Have you ever considered starting your own travel blog or keeping an online travel journal?
A blog can be a lot of work, but it doesn’t have to be. Is your goal just to keep up with your writing? Or to post photos and allow your friends and family to see what you have been up to? Are you considering starting a blog and just want to get your feet wet? Whether you live abroad or you are planning a shorter trip, there are a number of user-friendly and free options out there. Here are just a few of them:
- TravelPod: Allows you to create a free travel blog, upload photos and even insert a Google Maps-powered map to show your stops. Check out TravelPod’s All Time Best 100 Travel Journals for inspiration!
- Travellerspoint: Allows you to create a free travel blog, or you can pick the travel photography option if your focus is not the writing. The site also has a number of other tools to assist you in planning your travels and staying connected while you are gone.
- MyTripJournal: Offers free accounts or a premium paid subscriptions with additional options such as making your journal private.
- World Nomads: Allows you to keep a free travel journal, upload photos and embed videos easily. The site also offers information on travel insurance and other safety tips, and has a page where you can “Ask a Nomad” any travel-related question and seek responses from among 28,000 travellers from 129 countries.
- TravelBlog: Specialized in travel video mail. Through Skype, you can upload a video of yourself on your travels to share with the world back at home.
- TravBuddy: Asks you to create a profile, to which you can upload photos, start a travel blog and add a map of your travels. You can also contact other travelers through this site–to meet locals in your selected destinations or to meet others who will be travelling to the same spots at the same time.
- HubPages: Not limited to travel journals, this site allows you to create a page on any topic. Less commitment than a full-fledged blog, HubPages allows you to pick a very specific niche and write as much or as little as you want. You can also add photos, survey questions and a number of other fun tools to your pages. Unfortunately, my attempt to start a HubPages “hub” has been repeatedly denied as having too much overlapping content with ParisWeekender.com so I have given up on it.
- Squidoo: Similar to HubPages, Squidoo is not limited to travel blogs and allows you to pick a narrower topic that might not be suitable for a full blog. Squidoo does allow for advertising and hence the possibility (albeit remote) of earning some money from your writing. I find Squidoo much more user-friendly than HubPages. You can visit my page here.
If you give one of the above sites a try, let me know how it goes!
