Through interviews with travel bloggers / content creators, I have tried to identify problems / inconveniences they are commonly facing when it comes to creating, sharing & maintaining content.
👇 Here's the list of the issues I have gathered:
1. Time-consuming process of writing high-quality and informative content (mostly explained by the difficulty of finding the right words to express their experiences).
2. Having to constantly capture the moments in pictures / videos as you travel as well as writing down all the minute details to produce informative blog posts. This removes part of the spontaneity and pleasure of travelling.
3. Frustration about the trend towards catchy captions, bullet points information, eye candy pictures and "Top 10 things to do..." that is known as generating a higher traffic while some bloggers would prefer writing longer articles with more details and context.
4. The time-consuming process of image compression and resizing.
5. The time-consuming processes of tracking down broken links, reading statistics, finding the most performance-driven tools or changing affiliate strategies to increase earnings. Those secondary tasks are taking time off their core passions that are travelling and creating content.
6. Time spent on optimising SEO while also managing social media (on multiple platforms) and e-mail marketing.
7. Technical difficulties related to maintaining a website such as website design, hosting, domain management, and troubleshooting issues.
Many issues relate to the time-consuming aspect of some tasks, which can contribute to make the travel blogger job overwhelming and sometimes exhausting.
If you're a travel bloggers or content creator, I would love your opinion on:
👉 What are the biggest issues your face? (in the above list or missing points) 👉 What solutions are you currently using to relieve those pain points?
Looking forward to engaging discussions on this topic!
An interesting and relevant discussion topic, Benoit. My biggest issue with blogging / content creation is Google. Or rather Google's embedded links policy, which penalises websites for having paid external hyperlinks, claiming that these create false search rankings.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a common practice, and SEO specialists pay popular bloggers between $20 to $200 to publish guest blog content that includes one or two anchor text (key word) backlinks to pages on their clients website.
Clearly, the intention is to drive traffic to the linked site, which will increase the target sites ranking for that keyword over time. Well, Google doesn't like that at all, but not for the reason that they claim. The real reason is that this SEO practice errodes Google's ad revenue.
So, to get rid of competitors butting into their space, Google's algorithm analyzes the words used to create a hyperlink and penalises the offending blog site by blocking its domain resulting in a sharp decrease in visitor stats. From that point on, the bloggers domain is highlighted with a red warning sign and labelled as a "suspected phishing site". To add insult to injury Google informs the sites admin of its new status with a link to its "rules policy". To have the sites status reversed the blogger has to wade through every post hyperlink and either delete the link or change the link html code to tell search engines to "No Follow" the link. Then, the blogger has to apply for Google to review the domains content, a process that takes months to rectify.
The simple solution is not to sell links. It’s less of a problem these days but back when Google relied mostly on Pagerank (look it up on Wikipedia), paid links really did harm the user experience because less relevant results could be pushed to the top.
This practice has made a whole shady industry and why we all get a dozen “can I buy a guest post” spam every week - please do not contribute to this!
Thank you for your contribution Des, it seems SEO is a common complaint among bloggers! As I am not a blogger myself, I was not aware of this common "link selling" practice. I am interested in learning more about this topic. Do you know any reliable source explaining in details: - the Google ranking process - the use of keywords - the effect of using those external links in more details
As I'm writing this message, I realise that I'm basically asking for a comprehensive guide to SEO. I can probably find hundreds of them on the web but any suggestions welcome!
Brands/people demanding that I work for free for them. Ya know to help them generate income for their business. Love that one.
Or those who think a $4 coffee is all my time is worth when they want to pick my brain.
People demanding to know the ins and outs of my financial situation and how I make money as a content creator.
The pain of people telling me it's the best job in the world and then ghosting me when the invoice is due (yes I do have contracts and systems in place for when this happens)
People thinking that promising me the potential of more work is justification for not paying me in the first instance. Do this for free and *maybe* we will reward you with the opportunity to work for us again. At a very low rate.
The expectation of being a travel content creator is that you're happy to accept all of the above. And be grateful for it.
Brands & tourism boards stealing my content. Seriously we seem to have a lot unsupervised interns in this industry 🙃
On top of the above we are expected to be subject matter experts in so many areas - website, algorithms, seo, editing.
I could go on for so much longer on just a few pinpoints that is within this industry.
Hey Jean, Many thanks for your contribution and it seems you have a lot on your plate when it comes to people not considering your job seriously! Did you come up with ways to quickly assess the seriousness of brands / people reaching out to you? And are you using any specific channel to find more serious partnerships?
There’s a lot to unpack with this question. If blogging was easy, then everyone would do it. However, since there is no barrier to entry (it’s easy to start a blog), blogging comes with a high failure rate.
I think your analysis is good, and most of the pain points discussed can be resolved with a good workflow or the right tools.
I can’t underestimate how many good blogs I’ve seen with poor hosting, slowing things down. This is almost always the easiest to fix (e.g. upgrade your plan) and can pay dividends in terms of SEO and affiliate conversion.
One thing I’d add is having peer networks and meetups to discuss blogging and find people to learn from. Without these support networks, blogging can be a lot more lonely and harder to succeed at.
Travel Influencer and Creator, American Travel Family
Our biggest challenge is the lengthy process of editing our YouTube videos. Unfortunately, we're only able to showcase a small portion of our travels due to the significant time investment required for video production.
Thank you for your answer Brooke! Can I ask you what tools / software you are currently using to edit your videos and if there is a specific point in the editing process that is more painful / time-consuming than the rest?
For me, SEO is the big issue. I wish I could just write what I want to write, but instead I have to make sure it conforms to whatever Google is promoting at the moment, which could change at any time. I'm frustrated that sites like tripadvisor always rank at the top, even though they don't offer the kind of detail and quality that my blog offers. I'm annoyed that many people sell do-follow links - at least judging by the number of mails I get every day asking to buy them - and despite that being against Google's terms of service, they don't seem to do badly in the rankings. Google repeatedly says to focus on creating quality, but doesn't seem to reward it. (Rant over.)
Many thanks for your contribution Rachel! This issue of quality not being rewarded as it should be made me wonder why nobody has not created a website centralising travel blog articles (with their writer's consent) and offering end-users the ability 1) to filter those articles by country / region and also 2) to upvote / downvote articles for their quality / usefulness (similar to systems implemented on Reddit / Quora). The end-user will benefit from a more complete information base on his destination while quality content would be ranked first as vetted by the community through upvotes and would bring traffic to the original websites. But I'm probably missing some parts here
Good idea! Though I wouldn't want them to reprint the article - that's a disincentive to visit my site. The first couple paragraphs or a snippet with a link to read more would work for me though!
I'm building a "website centralising travel blog articles" with Famxplor. I selected thousands of family travel blog posts based on their content and made them accessible by country and city on a world map. Some users explore the world this way to get inspiration on where to travel, others zoom in a region to find activities with kids. The ability to vote for articles in a great idea!
Wow-- this is a realistic, very candid picture of the challenges we face. You have captured it perfectly. As it relates to SEO, I find that even when I try to come up with a unique headline for a post because I want to set it apart from ALLL of the content on the internet, my SEO analyzer rejects the headline for something more mundane, as you suggest, a simple "top 10...." with some type of superlative. My problem with some of the headlines like "Ultimate list" or 'Most unforgettable" is these are completely subjective and they are never the ultimate or most unforgettable, and yet, I find myself having to use them as well simply to improve the SEO. The moment you start to add in some qualifiers, "most unforgettable experiences with young kids..." etc, the SEO ranking drops down.
1 year ago
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Most common issues for travel bloggers?
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Featured on May 23, 2023 (1 year ago).
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Comments
Hi everyone,
Through interviews with travel bloggers / content creators, I have tried to identify problems / inconveniences they are commonly facing when it comes to creating, sharing & maintaining content.
👇 Here's the list of the issues I have gathered:
1. Time-consuming process of writing high-quality and informative content (mostly explained by the difficulty of finding the right words to express their experiences).
2. Having to constantly capture the moments in pictures / videos as you travel as well as writing down all the minute details to produce informative blog posts. This removes part of the spontaneity and pleasure of travelling.
3. Frustration about the trend towards catchy captions, bullet points information, eye candy pictures and "Top 10 things to do..." that is known as generating a higher traffic while some bloggers would prefer writing longer articles with more details and context.
4. The time-consuming process of image compression and resizing.
5. The time-consuming processes of tracking down broken links, reading statistics, finding the most performance-driven tools or changing affiliate strategies to increase earnings. Those secondary tasks are taking time off their core passions that are travelling and creating content.
6. Time spent on optimising SEO while also managing social media (on multiple platforms) and e-mail marketing.
7. Technical difficulties related to maintaining a website such as website design, hosting, domain management, and troubleshooting issues.
Many issues relate to the time-consuming aspect of some tasks, which can contribute to make the travel blogger job overwhelming and sometimes exhausting.
If you're a travel bloggers or content creator, I would love your opinion on:
👉 What are the biggest issues your face? (in the above list or missing points)
👉 What solutions are you currently using to relieve those pain points?
Looking forward to engaging discussions on this topic!
An interesting and relevant discussion topic, Benoit. My biggest issue with blogging / content creation is Google. Or rather Google's embedded links policy, which penalises websites for having paid external hyperlinks, claiming that these create false search rankings.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a common practice, and SEO specialists pay popular bloggers between $20 to $200 to publish guest blog content that includes one or two anchor text (key word) backlinks to pages on their clients website.
Clearly, the intention is to drive traffic to the linked site, which will increase the target sites ranking for that keyword over time. Well, Google doesn't like that at all, but not for the reason that they claim. The real reason is that this SEO practice errodes Google's ad revenue.
So, to get rid of competitors butting into their space, Google's algorithm analyzes the words used to create a hyperlink and penalises the offending blog site by blocking its domain resulting in a sharp decrease in visitor stats. From that point on, the bloggers domain is highlighted with a red warning sign and labelled as a "suspected phishing site". To add insult to injury Google informs the sites admin of its new status with a link to its "rules policy". To have the sites status reversed the blogger has to wade through every post hyperlink and either delete the link or change the link html code to tell search engines to "No Follow" the link. Then, the blogger has to apply for Google to review the domains content, a process that takes months to rectify.
The simple solution is not to sell links. It’s less of a problem these days but back when Google relied mostly on Pagerank (look it up on Wikipedia), paid links really did harm the user experience because less relevant results could be pushed to the top.
This practice has made a whole shady industry and why we all get a dozen “can I buy a guest post” spam every week - please do not contribute to this!
Thank you for your contribution Des, it seems SEO is a common complaint among bloggers!
As I am not a blogger myself, I was not aware of this common "link selling" practice. I am interested in learning more about this topic. Do you know any reliable source explaining in details:
- the Google ranking process
- the use of keywords
- the effect of using those external links in more details
As I'm writing this message, I realise that I'm basically asking for a comprehensive guide to SEO. I can probably find hundreds of them on the web but any suggestions welcome!
Pain points you say. Here's a few I have.
Brands/people demanding that I work for free for them. Ya know to help them generate income for their business. Love that one.
Or those who think a $4 coffee is all my time is worth when they want to pick my brain.
People demanding to know the ins and outs of my financial situation and how I make money as a content creator.
The pain of people telling me it's the best job in the world and then ghosting me when the invoice is due (yes I do have contracts and systems in place for when this happens)
People thinking that promising me the potential of more work is justification for not paying me in the first instance. Do this for free and *maybe* we will reward you with the opportunity to work for us again. At a very low rate.
The expectation of being a travel content creator is that you're happy to accept all of the above. And be grateful for it.
Brands & tourism boards stealing my content. Seriously we seem to have a lot unsupervised interns in this industry 🙃
On top of the above we are expected to be subject matter experts in so many areas - website, algorithms, seo, editing.
I could go on for so much longer on just a few pinpoints that is within this industry.
Hey Jean,
Many thanks for your contribution and it seems you have a lot on your plate when it comes to people not considering your job seriously!
Did you come up with ways to quickly assess the seriousness of brands / people reaching out to you? And are you using any specific channel to find more serious partnerships?
There’s a lot to unpack with this question. If blogging was easy, then everyone would do it. However, since there is no barrier to entry (it’s easy to start a blog), blogging comes with a high failure rate.
I think your analysis is good, and most of the pain points discussed can be resolved with a good workflow or the right tools.
I can’t underestimate how many good blogs I’ve seen with poor hosting, slowing things down. This is almost always the easiest to fix (e.g. upgrade your plan) and can pay dividends in terms of SEO and affiliate conversion.
One thing I’d add is having peer networks and meetups to discuss blogging and find people to learn from. Without these support networks, blogging can be a lot more lonely and harder to succeed at.
Our biggest challenge is the lengthy process of editing our YouTube videos. Unfortunately, we're only able to showcase a small portion of our travels due to the significant time investment required for video production.
Thank you for your answer Brooke!
Can I ask you what tools / software you are currently using to edit your videos and if there is a specific point in the editing process that is more painful / time-consuming than the rest?
For me, SEO is the big issue. I wish I could just write what I want to write, but instead I have to make sure it conforms to whatever Google is promoting at the moment, which could change at any time. I'm frustrated that sites like tripadvisor always rank at the top, even though they don't offer the kind of detail and quality that my blog offers. I'm annoyed that many people sell do-follow links - at least judging by the number of mails I get every day asking to buy them - and despite that being against Google's terms of service, they don't seem to do badly in the rankings. Google repeatedly says to focus on creating quality, but doesn't seem to reward it. (Rant over.)
Many thanks for your contribution Rachel!
This issue of quality not being rewarded as it should be made me wonder why nobody has not created a website centralising travel blog articles (with their writer's consent) and offering end-users the ability 1) to filter those articles by country / region and also 2) to upvote / downvote articles for their quality / usefulness (similar to systems implemented on Reddit / Quora).
The end-user will benefit from a more complete information base on his destination while quality content would be ranked first as vetted by the community through upvotes and would bring traffic to the original websites.
But I'm probably missing some parts here
Good idea! Though I wouldn't want them to reprint the article - that's a disincentive to visit my site. The first couple paragraphs or a snippet with a link to read more would work for me though!
I'm building a "website centralising travel blog articles" with Famxplor.
I selected thousands of family travel blog posts based on their content and made them accessible by country and city on a world map.
Some users explore the world this way to get inspiration on where to travel, others zoom in a region to find activities with kids.
The ability to vote for articles in a great idea!
I agree 100%; I experience the same issues.
Wow-- this is a realistic, very candid picture of the challenges we face. You have captured it perfectly. As it relates to SEO, I find that even when I try to come up with a unique headline for a post because I want to set it apart from ALLL of the content on the internet, my SEO analyzer rejects the headline for something more mundane, as you suggest, a simple "top 10...." with some type of superlative. My problem with some of the headlines like "Ultimate list" or 'Most unforgettable" is these are completely subjective and they are never the ultimate or most unforgettable, and yet, I find myself having to use them as well simply to improve the SEO. The moment you start to add in some qualifiers, "most unforgettable experiences with young kids..." etc, the SEO ranking drops down.