Useful Resources & Articles about Travel Blogging and Social Media.

When we first thought of starting this website our first idea was to call it The Blogpacker and focus it on ways of making money with a travel blog. The Working Traveller would come later.

There was only one teensy problem. We’d never written a blog before. Websites, yes; blogs, no. We also thought the subject would be a little too narrow and that the treadmill of writing one blog, let alone two (alongside editing a classified jobs abroad ads board and keeping a fairly large static website up to date), would be more than enough to occupy one lazy man and one woman half afraid to touch a computer.

But we remain interested in the mechanics of blogging, which perhaps can be considered the third revolution in quick succession for DIY writer/editors (after desktop publishing and static websites), and made sure that the idea of The Blogpacker was kept alive as a column if not as a whole website.

One of the things we quickly noticed about the world of travel blogging was how friendly it was. Adam Seper noticed it too but asks will the camaraderie amongst travel bloggers last?

Some of that camaraderie was put to the test when Monica spoke out about, in her eyes, tainted travel bloggers neglecting to declare they’d received money for a sponsored post. A follow up piece, Undisclosed Sponsored Posts: Is There a Loophole? carried the debate forward.

Not all of us are lucky enough to be even offered the chance to compromise our values and cross our greasy little palms with silver. Matt Sussman, writing at Technorati, composed a ballad to anyone who started a blog and failed to make it to the big leagues. He tells us You’ll Never be a Full-Time Blogger, and That’s Okay

But one of the biggest names in travel blogging, Gary Arndt of Everything Everywhere sees it somewhat different. In his look at the 2010 State of the Travel Blogosphere he believes that, if one takes the long view, money can be made – though he doesn’t think that there will be one set way to do so.

Gary touches on a number of other subjects but fails to address how big a narcissistic bunch of nerds we all are. Recognising this, Andy Jarosz provides a review of travel blog ranking sites.

One way of climbing the rankings, as Ant Stone explains, is to make the most out of your link page. Another is to take advantage of Suzy Guese’s offer and submit an article each week to her clever feature Suzy Stumbles.

Another good idea that’s going somewhere is the Top 100 Independent Travel Websites. The list is judged by a combination of Alexa rankings and scores given by Brendan van Son on a site’s layout, content, writing quality, photography and interaction with readers.

A look at Brendan’s own Alexa stats show just what a smart move introducing the Top 100 was, especially given how travel bloggers seem to like to be ranked and rated. This was confirmed when we spotted a tweet by Adventurous Kate: ‘Waiting for the #top100 while coming home on the T. New tradition. Like it ’

Kate earned a number of fans herself with her article How to be a Good Travel Tweeter, itself retweeted a considerable number of times as lots of tweeps took her advice.

Finally, what with all the posting, guest posting, commenting, stumbling and tweeting Keith @ Velvet Escape concludes that even travel bloggers need a holiday

Image courtesy of Webtreats

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4. The Blogpacker Review #2
5. The Blogpacker Review #5