We Are Failing at Travel Blogging and So Can You!

As travel blogs go, ours is what you might call an overnight failure. We started a blog, waited a night and then failed to become world famous bloggers. Apparently there is more to it than that. Since that first night, we have continued to fail. We recently hit our highest monthly readership numbers last month but only after a six month dip in numbers.Six months!

Lots of people want to succeed at travel blogging but to those of you that want to fail like we do, here are some suggestions on how to do it.

1. Don’t participate in the community. Don’t tweet other people’s work and in fact, don’t read it. Don’t comment on blogs and don’t ‘like’ or ‘friend’ anything. It’s best to pretend you are the only one doing what you are doing. The rest of the world be damned!
2. Write stuff that only you find interesting. I have personally found this technique highly effective. I write about stuff that is of no practical use to anyone other than myself. I could make it more useful and write about things other people might enjoy but there’s one problem: I own the blog and ‘other people’ don’t.
3. Write on random days and preferably with long breaks between posts. Try not to be predictable in your posting schedule. If you establish a pattern, break it as quickly as you detect it. Through curve balls in there once in a while to keep them on their toes.
4. Start something then don’t finish it. Got an idea for a half assed project? Great. Maybe it’s a “photo of the day” section. Start it then give up about half way through. Open up Pinterest boards and Google Plus pages and never use them. Email newsletters were great when you started now stop them! So were posts about weekly financial updates and travel segments. Abandon things just when they might get started or people find them useful.
5. Accept no feedback. Feedback is for people that are wrong. You are NEVER wrong and hence need no feedback. Ignore them, those who covet your overnight failure! Let them eat the cake of some other more successful baker for they shall have none of yours!

If you want to fail like we have, the above five points are great places to start. But if it gets too difficult and success seems like it might be lurking up on you, just remember, it happens to all of us sometimes. You just need to double down and fight through the accolades and praise until you find rock bottom again. Best of luck. Or should I say, worst of luck?

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net