BlueHost + the .com domain name for a year + security for a year cost me $160 AUD.

The benefit of having to buy three years’ worth of hosting is that I have to try keep this up! I can’t just give up after a couple of weeks (which I haven’t done anyway. Success!). By the end of the three years, I expect I’ll either be sick to death of this whole thing and let the domain name slide OR I’ll still be loving it and I might even have a decent following. Let’s hope for the latter, shall we? But really who knows what will happen in the space of three years…

It’s ironic because I’ve had this sitting in my drafts for over a month and if you told me then what the world’s like now I wouldn’t have believed you… So there you go.

The most confusing part: learning to use WordPress

When I started up my travel blog, I tried to follow the steps laid out by Never Ending Footsteps EXACTLY. But maybe things have changed because my set up looked nothing like hers???? Or maybe I just did something wrong. Anyway it works now so that’s the main thing, right?

I actually bought my domain name about two days before releasing my site so the world could see it. That’s how long it took me to work everything out, from my theme all the way to the plugins.

Choosing and customising a theme

I already had chosen a theme looking through the list of free wordpress themes online. Whilst I tried a couple of others, I ended up settling on that same one I saw. I thought about paying for a theme but given I have no idea whether I’ll actually stick this out after the three years, I wanted to cut down costs as much as possible.

When it came to setting up how my site actually looked, I really just worked by trial and error. I would get stuck on something, then come back later and realise it actually isn’t that hard to understand. Each theme will be different so I won’t go through all the details but my menus are a good example. It literally took me two weeks to work out how to make a dropdown menu… It’s as easy as dragging the page you want as the drop down so it’s underneath the page above…..

Don’t forget to check what it looks like on mobile!

In the last week I’ve changed my theme. Turns out I never looked at my site on a mobile device and the header looked totally stupid. There was no way I could change it with the theme I had so I decided to swap to a new (also free) theme! I genuinely like it so much better! It looks a lot neater and I had more flexibility with what I could change in the free version. Plus, I checked it out on mobile and iPad-sized devices and it looks good on them all! What a relief! The theme I am currently using is ‘Panoramic’ by Out the Box. Previously I was using Gateway.

Plugins

The plugins are actually really easy so I’m sure you won’t have any trouble with them. You just have to find the one you want, then download and activate it! I only have the basic (and free) plugins at the moment to keep my site functioning. I’ve mostly stuck with the plugins WordPress downloads and activates for you, but I did get a few others:

• Yoast SEO is literally the best plugin ever. It helps me to edit my posts so they’re easy to read and easy to find in Google!
• Menu Image allowed me to put social media logos in my menus instead of writing “Instagram” and “YouTube”
• Mashshare Share Buttons are at the bottom of each of my posts to make it easy for you guys to share if you want to
• iThemes Security keeps my site safe from hackers
• Comments Not Replied To will notify me if I get a comment and haven’t replied to it. Not essential when starting out – I haven’t got any comments yet!
• Antispam Bee picks up any spam comments and deletes them (again, maybe not essential when starting out). Your blog will come with Akismet downloaded and all the bloggers recommend but it costs money so I went for a free option.
• Beam me up Scotty – Back to Top Button is pretty self explanatory. See that little arrow in the bottom right? It takes you straight back to the top of the page!
• Social Slider Widget – adds a selection of my Instagram posts to my home page for you guys to check out.

The most exciting part: publishing your travel blog and your first post!

To be honest with you, I actually started doubting myself at this point. My first post was written, my site was looking great and everything was ready to go. But the thoughts going through my head were less “how exciting!!” and more “am I really going to do this??”. If I’d gone with wordpress.com I might have backed out there. But since I’d paid 160 bucks I had to go through with it!

And so here I am!

Next time on my blogging journey series, I’ll write about starting up social media for your blog. If there’s anything else you’d like to know about how I’ve started up my blog, let me know in the comments below or get in touch via social media! You can find me @globalpawprints on Facebook and Instagram.