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Copyright @2012 Travel Blog Advice

Earlier this year, I asked you what your most pressing travel blogging questions were. LI asked how and where to best promote a blog contest, especially if your blog is fresh out of the Internet womb.

Floating In The Extremes

A blog contest has the potential to excite your readers, encourage participation, and draw new audiences to your site. Conversely, a contest can also make you feel like you’ve fallen flat on your face in a public display of disappointment. Running a successful contest – that is with more than mom participating – is a tricky prospect, no matter how large or small your audience is.

Ease And Eas(ier)ness Of Entry

A critical component in running a successful contest is making things simple. That starts laying out the basics – what the person will win (e.g. phone cards) and how they enter.

Make entry into your contest as easy as possible, especially if you’ve got an audience on the smaller side. When LI asked whether to post a blog contest on Facebook or her actual site, I’d say do both if you’re just starting out.

While every contest is different and can go a number of ways, they tend to build momentum over time. When people are online they’re lazy – you’ve got generally under a minute to get their attention so make the most of it. With a larger audience you’ve got more people to funnel to a blog post or a Facebook page but for newer sites you’ll need to cast your contest net wider.

Give Yourself A Lead But Not Too Long

Travelers tend to neglect the places that are close to home partially because of the mentality that they’re so close, “I’ll get their eventually.” Well, we all know how that goes and a blog contest is the same way. Give people 6 weeks to enter and chances are you won’t get much more participation than a contest with a 1 week entry deadline.

People are consistently dumping emails, calendar tasks, and interesting articles into “to do” lists which are the digital equivalent of black holes. Never to be seen or heard of again your contest announcement should get people to enter on first read; because it will be gone by the time they get back around to it (if they ever do). That’s also where a simple entry comes in – your readers will be more inclined to do something that takes 3 seconds to understand and even less time to do.

I’ve got a few more solid pieces of advice for running a successful contest on your travel blog but do feel free to ask any questions you might have in the comments below.

[photos by: FrozenCapybara (question mark), Jer Kunz (simple math), redjar (snowball)]

Related posts:

1. Solid Pieces Of Advice For Running A Successful Contest On Your Travel Blog
2. What Are Your Most Pressing Travel Blogging Questions?
3. Your Most Pressing Travel Blogging Questions: Is TBEX Worth It?

Copyright @2012 Travel Blog Advice

Dave Lee’s Travel Blog Success program, which I reviewed last year, has been updated and recently relaunched. Travel Blog Success is designed to help travel bloggers improve their sites on many fronts from monetizing to building an audience. Here’s a look inside the improved program that has its host of success stories to back it up the second time around.

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Dave Lee, who writes Go Backpacking and Medellin Living, several times over the past few years. He’s been blogging for the past 4 years with 3 years of traveling under his belt; and is someone passionate enough about both to take an ambitious project like Travel Blog Success and make it work. There are two tiers of membership to Travel Blog Success, with Basic membership giving you access to 27 written lessons and Premium including 12 expert audio interviews (one of them with yours truly) and more.

(Travel Blog Success) Stories

Since launching last February, Travel Blog Success has helped build and benefit many popular travel blogs including Johnny Vagabond, yTravelBlog, and LandLopers. You can read theirs and other testimonials on the Travel Blog Success homepage which really highlight the main benefit of the program – the community. The private forums are filled with other travel bloggers with various backgrounds and strengths, who are serious enough about improving their sites to invest the $99 (for Basic) or $129 (for Premium) memberships.

Included in the Premium membership are also coaching calls from Dave, which can give you an extraordinary head start and advantage to others working through blogging alone. As I mentioned last time, while you can learn everything in Travel Blog Success on your own, ideas build upon other ideas. Travel Blog Success can help you learn the nuts and bolts so you can focus on the more creative end of travel blogging.

Money Back Guarantee

Travel Blog Success also comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied. In my opinion, the Premium membership fee of $129 (the extra $30 is worth the coaching calls and more) is a reasonable investment for those looking to make more of their travel blog. Travel Blog Success has a slant on making your travel blog work for you with advertising money and press trips, though this second incarnation looks to beef up the site’s content creation and marketing lessons.

Somewhere along the line if you want to make your travel blog a business, you’ll have to invest in it and regularly. Travel Blog Success is certainly a good place to put your money if that’s the intention; with the added incentive that’s it’s only a one-time fee.

Related posts:

1. A Review Of Travel Blog Success

Copyright @2012 Travel Blog Advice

Last year about this time I asked you – what are your travel blog goals for 2010 – and many of you responded with aims at monetization, maintaining a blog around hectic travels, and I even chimed in with a few of my own. Now that a full year as gone by, before we start looking at 2011, I’d like to find out how far you’ve come.

• Whether you replied to the original post or not, tell us, did you accomplish your travel blogging goals for 2011?

Let me know how things went across the board if you were successful, fell short in a few places, or had some unexpected accomplishments. I’ll round up your responses as well as my own in an upcoming post before looking at the year ahead.

[photo by: betsyjean79 (doll thinking)]

Related posts:

1. What Are Your Travel Blog Goals For 2010?
2. Travel Bloggers (Including Myself) Set Their Goals For 2010
3. A Review Of Travel Blog Exchange (TBEX) 2010

Copyright @2012 Travel Blog Advice

I’ve been putting the finishing touches on my next ebook to be released very soon, called The Ultimate Tech Guide For Travelers, which will also be available on the two predominant e-Readers – Amazon’s Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook. Getting any ebooks you may have written or coming up on either platform is fairly easy, with a few caveats.

While you won’t make quite as much from a given sale (Amazon takes 30% and B&N 40%) you’ll have access to a much broader audience who can potentially find what you’ve written. Both Amazon and B&N let you post ebooks for free, here’s how.

Hard Copy Or Not

Publishing ebooks only, that is without a hard copy option, is free and a much more straightforward process than selling physical books. Those of you looking to have hard copy editions of your ebooks available as well can do that using a host of online publishers like Lulu. You’ll also need to purchase an ISBN number (for sale in the US) at a minimum to publish on either Amazon or B&N; that costs around $100 and distribution is done by the publisher for a fee (~$75).

Selling ebooks on Amazon or B&N (and you should really publish to both instead of just one) doesn’t require an ISBN or any other addition to a standard PDF of your ebook.

How To Publish eBooks To Amazon’s Kindle

You can self-publish your ebooks to Amazon using their Digital Text Platform. You’ll have to certify that the ebook is your original work and create a description that will be displayed on your Amazon page (which will look like this). All you need is a standard Amazon account to get started or to create a free one.

• You’ll be asked if you want to use Digital Right Management (DRM) protection for your ebook. That will prevent it from being able to be viewed on other devices or computers and may cut down on illegal sharing; I’d recommend it.
• Also be prepared with a fairly large image for your ebook that will be displayed on your Amazon page.
• Amazon is particular about the format of your ebook – make sure it’s aligned vertically and mostly text; fancy graphics don’t do well on the Kindle and might be a reason your ebook is rejected from the store.

Once your ebooks are approved after a 2-3 business day period, you can begin working on improving their search ranking.

Begin Improving Your ebook’s Amazon Search Ranking

Even before your ebook has been approved by Amazon you can begin working on making it easier to find for potential customers. A good description outlining what you ebook is about, as well as 5 descriptive keyword tags make your ebook much more visible to Amazon’s internal search. Have your friends and family (those with Amazon accounts) add reviews and ratings as well.

• I would be happy to return the favor if you’ve read and would be willing to do a review of Overcoming The 7 Major Obstacles To Traveling The World on either Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Amazon will automatically create a sample version of your ebook Kindle users can use to preview it before purchasing.

How To Publish eBooks To Barnes & Noble Nook

Much like the process for Amazon’s Kindle, ebooks are easily submitted to the Barnes & Noble Nook store. Using their PubIt service you can upload you ebook file for consideration and approval, which usually takes about 3-5 business days. Barnes & Noble is a little more flexible about the format of your ebook although it’s still wise to give a mostly-text and graphic free version for the Nook.

• Tweaking your Barnes & Noble ebook page for better rankings in their search is almost identical to Amazon, except B&N is a bit more integrated with Facebook (another place where many “likes” will go far).

Barnes & Noble will also make your ebook part of their “LendMe” program, which lets Nook users lend out the ebook to others for 14 days (although during that time the ebook isn’t available to the lender).

Why Publish To Both Stores

Neither Amazon or Barnes & Noble have any restrictions to publishing to other stores and it can only benefit you to use both since the Kindle and Nook represent a combined 70% of the market share. Ebooks are also now 15% of all books sold so put your ebooks in the two stores where people are buying them – of course in addition to your own sites as well.

[photos by: libraryman (eReaders), Patrick Gage (books), cubicgarden (Amazon Kindle), AMagill (Barnes & Noble Nook)]

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Copyright @2012 Travel Blog Advice

You can boil down Google’s Pagerank system into an analogy of the Italian mafia and use it to increase your standing in the eyes of the ultimate boss – Google itself. Many travel bloggers complicate what Pagerank is, which can cause frustration and delay your page’s move up the ranks. Understanding the system makes it much easier to become a part of the network and a “friend of ours”.

Meet Don Google

Think of Google as the “Godfather” of an online mafia, which uses a vouching system to determine who it can trust and who it can’t. Your links are vouches, a travel blog’s displays of trust, visible back up to the boss.

• A big part of how external links work are “follow” and “no follow” links.
• “Follow” links are the only ones Google uses to create it’s map of the Internet – “no follow” links are ignored.
• Sure there are other search engines out there, but Google controls more than 70% of the global search market.

Almost all links are “follow” by default so anyone you link out to is used by the search engine to develop its trust map. Keep in mind that the vouches are specific, in the sense that rank is is given to individual pages based on keywords like “traveling with teenagers.”

Higher Rank, More Trust

Not all links are created equal. Much like the movie mafia, the more trusted you are, the more weight your words of assurance will have. That’s the basic principal, the more rank a page has, the greater impact a link from that page will have on the other site.

• Importance Of Relevance – Linking out to completely unrelated niches or using a pattern of unusual keywords like “playing poker online” stands out and reduces your site’s value in the eyes of Godfather Google.
• Pagerank Isn’t Everything – The placement of incoming links (whether in text or on a sidebar) are part of Google’s algorithm and the reason corporate guest posts are so interested in contextual links.

It takes time to move up the ranks and older sites tend to be more trusted by Google. Ideally you want quality incoming links from sites with higher Pagerank to your homepage and any keywords you may be targeting. That said, any links have some value for your site.

Vouching For Everyone – Why Links Pages Don’t Typically Rank

Links pages are good ways to get links for your travel blog, since they announce to the world you’re keen for exchanges. These pages don’t typically earn any Pagerank however since they give out too much trust. In the mafia you can’t trust the person who trusts everyone and that’s a bit how links pages are. They give out trust to everyone, which is why Google doesn’t give them much clout.

• Homepages Are Valuable – Many companies try to work their way up in the system by muscling their way on to your homepage, where typically your highest Pagerank is. Limit the number of external links coming out from your homepage and be choosy as to who you add there.
• Make The Most Out Of Your Link Page – There are ways to have ranked links pages.

While you can have many associates (i.e. your links page) be selective about whom you want to recommend to the boss. You can accomplish this by limiting the number of outgoing (follow) links on a given page. It’s easy to give out a link and say you trust someone, but what are you willing to do for them? Would you add a description, link to them in a post, or perhaps make them one of a few on a travel links page?

Trust Goes Both Ways

Money talks and there are a number of companies who try to gain Google’s trust by buying your good word. Selling text links is against Google’s code and you should be careful who you link out to no matter how much they may pay you.

• Getting Whacked – Link out to spammy sites or try to overtly manipulate the system and Google can reduce your Pagerank or worse – completely de-index you.
• Don’t Forget Your Followers Too – As Gourmantic notes, people generally hate vague links. Use descriptive links to build trust with your audience too.

Linking to spam or irrelevant sites is akin to introducing an FBI informant to a mafia family. You’re now vouching for that link which isn’t worth a dime and making the Godfather look bad. If that happens, guess who’s going to be penalized?

What Pagerank Gets You

Pagerank doesn’t necessarily mean your travel blog or blog posts will always be the first result of a given search. Nor does my mafia analogy mean it’s a bad, corrupt, or unscrupulous system. It’s just an easy way to understand what’s at work and how Google tries to build and rank trust with all of the sites on the Internet (most of whom it doesn’t know personally!)

Higher Pagerank means (in basic terms) that Google trusts your site and places more value on the recommendations (aka. links) you give out. Sites with higher Pagerank also tend to get indexed frequently and scrutinized under a closer lens by the big boss. Don’t obsess over Pagerank, understand that it’s a trust and value system. By making your travel blog a useful website within your niche you’ll naturally gain authority, moving up the Google (Page)ranks.

[photos by: shaun wong (Don Corleone), Nfoka (men talking), vasta (Sopranos photo exhibit), Steve Wampler (money grab)]

Related posts:

1. STA Travelbuzz Linking Program
2. How To Ensure Google Indexes Your Travel Blog Posts Quickly

Copyright @2012 Travel Blog Advice

When starting a travel blog it’s easy to come under the impression that “travel” is all the niche you need. Yet if you’re trying to reach a wide audience while managing a travel blog and at the same time generating post after post, a specific niche or angle can help keep you on the right track. The general travel blogsphere is a crowded one with many niches yet to be discovered or occupied. Without one your voice gets lost and leaves your screaming louder at deaf ears in a crowded room.

Covering It All

It’s tempting to try and cover every travel subject and topic for fear of missing out on any potential readers. Creating or falling into a niche doesn’t limit you from covering most any travel topic however, so long as you approach it from the angle you’ve developed on your site. If you don’t know where to start you can begin by asking yourself these questions:

1. What is my travel blog about?
2. How do people view my travel blog?
3. What do I enjoy writing about?
4. What posts seem to click or are more popular than others?

You don’t have to come up with something immediately, but the answers to these questions can help you get started thinking just what your travel blog is about. Figuring out a niche also helps you develop your voice and determine what it is you want out of your travel blog.

Your (Consistent) Voice Will Flow Like Water

When you have a niche your posts will begin to flow more like water, connected to each other by a common bond. It becomes easier for your readers to follow each post as opposed to having them bump down the road as you bounce around from topic to topic. Your posts should be like an open hand to any new readers and your voice is the path they’ll follow to keep hearing what it is you have to say.

• It’s Never Too Late – To refine your voice or focus in on a specific niche or angle to tackle the giant subject that is travel.
• Doesn’t Have To Be Dramatic - Take incremental steps to refining your voice. A niche isn’t some tangible place your blog is headed, but more of an outlook rather than a topic. Most people fall into their niche or voice and it’s a gradual process.

A good place to find or create your voice is to look at your tagline (or come up with one). What does that single line say about your travel blog to you? It says a lot to your readers and can be the spark to finding the niche for your site. On foXnoMad for example, my tagline “travel smarter” is what guides most of my posts. Whether it’s a tech post or one about how to bring your pets to the US, the approach is similar. Breaking down big travel tasks into smaller more manageable ones so that hopefully when you’re done reading you’ll be traveling smarter in one way or in a specific place. More than a niche it’s an approach but one that helps my determine how I want to take on a given topic.

Your Personality Is A Big Part Of Your Niche

The voice of your travel blog says a lot about who you are and your personality is one of the most important factors to building a successful travel blog. How you see the world and one aspect of how you travel can be your niche – your niche is inherently you. Do you like to travel luxury or perhaps are in love with China? Maybe trains are your thing but that doesn’t mean you can’t write about planes – the approach is just as important as the topic.

A niche for your travel blog, one that you can sum up in a sentence or two, not only focuses your travel blog but your writing as well. You’ll find it easier to write about travel with a path in mind rather than trying to approach it from a new angle every time.

[photos by: Joaquin Villaverde (shouting face), rogersmj (water flowing from tap)]

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Copyright @2012 Travel Blog Advice

The second annual Travel Blog Exchange Conference (TBEX) 2010, held in New York City over June 26th and 27th, was like a slightly unfinished product with a few rough edges around some stellar moments.

Hundreds of travel bloggers and members of the travel industry came to the conference to meet with their peers, many for the first time. It was this excitement and energy that fueled the pre-TBEX events as well as the TBEX conference, helping to downplay the weekend’s shortcomings.

The TBEX Talks

It seemed as though the TBEX talks tried to cover all of the aspects of travel blogging, reaching out to a mixed bag of travel bloggers, making it difficult to be too focused any one group or topic.

• Many of the talks seemed to miss the segment of newer travel bloggers attending the conference.
• Gart Arndt gave a particularly enlightening talk on “travel porn”.
• The videos submitted by other travel bloggers and writers shown at various intervals of the conference were excellent. There were some great tips, ideas, and advice on editing and creating good travel videos.
• You can listen to the entire second day of talks here.

The talks were varied although the need for in-depth breakout sessions was clearly evident. Also, the talks themselves were also hampered by frequent late starts, some scheduling confusion, and a lack of wi-fi. All of that said, there were some very useful nuggets in each of the talks and good leaping off points for further research.

Networking, Networking, Networking

The highlight and strongest point of TBEX 2010 was the massive networking potential. There were parties, cocktail hours, and events in the days leading up to the actual conference. So many familiar faces and Twitter icons all floating around the same venues, it was impossible to try and connect with everyone.

• Getting together this many travel bloggers, digital nomads, and location independents, is truly a feat and was in itself, worth the price of admission.

In a digital world and industry, personal connections are still more powerful than any other kind. It was surprisingly nice to find out that so many people I had come to know through their travel blogs, Twitter, and Facebook were, in person, similar to their online personalities.

Planning For TBEX 2011?

Next year, TBEX will be held in Vancouver on June 11th and 12th. If you are planning on attending I’d recommend getting your tickets for TBEX 2011 as early as possible (pre-registration is now over) even if you’re not quite sure you’ll be able attending. The cost is $80 and if you find you won’t be able to make it, there will be plenty of buyers come closer to conference time. I suspect TBEX 2011 will sell out quickly so don’t miss out or get stuck having to purchase tickets above cost.

• I’d also recommend, if possible, arriving a week or at least 3 days in advance. There are a number of events scheduled and a good way to make the most out of your time at TBEX by meeting people in advance of the actual conference.
• Travel Blog Exchange has a complete round up of TBEX reviews and posts.

I plan on attending TBEX 2011 and arriving in advance to take part in some of the activities I missed out on at TBEX 2010. I’ve read that some of the shortcomings are to be addressed and the crowds to be even bigger, which can only mean an improvement across the board.

Are you planning on attending TBEX 2011, or were you at TBEX 2010? What were your thoughts and impressions? Feel free to leave your opinions in the comments below.

[photos by: galavantinggals (TBEX 2010 logo), z_everson (TBEX swag), Sue Waters (Twitter faces)]

Related posts:

1. Travel Bloggers (Including Myself) Set Their Goals For 2010
2. A Review Of Travel Blog Success
3. Your Most Pressing Travel Blogging Questions: Is TBEX Worth It?

Copyright @2012 Travel Blog Advice

Links are what form the social map of your website for both your readers and for search engines. Internal links help search engines and your readers connect as many points from different parts of your travel blog as possible. It’s easy to increase the number of interlinks on each of your travel blog posts if you keep it in mind when you edit your posts and the same is true of external links as well.

How External Links Work

An external link is a link to your travel blog or one of your travel blog posts or pages from another website. External links are strong indicators for Google to whom has authority on the Internet and can greatly increase your search engine results. The basic external link components consist of the following:

• Keyword: This is the actual text that is linked. For example Sewri Fort, Mumbai or overnight stay in Papeete, Tahiti. (You’ll notice that the second link isn’t the name of the specific post but my own text.)

In terms of external linking, it’s better SEO practice to use very descriptive keywords when linking out from your website. Keywords like, this is so cool, are much less effective. That’s because the keywords and URL of the linked text are associated with each other by search engines so when giving out link love, using descriptive keywords adds more “punch” or impact.

• Follow vs. NoFollow - When linking (externally or internally), you can make the links either “follow” or “nofollow”. The difference is that search engines will ignore “nofollow” links. You can specify the HTML code like this: <a href=”http://www.travelblogadvice.com” rel=”nofollow”>KEYWORD</a>
• HTML that doesn’t specify links as nofollow will by default be regarded as follow links. When linking to other travel blogs or articles you like, it’s standard to give follow links in most cases.

For those of you considering selling text links, Google doesn’t approve of text link ads that are “follow”. To find out why, here’s a post on how to manage text link ads on your travel blog.

Big Fish, Little Fish

One of the easiest ways to understand how search engines (and Google especially) use and evaluate external links in their algorithms is to look at it as a vouching system. While there are many factors, for the sake of simplicity, let’s look at Google Pagerank.

• An external link from one site to another is like you vouching for a friend you recommend for a job to a prospective employer. External links work the same way – your link is saying, “hey this is the site to go to if you want to lead people to information on 10 train travel tips.” The higher that Pagerank, the more clout the “vouch” counts for (again, an oversimplification but the basic principle).

The more (follow) external links you have with a specific keyword pointing to your site from other authority sites, the higher your travel blog or post will come up in the search results. This is why people are willing to pay for text link ads and also why Google doesn’t like it.

Giving Is A Good Way To Get

External links to your travel blog or specific posts won’t come out of the blue at first. You’ll need to proactively go after them and one of the best places to start is on your own blog.

• Get good links for your travel blog now.
• Add your blog to the T-Bag Travel Directory.

It is also important to be generous. Keep in mind of, when typing a post, related posts on other travel blogs or websites you might have come across. If the link is relevant and natural, work a link back into your post. On most blogs (WordPress does it by default) a notification will be send to the site you linked to after the post has gone live. That person might come back to visit your site or even link back to a post of yours in the future.

• Search engines also take notice of how much you link out as well as link in. A blog that links out frequently is much more engaged in the eyes of the search engines and can add to your site’s SEO clout.

While typing up a post, you can also leverage social media like Twitter to ask if anyone else might have a related post about the topic you’re writing about. You can use those links to add to your post and potentially make a new online buddy as well.

Be Natural And Useful

It’s not good to link to things for the sake of linking. Make sure that your external links are relevant and useful but also fit naturally into the text. It makes for a much smoother read than by writing: “here is a post about this. Here is a post about that. This is a post that’s similar.” Instead just work the keywords into your sentences or use another way to work them seamlessly into your content. Also, for both your readers and a good SEO, use descriptive keywords. Most people get annoyed with vague links, leading to less clicks from both new and regular readers.

Giving external links is good for your travel blog and the other sites you link to. There’s no need to go overboard or to “catch up” with posts full of links if you forget after a few days. Add a few minutes after editing each post and pull some of your favorites from memory, ask around online, or do a few simple Google searches to find useful external links for your readers.

[photos by: greyloch (little spider-girl), lammikrb (over here), urlgirl (goldfish), MarcinMoga/Lolek (red gift box), alles-schlumpf (linked paperclips)]

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Copyright @2012 Travel Blog Advice

Traveler bloggers tend to go crazy with plugins, those little add-ons to WordPress, when first setting up their blogs. Plugins are easy to install and there are thousands of them out there. It can be difficult to choose which ones are worth the installation and hassle of configuration. These are some of my recommended plugins for your travel blog and why.

• All In One SEO Pack – A highly configurable plugin designed to tweak your website, pages, and individual posts for search engine optimization (SEO). If you aren’t running this plugin and Google PageRank and traffic numbers are important to you, it’s an essential add-on. To further improve your site’s SEO optimization, change your permalinks. (Download All In One SEO Pack)

• Google Analytics – There are many WordPress plugins designed to give you a variety of statistics about your readers but in my experience Google does it the best. You’ll need a Google Analytics account setup for this plugin to work, and it removes the need for you to tweak any code. If you’re obsessed with statistics, you can also try the Popularity Contest plugin. (Download Google Analytics)

• Google XML Sitemaps – Creates an XML-sitemap compliant sitemap which makes it easier for Google, Yahoo, and Bing to ‘read’ your entire blog. It updates automatically and submits the sitemaps to each search engine for you. (Download Google XML Sitemaps)

• Login Lockdown – By default it locks out any IP address from where 3 bad login attempts are tried within 15 minutes. The lockout lasts 1 hour and makes it much more difficult for someone to try and ‘brute force’ your blog password. Use this plugin as one of the ways to keep your travel blog safe. (Download Login Lockdown)

• Maintenance Mode – This plugin creates a nice little ‘Under Construction’ page for your site when you need to take it down for an update or make some coding changes to your blog. It’s very customizable and easy to use. (Download Maintenance Mode)

• Spam Karma – Although it’s no longer officially supported, this spam filter adapts and learns based on each comment and those you flag. It can be set for a number of levels to be more or less skeptical depending on the volume of comment spam you get. (Download Spam Karma)

• Subscribe To Comments – One of my favorite plugins, it emails people who leave a comment of any follow up comments. It’s a great way to generate discussion and comments on your travel blog since most people who leave a comment don’t come back to look for replies. (Download Subscribe To Comments)

• TinyMCE Advanced – Adds a number of icons to your post editing screen that were lost a few WordPress updates ago. It makes it easier to insert video, adjust pictures, and change font sizes. (Download TinyMCE)

• Whydowork Adsense – If you use Google’s Adsense to make some money with your travel blog, this plugin makes it easier to put ads within posts. You can even configure it to show ads X number of days after a post is published or in random spots. (Download Whydowork Adsense)

• WP-ContactForm – I’ve been coming across a number of travel blogs lately where getting in touch with the author has been difficult. Even though you’re on Twitter or Facebook, email is still the most common way people will want to get in touch with you. Use WP-ContactForm to create a contact page like this and place the ‘Contact page’ somewhere visible on your travel blog. It also comes with a built-in spam filter. (Download WP-ContactForm)

• WP-DBManager – Although WordPress comes with a built in database backup utility, this plugin lets you create backups at intervals of your choice and can be configured to automatically optimize your database every month. Extremely versitile and yet another good way to backup your blog database. (Download WP-DBManager)

• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) – Adds a number of related posts to the bottom of each post and in your RSS feed. (Download YARPP)

• Yoast Breadcrumbs – Allows search engines and readers to more easily navigate your site. (Download Yoast Breadcrumbs)

There are a number of other plugins that I use across my blogs but are specific to certain functions wouldn’t apply to many of you. One thing you should do as your blog grows is monitor the plugins you install, keep them updated, and deactivate any you stop using. Running plugins takes resources and can each one can slightly slowdown the loading time of your blog pages. Use the ones you need and do some spring cleaning on the others.

I’d be very interested to hear from you – what are your favorite WordPress plugins and what do they do? Are you using any from this list above? Feel free to leave your recommendations in the comments and subscribe to them as well.

[photos by: Craig A Rodway (legos), Bill Gracey (padlock), bengrey (kid emailing)]

Related posts:

1. The Quick Way To Move Your Travel Blog From Blogger To WordPress
2. How To Encrypt Connections To Your WordPress Admin Pages Using The Force-TLS Firefox Plugin

Copyright @2012 Travel Blog Advice