Travel writing – including travel blogging – has become incredibly popular (who wouldn’t want to make a career out of being permanent vacation in countries they love, right?) In fact, the most popular travel writers monetize their blogs in a wide variety of ways, with some of them earning between $10,000 and $50,000 per month. Not bad for doing something you love.

So, if you’re reading this article, chances are that you would like to join them. That’s a great decision that can change your life forever. For example, if traveling is one of your biggest interests, you can write about countries and sights you love, which will make your work a lot easier by providing that much-needed motivation.

If you feel motivated to begin, here are the steps that you need to take to become a great travel writer.

1. Decide How You’ll Work

Before we get to actual writing tips, let’s make one thing clear: you don’t need to travel to start creating content about traveling (at some point you’ll have to, but being at home doesn’t mean that you can’t write amazing content about other countries).

For example, if you’d like to write from home now, you can start producing content about your city, a certain district, or your country of residence. Then, you can move on to countries you’ve already visited; chances are that you have some incredible memories about other places where you used to work or study.

On the other hand, if you become a traveling writer, your experience will supply you with fresh ideas for content. Regardless of how you begin your writing career, the following steps will surely be useful to create engaging content that people seek.

Step 2: Decide on Content Types

It’s easy to think that travel writers only describe faraway places, but in reality, it’s much more than that. Since one of the main purposes of a travel blog is to provide people interested in traveling with useful tips, you could write about the following:

As you can see, there are a number of content areas for you to explore, so decide what you’ll do to have a strategy from the very beginning.

Step 3: Read

Didn’t expect this to be on the list, huh? Well, you cannot possibly know all the most interesting things about countries, cities, or places you’d like to write about, but if you read literature like magazines and books about them, chances are that your content will be much richer and engaging.

Besides, you’ll probably also learn how to write about travel (genres, styles, etc.), which is great to create your own unique style.

Step 4: Use Storytelling

Storytelling – the art of writing content in the form of a story – is quite popular because it makes easy for readers to relate to content. Don’t worry, you don’t have to come with a script or something; for example, just write about how your trip started, what you set out to achieve, or what drew you to that particular place.

Step 5: Make it Easy for Your Reader to Engage with You

Write your content in the first person and encourage your readers to leave comments and otherwise engage with you by including calls to action. For example, you can ask questions to encourage commenting, run small contests, and even ask them for suggestions for your next trip. This will make it easier for them to respond and engage with you, which is clearly important for your success as a travel writer.

Over to You

Photo by Nicole Honeywill on Unsplash

Hopefully these tips will be helpful for you to start writing about travel. Remember, passion is what it takes you to start, but organization is what keeps you going, so hopefully this is useful for you to increase your chances of success.