Travel BlogCamp

I’ve been writing Travel Rants for over 4 years now and I enjoy it. A friend asked me what makes me continue to write the blog when it does not generate enough revenue to do it full-time. The answer was simply, I love starting debates, helping consumers and of course the media attention.

I thought I would highlight the challenges that affect me, so other people can learn from my experiences.

Lack of productivity

I am a lazy arse, and recently I got to the point where I could not face replying to emails, writing a blog post, especially when I’ve had a crappy day at work. Then I started to read about “getting things done’” also known as GTD and it has made me a little more productive.

Basically, you unload from your brain, every single task you have to complete, be it work, home, or business and either write it down on a sheet of paper or use an online tool like remember the milk. Once you have unloaded your brain of all of those tasks you will feel better, believe me.

Then, identify any tasks that will take you less than two minutes to complete. Set some time aside and complete all of these tasks, one after the other. I did this last weekend and what a sense of achievement I felt because so many tasks were completed and ticked off.

Mentally, my brain was saying ‘I can’t be bothered with working because I have too much to do!’ but because I highlighted those quick fire tasks, the to-do list did seemed less daunting. I still have a ton of tasks to complete, but it does direct your mind to the job in hand.

Learning new skills

You have to learn so much, not just writing content that people want to comment and link to, but learn about search engines, social media, and how to promote your blog. This all takes time, and I have tried to learn a little of everything to get me by.

My RSS reader is very varied, I read search engine optimisation, marketing, building communities, and small business blogs. I believe if you want to create a popular blog then you have to divide some of your time in to learning these topics.

Sometime next week I will list the non travel blogs I read regularly.

It’s a challenge learning all this as well as writing content, but you do not need to be an expert (I’m not) you just need to know the basics. One lesson I have learnt is do not trust everything you read online, and try and focus on reading content written by trustful sources.

Networking

I love networking with other blogger’s, with people who work within the industry, journalists, and yes, I even enjoy networking with PR people. For a new blog I realised early on that I had to find blogs in my niche and leave comments and start to build relationships with these people.

I still love doing that, but I am finding lately that I spend very little time leaving comments on other blogs, so I am trying to dedicate a few hours a week where I read new blogs and join in discussions. I’ve also started posted on one or two travel forums.

Content writing

Writing content is a learning process. You quickly realise what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes I think to myself are people fed up of hearing me rant then I will write a post that will get tons of comments and links.

You have to experiment, try changing the style of the post titles, write short posts, long detailed posts, ask questions, and don’t ask questions.

Everyone has a different writing style, and your readers quickly get used to yours. Just don’t be afraid to experiment.

These are my challenges, with a few tips thrown in, what are your challenges?