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You Love Your Travel Blog (But Does Anyone Else Read It?)

So, are you one of those travellers who lovingly and enthusiastically updates your travel blog with all the latest tidbits from your adventures… where you are, what you’re doing, your contemplations and general (totally profound, dude) thoughts on a place.

You think it’s the bee’s knees, metaphorically speaking, but would anyone else agree (ie is anyone else actually reading the thing…other than dutiful family members, that is)?

If you’re not getting the thousands of avid readers you were hoping for (and counting on to help keep you on the road indefinitely), you might have to consider that, actually, your travel blog sucks and you need to make some changes (or give up entirely).

So, take a deep breath and then dive into Chris Mohney’s take on ‘10 Reasons Why Your Travel Blog Sucks‘. And then, try, try again.

(Photo: retro traveler/flickr)

Travel resources backpackers might find useful:
Cheap hostels – find and book your hostel online at special discounted rates
Airtreks Travel Planner – plan your round the world trip with Airtreks
Backpackers Travel Gear – backpacks and other travel gear
Travel Insurance – instant, cheap travel insurance for backpackers
Travel newsletter – sign up for our free monthly travel newsletter ‘From The Road’

Posted in Cool Travel Blogs, General Travel, Travel Writing | 1 Comment »

Travel Blogs We’ve Been Reading: This Week’s Top Picks (23.03.08)

You travel, you blog, we read. If we like, we’ll be writing about it here, every week, from now until we stop reading (which, failing our eyes falling out, global armageddon, or a complete lack of internet, is never).

So, without further ado, here are our top picks of backpacker-style travel blogs for the week that was.

Less Than A Shoestring – Budget Travel Tips For People With No Budget

This is a brilliant blog, especially if you’re looking for ways to extend that budget even further than you thought possible – you need only see how RyanAir ends up paying him to fly.

The author is currently on a 6-year residence in ‘various corners of Europe’, with the emphasis on travelling on less than a shoestring:

“I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of budget travel advice from newspaper writers with $100/day accommodation budgets. My idea of budget travel is around $10/day before admissions fees. Yes, even in Europe. Travelers like us don’t eat in restaurants everyday. We like meeting locals and other travelers, strolling through parks and people watching, taking public transportation and exploiting free festivals, events and opening days. We don’t need elaborate plans or accommodations to enjoy ourselves on vacation. By keeping costs down, we extend the length of our travels; yet we also know a worthy splurge when we see one. We’ve learned to appreciate the journey.”

Right on!.

Rio and Beyond-an STA free Latin Adventure – A gapper’s solo trip to South America.

In January this year backpacker Tom Barker left grey grey England and hightailed it to South America’s warmer climes (and lower prices). In Rio de Janeiro Tom sipped on caipirinhas and fell in love with the city’s warmth and friendliness. From there a 6-hour bus ride to Sao Paolo and its ‘Football, Mountains, Beaches and Gay Bars’, an encounter with unfriendly organised tourists at Iguacu Falls then on to Buenos Aires, Uruguay and beyond (he’s in Bolivia now). Sounds like quite a trip!

Posted in Cool Travel Blogs, Destinations | 1 Comment »

Backpackers Bookmarks: Jamble Magazine - Green Without The Extreme

Here’s a new online travel mag that’ll appeal to all you greenie backpackers out there: Jamble Magazine.

It’s a nicely put together website with an eco-friendly focus (but not to an extreme). Browse through their series of green city guides, read their regularly updated green travel blog, and check out their environment section for info on eco-friendly travel gadgets and trends.

Posted in Backpackers Bookmarks, Cool Travel Blogs, General Travel, Travel Guides | No Comments »

Become a Global Roamer - You Might Even Make Money Doing It!

Whilst ambling through our rather abundant and sometimes overwhelming RSS feeds, this post on TheLostGlobe.com caught my travel-obsessed eye.

It’s about Globe Roamer TV, an exciting new concept that aims to see six backpackers roaming the globe for 212 days, each day documented on camera and the Globe Roamer blog.

What’s most interesting is the collaborative nature of the project:

ALL travelers take ownership of the project. This means you help plan, promote, market, contact prospect sponsors, and put together the master plan. And guess what? If a mack daddy corporation decides to PAY for our show when we’re all finished, you get an EQUAL share of the profit. That’s right, EVERYONE, including ME, gets an equal share.

Nice.

So, the question is:

If you could circle the globe for 7 months and only have to pay for your own spending money, would you do it? If your flight, ground transport, and hostels were paid for would you pack up and go?

If you’re saying ‘hell-yeah’ and you happen to have light-coloured hair (!), and 7 months to spare (starting September 2008) you might just be in luck – they’re still looking to fill two of the six places on the trip.

Related entries:
Backpackers Bookmarks: GeoBeats Travel Videos
Backpackers On The Road: Round The World Travel Blogs
The Lost Girls’ Round The World Budget Guide

Travel resources backpackers might find useful:
Cheap Hostels – find and book your hostels online, choose from over 12,000 worldwide!

Travel Insurance – instant, cheap travel insurance for backpackers
Travel newsletter – sign up for our free monthly travel newsletter ‘From The Road’

Posted in Cool Travel Blogs, Destinations, General Travel, Travel Community, Travel News | 2 Comments »

Backpackers Bookmarks: Tips For Saving For Your Travels

Dave at GoBackpacking has been planning for some time to travel around the world.

To do so, though, he first has had to work on paying off his substantial accumulated debt, and only then start the saving part.

It’s not hard to incur mountains of debt. Student loans, credit cards, car payments – these all add up to what is seemingly an insurmountable hurdle.

It is, however, hard to stay motivated. Paying off debt means making some serious cuts on personal expenditure, something Dave knows all about:

It’s a challenge, though with practice, I miss the desire and attachments less and less. It all starts with an awareness of what you’re buying into and whether all that buying leaves you any happier than before. I’ve found backpackers tend to share this common value, as well as hippies!

Something worth bookmarking is Dave’s series of articles about saving for travel, the latest of which outlines ways to set financial and travel goals to help you keep focused.

Another website already featured on this blog is called Saving For Travel, a step-by-step guide for backpackers dreaming of making it overseas.

More tips for saving for travel here and here.

(Photo is Dave’s world map on GoBackpacking.com )

Related entries:
Cool Site: Saving For Travel
Working On The Trot: How To Get A Job When You’re Travelling

Travel resources backpackers might find useful:
Book hostels – choose from over 12,000 hostels worldwide!
Travel Insurance – instant, cheap travel insurance for backpackers
Travel newsletter – sign up for our free monthly travel newsletter ‘From The Road’

Posted in Cool Travel Blogs, General Travel, Travel Tips & Planning | No Comments »

Could Writing About Your Travels End Up Paying For Them?

If any of you backpackers out there have ever fantasised about making money by writing about your travels (who wouldn’t!), do yourself a favour and take a look at this article.

Written by Chris Mitchell, author of Thailand and South-East Asia Guide, Travelhappy.info, the article gives backpackers great ideas on how to get a travel blog going and, importantly, how to get it to start making money whilst you’re on the trot.

If that gets you going, then get stuck into some more travel-writing tips from these guys:

• ‘5 Ways To Craft Brilliant Travel Blog Headlines’ – Brave New Traveler
• ‘So You Want To Be A Travel Writer?’ – GoBackpacking.com
• Advice For The Aspiring Travel Journalist – Vagablogging.net
• ‘Making An Impression Within Travel’ – TravelRants.com
• ‘To Write or Not to Write: Keeping a Journal’ – InMyAllStars.com
• ‘Tips on keeping a journal’ – Kahunna.net

Excellent articles all.

(Photo by retro traveller)

Posted in Cool Travel Blogs, General Travel, Travel Tools, Travel Writing | No Comments »

Notes From Spain: Podcasts, Photos And Caterpillars

Notes From Spain is an excellent blog I’ve been following for some time.

The blog features regular articles about life in Spain as well as fantastic photos taken there, podcasts from Spain, and Spanish news and culture.

Particularly entertaining, I thought, was an open letter to Easyjet complaining humorously about the unexpected (and unwelcome) discovery of a caterpillar in one of their in-flight sandwich meals.

Useful travel resources for backpackers:
Hostels in Spain – find and book your hostel online.
Travel Insurance – instant, cheap travel insurance for backpackers
Travel newsletter – sign up for our free monthly travel newsletter ‘From The Road’

Posted in Backpackers Bookmarks, Cool Travel Blogs, Destinations, General Travel, Travel Photos | No Comments »

The Turkish Invasion: A Turkish Expat Blogging From Moscow

If you’re looking for a non-touristy peek at Moscow, take a look at this blog.

The writer introduces himself thusly:

Hello Comrades! This is the official blog of Dinc Arslan’s daring adventures, slavic experiences and boring ideas beyond the rusty Iron Curtain…

Born in Turkey in 1980 and now a ‘free-willing expat in Moscow’, he is, he says, ‘Turkish by nature, Russian by night’, whatever that entails, and he takes some interesting photos of Moscow – not the type that will be likely to show up in a glossy tourism brochure, and the more interesting for it.

(Via here)

Useful resources for backpackers:
Travel Insurance – instant, cheap travel insurance for backpackers
Moscow Hostels – find and book cheap hostels online.

Posted in Cool Travel Blogs, Destinations | No Comments »

Travel The World With The Lost Girls

If you haven’t already discovered the travel blog of the Lost Girls, you’d best get over there right now and start reading the archives.

So, who are the Lost Girls?

Three twenty-something New Yorkers who ditched their media jobs to embark on a yearlong, round-the-world journey in search of adventure and inspiration.

They’re six months in, and having a ball. And they write well, too.

In their most recent post, the Lost Girls describe their time at Kh Pha-Ngan – full moon parties, sipping from buckets, almost getting robbed and watching Thai kickboxing (Muay Thai) matches.

Quite something – go check it out.

Useful resources for backpackers:
Travel Insurance – instant, cheap travel insurance for backpackers
Cheap Hostels – find and book cheap hostels online.

Posted in Cool Travel Blogs | No Comments »

‘80 Days Or Bust’ - Round The World Travel, The Old-Fashioned Way

Mark Schatzker has just set off on an unusual journey. Or, rather, it’s not the journey itself that is so different, but the way in which he will be travelling.

Most people, when embarking on a round-the-world trip, would be planning to hop onto a plane at one or many stages, but not this man.

No, on behalf of Condé Nast Traveler, this talented magazine feature writer will be doing it the old-fashioned way (no planes, no helicopters – no travelling above 100 miles an hour), and, like the famous fictional Phileas Fog, he intends on completing his adventure within 80 days.

The intention is to rediscover “slow travel,” of the way humans moved across vast distances back when Jules Verne wrote his famous book about Phileas Fog and before commercial airliners painted their lines across the skies. (from here)

The part that’s really going to make all penny-pinching backpackers glow emerald green with travel-envy is this:

The good news is that unlike so many world travelers, I have a sweet budget. I owe my good fortune to the fact that I will be writing about this journey in the pages of Conde Nast Traveler, a magazine with a taste of the good life. They are paying me not only to see the world, but to live well while doing so. As journalistic assignments go, it doesn’t get better than this. How I lucked into it, I cannot explain.

Lucky, lucky, lucky man.

Useful resources for backpackers:
Travel Insurance – instant, cheap travel insurance for backpackers
Cheap Hostels – find and book cheap hostels online.
Round The World Tickets Explained – GapYear.com’s useful guide to round the world tickets

Posted in Cool Travel Blogs, General Travel | No Comments »