The Truth About Travel Blogging: 11 Things No One Told Us

The truth about travel blogging is that it’s incredibly hard to make a success of. And the more travel bloggers there are, the harder it gets.

Even when we started out in 2015, veterans used to complain about ‘too many newbies arriving on the scene’, all wanting just one thing: free travel. And that, as most travel bloggers will agree, is truly a myth. But the level of saturation then was nothing compared to what it is today. Social media and the Internet have become as real and powerful as the world outside our windows. As in every industry, there are a few who succeed beyond measure, some with genuine talent and others with a combination of luck and bought engagement. But what is travel blogging really like, for those of us in the middle, which is the vast majority?

The Truth About Travel Blogging: 11 Things We Wish We’d Known

Everyone wants to be you.

Every travel blogger needs an audience, and what you’re supposed to be doing is getting that audience to travel more. So you collaborate with a hotel and showcase it to your readers, hoping that they’ll book a stay there. Instead, most of your readers are thinking ‘wow, I want to score free stays too’ and they decide to get into travel blogging themselves. That doesn’t benefit said hotel or you, in any way. What it really does is skew the supply-demand ratio and saturate an already super-competitive market. But it’s just the way things are.

And guess what, the smartest bloggers have already figured it out. They’ve realized that most readers aren’t that interested in travel guides and travel tips. What they really want is a quick entry into the world of travel blogging. And so, these bloggers sell travel blogging courses! From what we can see, people are willing to cough up decent amounts of money to sign up for these courses. And what the courses do is give rise to more and more travel bloggers and fewer and fewer brand collaboration opportunities. But it’s worth noting that ‘travel blogging course’ is among the most searched queries on Google.

There are more travel bloggers than the total number of people in Iceland (probably).

Everyone’s a travel blogger. Even erstwhile fashion and food bloggers have managed to sneak in ‘travel’ into their portfolios somewhere or the other. We sometimes feel that a travel blogger/influencer/content creator is born every minute. And in case you were wondering, there are around 339,747 people living in Iceland. So one thing’s for sure – there’s nothing unique about travel blogging. But if you pick a niche that’s not too overdone (for e.g. your hometown), you might have something going for you.

Interesting travel blogging statistics

The truth about travel blogging is that it has little to do with good writing.

Blogging is nothing but writing on an online platform, right? Wrong. It’s just the sum of your SEO strategies, technical know-how, social influence, and dazzling photography. We’re ourselves guilty of referring to poorly written articles simply because they made it to the top of Google’s search results for a certain query. So being a good writer doesn’t give you much of an edge, nor is it a prerequisite for travel blogging. But for those who love to travel and are still perfecting the language they want to communicate in, this could be a good thing.

Good looking bloggers/creators/influencers will always have an edge.

There was a time when many bloggers never even showed themselves on their online profiles. It was all about the content and the experiences. In fact, there was a charm to weaving an aura of mystery around the creator of that content. Today, it’s becoming tougher and tougher to distinguish between fashion and travel blogging. Bloggers painstakingly plan their makeup, hairdos, hats, and outfits before getting themselves clicked in glamorous locations.

A beautiful person in a beautiful place – that’s got to be better than just a beautiful place, right? The followers of these fashion+beauty+travel bloggers certainly seem to agree. So hard luck if you don’t happen to be young and good-looking or own a wardrobe full of photogenic clothing. On the positive side, you’ll notice that simply appearing in your own pictures (even without perfect make-up and outfits) can boost your engagement.

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And so will those with a lot of funds.

Smartphones may have democratized photography and video shooting but they’re not enough on their own. If you visit the social media profiles and website of solo and couple travellers, you’ll see tons of pictures of said travellers. And they’re very professionally clicked too – certainly not the product of selfie sticks or random clicks by strangers. These bloggers take long breaks from work to go on extended trips where their sole purpose is to create spectacular photos and videos.

They record every moment of their lives on social media, with the aid of advanced gear like intervalometers (we only recently learnt what they are), tripods with remote controls, and super-expensive drones. Some even go to the extent of hiring professional photographers to accompany them on a trip. One could argue that it’s money well spent. Because they’re sure to gain thousands of followers in a matter of weeks. But it’s not really a lifestyle that anyone can aspire to, and we really hope that ‘relatable’ travel blogging comes back into vogue.

You will be competing with Instagram influencers, YouTube content creators, and a ton of other non-bloggers.

You can’t just be a blogger any more. Because there’s no way you can compete with the biggies of the media publishing world. BBC Travel, NatGeo Travel, The Guardian, The Telegraph – they’re always going to have more content than you and they’re always going to rank higher on search results. So you have to make yourself seen on social media as well. And that’s unfortunately the biggest time and money drainer there is. You’ll have to compete with professional photographers and models on Instagram, relentless pinners on Pinterest, and seasoned filmmakers on YouTube.

Even worse, you’ll have to reckon with those who buy fake followers and engagement to build a social media presence. They say there are no shortcuts to success but in the case of travel blogging, that doesn’t seem to be true. To be honest, the fake followers are rather obvious at the beginning, but once the influencer starts gaining thousands of real ones, no one seems to care how they started off.

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Transitioning from hobby blogging to monetizing is incredibly difficult.

You can’t just start a blog ‘for fun’ and then decide years down the line that you want to turn it into a business. Well, you can, but you’d have a herculean task ahead of you. Ask us. We were on WordPress.com for four years before taking the leap to self-hosting. It’s inevitable if you really want to monetize your site. But the challenges are tremendous, and the technical problems have reduced us to tears at times! Our advice: treat your blog as seriously as a business from the very beginning. You’ll have fewer regrets later.

The truth about travel blogging is that every time you want help, it’s going to cost you.

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Remember those courses we talked about? They cost anywhere between 300 to 500 USD each. You’ll usually see an ad for a FREE webinar with FREE tricks for overnight success on Instagram and Facebook. And like us, you’ll probably sign up and stay poised with pen and paper at the appointed hour. But what you’ll get is endless bragging, a few minutes of vague tips, and then an hour-long spiel on why you should buy XYZ blogger’s course and how so many people loved it. To be fair, some of these webinars actually do have useful information. But we don’t really understand folks who only have courses on their websites. What did they originally do?! (So, so, tempted to name some names here but we’ll exercise self-control)

Everyone’s selling something. And if you don’t, you’ll never make any money out of travel blogging.

Making money out of travel blogging has always been incredibly hard. And readers won’t make it easy for you. If you start writing reviews instead of soulful travelogues, they’ll tell you you’re a sell-out. It has happened to us. And if you serve too many ads, they’ll leave your website without reading anything. It’s a tough world. Yet, the posts of top travel bloggers are stuffed with ads and affiliate marketing links. For us, it was all good when we treated the blog just as a hobby. The day we decided to try and monetize it, we realized that blogging is no different from selling. And all the principles of sales and marketing apply here too. This can really take away the joy of what probably brought you to blogging in the first place: the pleasure of simply telling a story.

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The truth about travel blogging is that free travel happens too rarely to be the primary motivation.

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A good travel blogger has to be a voracious traveler, collaborations and invites notwithstanding. Some people have a hard time understanding this. When it comes to press trips, there are many other contenders – professional photographers and filmmakers, Instagram influencers with millions of followers, media journalists who write for top publications, and even celebrities who serve as brand ambassadors! Press trip invites for bloggers are far and few, and reserved for the very best in the industry. So yes, free travel happens very rarely. A more realistic goal is to aim for partial discounts and small freebies to reduce the overall costs of your trips.

Here are links to a few resources we use to save costs – if you click on them and make a purchase, we’ll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you:

• Amazon (Germany), Amazon (India), and Amazon (US) to buy cheap selfie sticks and tripods
• Booking.com to find cheap hotels starting at 45 euros a night
• Airbnb to find cheap homestays starting at 23 euros a night
• Getyourguide for cheap but interesting tours and activities
• Big Bus Tours for flexible and affordable hop on hop off city tours

People look down on bloggers; yet everyone wants to be one.

Once, everyone wanted to be a writer. To write a book and be published was the holy grail of social standing and class. And this resulted in tons of badly-written garbage that should ideally never have seen the light of day. But at least, there’s a certain respectability associated with writing. Tell someone you’re a blogger and reactions will vary from ‘oh, another one’ to ‘who pays your bills?’ The funny thing is, the person who scoffed at you is likely sitting on a domain or two themselves. People seem to look down on bloggers but that doesn’t stop them from wanting to have a go at it themselves. But we do believe the new generation has a different attitude to blogging and social media.

If you’re already a travel blogger, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the truth about travel blogging. And if you’re an aspiring one, let this post not serve as a discouraging spiel but as an honest picture of the world of travel blogging today.

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