Make Money Travel Blogging

What analytics should a new blogger focus on? Which spell growth, and how do you handle the apparent information overload?

In this video answer to a recent question, Craig shows you the statistics behind Make Money Travel Blogging and looks at what this new site has as its strengths and weaknesses.

If you have a question about travel blogging, ask it here.

I’m going to be doing something a little strange with our email list of the coming 10 days.

Building a good, legal, targeted email list can be one of the most valuable things you can do for your travel blog, but more on that later. What I’m going to be doing over the next little while is an extremely valuable case study which also introduces an extremely valuable tool.

I’ll be introducing this tool to the blog in August, when I’m also going to start running some free training on it, but to begin with I’m keeping this within the folds of our email newsletter (partly so I can experiment, partly because building a targeted email list is one of the most valuable things one can do).

If you’d like to join a few dozen of your travel-blogging compatriots over the coming week, find out how to increase your traffic and see a case study in email sales, sign up below:

Talk to you soon.

One of the most important things about monetizing your travel blog is experimentation. It doesn’t matter what your experimenting with, but experiment! Measure, change, measure again and take your best bet!

Experiment one: Amazon

Following everyone’s massive defense of Amazon in How to make money with a travel blog, I’ve decided to start building more links to that and see what happens.

Just to judge, in June I earned US$11.50 from 10 sales. That may pay some people’s hosting, but it doesn’t cover ours!

Experiment two: Tripadvisor’s affiliate programme

Today, Friday 2nd, I just signed up for Tripadvisor’s affiliate programme. I’m using a widget on one homepage (50% rotation against an ebook ad) and will spend an hour or two today adding affiliate links through popular and recent location-based posts.

Experiment three: Which landing page?

Speaking of the 50% rotation, the other 250×300 ad on the Indie Travel Podcast homepage is for our new ebook, Art of Solo Travel. For the past month, I’ve been passing that to an internal sales page. Now, I’m pointing it to artofsolotravel.com — it will be interesting to see:
a) How much traffic it sends.
b) How that converts vs. the internal sales page.

Experiment four: Better tags in iTunes

We get a lot of traffic through iTunes. Well, we get tens of thousands of audio and video downloads. I’m going to start using more intelligent tagging of those posts: rather than using generic “travel” tags, I’m going to use our keyword tools and smart SEO there — just like we’d use on our blog posts. If I have time to finish some videos, I’ll use similar techniques in Youtube.

I’ve been reading How to Live Anywhere by Karol Gadja. The affiliate notes have me very excited about the next major affiliate push we do.

That’s my main areas of play for July. What are you experimenting with?

Following a bit of discussion in the Travel Writers email group, I thought it would be valuable to talk a little about using Facebook Pages to grow traffic to your blog. More than traffic, Facebook can be a really powerful way to get your audience talking together and interacting.

Since Facebook currently has 6% of the world’s population on board, it’s worth spending some time there.

Get a “real” URL

Once you have over 25 members on your Facebook page, you can apply for a custom URL at:

• http://www.facebook.com/username/

Do it! It makes your page easier to share by word-of-mouth and makes everything seem more professional. Use your brand (e.g. http://facebook.com/indietravel) or a key word (e.g. http://facebook.com/travelblogging)

But how to get started? Annoy your friends

I mean, ask your friends. Explain this is a new thing you’re trying and ask them to like then share the page with their friends. Hopefully, this will give you your starting 25 and from there you can start to build. Ask them to use the “share” button you’ll find at the bottom of the left sidebar.

Design a custom landing page

Use the FMBL application to create a custom landing page for your Facebook site. There’s good walk-throughs here and here.

Use it in “real life” communications

If you have a blogger’s business card, make sure your Facebook URL is on it. Here’s an example of my business card (and yes, I can pass you on to our awesome designer).

Need a business card designed? We has the power.

If you have a budget to advertise somewhere, consider making your facebook page part of that. People will visit your site, but they’ll join your community on Facebook.

Chat with other Pages

Have a list of your friends and colleagues on Facebook and check in with them once a week or so. Make sure you’re adding to their current conversation and making their pages more lively and enjoyable. You’ll pull some of their fans back to your site — and help you and your blogging friends stay in touch.

The @ symbol isn’t just for Twitter

If you’re linking to another blogger’s posts using Facebook, use the @ symbol when you’re going to mention their name. Facebook will drop down a list of Pages and your personal friends to choose from, and will repost your comments there. WARNING: Spam possibility! Use this for good, not evil.

Using the Facebook @ Symbol

Drive traffic with other social media

Give it a stumble, talk about it on Twitter, set goals and ask people to help you hit them. People like to help, as long as don’t abuse them. It’s a two-way street.

On your homepage, above the fold

You might be using your above-the-fold sections for other calls to action: RSS, a newsletter, advertising … but if you’re keen to move your Facebook “like” box there. Pick up one of a dozen pieces of code from http://developers.facebook.com/plugins. There are more advanced options than a Like box, or look around your WordPress plugin sections for options.

Facebook “like” buttons on your posts

If you set it up right, people “liking” your posts will connect them to your Facebook group. Nice, huh? It’ll also increase traffic as people’s likes are posted to their personal walls.

Create fun spaces and encourage interaction

The more people interact with your page, the more their friends will be exposed to you via Facebook’s algorithms. Encourage comments, ask questions, always interact and — if you can — create a culture of video and photo uploads.

How do you generate fans on Facebook? Is the traffic valuable?

Let us know in the comments below…