NEW TO BLOGGING – 9 Valuable Things I Wish I’d Known From The Beginning

Working Smarter, Not Harder!

Beginning my travel blogging journey has been the most fascinating and craziest thing I’ve ever done. When I was super new to blogging, I didn’t know where to start, but as I progressed, I realised just how far I’ve come. I’m ever so grateful for the journey.

As I have travelled extensively, lived in numerous countries, and am constantly asked questions about my travels, starting a travel blog was a no-brainer. I looked around at a few travel blogs and thought I could do that, but better. So, I did my research and set on my way.

Little did I know that while blogging might be an ‘easy idea’, the workload certainly is not. From the beginning, I knew I wanted my website to be my full-time income eventually. So, I put in the work and assumed shortly after launching, I’d be making the big bucks; it’s gonna be wild! Haha. It turns it’s gonna take a lot more than that!

I spent two years on and off working on my website before it launched in 2024. Since then, I have learned many new things that I needed to adjust to, which took another six months. I could have done with really figuring out the blogging journey beforehand.

These are the nine things I wish I had known when I was new to blogging. They would have saved me time—the most valuable thing in the world—and helped me achieve success quicker.

Also, read Beginners Guide To Starting A Succesful Travel Blog In 2024.

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Disclaimer: This blog contains affiliate links. If you purchase any cool products or experiences through these links, I may earn a little something as a thank you. There is no extra cost to you, promise!

What Is The Purpose Of Blogging?

Writing blogs must have a purpose. Aside from just doing it for fun, with no aspiration to ‘take it somewhere’ (like a diary), there are many reasons for blogging. A well-rounded website catering to different purposes is good, especially when new to blogging.

Knowledge: For a majority, the main reason for starting a blog is to help others, pass on valuable information, educate, advise, recommend, and enlighten people with what they are passionate about. If you’re not here to help, teach, and inform others, I’m not sure you are here for the right purpose.

Community: Another reason to blog is to find and help communities with similar interests. Connecting with like-minded people can really benefit you and others. Plus, if someone loves your content, they’ll likely come back when they want new or other information on something else, e.g., a different destination. This will likely result in them recommending you to their peers and growing your community/network more.

Financial: If you blog solely for financial gain, you may be on the wrong path. Although blogging can be lucrative, it’s not a get-rich-quick scheme, especially when you are new to blogging and have so much to learn. You’ll have to be passionate, if not patient. You can make good money with blogging, but only the strongest survive.

Reputation: With a great reputation comes great authority. Becoming trustworthy will boost your chances of connecting and working with brands you love. You’re more likely to have brands reach out to you or have more success when reaching out to them. Just like content is king, reputation is queen!

Be in love with what you will be blogging about

You Only Need The Basics To Begin

So, my first reflection on things I wish I had known when I was new to blogging is that you only need the basics to begin. When I started my blogging journey, I overwhelmed myself with information and 90-hour-a-week courses and thought I needed to know EVERYTHING before I started. I spent two months learning courses on SEO (search engine optimisation), backlinking, inbound and outbound marketing, social media courses, and more. Building a high-quality site takes a lot of learning and resources. But to begin your journey, you only need the basics.

Sure, these courses have helped dramatically as I have advanced my knowledge, but most of it didn’t apply to the beginning of my journey as I was just starting. You know what they say, use it or lose it, so by the time I was ready to begin implementing, I had already forgotten half of what I learnt. Now, I’m not saying these courses were a waste of time or don’t do them; I’m saying that you only need the basics when you are new to blogging life. Then, focus on elevating.

Don’t overwhelm yourself with a long list of things to do

Basics You NEED

Domain & Webhosting: A domain is your website’s URL, like mine, foreverlivingyes.com. Web hosting is like renting space on the Internet where your website will live. For example, I registered my URL and hosted my website through GoDaddy. I pay an annual hosting fee. 

Setting up your blog: WordPress.org is the popular choice among writers. It’s free, trustworthy, and a reputable source to write—it’s what I swear by and suggest. Just make sure you choose WordPress.org over WordPress.com because, with .org, you can host your site yourself, whereas with .com, you won’t be able to.

Theme Plugin: A theme plugin is a template that creates the visual base of your website. Many free or paid themes are typically priced between £20 to £70. While there are free options, a premium theme is a worthy investment. After deleting my website six times, I opted for Blossoms Theme Pro. It was game-changing for me; it had video tutorials, templates and pre-made widgets for a travel website, making it easier to build my website.

Images: You want images featuring you and your travels. It doesn’t have to be your face (except for the author’s bio), but having images of you/your face is more personal and will help you connect with your audience. If you’re new to blogging, you may need to build up your media collection, so consider purchasing stock photos from places like Adobe Stock.

Logo: This will be used across your website, so ensure it’s a logo/brand representing you. I purchased my logo and brand kit from Looka and registered Forever Living Yes as a private limited company with the government, as I plan on doing something major with this FLY name in the future.

Experimenting with my logo on Looka

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Optimize & Compress Photos For Better Results

My second reflection is that I wish I had known the importance of optimizing and compressing images from the very beginning when I was new to blogging. Why is optimizing and compressing images important? Because they save so much storage on your website and help it perform better. Compressing also improves your SEO (search engine optimisation) score.

So, until very recently, I had no idea that this was important. When you upload pictures on WordPress, it usually says the recommended size. Don’t do your own thing like me; just stick to the recommended size so you’ll avoid having to do what I had to do—go through them individually. Going through 65 blogs and 19 pages, 12 hours a day, for three solid weeks, correcting my wrongs was not fun AT ALL.

So, stick to the guidelines from the very start. Also, compress your images to save storage space. ShortPixel is a highly reputable website for compressing images, which I now use and really love. They also have a free WordPress plugin for you to install on WordPress, making your life so much easier!

This is what Short Pixel looks like; it is super easy to use to optimise your media

Starting With The Basic SEOs

SEO can seem scary, especially when you are new to blogging. That’s because it is a very complex subject. I’ve done numerous courses in it, and I’m still getting my head around it. SEO is not a set-it-and-forget-it type of action, either. It’s forever changing and updating as the algorithms change. However, there are some good SEO practices to practice from the very start of your travel blogging journey, which are unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

Basic SEO

Optimising images: As I mentioned in the previous step, optimising and compressing your images using tools like ShortPixel is essential and an excellent SEO practice.

Alt text: When you upload a picture, you’ll see an option to add title, header, description and alt text. Alt text is basically a description of the image you’ve uploaded, making it accessible for people with disability. Think of it like you are painting them a picture with your description. It can hurt your SEO not to include alt text.

Interlinking: To help build your website, naturally include recommendations of your other posts in some of your links. It’s also recommended to link to other sources that serve your audience. For example, If I write about websites that offer travel services, I will refer to sites other than mine, like Thatch. Getting used to doing this might take a while when you’re new to blogging, but you’ll gradually catch on, especially when you start adding affiliate links.

Keyword: Using at least one keyword for your blog site will help google determine your blog subject. You can also add secondary keywords, but try not to overdo it. If you overstuff it, your blog will appear unnatural, and Google may penalise you, making your website harder to find. I’m no keyword expert. Actually, I suck in this area and still learning, but you can check out Ahrefs blog to learn all about it.

Many key SEO optimization tips and tricks come as an all-in-one plugin, like AISEO, which is free to install on your WordPress. It gives you recommendations on how to improve your blog before publishing. I’ve found this incredibly useful, using it as a guide as I produce my blogs.

Start with the basics of building an SEO strategy

Affiliate Programmes That Are Better For Beginners

Now, let’s talk money—I mean affiliations. This is an exciting avenue of income for the blogging industry. Affiliation is a commission from companies that recommend products and services. When starting your travel blog, you may find signing up with affiliation programs slightly challenging as some require a certain amount of website live time (how long your website has been on the web) or traffic. Being new to blogging has its challenges with making money from affiliations, as your traffic will be low, but work on it and watch the results.

Recommended Affiliates

TravelPayouts: I recommend TravelPayouts as my number one affiliate all-in-one program. It has 60 partners, including some of the most popular travel brands, such as GetYourGuide, TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Viator, and more. Once your account is verified, you can apply and connect with these brands. Once accepted, you can recommend activities and services using your unique ID.

TIP: I highly recommend signing up for TripAdvisor. Unlike most companies, which pay you when someone actually books a service, hotel, or activity, TripAdvisor also pays a Cost-per-Click rate. This means when someone clicks on your link, it goes to their website, and the user engages, they will pay you a small percentage. I like this affiliate because you get rewarded even if visitors don’t book.

CJAffiliate: Another good affiliate to use is CJAffiliate. With hundreds of companies to choose from in a wide range of industries, like Shein, Agoda Hotels, VirginAtlantic, and more, it’s a great place to scout your favourite brands. All the companies have their own conditions and rewards.

Amazon Associates: This affiliate programme is one of the most popular ones. Amazon Associates makes signing up to and creating links to your favourite products easy. This is great, especially when you’re new to blogging, as you can use it to recommend things like suitcases, battery packs, or any other items you love to use.

Awin: Another one I signed up to was Awin. They have a cool range of partners, including LastMinute.com and Jet2Holidays. All affiliate companies have their own conditions and rewards, so signing up for various opportunities is great.

Paid Ads Affiliate

Also, on the affiliates’ note, have you considered ads? A great place to start is Google AdSense. I’m unsure of the rates as I don’t currently use ads on my site, but this is a typical place to start as a new blogger.

Many bloggers dream of being accepted into MediaVine, as it’s the gold standard status of a great website, and they pay one of the highest commissions. The requirement is 50,000 sessions per month, so it will take a while, but that’s the goal. I’ve applied for their newer sub-advertising affiliate programme, Journey, which accepts smaller bloggers with around 10,000 monthly sessions. So, fingers crossed!

Affiliate opportunities and ads are a good way to bring in some dollars

When To Launch Your Travel Website

I guess this is a popular question. It’s something I Googled when I was new to blogging. The truth is, there’s no real right or wrong; it’s just when you’re ready. However, my ‘ready’ was nearly two years after beginning my journey. I should have launched before knowing how long websites take to build and rank.

When I launched, I wanted 40 blog posts so people could click around and be amazed at all the work I put into it. The thing is, I kind of messed up with that. I now see it as a year wasted of traffic growth while I continue to build my site. It’s better to start at less so you can focus on driving traffic to these pages singularly if you want to promote it early.

So, when’s the best time to launch your travel website? Although you can launch as early as your first blog post, I recommend having at least 5-10 blogs ready. You want people to click around and have some opportunities to read a few of your other blogs, plus your page won’t feel so empty, even though you’re new to blogging.

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Perfection Damages Productivity

This leads me to the next reflection: perfection damages productivity. I spent two years on my website before it went live. I wanted to be perfect and showcase something amazing. However, in a way, this actually damaged my productivity, as I focused repeatedly on the same blogs, perfecting everything, changing everything, and spending a lot of time doing so.

Now, some might say that is pride in your work, and it sure is. It’s a great trait but also an annoying one. Even when I was new to blogging and didn’t know half the things, I could have adapted. If I had launched even a year earlier, that would have been a year of growth, traffic, and community-building. Experts even recommend occasionally refreshing/updating your content, as it helps with SEO. So this would have been an advantage, but my perfection damaged my productivity.

The same goes for spending hours perfecting something. Perfecting your craft is a beautiful thing. However, spending days perfecting tiny details will likely damage your productivity because you could be advancing to the next stage already.

Learn Along The Journey Step-By-Step

As mentioned in some previous reflections, I studied heavily at the beginning of my journey. That study still happens, but it is step-by-step, meaning I learn on the go. Whenever I come across a blog, course, or video that seems like it could benefit me, I save the link on a document. Whenever I need a break from my website or life, I randomly open one of the links and learn.

Although great blogging resources exist, there’s no step-by-step guide to your journey. The road to success is unique and will have many bumps, wrong turns, and achievements. Learning is part of the process, so don’t do what I did when I was new to blogging and overwhelm yourself with things because you think you must know it all right now. It’s great to learn in moderation.

I thought this was a pivotal reflection to include, as I know how it feels to feel like you need to know everything before you get started. It really does feel like that, but trust the process and trust that you’ll learn along the journey.

You have to learn to walk before you can run. Step-by-step is a better way to win!

The Importance Of Resources & Tools

This one might seem backwards, as I told you not to overwhelm yourself, but resources and tools are everything! Without access to all these free and paid resources, not many people would have accomplished so much today in any industry. Resources are tools and guides that help you learn, understand, and grow.

I included this reflection because if I had known the value of these resources when I was super new to blogging, many of my answers would have been answered earlier down the journey, and I would have saved time, my biggest value.

Recommended Resources & Tools

Facebook Groups: My favourite resource, hands down, has been Facebook groups. I’ve learnt about ShortPixel, a newer ad network for beginner bloggers – Journey, backlinking tips, and have been able to help others in return in these groups. Definitely join a few groups; you don’t need to participate, but keep an eye out for questions and answers; they are really insightful.

Travel Websites: Now and again, I binge at a few travel websites and look at what they are doing, my user experience, what resources they have on their website to learn more, things I don’t like, things that inspire me, etc. Some websites made me realise I wanted something similar things on my website.

Pinterest: I learned from Facebook groups how valuable Pinterest has been to their success. I had previously tried Pinterest for three weeks and then stopped. However, after re-discovering the potential of this platform, I’ve decided to give it a shot again. I’ve given myself a 20-week timeframe to analyse my results. Consistency is key, so I’m doing four pin posts daily, optimised for SEO.

Coursea & SkillShare: I returned to refresh my mind and study on Coursea & SkillShare. There’s a great deal about marketing, advertising, SEO, and a wide range of resources. Getting familiar with words commonly used in the travel business is essential and a great way to improve your growth strategies.

Grammarly: This tool is my go-to tool. I still use it from when I was new to blogging. Grammarly is a writing-assistant tool that helps identify grammar mistakes and create better-flowing sentences. It’s a great tool, especially if you’ve never been amazing with punctuation. It’s really helped build my confidence.

A screenshot of Forever Living Fly Pinterest. 2 weeks’ work from an 8-month challenge

The Investment It Takes

All businesses need to invest financially, emotionally, physically, or mentally. The biggest investment will be your time. I spend most of my days learning and improving my website and skills because I have a massive goal beyond the website.

You want to work smarter, not harder, so outsourcing resources is a clever way to save time. Hiring people for a small cost on sites like Fiverr can drastically cut your workload. This could be for things like social media management, creative designs, or people to write your blog. This makes your life so much easier, as you can focus on other areas.

I always do everything because I want to learn and know every part of my business. I’ve accepted that one day, there will be too many things to put 100% into, and I will have to delegate jobs to people. There’s no right or wrong way. However, it is smarter to delegate jobs if you’re looking to grow more quickly. Like with any business, it’s going to be hard. So, if you are serious about joining the travel blogging world, commit fully to avoid wasting your time.

I wish I had known it was gonna be difficult when I started so I would have had a choice as to whether to go for it or not. On the other hand, would I be in this position today if I had known? I’m not sure I would. But I wanted to include this reflection as I don’t want ya’ll to think it’s an easy road to success. It’s not. It takes a lot, but if you’re in it for the long game, well done!

Investing time and dedication will no doubt equal great results

Conclusion

Reflecting on the start of my journey actually brings joy. Although I could have saved time in so many ways when I was new to blogging, I’m grateful for the learning curve. I can now share my valuable knowledge with people like you to help you on your journey in the travel blogging industry.

Are you a go-getter? For better or for worse, do you have what it takes to come on this ride? Whether this is just an idea or you’re in the process of starting your travel blogging career, remember that if you put your mind to it, you can succeed. Good luck!

Also Read: 10 Steps To Being More Productive As A Blogger