13.5 Rookie Mistakes That Will Kill Your Travel Blog in 2024

Year four of our life on a sailboat. Year four of reading about all those other successful travel blogs. What am I doing wrong? I know at least 13.5 things! Don’t be like me, avoid those 13.5 mistakes that will damage your travel blog. They are hilarious too, so it’s quite acceptable to laugh at me!

If you are out there starting a travel blog, writing and re-writing blog posts, staying up late at night reading about those 8, 10 or 12 (they are never odd numbers!) steps that will definitely make your blog successful, you are not alone!

There are at least two of us!

Since I consider myself something of a veteran blog-failure, I will go ahead and assume that most of my blogging strategies are incorrect, and share them with you, so you can avoid similar mistakes and make tons of money!

Remember, these are what-NOT-to-do’s!

1. Choose a difficult blog name!

When our family moved on the boat, I knew I was going to keep a blog. I enjoy writing; living on a sailboat is kind of interesting, and I definitely have a few friends and cousins who would read it! OK, so what to name it?

I thought about the importance of having a short, user-friendly name. I thought of various short and creative names, and I picked neither – notextingandtacking.com! Huh? I even paid for it, so that no one would ever steal it! Genius!

If I had a dollar each time I misspelled my own website, I’d better collect and stop blogging altogether, it’s a guaranteed income! And we don’t need too much (Check out our post on The Cost of Living on a Sailboat).

Notextingandtacking is difficult to pronounce and over 50% of the letters are consonants (oh, no, 13 of them!). Half of my friends have never heard of “tacking” (which means to change the direction, in which the boat is sailing, and quickly adjust the sails), so they don’t find it funny.

Those who happen to remember the name, usually ask me something along the lines of, “I know you had a blog, something with ‘no…’?”

But wait, your name is short, witty and memorable? Then you are doing something else incorrectly that is sure to damage your new blog, read on!

2. Forget consistency!

As any great writer, I need inspiration to work. Writing has always had a certain melody for me; if it is out of tune, it just doesn’t feel right. It is hard to produce a melody on demand.

Unfortunately, posting consistently and following a schedule is vital to keeping readers coming, staying, and even subscribing! The audience expects a certain amount of certainty. According to some Bloggers, but according to others, quite successful ones – that might not be the case:

Read one of my blogging inspiration posts on the subject: The Golden Rules of Blogging and Why You Can Ignore Them The author still endorses regularly connecting with your readers via e-mails.

As an unsuccessful blogger, however, I will keep this step, because it may have contributed to my poor performance, and because I really need 13.5 of them and already wrote it.

If you subscribe to a magazine, you might be a little disappointed if the publisher skipped a copy here and there. Certain copies may not be as great as others, but they consistently appear in your mailbox, or inbox, or whatever box you have chosen.

So, be like me, publish whenever you feel like it and you will have readers when-never…

3. Write short blog posts, using long compound sentences!

I love the semicolon, as well as other forms of punctuation! Ask the kids – grammar and sentence analysis occupy a special spot in my heart and in their homeschool schedules.

I prefer to read short sentences and clear thoughts, but when I write, mine seem to meander in my blog posts, enough to cause even experienced readers to loose their way. “Meander” is a word with a very funny history in our family – See our episode below:

How we lost our Way, Meandering Through the Mangroves in the Bahamas!

So, what do short sentences look like, then? The first ten results on any Google search would contain excellent examples. Then, again, why would you want to overuse the period; there is such a great variety of punctuation marks to choose from!

4. Keep a low profile on social media!

We never had to quit Facebook! Because we were never part of it. It was a simpler world, full of tangible friends, whose lives were not picture-perfect.

Then, in November of 2018, we moved to live on a sailboat… There was a huge group on Facebook, with hundreds of members, who also lived on boats and had kids! I had to talk to them! We joined the dark side…

We removed lots of stuff, including social media from our lives, but Kids4Sail (a Facebook group for those sailing, or thinking about it) has been as valuable as our compass.

Shortly after I created this travel blog, I also created a page on Facebook, called Sailing Graceful. It is linked to my blog and all of my posts appear there!

That was a couple of years ago. I have one follower. Be my second one, if you wish – Sailing Graceful. Beware, it is kind of under constructions, always…

I politely ignore all of Facebook’s offers to promote my page for a small fee, so they don’t promote it. I feel bad about asking my established friends to “like” the page, so they don’t even know it exists!

I do tap into my circle of FB friends for my source of readership. However, my profile on Facebook is private, meaning you cannot even find me, unless I choose to find you first (I do keep my blog posts public)!

This would be the equivalent of a writer running around town, handing a copy of her book to only a small group of people on the street, while carrying a bag over her head.

5. Spam social media groups!

Wow, I can reach hundreds of readers, if I join certain social media groups and then spam them with my weekly blog posts! I actually did that, but stopped myself soon enough, with only one moderator politely asking me to keep posting new links as responses to my original self-promote message!

Let’s leave that as an embarrassing story of the past and move on. Sure, I did receive “clicks and views”, but few new subscribers. Because being annoying is not cool.

6. Think about joining a variety of social media platforms!

I am thinking…

7. Keep your mind tagless!

Have you heard of SEO optimization, tags and hashtags? I have; I even read about them. It is not my area of expertise and, to be perfectly honest, I’d rather not be bothered by them.

I believe I actually have a post, which contains the tag, “I have no clue what those tags even do”. It may have attracted a reader or two, equally lost on the web!

If I had the means, I’d hire someone to help promote and optimize my blog. Since I do not, I asked my husband to do it. He did. I remain relatively clueless.

As far as I understand it, running a successful blog requires all kinds of skills, well beyond writing. It is like creating and managing your very own small company. That part sounds fascinating, doesn’t it! Not to me, it does not.

8. Count on word-of-mouth subscribers!

If there is something interesting and funny, or useful, or witty, or sad, people will share it, correct? I even have a couple of sharing buttons at the bottom of the page!

Why struggle to promote the blog and throw myself out there in the social media jungle, or even worse – why pay for someone to help promote my blog?! If it is well-written, with good photos, that’s all I need!

I am starting to realize that most people simply don’t have the time to care. Even the best-sounding story remains silent, if no one can hear it. I wonder then, does it cease to exist? To a writer, that thought sends chills down her spine.

9. Compare your posts to everyone else’s!

It is perfectly acceptable and even useful to check out the competition. The trouble is, being sucked into it to the point of not having time to focus on your own work.

In fact, there have been a couple of blogs I only wanted to quickly visit, for ideas and inspiration, and I found myself actually browsing through their menu tabs, clicking on links within the text until it was too late to write anything of my own. Good job, competition!

Sure, there are only so many countries to travel, and the places we visit have already been explored, and turned into stories by talented story-tellers. But if beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, then I do offer a different perspective – my kind of beautiful.

Being aware of the completion is probably enough, take a look and move on… do it, Mina!

10. Keep information difficult to find!

I would like my readers to hang out for a long blog visit, rather than a quick peek and a speedy getaway. Google, apparently, likes that as well.

Rather than guiding them through a well-organized system of tabs and links, I have all of my posts conveniently located in the same tab!

All you have to do, if you are curious about, say, homeschooling on a boat, is scroll down to the date the post was published and read it. Which date that was, I have absolutely no idea!

11. Reduce the number of useful posts!

Who loves How-to posts, travel tips and tricks? I do!

Whenever we reach a different place, I search the web and those other bloggers, with their great keywords and tags already cast, chilling in the front rows of the search engine, catch me!

For what it’s worth, I am a good catch. Once caught, I stick around, enough to help that line-graph curve up for the other blogger’s reader retention!

I write funny posts, whiny posts, essay posts, but, sadly, few useful posts.

Wait, wait, wanna read a whiny post – How to Live on a Sailboat, if Sailing is Not Your Thing.

12. Keep those steps in odd numbers!

Have you noticed that most of the articles, which list steps, points or something else countable, are choosing even numbers? Some are also multiples of 5.

Prime numbers are not popular; they occasionally show up in math problems involving long division with a remainder!

I fear we have conditioned ourselves, over many generations of math-haters, to gravitate towards things, which can be easily, painlessly and quickly solved!

I love math, always have and might still do even after we are done with homeschooling. So, as a tribute to the beauty of prime numbers, I am leaving this post as is.

13. Keep up the self-doubt!

Let’s say you write a great story, you re-write it, you edit, and edit again… in the end it is a great story, unique, real and personal! Then, filled with self-doubt, you delete the entire thing. Does that sound familiar?

If it does not, then your blog must be successful and I have no idea what you are doing here! If it does, well, two of us negative thinkers, on the same post will really not end up well for either’s work.

Which is why it might be best to bid each other goodbye at this point.

Thank you for stopping by and thank you for reading. Now, go, find your inspiration, write your blog, be successful, and do not return to this post!

13.5…

That one is still just a thought in the wrong direction. I am not sure I will ever proceed to that mistake, because another blogging mistake will completely negate number 12 above!

Read more fun stories here: