In today’s travel blogging tips article I am delighted to be featuring Ayngelina Brogan, author of the wonderfully titled blog: Bacon is Magic.
Currently travelling in Latin America, on a journey that has lasted almost a year, Ayngelina set off with the intention of finding out more about herself and her life.
Nearly a year of travelling later, she has made the decision to lead a location independent lifestyle. On her blog she shares her stories of travel, her hopes and fears, and some wonderful photography.
Today she talks about her aspirations for her site, who she turns to when she needs advice, and her number one tip for increasing site traffic. On with the interview!
Tell us a little bit about Ayngelina, and your site, Bacon is Magic.
Almost a year ago I had a great job, boyfriend, friends and apartment but I felt like something was missing so I decided to travel for a year to find inspiration. I’ve been writing about my experiences as I travel through Latin America. Although it is a travel blog the locations are really just the background for my journey to find something more meaningful.
It’s also evolved a bit as I’ve decided to make this an indefinite experience and try to become location independent.
Why did you start writing a travel blog?
It started off purely for friends and family as a way to document the trip. I had no idea others would be interested in the site.
How do you define success in terms of your travel blog?
Ultimately I want to be happy with the content I produce. I could drive more traffic and make more money by doing generic top 10 lists but I would rather have a smaller group of dedicated readers who have the same interests.
What aspirations do you have for your travel blog?
Well two things:
- Increase the revenue so that it can sustain my travels
- Branch out from travel as I´m now also writing about my own quest for location independence and creating a life on my terms.
How would you describe your level of technical know-how, and how has this helped or hindered your site?
I didn’t know much when I started and chose a really bad template. Fortunately I met The Aussie Nomad really early on and he has taught me everything I know.
Do you follow any metrics in terms of traffic analysis / site ranking, and how important do you think these are?
That’s a tough question. Sure everyone loves to see an increase in traffic and ranking but ultimately I can’t base my value on numbers. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t check them every day.
What would be your number one tip for increasing site traffic?
The best tip I learned for quality traffic was from Andi Perullo of My Beautiful Adventures, which was to email commenters your response. A lot of people don’t come back to a post to read your response. Because she took the time to personally respond I felt compelled to follow her adventures and now I consider her a great blogger friend.
What have you found to be the hardest thing about running a travel blog, and how do you overcome this?
Time management. It’s easy to get into a habit of being online all day but my best work comes when I unplug. Recently I took a digital sabbatical and it really helped my ideation.
Where do you turn for help when you need advice on your travel blog?
I have a solid group of people who are so supportive but there are three people who have supported me from the early days: Chris from The Aussie Nomad has taught me so much about the technical end, I talk to Michael of Go See Write daily about blogging and Mike from Fevered Mutterings is an inspiring writer and great friend.
What sort of time commitment do you put in to your travel blog on a weekly basis?
I have this lofty dream about only working an hour a day but it ends up being 2-3 times that much. I spend as much time on social media and promoting the blog as I do writing.
If there was one thing you wish you could have known before you started writing your blog, what would it have been?
Start it as early as possible so you can learn the technical aspects and find your voice before you go. I wish I had started it a year before I departed.
What have you found to be the best way to go about generating an income from your blog?
Monetizing is tough and I don’t think you really get a good grasp of it until nearly a year of blogging. Text links are the easiest form of income but now that I´m a bit more established I want to explore other means.
How do you go about promoting your travel blog?
As I mentioned above social media consumes half my working time. Twitter is great for networking with other bloggers, Facebook is great for ¨real people¨and most recently I’ve started guest posting to reach new readers.
How do you see travel blogging developing over the next few years?
I already see it starting to diversify, some are great at general travel tips, others at luxury or eco travel. Although I’m technically a travel blog I focus more on finding inspiration through travel to change your life.
And finally, what key advice would you give to people running, or thinking about setting up, their own travel blog?
Start early and learn the ins and outs before you go and for goodness sake, do not use blogger.
As always, tremendous thanks to Ayngelina for taking the time to answer my questions. You can find out more about her travels on her website, plus you can find her on both twitter and facebook.
For more travel blogging tips from the experts, have a look at the rest of the series. To keep up to date with upcoming posts you can subscribe to the RSS feed or join in on the site’s Facebook page. In the meantime, if you have any questions or thoughts on this post or the series thus far, the comments box awaits!
Ayngelina says
hehe, Google Reader makes things very efficient, it feels like I’m everywhere but really not so much – also not as much as Andi!
Connie Hum says
Great interview! Lots of useful information from Ayngelina! Keep up the great work with Bacon is Magic and good luck with achieving your goals! Sounds like you’ll be there in no time!
smith says
The interview taken by Ayngelina is really good. Tips for
travel blogging are quite informative.
Laurence says
Thanks 🙂
alltraveltips4me says
This is a really great interview Ayngelina.The idea was awesome. I think that interviews like this will not only help beginner bloggers
to develop their skills but will also help this community to grow more and more.
katja hentschel says
this is a lovely idea, but isnt it tough finding the time for this, amongst all the other stuff that need taking care of?
Erica&Shaun Kuschel says
I am so happy that I started blogging a year ahead of our trip. I had no clue that it would turn out to be the project that I love today.
Ayngelina, you really are an inspiration for many of us. I know I look up to you, look forward to your advice, and love your blog posts.
Laurence says
Although I get a lot of different responses to the various questions in
this series – the one about starting earlier is a very common theme!
Starting a whole year before you set off is a great idea, as it lets you
get comfortable with the whole blogging thing and your site design
before you set off 🙂
yTravelBlog says
Hey Ayngelina, fantastic interview! Thanks for sharing Laurence. And like others have mentioned very useful tips. Agree time management is key, there are so many distractions online and off. Like and agree with your perspective that it’s better to have a hundred loyal followers who will sing your praises and share you naturally to a targeted audience, than a million fly by nighters who stumble you.
Looking forward to meeting you somewhere in this wide world…
Ordinary Traveler says
Great advice, Ayngelina! I used to send our comment replies to people’s emails, but if they didn’t opt into receive it I feel like some people would get annoyed with that. Don’t you think?
ayngelina says
Christy, if someone takes the time to comment on my blog I think it opens up the dialog. Personally I would prefer an email back from someone responding so I don’t have to check their site again.
I haven’t had anyone complain…yet 🙂
Laurence says
I like the comment systems that e-mail me when someone has replied
specifically to me, rather than mass e-mail me every follow up comment
on the post.
Geert @ Inspiring Travellers says
Excellent tips from an excellent blogger! I agree about starting early – we worked out so many kinks in the first year that I would not have had the time or patience to deal with while on the road.
Chris says
Good interview choice Lawrence, Ayngelina’s blog is great and having known her from the very beginning I can easily say its been one hell of a friendship I’ve made. God help us when I finally meet up with her.
Laurence says
Thanks Chris! I’m really looking forward to meeting up with a whole
range of travel bloggers – hopefully this month I’ll be catching up with
Dave and Deb from The Planet D on their wanderings around NZ 🙂
Cathy Sweeney says
Love this interview of Ayngelina! Nice to learn more about her and get some of her great tips!
Justin Hamlin says
The interview was great Ayngelina – as always. Its always nice to see a little more insight to the life of the people behind the blogs we follow. Their thoughts, motives, practices, etc.
Thanks for sharing 🙂
Ayngelina says
Thanks, these are all things I learned from such a great community of people.
positiveworldtravel says
Great interview Angelina. We are loving your new site by the way! I think we need to take some time away from our blog and unplug to gain inspiration again. It is sometimes hard to find a good workflow and also experiencing the world around your We have found that we will work on the site for a week then schedule for 4 weeks. Hope you are enjoying Latin America. We are making our way down there shortly.
ayngelina says
I’m the same way. I’d rather work hard for a few days and relax for a few weeks although social media is really a daily thing.
Make sure you find me when you come down!
traveltosun says
Thank you for these really useful tips, Ayngelina. I started blogging about 6 months ago, but I know I still have a long way ahead of me and I think that interviews like this will not only help beginner bloggers to develop their skills but will also help this community to grow.
ayngelina says
Thanks, these are all things I learned from such a great community of people.
Annie @ Wayward Traveller says
This is a really great interview Ayngelina, you have pointed out some things to keep in mind that have really stuck with me. It may seem like common sense to gain a group of dedicated readers but it’s easy to get caught up in all the traffic and advertising talk of the travel blog scheme. It’s not that I’m opposed to making money with my blog but I would much rather work on making real friends and finding out that readers are actually enjoying what I write instead of just ‘helping me out’.
Learning to blog is hard, Chris has helped me tons as well and I still feel like I’m lost at the bottom of the well! I have a lot of work to do but I hope I can take your advice and grow as much as you have!
ayngelina says
So many people get caught up in tips and schemes and yada yada. Yeah I use Stumble Upon and Twitter but they are a second priority because they may bring people to your site once but people only come back if they connect with you.
Connvoyage says
Great interview! Lots of useful information from Ayngelina! Keep up the great work with Bacon is Magic and good luck with achieving your goals! Sounds like you’ll be there in no time!
BeersAndBeans says
Great interview! Keep up the good work Ayngelina! -Randy
Ayngelina says
I think it’s also a lesson in patience. I learned how to write in Central America when no one was reading me, everyone thinks I’ve just been in South America. Let’s keep those posts a secret!
Nicole Durbin says
Some great tips, and I like the email comment reply too! Is that a plug-in?
ayngelina says
Nope I do it manually. You take the time to comment I take the time to reply 🙂
KarenK says
Can you expound on why not to use Blogger?
David Paul Krug says
It’s not as much as why not, as the benefits of using WordPress or another more powerful robust content management system.
WordPress is easily themable, and easier to manage content IMO. But that’s just my take.
ayngelina says
David is right, like most early bloggers I also started with Blogger – http://blackwhitepinkbrown.blogspot.com and I found it difficult and ugly. This time I wanted to take it seriously and create something that I would be proud of. A lot of people think Blogger is the only free option but WordPress also has a free version and if you want to upgrade at some point it’s much easier.
Laurence says
This blog is hosted on blogger. I’ve not used WordPress, but from
various discussions, I think there are two areas to consider.
First, when folk say you should go self hosted, the main thinking behind
that is that a custom domain name carries more authenticity than a
youblogname.blogspot.com or yourblogname.wordpress.com domain. You can
do this with both blogger and wordpress installs – blogger is $10 a year
for custom domain name and hosting. WordPress varies based on your
hosting package, but is usually quite a bit more I think.
The other is regarding the technical differences between blogger and
wordpress. Whilst blogger is customisable, and has a multitude of themes
to choose from, it is not quite so easy. Tweaking about with themes and
site layout requires a lot of patience and getting to grips with
bloggers rather unintuitive code, which is all presented in a gigantic
block of html and javascript. It is do-able, but it is far from user
friendly. Plus, if you decide to change theme down the line, all of your
customisations to the template will be overwritten.
Blogger is also a lot harder to make SEO friendly. There are a few SEO
specific plugins for WordPress, which let you change things like meta
tags on a per post basis. This is almost (not quite, but very tricky)
impossible to do with blogger.
Blogger’s advantages are that if you don’t want to customise the theme,
it is very cheap and easy to use, has built in stats (I think WordPress
has this now too), and last year, had 100% uptime, which is pretty
impressive for $10 a year. The custom domain thing comes with full
google apps support, which provides you with e-mail from your custom
domain, and the rest of the Google Apps package.
There are a number of guides available for migrating blogs from blogger
to WordPress, if you decide to make the move 🙂
ayngelina says
There is a free wordpress option so you can just have the name or you can buy your own domain name, mine is $7 a year.
WordPress has tons of nice free themes to use.
Laurence you are one of few who has sidestepped Bloggers terrible commenting system, my biggest pet peeve with Blogger is the commenting system.
Also don’t forget on TravelBlogSupport.com Chris has launched a contest to move your site from Blogger to WordPress which I heard can be a pain but every former Blogger blogger (lol) has told me they are so glad they made the move.
Laurence says
I didn’t know that! And yes, the blogger commenting system isn’t that
great. Disqus does play nicely with it though, so the comments are
stored on the blogger system too if I ever decide to change commenting
tool. I will investigate the move to WordPress, just need to find some
time where I have a decent internet connection for a longer period 🙂
Erin Parker says
i love interviews with great bloggers and this is brilliant!!! now, can someone tell me how to master twitter? it becomes a monster that will eat all of my time if i let it…
ayngelina says
This may not be a popular view but I’ve pulled back significantly from Twitter. I looked at where I wanted to spend my time and decided that I’d rather show other bloggers support by commenting on their blogs than retweeting their stuff.
My goal is to decrease my Twitter time to 20 minutes a day.
David Paul Krug says
Great article thanks for sharing the tips 🙂
Laurence says
Thanks David 🙂
Theodora Sutcliffe says
Love the emailed comment reply concept. I’ll have to try that one.
Laurence says
It’s a great idea – far better than the auto-opt in to all comments option that I often end up being trapped by – cue hundreds of e-mails arriving into my inbox without warning!
Andi Perullo de Ledesma says
OMG I wasn’t expecting a shout out! Thank you darling!!! I just think if someone is going to take the time to read my post and comment, they deserve to receive a comment back even if it’s a simple thank you 🙂
Buena suerte con todo amiga!!! I know you can accomplish all of your goals. I really, really hope our paths cross soon. Besos!
Laurence says
Thanks for all your comments Andi! Much appreciated 🙂
Travel Yourself says
Wicked interview Ayngelina!
You must spend more than 2-3 hours a day on the net because you manage to leave comments everywhere! I love it and it definitely brings people to your site to, extremely personable 🙂
Glad to have met you virtually 🙂
ayngelina says
hehe, Google Reader makes things very efficient, it feels like I’m everywhere but really not so much – also not as much as Andi!
Andi Perullo de Ledesma says
I start every morning with an hour of blog reading! It’s a great way to start each day, as I’m always inspired!!!
Michael Hodson says
great interview with a great travel blogger!
Laurence says
Thanks Michael 🙂
Shannon O'Donnell says
Love the tip to start early – like you, my first days traveling were the testing days of my voice, pov, and style, and as a result a lot of my posts from Australia (where I started) are crap! You don’t over glamorize it – it takes time out of every day to do it properly, but the end goal can be more than just top 10s 🙂 Loving your journey Ayngelina and great tips for new bloggers!
ayngelina says
Oh yeah I wish I could go back and revisit places just to uncrapify the posts!
Laurence says
It’s all a learning curve I guess – there always seems to be something new to learn, or some new technology to get on top of. The joy of a blog is that you can go back and edit old posts if you want to (although I like to keep them as is as something to look back on fondly :))
ayngelina says
I think it’s also a lesson in patience. I learned how to write in Central America when no one was reading me, everyone thinks I’ve just been in South America. Let’s keep those posts a secret!
Michael Figueiredo says
Great interview! It’s nice to learn more about Ayngelina. I already follow her blog, which is awesome 🙂
Laurence says
Thanks Michael. I agree, it is 🙂
Jeremy Branham says
Thanks for the interview Ayngelina. I can honestly say I learned something here. I always wondered why Andi emailed people back. I like her personal response to doing that. I never thought of it as a way to drive traffic. As for managing a blog, completely agree that time management is so difficult because I am pulled in so many different directions with things that I need to do. Finally, you hit on one of the key points of my new blog – using travel as a way to change lives and become better people. That is an area I want to focus on because that is how travel has changed me.
ayngelina says
Personally responding to comments by emailing really takes me quite a bit of time but in the end I believe it’s such a strong way to form relationships with people.
Andi Perullo de Ledesma says
You know what’s funny? I never ONCE thought that responding to comments personally was a way to drive traffic. That never even crossed my mind! I thought everyone did that haha and that was the way one blogged. I was sooo naive when I 1st started blogging.
ayngelina says
That’s the point, you made me feel like my comments mattered to you and I realized I wanted my readers to feel the same. The traffic is an unintended benefit.
katja hentschel says
this is a lovely idea, but isnt it tough finding the time for this, amongst all the other stuff that need taking care of?