There are plenty of backpacking bloggers out there but reading a backpacking blog from a true backpacker has something special. So how to start a successful backpacking blog was written with a true backpacker in mind. Starting a website or blog about your backpacking adventures is an amazing way to share your experiences and enthuse the reader to try it for themselves.

Regardless of where you travel, beit around your home location, on your annual vacation, or breaks away, by writing a blog, you are creating a website that solves problems your audience might have, telling them what to expect, where to go, what to take, where to stay, what backpack to use, camp or not to camp – the whole experience using your knowledge.

Writing on your own website about backpacking can start as a hobby, in your downtime from your regular work, but no reason why you can’t make income from it. Your website can be a combination of blogs and affiliate marketing, giving you the opportunity to monetise your website as you work.

How To Start Blogging

I won’t go into how to set up your website at this point because I have written articles about that already and setting up a website for backpacking is the same as it would be for any other website right now. So hop over to website building, and start there first.

You can host it at Wealthy Affiliate – that’s where mine is hosted, and I’m there too if you want any help, follow this link to Wealthy Affiliate Review to see what its about and whether its for you. Hosting at WA gives you so much help, you might find that it is just what you need right now.

With your website set up, the next step is to get a few articles/blogs written.

What To Write About

So you are a backpacker… As a non-backpacking traveller, I can think of dozens of things I would want to know if I was taking it up for the first time. That’s a good niche audience to target, or you could combine a niche website with articles for the beginner and the seasoned backpacker?

To start writing, you need great keywords that will attract readers to your website. As a startup, you could do with a little help in how to target those keywords that will help get you ranked highly on the search engines because as you can imagine, there will be a lot of websites that rank already for the popular backpacking keywords, so you need to be a little clever here and pick off those ‘low hanging’ keywords that will bypass the more popular keywords that will put you up against the high flyers on backpacking on the search engines. K

Keywords

As you can see from this illustration here, these keywords are very popular, that is to say, there are a LOT of websites using the keyword ‘backpacking’… not worth using as a keyword as you have to compete against 168 other websites using that same keyword. Really not worth the bother…

This search is much more productive with very possible keywords to use. I love ‘best backpacking trails Oregon’ at only one other website ranking for that keyword.. but Im not in Oregon I hear you say… well search with your own state…. the likelihood is that it will rank as positively as this.

To learn more about finding those keywords, read my article on Jaaxy – Jaaxy is a keyword tool that will find those low competition keywords for you, showing the likely traffic you could attract to your website with those words. It will also give you alternative similar words for you to consider and try out. By doing this you will find keywords that you can write about and know you will attract organic traffic to your articles. If you want to learn more about Jaaxy and try it out, follow my link. As an example, I had a look through Jaaxy to see what sort of backpacking keywords there are.

Products/Information

With a website based on backpacking, it opens up a whole array of avenues you could take with products, information, articles, blogs, tips and ideas. Start a subscription to encourage readers to keep up with your blogs and advice. So many ways that you can enhance your readers enjoyment of their backpacking.

Products

You might want to narrow your products/ information more, rather than going for everything you might need for a backpacking adventure and having several choices of each item… a lot of affiliate links to sort out.

There are tons of products you could recommend, but you could look at it from various angles – an article about all the stuff you use yourself on backpacking trips, using the latest affiliate links to various websites where they can purchase what you use…. Choose a few products to recommend, ones that you feel passionate about, review them and offer your opinion on them. Get the company to send you them to try out, get images on your trek to use in your blog – this will really add weight to your article and improve the trust element that is important for any website.

Check out the affiliate programmes for your products, this is the crux of an affiliate website, the ability to monetise it. This starts with affiliate links. You review a product then add an affiliate link to the item. When the reader clicks on that link and buys the product, you get a small percentage. It doesn’t cost your reader more. So check out how to do this by following my link to affiliate marketing and affiliate links. Both these articles will explain how to set up the links and what affiliate marketing is all about.

A well researched product, with great photos ‘out in the field’ with an honest review, will build your brand and encourage more readers to interact with you.

Products you could review include – sleeping bags, backpacks, camping tents, walking boots, jackets, cooking equipment, first aid, dry bags, compass, camera, bug sprays, travel companies for backpacking… the list could go on!

Information

I would love to go backpacking but I wouldn’t know where to start, and I would have so many questions that I would need answering before I could even consider it. You can decide how you want to approach the information you give out. Its always ideal to have a balance between information that you offer freely and information you offer for payment.

Much of the time I would expect that the blogs/articles you choose to write about will be freely available to your readers, but thinking about articles on epic adventures that you have, maybe in your own state, with exact information from where to park your car, to what sights to see on the backpack adventure, where to camp, or where there are lodgings you would recommend – the full instructional booklet on backpacking in…..Cashiers, NC or Fort Walton FL….or Dripping Falls TX !

This sort of booklet by a backpacking expert will be valuable to the beginner. Making the most of a trip for those starting out on this pastime is important but also knowing that they will have the right equipment etc to make their experience a great one.

Other articles/ blogs can cover a plethora of topics from ‘Tips For Camping In The Rain’ – great one for the UK backpacker ! Or ‘Preparation Exercises for The Starter Backpacker.’ ‘ Personal Hygiene When Backpacking’ or ‘When You Wipe With The Wrong Leaf’ ? You can have great fun writing about low cost travel recommendations, water hydration and cleaning, cooking skills.

If you want to come join me at Weathly Affiliate, to have unrivalled support with your website from the get go, click on the banner below. I will personally support you in your journey and get your backpacking website off the ground.