Knowing Your Travel Writing Why and Goal: BITW 161

This podcast shares day one of my newly revised (for 2021) E-book entitled 30 Days to Launch a Travel Blogging or Writing Career. Once a month I’m going to share one new day from the E-book with tips to launch a travel blogging. This episode shares tips to determine the why for becoming a travel writer or blogger and goals for your travel website.

Break Into Travel Writing: A podcast and website designed to help you build a travel blog your readers love as well as help you achieve your goals as a travel writer or blogger.

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30 Days to Launch a Travel Blogging or Writing Career E-book Day 1

Show focus: The new podcast series based on my 30 Days to Become a Travel Blogger (or Travel Writer) E-book.

Listen to today’s episode where I share day one of the Ebook series to launch a travel blogging or writing career. Day one focuses on knowing your why and understanding your goals for your travel career and website.

Listen to the full podcast; click here!

Once a month I’m going to share tips from my newly revised (for 2021) Ebook entitled 30 Days to Launch a Travel Blogging or Writing Career.

The entire Ebook is available as a downloadable pdf for purchase. The full 30 days shares the step-by-step to go from aspiring travel writer to travel writer or blogger with step-by-step instructions for each day can be found at bitw/30daysebook or from the courses tab on the navigation bar of my website.

The 30-day foundation course lays the groundwork needed to launch a travel blogging or travel writing career from the launch of your website to landing media trips or creating your own paid-for solo travel!

If you already have a website but are struggling to find your audience, build traffic and understand how to work with affiliates, this podcast series and e-book will be super valuable to you as well.

Maybe you have a blog and are ready to start relationships with PR and media and attend media trips. Or maybe you want to have a community of travel bloggers to connect with to trade PR and media contacts or have an article proofed.

If you are ready to take the steps to become a travel blogger or take your current site to the next level, to hone in your site, audience, traffic, social accounts, SEO strategy, and more!

Each of the tips from the Ebook, will be short and sweet and come with a bit of homework. In fact, I have a pdf worksheet you can download with the steps to work on for today.

30 Days to Launch a Travel Blogging or Writing Career E-book Day 1

Day 1 Knowing Your Why and Your Goal

Let me ask you:

Why are you starting a travel website?
Why do you want to be a travel writer or blogger?
What is the goal of becoming a travel writer/blogger and starting a travel website?

Mindset

There are a lot of different reasons to start a travel website, which gets into the mindset of blogging. Take some time to truly think about your true intentions for diving into the world of travel writing or blogging.

There is no right or wrong answer here, but getting honest with your ‘why’ and goals can really help with the direction you take your website and what tasks you focus on. If you’ve already started your website, this can help determine if you are actually on course to meeting your goals.

Do you simply want to write about your travels?
Do you want to have a travel website so you can travel more? Maybe get invited on press trips?
Maybe you want to be able to learn how to travel for free and lower your taxable income?
Do you want a creative outlet?
Will the travel website be a hobby?
Do you want to use a travel website as a portfolio for your freelancing career?
Do you want to become a travel writer or blogger simply because it’s cool?
Do you think of it as a hobby and if you end up making money that is a bonus?
Are you hoping to make a bit of additional or supplemental income from your website?
Are you starting a travel website with the intention to turn it into a business and want it to eventually be your sole income?
Are you hoping to retire or quit your current job in a set amount of years with the goal of the website covering your income in the future?

When I started my travel website, 52 Perfect Days, my goal was to travel. I wanted media trips and wanted to stop relying on my freelancing gigs for media trips. I wanted to travel and wanted to be my own editor so I could guarantee story placement because I was tired of pitching editors on stories and losing the media trips because the editors took so long to respond.

After a few years, I got interested in monetizing my website and turning it into a business and began researching and learning about affiliate marketing and how to work with brands for ad sales.

It’s been an evolution, but my site has been around since 2008.

1+1 Needs to Equal 2

There can be a lot of moving parts to a website and blogging. Don’t get caught up in tasks that don’t align with your end goal.

This doesn’t mean your goals might change in a few months or a few years, but based on your goals today, think about ponder the following.

Do you care about traffic, views, and readership on your site? Or is it truly about having a creative outlet?
If you want a big following but only want to write personal travel essays it will be harder in most cases to have a large following. You could build a great small audience, but writing informative pieces for readers will have broader appeal.
Are you willing to have ads and affiliate links on the site?
If creating income from your website is a top goal, but you don’t want any ads on your site or affiliate links, you are taking away two powerful ways to earn income.
If you truly want a creative outlet that is a hobby…. Don’t get caught up in building traffic, working on SEO, and understanding affiliate marketing. Focus on the writing.
If it’s truly all about the travel and you don’t have a desire to monetize work on traffic, domain authority, and your social media presence. Some travel bloggers get trips based on one awesome social media channel with lots of followers and engagement even though their website traffic might just be ok.
As with anything new that you’re learning, you have to be flexible and open to trying new things. You should also be prepared to experiment a lot when it comes to blogging, and while building and pleasing an audience of travel lovers. But you can never find out what works without trying a lot of different things.

Homework: Download the PDF!

Get All 30 Days Now! Purchase the Ebook for only $49

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