Wondering about how to get started in the manic world of travel blogging? TraveLinkSites can help you out. Over the next year we’ll be asking some of our travel blogging friends to help share their own personal hints and tips on getting started and more.

In this, out first chapter on getting started travel blogging, we talk to the phwoar-some Jeremy Albelda of The World or Bust, who get’s our blood pumping with his potty-mouthed travel tirades every time.

Over to Jeremy… 

1. Hi Jeremy! Could you briefly introduce yourself, your site and why you wanted to write a travel blog? 

Well Hello.  My name is Jeremy and I’m a 24 yr old, proud American (sort of) currently residing in Miami Beach.  I am the creator of The World or Bust, the best fuckin travel blog out there!  Actually, it’s pretty mediocre, but I have fun doing it.  I wanted to create my current travel blog as I have always been a writer and have dabbled in other previous, more primitive blogs, and thought it’s time to set up to varsity baby!  In reality, I just love writing and traveling (like my little intro video says) and I thought a blog was a cool way to share my stories from the road and interact with like minded travel heads.

Jeremy and friends chilling by a volcano

2. Who were/are your major influences when decided to create your own travel blog? 

My main inspiration for my current blog is from Jason of LocationlessLiving.com.  I grew up with the son a’ bitch outside of Philadelphia and actually lost contact after high school.  3 years ago, I was drinking a beer at my hostel in Medellin, Colombia, minding my own business, when out of nowhere Jason sits next to me.  We starting talking of course and he told me about his blog and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.  And ever since then, he has been a true mentor in travel blogging and other facets like starting my online business.

3. How tricky was it to design your site? What did you find most easy? Most challenging?

It wasn’t hard to design my site at all…because I didn’t do it!  I run an internet marketing company, and thankfully have hired many web designers/developers in my past, so I decided for the small fee, it was worth it to have someone else set it up right (of course I had a say in colors, what I wanted it to like like, etc).  I use theThesis theme from WordPress and the Easy Thesis skin which are both, you guessed it, easy to use and powerful as well.  All in all, I paid a few hundred bucks for everything and it was well worth it. The hardest thing was learning how to tweak things myself, which someone else would probably have learned in the process of building their own site, but oh well.

4. The wide world of SEO, what does it mean to you? And how do you go about it?

Ohhh SEO.  SEO actually means a lot to me.  Part of the reason for creating my travel blog was to learn some SEO best-practices, 1. to say I’m a SEO baller and 2. to help with my personal clients.

5. What time of day do you find best to write? Do you have any particular styles of getting your ideas down? Do you have a notepad or is everything digital?

I like to write in the morning when I’m fresh and bright eyed and bushy tailed.  I don’t really have a method to my madness beyond a piece of computer paper I taped to my wall with ideas for posts, things I want to include in them, etc.  Everything beyond that piece of paper is digital for me. My hand writing is atrocious and I attribute that to only picking up a pen to sign my John Hancock on receipts these days.

Jeremy: all bright-eyed and bushy tailed

6. Have you tried video blogging? What are your opinions of any video blogs you have seen?

I’ve been dabbling in vlogging.  My point-and-shoot canon takes pretty decent quality video so I think it’s fun to do videos every once in a while to mix things up.  Some video bloggers annoy me, (I won’t name names), but some are pretty legit like AsWeTravel and SoniaGil (mostly because Sofia and Sonia are dime pieces).

7. How do you build your audience?

I’d say StumbleUpon helped me a lot in the beginning, but now that’s toast as they changed their algorithms. I also did a lot of commenting on other people’s blogs and I leveraged twitter.  I have like 1500 personal Facebook friends so that helped a lot off the bat too.

Reclining for the ladies....

9. Tell us about your most popular post.

My most popular post is a guest post from a friend who was on the plane that crashed in the Hudson river in NYC.  No one else had a first hand account like that and it went viral.

10. And lastly, what would be your top 3 tips to a new blogger starting out?

1. Get a quality blog made (with your own url, not something .blogspot).  Save up the couple hundred bucks and have a professional at least set up the  basics, it will save you a lot of time and frustration, and set you up for success from the beginning.

2. Focus on writing quality and interesting content at first.  Everyone has read the same cookie-cutter ass wanderlusty posts, so try and be original.

3. Reach out to other bloggers who already have a decent following.  I’d say don’t waste your time trying to contact the heavy hitters like Nomadic Matt as they are too busy, but more mid-tier bloggers who are much more eager to help and have the time to give you advice.  Guest post on other blogs as well as you will land a solid backlink and have someone else vouching for you with their established name.

Thanks to Jeremy for sharing his inspiration and some very cool tips on getting started travel blogging. Make sure you check out the little hunk of muscle at The World or Bust and on Twitter.