Have you ever wanted to be a blogger but starting a travel blog seemed too complicated or too technical? Have you ever wanted to be a travel blogger who travels the world full-time and makes a lot of money out of that blog, but never knew how do travel bloggers make money, therefore thought it’s actually impossible?
Do you believe that making money from blogging is possible, but it’s too risky to leave other things behind and fully go for it, by just starting a travel blog?
If any of these sounds familiar for you, then know that you’re not alone thinking like that!
Actually, the majority of people have these exact questions and doubts before starting a blog and making blogging a career.
We were no different and also had our doubts about how to grow our audience, how to create interesting content and how to make money from blogging.
But on top of that all, the motivation of being able to travel to all the countries around the world pushed as forward to turn out travel hobby into the travel blogging business.
Now, as we’re already over a year fully into travel blogging and full-time travel, our opinion about many of these questions have changed to the direction where now we’re like:
“why the hell did we doubt it and didn’t start blogging much sooner?!?”
So here are the most common doubts that we’ve seen holding people back from starting a travel blog and being a full-time blogger.
We’re sharing these to encourage you not to allow any of these be a show stopper for you in starting your blogging career.
Discover our experience in each of these areas and find out how many of them are actually nothing that bad and shouldn’t hold anyone back from blogging as a hobby, side work or even a career.
See the Contents
1. I’m not so technical to create a blog website
One of the biggest concerns of people how haven’t started blogging yet is how to actually build a blog. Without having a technical background or an IT genius friends this might seem close to impossible.
When we decided to create a blog, none of us have any knowledge of how to do that at all. No website design experience, no coding or HTML knowledge, nothing.
But as it turns out, the blogging industry has a whole lot of materials and information available to help you learn things about building a blog.
It’s actually not that difficult at all if you’re willing to invest some time, learn and follow the guides on the internet.
Plus, all the setting up of the website itself and its design has been made simple and user-friendly for people without prior knowledge for ages already.
As an example – you’re reading all of this on a website made by me, Anete who had no prior knowledge to do this at all. And look how it turned out!
2. It sounds expensive to have a good-looking blog
Some people think that they have to save up a lot of money in order to build a pretty blog.
They might think that it costs a fortune to buy the hosting and to pay a web designer to put it all together, but honestly, it’s really not the case at all.
First, when just starting out, it’s possible to have a free WordPress blog. It’s not going to be all fancy with different layouts and options, but it’s a good way how to get the first practice what’s blogging all about.
When you are ready to start with blogging more seriously with an aim to make it awesome and monetize it, it’s best to use some of the paid blogging options, but it doesn’t have to be expensive at all.
When we started our travel blog, we signed up to our web hosting service Bluehost. It came with a free domain name, free and easy WordPress set up, a page builder and support to make this whole thing up and running.
The cost was only 3,95 $ per month. The other things that we bought was a website theme to make it look nice and pretty, that cost 20$. That’s it.
Sure, you’ll have plenty of options to add different extras after a while, but when you are just starting out it doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated. So don’t let it stop you from starting a blog.
3. It doesn’t seem possible to make money with blogging
I’m sure a part of you is wondering how to earn money traveling and even more – how to earn money from a travel blog. And is it even possible at all?
Our answer is YES! I’m not gonna lie and say that it’s easy and once you’ll start your own travel blog, you’ll be getting lots of money and become famous right away.
It doesn’t work like that. But for those who are willing to work hard and put a lot of effort to make things work, travel blog can become an incredible source of income.
We’ve been traveling all over the world for more than a year now.
We lived in Bangkok, Bali, different cities in Vietnam and Mexico. We spent time in South Korea, Cuba, California, Monaco.
And that’s all within a year and thanks to our travel blog. There are many ways how to make money from blogging and with some dedication and research, you can make it happen.
Just know, that fear of not being able to make money is definitely not something that should stop you from starting a blog.
4. Scared to leave the regular life behind and fully turn to blog
Full time traveling around the world might sound like a dream come true for many, including us.
But travel blogging doesn’t have to be 100% about that. You can be a travel blogger without leaving your existing life, job, and people around you for a long period of time.
Just to test out the waters and catch that travel bug, by taking shorter trips, writing about them on your new blog in the comfort of your own home. Take things step by step.
Travel a bit, then come back home. Then travel again for a bit and return home for a while again.
That way you’ll get the feeling of how it’s like to be a traveler and it will be easier to jump into that as a full-time career if that’s your goal at all.
5. All successful bloggers must have learned writing and photo. I have no experience in that
This is another point that totally shouldn’t stop you from dreaming big and having your own successful travel blog.
Blogging and travel photography, the same as almost everything in life, can be learned. For some, it’s more difficult to learn, for some it’s really easy, but either way, this is not a show stopper.
When we started our travel this blog TheTravelLeaf.com, we also had no experience in travel writing or photography.
Again, it takes some research and looking for info on how to write awesome articles and how to get started in travel photography.
So that’s exactly what we did. We started and just rolled with it, learning something new day by day.
And now, just more than a year later, being self-thought writers and photographers, earns us living and allows to travel the world. Worth a shot, isn’t it?
6. I don’t have an expensive, professional camera gear or GoPro to make good travel shots
Neither do we! We’d think this too at first but managed to prove ourselves wrong.
You don’t have to wait to be able to buy a super expensive camera with a huge lens to make those epic travel sot you’re seeing all over Instagram.
All it takes actually is some creativity, YouTube tutorials, and a more simple camera to begin with. You can even take great shots with your smartphone.
Just to give you an idea, here’s how we started out. Before our blog, we’d always take photos with our smartphones.
But once we decided to start a blog, we got a beginner level camera Nikon D3300 for just over 300$ only. This camera is what we’ve used to get all our blog and Instagram shots and we are totally happy about that.
The key is to start learning some photo editing tricks and you’re good to go.
7. I don’t have anybody to travel with me or start a blog together
Don’t worry if you don’t have a companion who’s ready to travel the world with you or create a blog together.
The most important thing is not to stop yourself from traveling and blogging, just because you’re waiting for someone to come along.
That way you can keep waiting forever and end up doing nothing, just because others don’t want the same things as you do. From what we’ve seen around, solo travel is epic and you definitely won’t be the first person who’ve done that.
Here we don’t have a personal example to share as the two of us travel together as well as work on this blog together.
However, there are so many awesome examples of solo travelers having a great blogging success and traveling the world like a badass.
Just check out bloggers like Ciara from Hey_Ciara or Kiersten from TheBlondeAbroad for some solo travel inspiration.
8. Fear of failure
These are such natural things to be scared of when doing anything, let alone starting a new lifestyle or career path, like being a travel blogger. But when you really think about it, what’s the worst thing that can happen?
So, you start a blog and go traveling, it doesn’t work out and you return home. What you are left with is a cool travel experience to always remember.
On the other hand, you can risk it and actually make your plan work, to get the travel blogger life you always wanted. I think both of these chances are worth to take. Just know that your fear is only holding you back, not protecting you.
9. What if nobody will read my blog
This is simply not true if you are dedicated to work hard on your blog and make it interesting and useful to your audience.
There are many ways how to build up your audience who will love your blog, starting from pricking your blog niche, working on SEO – having your blog rank in Google when people search for the things you write about, to growing your social media following etc.
Once you get into blogging, you’ll learn a lot about how to build your audience, but at the moment just know, that there will always be someone who’ll read your blog.
You’ll be surprised! As we’ve learned so far, people tend to have the same kind of problems that we do. They are interested in the same kind of things.
So the same way we look for answers to questions, others do too and that’s how our audience grows.
10. Fear of being too old or too young to be a travel blogger
Again, this is something that should not stop you from doing what you love. We started blogging and changed our careers to be full-time travelers at the age of 27.
Others do that right after high school, some do it when they’re over 40 of 50. So it’s never too early or too late. As long as you feel good about your choices, go for it.
11. I’m too lazy to find how to start a travel blog
This is totally understandable and we can relate to that all the way. If you feel like it’s gonna be too much of a hustle, just start slow.
All you need is one evening with a glass of tea or wine in hand, to sit down and look for some info on how to start. It’s going to get more and more exciting from there. We promise!
A good way how to keep to motivation and win over the laziness is to set your goals. Just write down what do you want to achieve with blogging.
And remember this – every small step you take and every small thing you do, will get you closer to that goal. That should be a good way how to get yourself to sit down and do some blogging work.
