Make Money Travel Blogging

Maybe I’ve done something really, really dumb when it comes to business. I’m giving up over 100 hours of my time and tons of my creative energies to an event that makes me no money, gives me no backlinks*, and slows down the already behind-schedule projects that are in the pipeline. And this is in the last month of the financial year when targets need to be met.

So, what on earth is going on?

I’m spearheading blog4nz — a massive social media project aimed at helping New Zealand after the Christchurch earthquake. I talk about it here, on national radio in New Zealand:

But blog4nz is good for my business, and it’s great for travel blogging as a whole.

• It gives me a good excuse to get in touch with bloggers I haven’t spoken to in ages.
• It gives me a chance to work with bloggers who I like and respect. And meet new people like that.
• It gives the whole industry a focus point, a chance for more traffic, a reason to rally.
• It gives all independent travel bloggers a chance to be seen and heard by major industry players in Oceania.
• It increases my experience with working with a blogging team and project planning.
• It increases my knowledge of how PR and mainstream media work.
• It will, hopefully, have a bit of “glow” that passes onto the work that Indie Travel Media Ltd does. But I’m not banking on that.

My question to myself: I’m doing this for idealistic reasons, but is there a way to capitalise on the experience I gain?

My question to you: Are you signed up? I’m looking forward to seeing your posts on March 21-23!

When it comes to figuring out what posts are doing well and how your traffic is growing overall, you’ll probably be using an analytics package. Like many, I favour Google Analytics because of the depth of their analysis and customisation options.

However, there’s no simple way to filter out your own visits, especially if you’re a traveller visiting your site from multiple IP addresses. A snippet of WordPress code to the rescue.

How to stop Google Analytics tracking admin visits in WordPress

This method seems to work best when manually editing your theme. I’ve had problems with the “analytics code” section of Woo themes and other customisable themes.

Load your footer.php in a text editor and add in the following code:

<?php global $userdata;
get_currentuserinfo();
if ($userdata->user_level < 2) {
?>

<?php
}
?>


The if statement stops WordPress Administrators (i.e. YOU!) from triggering the analytics code. After you re-upload your footer.php file, you’ll find your traffic drops … but down to a true level. This is good: it helps you see where your audience goes, rather than inflating your favourite spots.

With more accurate analytics data, you can make better choices for your audience and make more money travel blogging.

Also see: Travel blogging and Analytics: What analytics are important for your travel blog.

I am currently struggle out on design projects: two sites for clients, upgrades on one site and an entire redevelopment of content and design on Indie Travel Podcast. That last one has been in the works for three months now!

The upshot is that I’m thinking a lot about focus. Where do I want people to look? What do I want them to do?

I recently read a report on people’s attention and how it effects their choices. I’m taking some of these things into effect as we work on these sites:

1. Have no more than seven design elements in any menu.

2. Use hotspots for calls to action. What’s most important: subscribers (which type?) or ad clicks (raw numbers or affiliates).

3. Colour plays a large part in where people’s eyes are drawn.

4. Always give people a soft option when doing a hard sell. (‘Buy now or find out more’).

5. Incentives and bonuses motivate people. Use them wisely.

6. Write for humans, code for machines. Make things keyword tight for your machines, but ensure people read them with ease … or even eagerness.

7. Quality and relevance are the keys to long-term growth never sacrifice them for a quick sale.

That’s seven elements … can you use them to improve your blogging profits?

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.

Marcia asks if, and why, she should change from Blogspot to WordPress:

I notice a lot of travel bloggers using WordPress. I can’t imagine anything in BlogSpot that I can’t do and I can html when I want. Am I really missing something by not using WordPress?

I think WordPress is a much more powerful tool for several reasons:

• It’s database driven, meaning it’s easy to access your data from other websites
• It’s easy to change the look and feel of your site through themes – it takes half a dozen clicks, no coding needed.
• There are thousands of plugins which add the ability to do admin tasks, build lists, make money and provide a better experience for your readers.
• It’s easier to backup your blog than it is on Blogger.

I should note, I’m talking about the self-hosted WordPress.org, not the blogger-like WordPress.com. We’ll be doing some more WordPress-based training here on Make Money Travel Blogging in the future.

If there’s one thing that can save you hours of hard-coding it’s a well-planned and well-managed adserver.

You can use an adserver to quickly change out advertising, rotate ad space (so you can experiment with them) and remove advertisers that have stopped paying for that space or affiliate programmes that are not performing well.

In this video I answer a reader question, “Which adserver do I use?”

You can subscribe to my travel blogging and travel video channels on youtube. Please do.

Useful links include:

• Ozh Who Sees Ads WordPress Plugin.
• I got Link Daemon as a bonus with the Silo Plugin – not sure if it’s still available.
• The WordPress redirection plugin.

Do you have any experience or advice with adservers? Do you use them or manually change your site html for new ads?