Skyring
Established Member
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2005
- Posts
- 2,194
- Qantas
- LT Silver
A couple of fellow members have recently commenced travel blogs and are planning to get serious about them. This one, for example, aimed at in-depth reviews of restaurants, tours, places.
I've run a fun but unprofitable blog empire in the past, but I think in retirement I can be a bit more fair dinkum.
I've recently commenced a lightweight blog focussed on Dad jokes - DudJokes.com - and that's working out well. No money, but I'm able to find a couple of eye-rolling jokes a day, heavy on the puns, and I'm enjoying it.
There's more to running a blog than just posting updates. Finding a host, a platform, a theme, social media accounts, spamfighting and so on. I discovered I was getting a new subscriber every hour or so, but I also discovered that most of these were bots run out of Russia or similar. Why, I don't know, but they hold no value or interest for me. I signed up to a botfighting network and most of the fakes vanished.
I've registered a domain name for my travel blog, started work on the platform and admin, now looking for advice on what would be a good direction to go.
I'm considering postcard-sized snippets of useful travel information. Anecdotes, reviews, information, advice and so on, each illustrated by a picture, and no more than a couple of hundred words. I don't want my blog to be a series of "I-went-here-then-I went-there" journals, heavy on happy snaps of my meals and the view out the window.
The thing is, that there are a million travel blogs out there, most of them pretty much the same as the last one. Some are really good. Ben Schlappig and in fact all of the Boarding Area blogs are well worthwhile. Ben puts a lot of work into his blog, but he also makes a lot of money from affiliate and referral sales. I get the feeling that when he's flying, he's working.
I'm not sure I want to write big long narratives like Ben. I've tried this in the past and I usually run out of puff way before the trip is over.
I like the look of the WP-Prosperity theme - examples here and here - to give a magazine feel, rather than slabs of text.
I've got ten years of globetrotting to draw upon, thousands of photos, and any number of stories. I can jump in and out of my resources. A place, a photo, a person, a plane from now or the past. No coherent narrative, just the things I found interesting.
And they say that you should write your passion, and to be honest, if I'm not dreaming about my next big trip, I'm generally remembering the last. Might as well put all that effort to good use.
There's a million travel blogs out there. Which ones do you return to, and why?
I've run a fun but unprofitable blog empire in the past, but I think in retirement I can be a bit more fair dinkum.
I've recently commenced a lightweight blog focussed on Dad jokes - DudJokes.com - and that's working out well. No money, but I'm able to find a couple of eye-rolling jokes a day, heavy on the puns, and I'm enjoying it.
There's more to running a blog than just posting updates. Finding a host, a platform, a theme, social media accounts, spamfighting and so on. I discovered I was getting a new subscriber every hour or so, but I also discovered that most of these were bots run out of Russia or similar. Why, I don't know, but they hold no value or interest for me. I signed up to a botfighting network and most of the fakes vanished.
I've registered a domain name for my travel blog, started work on the platform and admin, now looking for advice on what would be a good direction to go.
I'm considering postcard-sized snippets of useful travel information. Anecdotes, reviews, information, advice and so on, each illustrated by a picture, and no more than a couple of hundred words. I don't want my blog to be a series of "I-went-here-then-I went-there" journals, heavy on happy snaps of my meals and the view out the window.
The thing is, that there are a million travel blogs out there, most of them pretty much the same as the last one. Some are really good. Ben Schlappig and in fact all of the Boarding Area blogs are well worthwhile. Ben puts a lot of work into his blog, but he also makes a lot of money from affiliate and referral sales. I get the feeling that when he's flying, he's working.
I'm not sure I want to write big long narratives like Ben. I've tried this in the past and I usually run out of puff way before the trip is over.
I like the look of the WP-Prosperity theme - examples here and here - to give a magazine feel, rather than slabs of text.
I've got ten years of globetrotting to draw upon, thousands of photos, and any number of stories. I can jump in and out of my resources. A place, a photo, a person, a plane from now or the past. No coherent narrative, just the things I found interesting.
And they say that you should write your passion, and to be honest, if I'm not dreaming about my next big trip, I'm generally remembering the last. Might as well put all that effort to good use.
There's a million travel blogs out there. Which ones do you return to, and why?
