Monthly Archives: November 2013

How to Start a Travel Blog for Free and Set It Up Instantly

Some people want to be a travel blogger but they procrastinate for days, months and even years before taking action. Some end up not even doing it. The sad part is that it is so easy to do, doesn’t cost anything, and only takes 5 to 10 minutes to get it all set up.

If you’ve always wanted to have a blog where you can write about your vacations, share cool pictures with friends and family, pen your opinions about a country you’ve just visited, or rant about the crappy airport where you’ve been stuck at for the last 10 hours, then wait no more.

Do It Now

You don’t need to be a tech geek who knows how to write code, nor a creative graphic designer who can come up with awesome visual designs. All you need is the ability to type and have something worthwhile to say. If you’ve also got a camera or a phone that can snap photos, you already have all the essential tools to start creating a great blog already.

Just head over to Blogger.com or WordPress.com, click on ‘Register’, ‘Start a New Blog’ or follow whatever instructions there are on the site, and you’ll be the proud owner of a brand new blog within minutes. Yes, you will literally have your own travel blog immediately. No payments needed, no approval process, no nonsense.

Meaningful & Memorable Name

All you have to do is to choose a name for your blog, and you will be given a free website address (also known as a URL) such as http://yourblogsname.wordpress.com, or in the case of Blogger, your blog will be located at http://yourblogsname.blogspot.com.

You can also spend $10 to get your own domain name (at Godaddy.com or any domain registrar) and give your blog a more professional web address like http://www.yourblogsname.com, but if you’re after a completely free solution, then you can stick with the freebie offered by Blogger or WordPress.com first.

So what’s the catch?

Not much. Millions of blogs are published on these free blogging platforms that offer users a web address for their blog, free hosting, and an easy to use blog publishing software that is accessible online and packed with lots of features to get novice bloggers started.

The only downside is that there may be limitations to what you can do on your blog, the type of files you can upload, the type of content you can publish, and some of them may insert advertisements or some other sort of internal advertising messages in exchange for providing the free service to you.

But if you’re just starting out, looking to write about travel related topics, and want to get an immediate result without paying anything, then you can’t go wrong by taking the plunge so that you can begin focusing on what’s important, which is the awesome content you’ll be posting.

Eventually, when you need features not offered by these free solutions, and you’re willing to invest some money to set up your blog properly, you can move the blog onto your own hosting account and get a unique web domain too. Ideally, it is better to set things up the right way from the start, but if you prefer to test with a free option first, you can certainly upgrade later.

Note: Choose a Name for your Travel Blog before Setting It Up

One thing you’ll have to decide when you’re setting up your new blog is the name, or the name to be used for the free website address you’ll be given. If you don’t have a name yet, it’s a good idea to find a name you like and choose one before proceeding to register the new blog.

A lot of people make the mistake of trying to select a good name (on the fly) while setting up the blog and end up with a terrible one that they don’t like. Creating the new blog may take 5 to 10 minutes, but choosing a great blog name may take a little longer, so get yourself prepared and do some homework before taking the leap.

You can start by reviewing the naming strategies you can use and then get inspired by some of the names of top travel blogs.

50 Names of the Best Travel Blogs to Give you Naming Ideas

One of the most effective ways to find a great name for your travel blog is to get inspiration from other bloggers. Regardless of whether you’re starting a new blog, or renaming an existing site, the process of getting a memorable and meaningful name is still the same.

However, with millions of blogs out there, how do you find the right ones to get ideas from? Well, one option is to reflect on what the top travel blogs are called.

And the good news is you can find a lot of them in TravelBlogNames.com as we’ve compiled them all into one place so you don’t have to trawl the web in search for names.

Hopefully, you’ll be inspired by the following list of 50 Awesome Travel Blog Names and use some of the naming styles to create an ideal name for your blog:

  1. The Brooklyn Nomad
  2. The Professional Hobo
  3. Johnny Vagabond
  4. Business Travel Guru
  5. Pocket Cultures
  6. Happy Hotelier
  7. Technomadia
  8. Travel Feeder
  9. Go Backpacking
  10. Travelogged
  11. Turkish Travel Blog
  12. The Vacation Gals
  13. GranTourismo
  14. Budget Travel Adventures
  15. Bacon is Magic
  16. Living the Dream
  17. 2 Backpackers
  18. Globetrotter Girls
  19. Runaway Jane
  20. Gypsy Journal Rv Travel Newspaper
  21. Family On Bikes
  22. Trans-Americas Journey
  23. Man on the Lam
  24. Never Ending Voyage
  25. Solo Traveler
  26. Breathe Dream Go
  27. My Itchy Travel Feet
  28. Adventurous Kate
  29. Green Global Travel
  30. One Step 4ward
  31. My Yatra Diary
  32. Travel Dudes
  33. Canada Adventure Couple
  34. Wandering Educators
  35. Theme Park Mom
  36. That Backpacker
  37. Wandering Trader
  38. Travel, Work, Life
  39. Camels & Chocolate
  40. Get In The Hot Spot
  41. Travel with a Purpose
  42. Travel Blissful
  43. Todd’s Wanderings
  44. Amateur Traveler
  45. Mommy Poppins
  46. Leave Your Daily Hell
  47. EscapeArtistes
  48. Nomadic Samuel
  49. 501 Places
  50. Travel O Cafe

What you’ll notice is that almost any sort of name can be used to generate a significant readership. Obviously, some names make more sense, sound better, are more meaningful or may resonate deeper with you in some way, but evidently, the longer and less intuitive names manage to house good blogs as well.

Another 25 Great Names of Travel Blogs to Inspire You

Bloggers can never have enough examples to get ideas when trying to find a name for their blogs, and that is why it’s time to double the number of names featured in TBN from the current 25 travel blog names (here, here and here) with another 25 top names in the travel blogoshere.

You can see the following list contains a mixed selection of names, and clearly proves that successful blogs do not need to adhere to any particular naming technique.

Most of the effective ones tend to give you an idea of what the blog is focused on, or shares some information about the blogger.

Without further ado, here are the Names of 25 Top Travel Blogs to help you name your own travel site:

  1. Adventures with Ben
  2. Offbeat Travel
  3. Dave’s Travel Corner
  4. Sharing Travel Experiences
  5. Ordinary Traveler
  6. Crazy Sexy Fun Traveler
  7. Yeah That’s Kosher
  8. My Several Worlds
  9. Notes from the Road
  10. Hole in the Donut
  11. A Luxury Travel Blog
  12. Travel Experta
  13. Ken Kaminesky Photography
  14. Migrationology
  15. WhyGo Italy
  16. Chris Elliott
  17. Notes from Spain
  18. Calvin’s Hub
  19. Life Cruiser
  20. Young Adventuress
  21. A Dangerous Business
  22. Go Nomad
  23. Mexico Vacation Travels
  24. Around The World L
  25. Velvet Escape

Note: The list is not ordered in terms of name or blog quality. In other words, ‘Adventures with Ben’ isn’t a better name or blog than ‘Velvet Escape’. 

What’s the Cheapest Blog Hosting Solution for Travel Bloggers?

Finding the lowest cost web hosting provider for your travel blog is a lot easier than you think.

Some bloggers take a long time to critically appraise the pros and cons of many web hosts to try and choose the perfect one, but most of the time, all that effort is unnecessary, especially if you’re just starting a blog and don’t have complicated requirements.

How to Choose the Right Web Hosting Solution

In the hosting industry, the big players tend to offer the most attractive solutions when you combine pricing, reliability and support together. So if you’re price conscious, stick to the global market leaders unless you really require local support.

Shared-Hosting is the entry level (and cheapest) package you should be considering. This means your blog will reside on a server together with lots of other blogs and websites, sharing the resources of one computer.

The 3 Leading Shared Blog Hosting Companies

A good deal to one person may not be for someone else who has different needs, so it’s normally hard to suggest a one size fits all solution when it comes to technology oriented services.

But in the case of web hosting packages for new bloggers, there are a few companies that have extremely attractive offerings in terms of price, features, and services provided. This is because they are specialists in working with clients who have limited technical experience and only have moderate hosting needs.

If you’re searching for the cheapest blog hosting services, these are the top web hosts to consider:

The product differences between them is quite minimal and there are varied opinions on who is actually better. Most people have only been customers of one company, so it is difficult to judge the reliability of most reviews when they say that one is better or worse than the other.

Decide for Yourself

Since the choice has been narrowed down to 3 options for you, perhaps the final decision should be yours to make after you visit all their websites to read through the details and features in their packages.

You may find that one is easier to understand, or you may be tempted by another that has a slight pricing advantage. You may prefer the one that gives you a larger disk storage space or you may like the one with the most attractive bandwidth offerings.

Some people even make their decision based on the look and feel of the service provider’s website.

The Deciding Factor

Ultimately, those little things don’t really matter so much. If you want to focus on something, you should probably test out their customer/support service by clicking on their online chat service or filling out a customer enquiry form to test the speed, effectiveness and professionalism of their response.

New blog owners often get caught up trying to do detailed product feature comparisons and miss the really important issues. On the whole, it doesn’t really matter whether you get a few more megabytes of storage or bandwidth.

What you should focus on is how easy is it to set up your blog, will you get any direct assistance if you get stuck, and what do you do if you need help to solve a technical problem or any other issue. And the best way to find out is to test their marketing support to see if they manage to answer all your questions and convince you they’re the right choice.

Good luck in your Host Hunting, and feel free to ask any questions if you need feedback on anything.

If you’re already an existing customer from one of these 3 web hosts, or have another one to recommend, please share your opinions in the comments below.