Discover How to Make a Travel Guide Website!
A travel-guide website is a resource where people can find any kind of information about a specific location on the Internet. This form of website provides the tips, tricks and secrets of a destination to the interested visitors and could be very helpful for travellers and adventurers as an authority website.
Normally, we get the information about a location we are going to visit in the form of catalogs, brochures and printed documents from our travel agency. The downside of those things is that they are mostly prepared by promotional purposes and cannot basically give the honest and comprehensive review of the location. On top of that, getting access to those stuff is time-consuming and even costly. We need instant and FREE access to tons of information about a particular destination. That’s when the Internet comes to play.
Today, you can search on the Internet for a specific place and see a whole bunch of results coming up that each of them shows an aspects of the searched place. Many of them are online travel-related companies, some are encyclopedia websites, article directories and forums. But, as mentioned before, we want a single website where we will be able to know a lot about that particular region from a person who lives there or has been in that location for a time. That way, we would be satisfied on the given information.
What if you could build a website that introduces a location to your visitors and covers little unknown things?
You don’t need to be a travel agent to run a travel-guide website. You don’t even need to create an online tourism company that would take a big fortune to get up and running. The only thing you will need is knowledge and passion or both of them to run a content-based website about a specific resort place. That way, you would not promote the destination so heavily that the prospect feels uncomfortable and leaves your website immediately.
Unlike many travel agents, you should try to over-deliver valuable and high quality information that people can take advantage of. At the end of the day, you would be regarded as an expert in the topic and your recommendations would be taken seriously. That’s how you’re going make money and run your web business on a daily basis.
But, How To Make a Travel Guide Website?
When it comes to making a website, most people consider it as a really complicated work. Trust me, a few years ago, I didn’t even think about building a single web page. Today, it is truly simple to create a website from scratch no matter how much you know about site building.
But, making a website that works is not that easy. A successful website can be defined as a profitable business only if you fulfill all the elementary steps properly and accurately. So, first of all, you need a blueprint or guide that walks you through the entire process and helps you get started. Second, you will need some powerful tools and resources that are necessary for the process of site building and finally you should get involved by providing high-value content to the website.
One Real & Successful Case Study
Before I get through the steps you will need to build a travel-guide website, I would like to show you one of the successful case-studies about some ordinary people who have turned their knowledge and passion into profitable web businesses. People from around the globe who took a chance and then realized the process. Finally, their worlds had changed.
One of those successful people is Birgit Bradtke, the owner of www.Outback-Australia-Travel-Secrets.com, who created a popular content-based website around Australia Outback adventure.
When Birgit decided to build a website like this, she didn’t know anything about websites. She never even liked computers. Besides, English is her second language. But, she always dreamed about becoming a travel writer and her biggest passion was travel. She wanted freedom, adventure, and new experiences.
Her dream came true when he found a program called SBI! (Site Build It!) where all the tools and learning materials were included. She really could start from zero and SBI! would take her by the hand through the site building process, step by step. Site Build It!l promised to not only teach her how to build a website, but also how to get traffic to it and how to make money with it.
After all, Birgit made enough income that she could quit her job very soon. Now, she has more than 1 website with the help of SBI!, all are growing and making money every single day.
Top 5 Necessary Steps Of Building a Travel-Related Website
Here are the main steps you should complete in order to make a travel-guide website. Do not overlook or ignore any of them if you are looking for a long-term web business:
1. Brainstorming:
In this stage, you generate the ideas and choose a location. It could be your town or city. Sometimes you can go broader and choose a bigger regions such as state, province or even country. But remember, the more targeted, the better results. If your town is not that popular, select the nearest resort city to your living place. The point is to choose a location that is being searched by some people and the number of websites talking about that location is low.
2. Building:
This step is the core of your entire process in which you register a meaningful domain name that could preferably contain your destination words, get a web hosting account and start designing your web pages. Bear in mind that your website layout should look professional and relevant to the topic. Use eye-catching headline with nice graphics. Try to build a user-friendly website that people enjoy browsing. Also, make sure your web pages are Search Engine Optimized.
A high quality content must be the main part of your website. Whether it is informative articles, nice pictures, interesting audios or cool videos, try to provide it in a way that visitors take the most advantage of and give you credit. That way, you would be considered as an expert and people would trust you.
3. Marketing:
Promoting a content-based website should not be difficult if you have fully and properly completed the prior steps. However, you need to let people know about your website in various methods. If your site is a well Search Engine Optimized, chances are that you would get some nice traffic from the search engines. You can increase the traffic flow by writing and submitting articles and press releases in different directories. Also, you can get tons of visitors from niche-related websites and forums where most of your targeted prospects are hanging out.
Pay Per Click Advertising could be also used as an accessory, yet powerful method of generating traffic. No matter which traffic source you would use, it is the content of your website that matters. Don’t forget that the power of “Word Of Mouth Marketing” is still the most effective one and can turn a website into an authority resource.
4. Monetizing:
The most beautiful part is when you start making money from your website. Although this step of process could be put in parallel with Building phase, but I consider it as an independent and important stage. You should choose a way or ways to monetize your website. You can put ads on your web pages and earn some cents here and there or promote affiliate offers that could bring you much higher income. Probably, you can sign an agreement with a few local businesses in your city and earn hefty commissions by referring people to their businesses. In fact, the opportunities are endless.
5. Tracking:
You should always track the traffic of your website and find out what has worked fine and what not. You have to test different parameters and see the corresponding results. That way, you would be able to improve your business. Also, take advantage of your visitors’ comments and suggestions as a feedback for your web business. Remember that nothing is 100% perfect but we all can improve ourselves.
Making a travel-guide website could be a very profitable online business for literally anyone from around the globe. If your are an stay-at-home mom and dad, college student, retired person or even a part-time/full-time worker, you can start an Internet business from scratch with a very low budget. Today, you can do it under $300 US Dollars.
Some people prefer to get educated before doing anything and then get involved. That’s why it is better to have a comprehensive guide that teaches everything to make a website that works.
SBI! (Site Build It!) not only walks you through the whole process of site building step by step, but also gives you the needed tools for creating and running web pages. It is also a domain registrar, web hosting company with brainstormer tool, tracking program, page manager and tons of other useful features. You can read more about it in the following post:
To Your Online Success!
Hooshmand Moslemi
