Travel blogging has become an addiction shared by backpackers around the globe and those who digest these blogs on a daily basis. Blogging with excellent descriptive writing is a lure that interests me on different travel blogs over and over again. Photo blogging takes it a step further and keeps me coming back again and again.
Photo blogging backpackers have that special sauce that makes any backpacker blog become a hit with everyone who reads it. Travel photos take you to that location and let your mind run wild with excitement and aww.
I am always adding new photo blogging backpackers to my blogging abroad directory so you who love the photo blogs can check out photos that are as exotic as their locations.
So you’re going on a trip and you’ve cleaned and charged your digital camera for the journey. You are going to snap shots of the sights of a new world. A digital camera’s storage card can only hold so many photos, so where are you going to store all those new shots? Luckily in this wonderful tech age we live in there is solutions to your photo storage problem.
• First and probably the most obvious is a laptop computer.
There are is an abundance of good, small, portable laptops out in the market right now, such as apple’s new macbook or the dell xps 1210. There are pros and cons of having a laptop while traveling though. Pros it is a portable work station that you can use to communicate, blog, edit your photos, and keep up on whats happening in the world. Cons it is something that will make even non criminals turn to theft, laptops are highly sought after by everyone so you have to take extra security measures. If that laptop gets stolen, your precious photos go with it, unless you back them up on CD or DVD R’s.
• The next option is online photo hosting solutions such as Flickr. With these online storage services you can upload your images right to the site, you can even send your link to family, friends and blog readers so they can view your photos. This is an awesome, amazing, fantastic photo storing solution, IF you have high speed internet access. If on the other hand you are in a place with a 14.4 dial up modem, you might end up snapping and smashing the computer you are on and end up in a third world jail. No one wants you to end up in a jail cell so keep this as a back up option!
• Some countries have capitalized on the amount of travelers with digital cameras and opened up shops that allow you to upload and burn your travel photo’s to a CD or DVD for a few bucks. This is an excellent option and I highly recommend it as long as you aren’t the type that loses CD’s or DVD’s!
• And finally, one other option I have read about but have not yet had the opportunity to try is the digital camera to ipod connecter.
Ahh the ipod, is there anything this little electronic super hero can’t do? Basically from my understanding you hook up your camera cable to the adaptor that plugs in your ipod and hit a few buttons and badda bing your ipod now is holding your photos. For users with a large capacity ipod this would be my ultimate recommendation!
Happy snapping and saving your photos! If you have any travel photo’s I would love to see them so feel more than welcome to send your travel photo links to me so I can check them out!
When you are sitting somewhere doing something mundane, work or school for example do you ever start to think if I could be doing anything anywhere in the world where would it be? Sit back, take a deep breath and really think about that question. Think about the question in it’s simplest form, I’m talking no limits to your destination.
Where would you be if you could be anywhere right now?
There is no greater treat than reading a well focused blog. A well focused blog entry is when you pick one or two topics and writes about them in depth. Talk about your bbq squid lunch at a stall in the middle of downtown Bangkok and the sights and sounds around that meal that made it a special even worth writing about.
Or talk about your day on the waves learning to surf and everything leading up to the one time you were really riding the wave.
Blogs that are scattered and unfocused aren’t interesting to the reader because it takes a lot of effort to read and understand. Smooth one or two topic posts are fun to read and let your readers feel like they are living the same experiences. Readers check blogs to connect to the material, so let them! There is no way you could pack even one full day in to a blog post, it would be information overload for the reader and would take a very long time on your part to write. So pick your favorite parts of the day and make your readers feel like they are there!
Appeal to your reader’s senses; smells, sights, sounds, feels and tastes. This really gets the reader into your writing and into your blog, pictures really work well in backing up your sight descriptions. Focused detail in blogs keeps me reading and it can keep your readers hooked too, give it a shot and let me know how it works!
Blogging your trip can be a vault of ideas and memories, sharing your blog can be extremely rewarding especially if you have readers who comment and are eagerly awaiting your next entry. Readers are great to keep you going, you know you aren’t just writing and spilling your heart to an empty place in cyber space.
A high number of readers and traffic also means more money. Making a profitable blog will allow you to travel longer, and do all the things you want to do. Imagine traveling and checking your accounts online and the money keeps rising; wouldn’t that be a change!
Getting readers isn’t the easiest task in the world, but like any task there are ways of increasing your success rate. First off readers need to know that your blog exists, they won’t just come out of the blue and land on your page; trust me I learned this the hard way!
Get links to your blog from other sites, blogrolls, directories what ever just have the links linking to your blog. Also the more links you have the higher you can be listed in search engine results. Ask bloggers who’s blog you read to swap links, both parties benefit from this!
Have a link to your blog in a signature on forums you participate at and in your personal email that is attached to all outgoing mail.
Participate in forums, be active make connections. If you are real and help out someone with a problem, you would be surprised what people will do for you. It’s called karma, so start earning those karma points!
Comment on other travel sites and blogs. Real genuine comments not just promoting your site with a link to your blog, no one likes seeing in your face solicitation.
Spread the word! Tell your friends to tell their friends, this does actually work!
When you have enough readers to make the New York Times jealous, don’t forget who got you in the know!
Travelling is my favorite past time. New places mean new smells, sights and sounds which lead you to a new way of thinking. Traveling is education; it gives you a new respect for other cultures and different ways of life.
Just entertaining the thought of traveling to a new, unknown destination sends a chill down my spine and the goose-bumps follow shortly after. The unfamiliar sounds of a bustling city to the refreshing native fruit that you never knew existed. Everything is new and waiting to be forged in to memories and new ideas. What do you love about traveling?
Embedding youtube videos into wordpress blog posts is much more difficult than I thought it would be. I’ve done some digging around and found a solution so you can upload your travel videos to youtube.com and have them located directly in your posts on wordpress blogs in four simple steps anyone can do!
Step one: Sign up for youtube, and upload the videos you want to share. Copy the embed script by right clicking and selecting copy from the Embed box. Here’s a picture to help you locate more easily.
Step two: Go in to your admin area in wordpress and click on the users link, scroll down to the personal options and uncheck “Use the visual rich editor when writing” option.
Step three: In wordpress begin writing a post as you always would, you will notice the area where you type feels a little different (this is the rich text editor being turned off), paste the embed video script you copied from youtube and paste it where you want it in your post.
Step four: Save, publish and voila you now have your own video right in your post.
Here is an example I have embedded. (Note: this is not my video).
I will be posting one blog a week that I think stands out from the pack. This week I was reading quite a few different travel related and tech blogs, however one stood out in my mind and I find myself checking back every few hours to see if there are any new posts.
The is well written, and funny at times. Makes me wish I was in Hong Kong’s Kowloon harbour watching the nightly light show. The blog is definitally worth the click!
Awesome blog post from the digital photography school. Have you ever wondered how to create breathe taking sunrise and sunset photos? Well look no further Blogging Abroad found this informative post for you:
No good travel photo album is complete without the token sunrise or sunset picture!’
This was the comment of a friend who recently took me through some photos from his recent trip overseas. He obviously strongly believed in the above mantra because there were ALOT of sunset shots in his album - but unfortunately most of them looked very similar to one another and while they were beautiful, they didn’t really end up being the highlight shots he’d anticipated them to be.
Here are a few tips for making sunrise and sunset shots the best that they can be:
Blogging is not only a fun thing to do, but can also be a financially benificial way to share your experiences with the world. People all around the world are wanting more information on things you are doing and places you have been, they are hungry for more knowledge. So help them out give them details, share moments of your journey and make your blog fun to read and easy to relate to. Aimless websurfers who stumble upon your page will become enchanted by your posts and become avid readers. Avid readers tell their friends and their friends tell their friends, next thing you know your blog has 4000 hits a week and you are making a splash in the blogging community.
OK sure if I pour my soul into this blog I’ll get readers? Readers yes, and with readers you have an audience. You can monetize this audience by placing small advertisements on blogs or selling space or links to advertisers. The best way to cash in on a large reader base is google adsense which displays relevent text or image ads based on what is written on the page they are placed. For more info on these ads check out google adsense here. For every click from your site you get a small amount of money. This is a great way to turn traffic in to cash.
But how do I get readers, there are so many blogs out there already?
Blogging takes time and effort to grow just like anything in life. One way to increase the popularity of your blog is to get other related sites to link to you. This is often as easy as emailing the site admin and asking nicely, most sites will want a link from your blog pointing back to them.
Blog directories are another way to build traffic and popularity. Blogging Abroad has a free directory for travel bloggers that you can submit your blog to here .
These are the first steps to building a blog and cashing in on its popularity. And everyone loves seeing photography so don’t forget to get a flickr account and embed photos in your posts!
