How to Find Your Competitors as a travel writer or travel blogger

It’s day three of my newly revised (for 2021) E-book entitled 30 Days to Launch a Travel Blogging or Writing Career. This episode shares tips to help you create the habits to be a successful travel writer or blogger and the topic is how to Define & Find Your Competitors as a travel blogger.

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30 Days to Launch a Travel Blogging or Writing Career E-book Day 3

Disclosure: This article may contain affiliate links. I may make a small commission from these links if you order something at no additional cost to you.

Listen to today’s episode where I share day three of the Ebook series to launch a travel blogging or writing career. Day three focuses on how to find the other bloggers and travel writers in your same niche and why this is important. I also share why I just launched a new website called Travel in Missouri.

Listen to the full podcast; click here!

Define & Find Your Competitors

Day 3: How to Define & Find Your Competitors as a travel blogger.

If you haven’t listened to it, head back to Episode 161 — which covers day one of the 30 Days to Launch a Travel Blogging or Writing Career and shares tips to determine the why for becoming a travel writer or blogger and goals for your travel career.

Lesson 2 can be found at Episode 163 is focuses on Defining Your Niche. The episode shares the benefits of creating a niche travel website instead of a broad travel site. And why if you write about everywhere in the world and every type of travel, you will most likely have a hard time building website traffic, growing an audience and landing media trips. This episode shares why the fastest road to success is starting with a focused niche or defining a more honed in niche for your current website and how to do it.

Create the habits to be a successful travel writer or blogger and our topic today is how to Define & Find Your Competitors. And the lesson is truly short, but super important.

Using your travel writing or blogging niche, which you defined and honed in day 2, you are going to determine the other bloggers or travel writers in the same niche. So, this lesson is focused on finding your competitors in that space.

Who is doing it correctly in your niche space? Who isn’t doing it well? Today will be focused on getting clear about whom you want to be in your niche.

Defining your writing niche means choosing which corner of the travel writing world you would like to occupy. If you did not choose a niche yesterday you must choose something.

What you choose doesn’t have to be your final niche, but you need to make a choice so you can get more clear about how to move forward and to be able to work on today’s task (and you’ll be able to rule a niche in or out after today).

If you already have a Website or Writing Focus

If you already have a blog or writing focus, today’s task will be great for you too! When was the last time you really took a look at what other bloggers are doing in your niche?

Understanding the other travel writers, bloggers and content creators who are already in your niche is very important. Who are the veterans? Who are the other newbies? Who is considered the authority? Remember, a blogger or writer who has been around for 5 or 10 or more years, may not be considered the authority.

There are Just 3 Steps for Today’s Lesson

Download the FREE PDF worksheet for day 3 before you read on!

1. Search & Find Top Competitors

Based on your niche, do a search in Google. Let’s say you want to focus on luxury travel. Search ‘luxury travel blogs’ or ‘luxury travel bloggers’ or ‘top luxury travel websites’. If your focus is more geo-targeted and you want to focus on Bail, search for ‘Bali blogs’, ‘Bali bloggers’, ‘Bali websites’. If you have honed in your niche and focused destination the search would be something like ‘Luxury Bali travel’ or ‘luxury Bali travel blogs’. Find 5-10 blogs that focus on your niche or the area you think you want to focus on.

2. Review the Sites (Do your own mini audit)

Spend time reviewing the sites you find. Look at the home page, about page, and a few recent blog posts. Look at the title of the post, blog layout, photos, writing style. Take notes. What do you like? What don’t you like?

3. Sit Back and Ponder

Based on your searches today what has inspired you? Are you clearer about your blog or the direction you want to take your writing and your website?

This isn’t all about finding competitors. This can also be about finding a mentor. It’s about connecting with other bloggers and travel writers. You might reach out to a few and start your own small mastermind or support group.

So, take some time, not just to study their sites, but also to follow them on social, join their email list, share some of their articles on your social channels, connect with them on Linkedin.

Allow today’s lesson learning about other bloggers and writers in your niche to inspire you and help you create new connections.

Have you downloaded the FREE PDF worksheet for day 3?

About The 30 Days to Launch a Travel Blogging Series

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.

Day 1 Listen to the Podcast | Day 1 Blog Post
Homework Day 1: Download the PDF!

Day 2 Listen to the Podcast | Day 2 Blog Post
Homework Day 2: Download the PDF!

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

Also in this Episode: Atomic Habits by James Clear

I want to quickly share a few strokes of genius I’m learning from the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. I started listening to this book on Audible and can’t believe how many amazing insights are in the book. I’ve been super inspired by the book and wanted to share a few of my favorite takeaways that I think could impact your travel writing career and your life.

This is just a book I happened to buy on Audible and getting so many insights from that I wanted to share his wisdom.

The book is all about the habits we each have and that, with the same habits, you’ll end up with the same results. So, it’s important to understand if your current habits are putting you on the path to success.

Success is the product of daily habits but failure can also be the product of bad daily habits.

James Clear explains that whatever outcome that happens is a lagging measure of your habits.
For Example: if you’re currently a millionaire and spend more than you earn you will eventually be broke. But if you’re broke and you save a little bit every day you will become financially free. It just may not be overnight.

So, to explain the lagging measure a bit more, here are a couple of cool examples he shares in the book:

Clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits.
Net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits.
Your weight is a lag in measure of your eating habits.
Knowledge is a lagging measure of learning habits.

The bottom line is that You get what you repeat (which are habits).

If you want to predict where you’re going to end up in life Follow the curve of tiny gains or losses. If you’re saving a little it’s a gain towards an end result of a lot. If you’re saving nothing or spending more than you earn it’s an end result of being broke. Your daily choices predicted this outcome.

He says to forget about goals & focus on systems because systems lead to goals and progress happens with systems because these are the steps you take repeatedly.

In the end, it’s about Choosing good habits vs bad habits, but it’s also about Want vs Priority. For example, you may want to save money, but if you don’t prioritize the habit you may not save anything.

If You Want to Become a Travel Writer

If you want to become a travel writer and you commit to writing an hour a day or publishing an article on your website every Monday & Thursday by virtue of this habit you will become a travel writer. The longer you practice this habit the more real you’re identity of being a travel writer will be.

Each time you write a paragraph, you are a writer.

Every action you take is a vote for who you want to be. Habits are the path to change your identity.

Working through the 30 days of this e-book will help you create the habit to be a successful travel writer or blogger.

Don’t let this 30 Day free course be something you start but don’t finish. That’s the whole crux of creating good habits.

Showing up and doing all 30 days of this course will create a habit to become a better travel writer or blogger. Just like showing up and writing an hour a day or publishing two articles every week will make you a successful blogger the reverse is true.

If you commit to the habit of writing an hour a day and publishing two articles a week but you end up writing an hour once or twice a week and publishing an article a month the steps to reach your true goal are going to take much much longer.

It’s like anything in life. If you go to the gym or work out daily you will get into better shape faster than if you work out once a week or once every other week. And you won’t see the results you’re hoping for. And that’s one frustration comes. Can you commit to the habit that will put you on the path to becoming a successful travel writer and blogger? Because doing it partially or randomly will give you partial and random results.

Believe it or not, I’m only on chapter 2 of the book. I’m listening a bit every day and really trying to take in the lessons and how I can apply them to my life, my travel writing, my websites and my income goals.

I hope you found some insights from the book and I’d love to know of any books you have found profound for taking your business or life to a new level. Please visit the website for this episode, which is #165, and please share in the comments any books you recommend for building a better business or life.

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