BITW 167: Launch a Travel Blogging Career – Day 4

It’s day four of the free travel blogging course based on 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 understanding and finding your ideal reader and audience.

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30 Days to Launch a Travel Blogging or Writing Career E-book Day 4

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 four of the Ebook series to launch a travel blogging or writing career. Day four focuses on how to find the other bloggers and travel writers in your same niche and why this is important.

Listen to the full podcast; click here!

Find Your Ideal Reader and Audience

Day 4: How to Find Your Ideal Reader and Audience for your travel website.

As a brief overview and because it is so important to today’s lesson, defining your writing niche means choosing which corner of the travel writing world you would like to occupy. It’s about creating a purposeful blog.

The bottom line is that honing in on a niche will allow you to be successful faster. When I say successful, I mean growing an audience, traffic and revenue which leads into our topic today.

Instead of trying to cater to every possible travel topic and travel destination, instead, focus on one part of the world– it can as small as one town or city, a state or province or a small country. Or choose a specific type of travel such as family, solo, adventure. Even better, hone in on both if possible such as best family adventures in San Diego. The bigger your city, town, state or country, the more you’ll want to niche down. If you haven’t done this, do yourself a huge favor and listen or re-listen to episode 163 and finish this step.

Determining your niche also will help you define your audience. This is your website readers and visitors. The more you define who we are as a writer/blogger/content creator will also help you build your audience. This is the audience you speak to with your writing. Knowing your niche and determining your audience will, in turn, help you focus on the point of view of your blog.

Think of it this way. If you have a website about travel to locations around the world, who is your reader in todays world? It’s a small audience who wants to travel everywhere you might want to go to and write about.

Niche & Audience Case Study

I recently posted a Guest Post on Break Into Travel Writing from Victoria Philpott from Day Out in England and you might know her better as VickyFlipFlop. Her post topic was The Importance of Choosing a Travel Blog Niche and comparing her original site VickyFlipFlop Travels with her new niche site Day Out in England. This post is super relevant to our lesson today and reinforces the concept of niche sites as your ideal choice for your website.

In her guest post, she said “I set up my first blog VickyFlipFlopTravels almost ten years ago and the blogging world was very different. You could get by without a niche, and just be ‘a travel blogger’. Now I think it’s really important to have a niche, both so you stand out from the crowd, and so Google can see you’re an authority.”

Vicky goes on to say, “It’s been amazing to see how quickly this site has ranked thanks to the tighter niche. Google knows exactly what it’s about, as do the readers, as do I. Unlike my first blog I could sum it up in a tagline – TIPS, GUIDES & ITINERARIES FOR YOUR DAY TRIPS in England”.

She also shares the bio for her new niche site which is:

“We’re here to help you make the most of this wonderful country, and to find great days out to suit your budget. Filled with guides and itineraries to England’s best days out, and searchable by interests, counties, cities and areas – we’re definitely not just for the kids!”

She explained, “I’ve never been able to do that for my general travel blog. It’s been a really interesting learning process to see the comparative growth here, with a tight niche I was passionate about”.

In the post, she goes on to share her top 4 Tips to Find a Niche for Your Travel Blog and the Importance of Choosing a Blog Niche You are Passionate About.

Before I move on to the meat of our lesson today, I want to share one more thing from Vicky’s niche blog results. Her site Day Out in England, qualified for Mediavine within four months. If you don’t know what Mediavine is, it is an ad network, which means it shows ads on your site that you make income from. Mediavine is the ad network I am also signed up for with my travel site, 52 Perfect Days.

Mediavine requires 50k sessions per month to qualify, so you can see what kind of traffic Vicky was able to generate quickly!

I 100% identify with Vicky. I started 52 Perfect Days over ten years ago and agree with her that the blogging world was very different. You really could get by without a niche, and just be ‘a travel blogger’. There were way fewer of us back then. Meaning, less competition. But, the other factor is that technology has also changed and how people search and consume information is also different.

For 52 Perfect Days, I have articles about everywhere. The site is about travel in general. I have almost 1000 articles and that is after I’ve tried to hone it in more and remove really old and irrelevant content. Someone coming to my site about a packing list for Cancun may click through to another article about Mexico, especially one about the Yucatan, but less likely to continue to click around beyond this.

Compare this to Jim Chenney, who I have been admiring from afar. He is the man behind Uncovering PA and Uncovering New York. When someone comes to Uncovering New York looking for information about a waterfall, there is a good chance they’ll also click through to another article about how to get to the waterfall or articles about other nearby waterfalls. They also might click thru to an article about a brewery, hike or museum on the way to the waterfall. The content is so honed in and niched down to specific New York state topics, I would imagine the bounce rate is super low.

What is a Website Audience?

Audience consists of people based on age, gender, demographics, income, etc.

Can you imagine how easy it is to define the audience for Day out in England or Uncovering PA and Uncovering NY?

Can you see how defining my audience for 52 Perfect Days could be super complicated in today’s world?

Like Victoria and Jim and a lot of other bloggers, I have also started a niche site, which I launched with my husband last month and it focuses solely on travel in missouri.

Beyond only focusing on Missouri, we are starting the site by focusing on museums, wineries, breweries, caves, and historic hotels. Once we develop these categories and start ranking in Google, we can move on and add content about other Missouri travel topics.

So, let’s dive deeper into finding your ideal reader.

Website Audience Examples

Based on your website niche, determine who is most likely to search for this content.
start with broad questions, such as what generation is your target audience?

Let’s say your website focuses on the niche of budget travel in Thailand, you need to determine who wants information about budget travel in Asia? 20-somethings or Boomers?
If you have decided to focus on cruise travel, again you need to determine the types of people who are looking for cruises. Diving in deeper — are you covering all cruises?

Because the person looking for a river cruise in Europe isn’t the same person looking for a weekend party cruise to Mexico.
This isn’t 100% black and white, but for almost any niche, there will be a primary audience.

Why does a Website Audience Matter?

Hoping every traveler will read your website or articles is a huge ‘wish’. To build a loyal following of readers and web visitors means understanding your audience. It means writing with your reader in mind.

If your website niche is budget travel in Thailand and you write an article about the best hostels in Thailand, it is in line with your site, For a budget Asia travel website your audience will be budget travelers who are most likely under 30, probably even under 25. These travelers will most likely be backpackers on a trip for several weeks or longer.

Knowing what this traveler wants to know about Thailand is important. Do they want to know about the best bars and happy hours or the best fine dining?
So, writing an article about the best 5-star restaurants in Thailand would not be serving your audience. In fact, it might confuse them.

Let me pick on my own site again. I have had over 100 guest writers on 52 Perfect Days, writing about all kinds of content from spring break travel for students to bike routes throughout Asia to European river cruises and African safari’s.

Someone finding my site because of a Viking River Cruise may be interested in an African Safari, but most likely not going to want the top 10 party bars in Sri Lanka. They probably won’t want to read about the best FAMILY FUN DAY IN PALM SPRINGS. Why, because my European Viking cruisers are most likely empty nesters. They aren’t looking for top party locations or articles for kid-friendly options.

This isn’t to say I don’t get traffic to 52 Perfect Days — I do, but it is because it’s been around for so long and I have articles that rank well. But, I get a lot of new visitors and they don’t bounce around from article to article because they are so relevant and honed into one main target audience.

So, I’ll say it again. The more you define who we are as a writer/blogger or content creator will help you build your audience. Knowing your niche and determining your audience will, in turn, help you focus on the point of view of your blog. Honing in on this niche will allow you to be successful faster which translates into growing an audience, traffic and revenue.

Today’s Lesson: Finding your Ideal Reader and Audience

So, let’s jump into the steps for today’s lesson and your homework, and don’t forget to download the free pdf to help you stay organized and move through these lessons faster!

Download the FREE PDF worksheet for day 4 before you read on!

1. Who is Your Audience?

Creating a persona or avatar of your perfect reader is a great way to visualize your audience. Creating one person who represents your audience can help when you create new content and in making decisions about the type of content to include on the site.

Download the PDF worksheet to fill in all details about your ideal reader!

2. Write a 1 paragraph description of your Blog

Again, use the free PDF to organize your blog bio focused on what your website is about, its focus, mission, and promise to your readers.

Niche Travel Website Bio Examples

For my site, Travel in Missouri, our short bio is: This is a Missouri travel blog that features travel tips, travel advice, travel inspiration, historic hotel, and unique accommodation reviews to help plan your next Missouri vacation.

On Jim’s site, uncovering PA the about page shares: Uncovering PA was started in August 2013 and is now the most-read travel blog in Pennsylvania, reaching well over a million PA travelers each year. There is no better source for first-hand accounts of the best places to visit in Pennsylvania than Uncovering PA.
Our goal is to visit every single tourist attraction, hiking trail, local restaurant, and roadside oddity throughout Pennsylvania, and we’ve already been to over 1,000 places around the state in this quest.

Not only can you see the success of the site as far as traffic, but you can see the honed in niche of his site and who his audience is — PA travelers. People who live in PA and want to take day and weekend trips as well as travelers headed to Pa, who want to find the best things to do.

I hope you enjoyed this show and day 4 of 30 Days to Launch a Travel Blogging or Writing Career series.

Have you downloaded the FREE PDF worksheet for day 4?

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!

Day 3 Listen to the Podcast | Day 3 Blog Post
Homework Day 2: Download the PDF!

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

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