It’s a long road to the top if you want to travel blog. Like anything worthwhile, it takes patience and hard work.

I should know. I’ve been travel blogging for more than a year now and, while I’m pleased that my website continues to grow (in May I surpassed 7,000 visitors for the first time in a single month), I’m still striving to make Man vs World the best travel blog in the world.

To that end, I’m constantly scouring the internet for hints and tips, advice and lessons from the top bloggers about how I can grow and improve my website. These are some of my favourite resources for travel bloggers.

And don’t forget to check out 10 great resources for aspiring travel bloggers!

Travel blogging as a business

The Travel Blogger Academy is a great resource for travel bloggers looking to write, travel and get paid for both. Its article 31 lessons from the world’s most popular travel bloggers should be required reading for all fledgling travel bloggers.

Jet Set Citizen spells out why travel blogging is a lousy way to earn money online, which is more motivational than that title might suggest, and interviews successful bloggers who have managed to make an income for themselves online.

Meanwhile, despite professing a love for volunteering, Kirsty at Nerdy Nomad continues to rake in just enough money from blogging each month to make bloggers like me jealous but not nearly enough to retire just yet.

Kirsty’s monthly earnings and spending reports make for very interesting reading and her plans for a Google-intimidation-free online income is inspirational and informative. I’ll be very curious to see how she goes with that.

Travel blog plugins and security

My good buddy Neil at Backpacks and Bunkbeds must have done something horrible in a past life to deserve having his travel blog hacked a while back. Part educational, part angry rant (who can blame him?) this blog post about WordPress security will have you doing everything you can to ensure your website is safe and secure.

Canada’s Adventure Couple have a great blog post called 10 essential WordPress plugins for travel blogging which is a great starting point for setting up a travel blog, as is PC Mag’s guide to the 30 best WordPress plugins.

Travel blogger SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is arguably the most difficult thing to wrap your head around when setting up a travel blog. Fortunately for me, as a journalist, quality writing still seems to be the order of the day.

Amberr is Me tends to agree, arguing that over-optimisation can kill your blog. That blog post is part of an excellent series of blogging basics for beginners, which covers everything from Google Analytics to community building and blogging platforms.

Speaking of blogging tips for beginners, ProBlogger’s 7 tips to starting a travel blogging journey is a great read (written by Nomadic Matt), and Y Travel’s 9 simple tips about travel blogging is another good one written by travel bloggers at the top of their game.

Social media

Man vs World owes a lot to social media and to Twitter in particular. At the beginning, Google didn’t show this blog much love and for a long time I had to rely on social media to get the word out.

These days I like to use Triberr to bolster my Twitter reach. By using this powerful blogging tool, my potential reach on Twitter has expanded from my 3,500+ followers to more than one million. You can read all the reasons why I love (and hate) Triberr here.

If you’re looking for more travel blogging hints and tips, you should check out: