There are some facts in life that leap head first into your brain, nuzzle up, make themselves comfortable and stay with you forever. For me, one of these was taught in primary school English class. We were learning how to write a good story and our teacher reckoned the best way to start was with the “5 W’s” – what, when, where, who and why.

As tempting as it is to launch straight into the how, let me start with an intro that would make ma’m proud.

WHAT is a travel blogger?

In essence, anyone who travels and publishes regular stories and photos on their travels is a travel blogger. These stories can be published on your website, on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube – you name it. Hobby bloggers write about travelling as a hobby, often with a hope of becoming a professional travel blogger, who earns a living out of their travel blog. I mean, who wouldn’t want to get paid to travel, right?

WHY would you want to be a travel blogger?

Many people start blogs to share their stories with their friends and family – when they are embarking on a round the world trip or overseas adventure or gap year.  For us, we started our blog as a precursor to such a trip. We want to take a sabbatical and go on a gap year with our kids, road tripping around the USA and Canada. Although we haven’t quite figured out how to do this just yet, we thought we could start our blog in the meantime to practice our writing and blogging skills. In doing so we discovered that travel blogging as a family is a fantastic way to spend the best possible quality time together – exploring, discovering and having the time of our lives while inspiring others to do the same.

WHERE on earth do you have to travel?

You don’t have to go to far flung places to run a successful travel blog. You need to be able to discover the joy and appeal (or lack of it) of a place and document it in an entertaining way to inspire and empower others to decide on whether they would like to do that experience. People love to read about new things to do and discover – these can be as simple as going on a hike in your hometown or as exotic as visiting an undiscovered tropical island.

WHO would read about your travels?

Your first readers will be your friends and family. If you just keep a diary of your travels, your readership probably won’t grow much. If you include useful information, tips and entertaining inside knowledge, your readership will start to grow and you will build a following of like-minded adventurers who share in your journeys.

WHEN to find time to travel and blog?

As a hobby blogger, you will probably have a full time job and if, like us you have teenage kids, you will have a full schedule of school activities as well. This doesn’t leave much time for lengthy trips. We blog about a lot of day or overnight activities which we can fit into our very full family schedule and take one long trip each year.

An average blog post takes around 6 hours to write, edit the photos, load onto your website, proof read and publish. That’s a lot of extra effort to fit into your limited spare time, but if you split this over a few evenings and aim to post once per week, it is do-able.

And finally, HOW do you become a travel blogger?

This answer is a bit more complex, but at the same time it is simpler than you may think. Travelstart rounded up opinions and pearls of wisdom from some of South Africa’s top travel bloggers and put together this handy infographic to help you on your way.

This post is sponsored by Travelstart – a fabulous one-stop online travel shop. Forget trawling the web for all the best airfare specials – check out Travelstart’s easy to use online tool where you can find Cheap Flights to Johannesburg and anywhere else in South Africa and the world at the click of a button.