Make Money on a Travel Blog

I was recently asked by a friend who is going travelling this summer, if they should set up a blog about it to make some money, that will pay for their extended holiday:

My Advice to her is below:

I think writing about your trip is a great idea and yes you can make money from it. I would however cation you if you think it will make you loads of cash quickly.

It is not that it can't, but I do it full time and it is a full time job. It also took me over a year of doing it before I got to the point where I was earning enough so that I could quit my day job and work on it full time.

If however you just want to earn some pocket money - You could easily set up a blog and then add some Google Adsense and Affiliate advertising onto it. This is not to say that in the future you could not earn a living from it, but this summer may be too soon to really make good money from a blog.

Nerdy Nomad: http://www.nerdynomad.com/ is good for inspiration and plenty of advice as she pays for her travels with her blog

Free Blogging Platforms
Besides wordpress.com, that this blog is hosted on, Google have a good free blog host: www.bolgger.com

Build Free Websites

For SEO purposes, I am always on the lookout for "places" to add content on the web, get it ranked and then point it towards my main sites. If these "places" are free, so much the better.

There are a number of sites that offer you the chance to build and Create a free website, some of the better ones include:

• http://www.yola.com/
• http://www.webs.com/
• http://www.weebly.com/
• http://www.wix.com/

Of these, wix is my least favourite as it builds the site in "flash" which looks nice, but is pretty rubbish in regards to getting high rankings on the search engines.

MP3puzzled.com - The MP3 Downloads Price Comparison Website

These days, there seems to be a price comparison website for just about everything and this morning, I came across another one, it has nothing to do with meerkats and I think what sets it apart, is that it is pretty useful:

MP3puzzled.com is a MP3 Downloads Price Comparison Website and yes, by comparing prices you can save money. For example:

Killing In The Name by Rage Against The Machine will cost you:

£0.99 on itunes
£0.89 on Amazon.co.uk
£0.79 on HMV.com
£0.70 on Play.com
£0.67 on Tesco Entertainment

Simba and the Muntjac Deer

I was lucky enough to spot a pair of Muntjac Deer feeding at the bottom of our garden this morning.

Simba (our cat) also spotted them, braved the snow and stalked right up to them. She got within a meter before they spotted her, had a staring match which Simba eventually lost and then as only cats can do, she walked away as if to say "I didn't really care anyway!"

Pity I could not get any better photos, especially of the Buck, as he has some stunning markings and antlers. But here are a few of the better ones.

Originally from China, they escaped and been released from zoo's and wildlife parks and are now spreading all over the country. The Muntjac is the smallest deer in the UK (about the size of an average dog).

Simba (in the foreground) returning from her Muntjac "hunting" expedition!

Self Drive and Car Hire Namibia

The 1st of January 2010! Time for new years resolutions....

I have recently been doing quite a lot of research on Namibia, mostly for my Safari Holiday Guide website. It is a place full of contrasts and not that I think that I will be able to go this year, but going on a self drive camping holiday in Namibia is definitely on my lifetime to-do list.

With it's excellent places to camp like the Etosha National Park and generally a good road system, it is ideal. My hope is I will eventually move back home to Zimbabwe and then be able to drive over from there in my own vehicle.

For overseas visitors, Namibia does have some really good specialist vehicle and car hire companies, that offer 4x4 vehicles fully equipped for camping that are mostly located around Windhoek. And as far as I can ascertain, hiring a car in Namibia is pretty simple and not that much more expensive than what you would expect to pay in Europe. Specialist and 4x4 vehicles are more expensive, but will still be much cheaper than staying at lodges. And even if you don't want to camp Namibia has plenty of really good guest houses and B&B's.

For some inspiration take a look at this excellent trip report, with loads of useful information: Namibia and Botswana 2006.

For more the vehicles take a look at my article on Vehicle Rental & Car Hire Namibia

...now back to deciding what this years resolution is going to be.....

Free Web Hosting

If I have an idea for a site, it is great to be able to test the concept without having to spend too much cash. I have used a number of Free Web Hosts, many are terrible, but there are a few good ones out there as well.

Good ones to look out for offer more than just hosting, with extras like Php functionality as well as at least one MySql database, per account.

My favourites are:

• http://www.000webhost.com/ - I haven't been using it for long, but so far so good. One of my test sites, Zambezi Safari is hosted with them.
• http://www.awardspace.com/ - This is another very popular free webhost. I have often used them in the past and indeed have upgraded on of my free acounts to a paid for version.

GUK Publishing

It has been a while since my last post, mainly because I have been really busy and as such, plenty has happened.

The biggest news is the start of GUK Publishing, a company that I, along with two other guys have started.

It is still very much in it's infancy, so much so that the name is not 100% fixed yet and we don't yet have a website, but the whole project is very exciting. As the name suggests we will be publishing useful content on the web and we have already stared on a few projects:

• Weddings in Newbury
• Hotels in Newbury

Both websites focus on local business and aim to provide useful information to the people of Newbury or those visiting Newbury (in the case of the hotels site)

Guest Posts
All our projects will also allow guest posting, guest articles should be relevant and useful. The advantage for us is good quality unique content from a different perspective and the advantage for you is a link back to your site on the "about the author" section. So if you would like to write an article for either, please feel free to contact me.