My First Year as a Travel Blogger

Yes, it was exactly a year ago on July 29th that I posted my first blog post, “Why Travel?” It’s been a journey ever since. I thought I’d take this anniversary to share about my first year of blogging.

When I retired from teaching last June, I knew I needed to have something to do to help keep me occupied. Being a middle school English teacher for 21 years, I had worked to teach my students how to write. I decided that perhaps I should practice what I had been preaching and write. Blogging seemed the easiest way to do this, a way to hone my skills.

I had various ideas about blogging subjects, but decided on travel. One of my reasons was because this would offer me the opportunity to also share my photos. I have a photo site on Flickr for photos, but I feel like the photos I post there need be be my best. Sometimes when I travel I take photos that I think show something interesting, but the quality may not be there. A blog offers me the chance to share those photos with others.

I certainly had a learning curve regarding blogging. I don’t consider myself a techie person. Picking a name, designing the site, figuring out all the technical aspects of blogging took time, but I was proud of myself that I stuck with it and finally got my site up. The informational site I used the most to get me going was ProBlogger. It has quite a few useful resources.

The process of creating a weekly post has been more time consuming than I expected. Writing the initial blog post is usually not too difficult. Once I have an idea, I will think about it for a while, and then when I sit down to type it out, it usually flows pretty easily. However, that’s not the end of it.

Preparing the photos is usually the most time consuming part of my blog. Posts that are particularly photo heavy, such as my recent posts on gardens, can really take a lot of time. While I don’t post only the perfect photos, I still want each one to look their best. I use the photo editing site Topaz Studio to edit each photo. Depending on the photo it can take up to 5 minutes to edit one photo. Hopefully the effort is worth it, and you find the photos interesting and enjoyable. Do be sure to click on photos to see the complete image as sometimes they are cut off when they are put in a montage.

Once the photos are edited, they have to be put into the blog with titles and something called Alt Text. That is a description of what is in the photo should the photo fail to download for someone. Sometimes the photo file is a little too large, and the site won’t accept it so then I have to resize it. That can get frustrating at times with multiple rejections.

The final step is editing the post. One plugin I use does an analysis of my writing. Usually I do pretty well for them except in the area of using passive tense. The standard they set is for a maximum of 10% of the sentences to be using passive voice. I am almost always over that so I go back and try to rewrite the sentences to put them in active voice. Some are easy to do; others are not so I may leave them alone. It’s a challenging process.

During my final editing I may read a post over five or six times making changes along the way. Recently I have been trying to focus on word usage. For example I began to realize I was using the word “area” too much so I am trying to find alternate synonyms. While I try to write very directly, I have also been making an effort to use more descriptive words. It’s all a part of honing that writing skill.

The other aspect of writing I am trying to develop is storytelling. Generally I am sharing my experiences, but it can easily fall into just stating facts and information. Storytelling requires a willingness to speak to emotions and thoughts, and I am working to include more of that in my writing. It is a learning process, and I hope my writing has improved over this past year.

Of course content is always an important consideration. Arriving home from a trip always gives me information that I can write about, but filling in the weeks between can be a challenge. This has been particularly true since the pandemic has stopped travel.

One never knows how an audience will respond to a post. Back in October I wrote a post about toilets. I thought it would be an unusual subject that would garner interest. It didn’t. However a June post regarding the song “The Blessing” has been my most viewed post ever thanks to a plug by my pastor. (I am planning a follow up post to “The Blessing” next week).

While putting together a blog has been an enjoyable process, the challenging part has been getting readers. While I never expected my blog to go viral and be at the top of the thousands of travel blogs being written, I had hoped to get a respectable audience. It didn’t turn out to be that easy. I sent invitations out to people I thought would be interested, and some signed up. Others didn’t. I couldn’t even get all the members of my own family to sign up. I had hoped to eventually get 100 subscribers. After a year I have just 15.

Part of the challenge is I have never been big on social media. I don’t have a Facebook page or Instagram or Twitter which everyone says are the best means to get readers. My wife does put my latest post on her Facebook page and that has gotten some results. I have tried to use my LinkedIn page and Flickr photos to attract attention but without much success.

So I just keep writing away. It’s not all about the views, but I can’t say they don’t matter to me. Some people are inspired to just write and enjoy that process. What motivates me to write is teaching and sharing information. I am especially blessed when someone makes a comment that they found a post helpful. That’s when I feel I have accomplished what I set out to do.

So I plan to continue writing for the moment. I have some thoughts and ideas already in mind for a few more months. Hopefully by then some opportunities for travel will come up.

In the meantime I want to thank you, my readers, who have encouraged me over these months, especially those who have taken the time to make an occasional comment or to fave a post. I hope my weekly posts have given you a few moments of insight, enjoyment, or encouragement. In the meantime I continue on my journey in life and hope to travel often and learn much in the coming year.

Acknowledgement: The two photos of me taking pictures are by Silvette Lee