10 Best Blogging Tools & Tips I Learned My First Year As A Travel Blogger
Navigating your way through your first year of blogging can be a tough challenge! When I first started my blog, I ended up changing my website’s name, almost falling victim to an affiliates scam, and not making much money until around month 8! I worked hard, did my due diligence in research, and was able to eventually cut down to two days at my day job! I want to pass along the things that worked for me to help you in your beginner blogger journey, so keep reading!
FYI : This page includes affiliate links, which means I might get a commission from your purchase at no extra cost to you. This is what helps me work on the free content and freebies I produce for you guys, so thank you for that! Know that, I ONLY include what I use myself and stand behind 100% (learn more)
First off and most important… I want to encourage you to stick with it! Blogging IS NOT a get rich trick or something you can “start so you can quit your day job” right away! Some bloggers selling their courses may bait you with those click bait tactics to get 10,000 new views to your posts every day, and sure that’s possible but it takes a few years to get to that level. Even though it takes a lot of time and effort, it’s sooooo worth it once you start seeing those results finally funneling in!
Trust me when I say, it’s the best feeling ever!
I’ve had such a great year blogging! I’ve both met and discovered a ton of great people in the community and can genuinely say I have an idea who a lot of my followers are (which I think is important!)
My mind is still blown over the fact I’m already at 1,000 watch hours on Youtube and quickly racking in even more views to the point I had about 10,000 views just in September alone! I made it my lofty goal to get to 1,000 subscribers by January 1st so I can start monetizing on Youtube and make content and videos full time!
The only things you really need to spend money on in your first year are your blog’s website host, your blog name, and Elementor which makes it easy for us new bloggers to drag and drop our content. I also spent money on Canva which allows me to easily create content and repost it across all of my social media platforms. Because our travel blogging content is so visual, tools like Canva really help me to make content quickly even when I’m not on vacation!
Because we have so many social media platforms, it makes it easier than ever to do our own marketing. As long as you add SEO to organically show up when someone is searching for your kind of content, you’ll already be ahead of most of your fellow bloggers!
There’s a number of ways to do this. I use Google itself, Tubebuddy, VidIQ, and Yoast SEO. They all help you to see what your competitors are finding success with, help you find the keywords people are actually looking for, and give you suggestions for more keywords to add into your blog posts. This will all help Google suggest you to your ideal audience.
There’s always new tools coming up! There’s always fresh new ways to do the same ole thing. Maybe you have an idea for a post, then after researching, you realize that you could also work it into a viral trend, then into a viral sound, then next thing you know you go viral too! All because you put together all the right pieces that people are already looking for.
Now that you have the most optimized content to bring in new followers and new traffic, you need to make sure you get it seen everywhere! The best FREE way to do this is to take over your handle all over social media. That means you want to be on Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Youtube, Tiktok, everywhere! This will also help you get seen in Google search, because Google promotes it’s own incentives first, which means your website may not even show up until page 2 or 3 of a Google search!
You also don’t want someone else to think of the same handle and then start making a ton of content or leaving comments everywhere when it’s not your content or your comments!
That’s why you’ll see I still have some content and videos under Emilyspalmtree. That’s what I first started my account as UNTIL I started getting feedback about how it looked like Emily Spalmtree. I wanted it to look like Emily’s Palmtree but on Instagram and other social media you can’t use a “ ‘ “ symbol so it would get all messed up.
So, I decided to go in a different direction.
But that just goes to show why you shouldn’t spend a ton of money your first year because it’s all about experimenting and seeing what works.
While you are putting your content out everywhere, you will start getting feedback. Some of it will be good and a lot of it might be bad! Think of it as experimenting and this is the time to really take those bold steps or make that crazy content.
If it doesn’t work, you can always delete it.
If it does work, and it goes viral, then you know you’re on the right track!
This first year will help you really channel into your natural traffic and get an idea who your specific audience really is, as well as, give you the opportunity to find what kind of content you really like to make and which platforms you should invest your time into.
For example, maybe you’re constantly going viral on Tiktok and no where else. You can easily start re-purposing and re-posting Tiktoks across all of your platforms and really driving traffic to your Tiktok account. You can start monetizing there once you have 10,000 followers and 100,000 video views. So use your other accounts to funnel traffic back to Tiktok.
In the process you may find that your Youtube is starting to get a lot of views. To monetize on Youtube, you need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours. So start utilizing Youtube Shorts and use that to start really growing your Youtube as well!
It would be a waste for you to spend your time posting on Twitch or something when that’s not where your audience is.
There’s a number of ways to do this which I go into detail on Youtube. I’ll talk about the main one here, especially when you are first starting your blog.
The “Donate Button!”
There’s been so many times this past year where I’ll be looking for new ways to learn about social media! BUT, I can’t afford to take those fancy $300 classes. (Nor did I want to pay big money for things I could learn for FREE.)
I DID want to pay them back somehow by maybe buying them a coffee or offering them some sort of donation. I would reach out to them and they would tell me they’re just doing this as a hobby or the way they make their money is through their courses so buy one of those.
Imagine how many others there are, just like me looking to pay someone back for their FREE knowledge or product they were giving me – but they didn’t have any option to do it. It’s so easy to add something like this to your site now, especially with Cashapp, Paypal, and Venmo, etc!
THEY ARE THERE FOR A REASON!
Think about it… these apps all want people to stay on their app. So giving you insights to help you keep people on the app is kind of genius! All of the apps have them now when you have a “business account!” Some of them don’t even need a business account!
Take advantage of this FREE resource and use it to really get into the heads of your followers.
For example, maybe your audience tends to always be active on your channel around 1pm. Think about the logistics of this. They are probably on their lunch break, their kid is finally taking a nap, or they’re going through the mid-day slump and need some stimulation.
What kind of content do people want to see during their lunch break? Is it something to hype them up? Something to make them laugh for a bit?
Each of our audiences are different, but you can really get into the nitty gritty stats even down to the age, gender, and occupations of your followers. Use these analytics to your advantage and give your audience what they are looking for.
Because when you start to really give them what they want, they will share with their friends who will share with their friends who will share with their friends and then boom FREE FREE traffic baby!
Plus, now that you know this is the time your ideal audience is active, it will be easier to help you find more of your ideal audience because they will most likely be active at the same times as your current ideal audience.
Don’t give out the same five tips every week or else your audience will start to feel like they’ve already learned all they could from you.
Mix it up.
Maybe deliver similar tips but in a different genre. For example, packing tips – how to pack a carry on, how to pack a suitcase, how to pack a backpack – then how to pack a carry on for Vegas, how to pack a carry on for Nashville, how to pack a carry on for Dallas, etc.
Keep breaking things down or adding fresh layers to things you know all about! You can also mix up your forms of content. Maybe one day you do a photo, next day you do text, next day you do video, etc.
Never take anything personally!
Maybe one day you have ten new followers and the next they are all gone! The reality is it was probably a follow for follow set of bots trying to get you to follow accounts back – when you didn’t – they unfollowed you – or they would’ve unfollowed you anyways.
Then you have the haters who are just on the platform to get out their aggression. I’m a firm believer that you’ve made it once you have haters because it means you’re doing something that is striking an opinion or it is enough to make someone hate on you for, for example, being on vacation when they can’t.
You never know what is going on with someone’s day to make them come at your for no reason. That being said, don’t ever feed into the negative vibes.
Keep your platforms positive.
Do you really want to go viral for getting so many negative comments? Or do you want to go viral for giving out good, valuable information, and genuine content!
People love to connect to a real person. Maybe you have some great advice, but what makes your advice different from someone else’s?
What makes someone choose you over the next one in their suggested videos.
This is where you can really show your style in your thumbnails, your delivery, your style of editing.
Whatever makes you you, don’t be afraid to show your real genuine self online.
The right audience and followers will turn on notifications because they can’t wait to see what you’re going to put out next!
Keep it up!
You’re doing great!
I hope these tips and tools are new tricks that will help you to succeed!
If you have any advice that worked for you that you would like to share, feel free to leave it in the comments on Youtube!
Let’s all support eachother and help eachother grow!
💞 Feel Free To Share! Your Support Is Appreciated! 💞
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What other posts would you like to see?
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