Hi Dave,
Hope you accept Our Hiking Blog as a "Travel Blog" - well ya gotta travel by foot!
Will be interested in reading all the comments as they come through.
We are currently converting to Wordpress and have our domain. Just need the time to do it!

Hits are not too high as most of our topics relate to Australia (population of 22 million). We are gradually broadening then to include more international treks and topics that relate to any one in any country.
Cheers
Frank

Hi Frank, of course hiking blogs are travel blogs! Great to hear you're making the move to Wordpress and getting a personal domain name.

It still amazes me how low the population is for Australia! You lay claim to a whole continent.

If you have the knowledge to include the most popular tramps/hikes in New Zealand, that might help increase traffic, given so many travelers go there and do at least one (I did Tongariro Crossing).

At this point we are not really interested in making money or having adds. Some of this stems from a lack of understanding of how to make revenue from our wordpress platform, but some of our resistance is to the general theme of monetizing. We started blogging in order to stay in touch with friends and family, and to help anyone else interested in traveling (since we learned so much before our trip from reading other blogs). We also don't have a computer, so we do our blogging from cafes, etc. This makes us want to get the posts and photos done quickly.

I am curious about how much time you have spent working on your blog compared to how much you make from it. At this point, our stats have plateaued, and we are not really interested spending more time in internet cafes to attract more viewers or including our own adds to the page layout. For us, I am not sure the amount of effort required to make revenue would be worth it, so I am curious about the benefit rate for your time with a more established blog.

Hi Jason, thanks for responding to the poll.

I felt the same way you do when I was preparing my blog for my RTW trip. I wanted it to primarily be a way to communicate with others, not make money. At the same time, I wanted to leave the door open to making money in the future, but didn't know where to start or what kind of potential existed.

A funny thing happened once I did start to sell a text link or two. I began to work harder at it. But it wasn't really work. I worked a 9-5. Coming home and spending time learning about blogging effectively was more like a hobby. It still is. And I love it all the same almost 3 years and 22 countries later.

On my trip, I probably would've spent a similar amount of time on the blog whether I was making money or not. Partly because I came to enjoy the process of blogging so much, and partly because I was proud of the blog I had created from scratch. I left home without a laptop and phone, and while I picked up a subnotebook in Hong Kong, it was very basic, and the AC adapter broke on me in 3 different countries, rendering it useless. I probably spent 1-2 hours a day in internet cafes, so I know what you mean about not wanting to spend your time in them!

The great thing about traveling for a long time is it gives you TONS of inherently awesome things to write about, and if you are already familiar with some simple techniques to get eyeballs to your pages, then as the traffic increases, so too can the money. In 2008, while traveling, I earned an average of a little more than $500/month from advertising, dares, and reader/family/friend gifts and donations.

But I don't think that would've been possible if I didn't start learning about blogs in Jan 2007, 11 months before leaving home, because I wouldn't have spent time on my trip learning. Drafting posts took up enough time as it was.

Getting a bigger base of readers is my focus now that I am taking a couple of months off from the rapid traveling I want to increase the range of content and get more eyeballs - that's my big sticking point right now! Eyeballs, I tell ya :-)

Hi Shannon - it seems to be a trend that traffic and more eyeballs are what travel bloggers want most.

I'll be giving it some thought. Thanks!

"Which aspect(s) of your blogging do you want to improve the most (check all that apply)?"
you can only check one!

;)

Thanks for reporting my polling goof, Babel. Clearly it has been awhile since I put one together. :)

I fixed Question 4

Finding the time to create fresh content for my return visitors and to draw new readers.

Hi Joanna, thanks for taking the time to leave your sticking point.

Do you have a goal for your blog?

For example, do you want to eventually make money from advertising (quantity of visitors will be important) or use it as a platform to experiment and share finely crafted travel writing (quality of visitors more important).

Dave ~

I would say my blog is travel information and stories with a personality. I don't know if my goal is to monetize or not. I think that if my content is of high enough quality, then the readers will follow and the advertisers would naturally follow after that. I already had the Wynn Resort contact me to say someone had bought a VIP package based on a review I did of a show there. I think if I have the ability to do that, I could monetize. That said, I don't think the layout of my blog is friendly for that yet. I imagine I'll have to completely redesign before I consider advertising, though I really do like the layout and I get comments on it frequently.

That must have been some article! I had a former employee tell me he bought a BlackBerry Curve after reading my review about why it was a great smartphone for world travel. He said I should be getting paid for reviews. And sometimes I am! But to be honest, writing reviews, paid or unpaid, is amongst my least favorite blogging activity.

You've got a great looking blog, and I think it pays in the long run to focus on content first. Once you've got the traffic, you'll attract higher quality advertisers. This is the stage I'm at now, and it's a nice place to be, versus trying to scrape and scrounge for AdSense money at the expense of how your blog looks.

The great thing about WordPress is you can get a free (or these days I recommend Premium) theme and with a little tweaking, present all the same and new content in a completely different manner.

I appreciate the feedback!

Difficulty in reaching out to more readers in my genre of travel writing. Need platforms that democratize visibility instead of circulating the same set of blogs that somehow became known, and improve visibility for travel blogs from the Asian sub-continent.

Anil - you raise a valid point about tumbling of the same travel blogs over and over again. The good news is, in the absence of platforms to democratize the process, there are many tried and true strategies for building up your traffic independently.

Guest posting on other blogs is probably the best thing you could do. Especially if you do it regularly. In the process, you'll have the chance to establish a virtual relationship with other bloggers, which will likely lead to them promoting you not just on their blog, but in social media too (esp. Twitter).

How would you characterize your genre of travel writing?

Well my blog is still fairly new so my major concern at the moment is increasing traffic and just getting my name out there. My biggest sticking point is probably SEO. I have no background in internet marketing and am just totally lost with this.

Stephanie - thanks for the feedback. What you're going through is normal growing pains. I take a more organic approach to SEO. I learn the fundamentals, and then apply them without thinking at this point. Sure, there is more I could do to edge certain posts higher up in the rankings, but I believe Google rewards people who work over time to produce quality content.