Confessions of a Non-Designer

Let’s be real: I’m not a natural designer. I can appreciate beautiful design, but creating something stunning myself? That’s an entirely different story. I honestly have the design skills of a potato, and this has followed me through various aspects of life, including the websites I’ve tried to build.

I’ve always admired beautifully designed websites, but as someone who doesn’t consider herself a natural designer, I’ve struggled to create visually stunning sites myself. It’s not that I can’t recognize good design when I see it; I simply don’t have the innate ability to craft something beautiful from scratch.

Curious? Use our code NOMAD10 for 10% off your annual subscription here.

Past Website Struggles

Charles and I have built dozens of websites over the years including ones for ourselves, a few for companies and a few for friends and family. Some of our most popular include this site TheBarefootNomad, our recipe bog TheParentSpot, plus a few websites dedicated to helping travelers choose the proper travel insurance (which we’ve since sold or shut down).

Despite our best efforts and countless hours invested, none of these websites turned out as beautifully as we had envisioned. Any design improvements we attempted to make were met with frustration and felt like an uphill battle. The problem has never been technical for us, more of vision.

Discovering Squarespace

After our past website struggles, I realized that having the right tools might just make a big difference. That’s why I decided to give Squarespace a try for my personal website, MickiKosman.com. I wanted a space to share my journey as a travel writer, entrepreneur, and storyteller, plus a place to connect with my audience in a creative and professional way.

What is Squarespace, Anyway?

So, you’ve likely heard of Squarespace, but what exactly is it?

In a nutshell, it’s an all-in-one platform for building websites. It comes with a bunch of features like professional templates, a drag-and-drop editor, a content management system, blogging tools, SEO stuff, e-commerce options, and site hosting. Basically, it’s has a lot of the things you need to create a gorgeous website, all in one place.

Getting Started with Blueprint AI

Signing up for Squarespace was straightforward. I started with the free 14-day trial and played around with the Blueprint AI design feature. It offered some helpful design suggestions based on my site goals.

What really impressed me was Squarespace’s library of customizable templates. There were plenty of attractive designs to choose from.

Customizing My Website

Customizing my website with Squarespace was a relatively smooth process. The drag-and-drop interface and various features made it easy to personalize the design without needing coding skills. I could add, remove, and rearrange elements on the page with just a few clicks.

Finding the Right Images

One thing that can be time-consuming when building a website is finding the perfect images.

Squarespace helped with that by offering a selection of stock images in addition to the ability to upload my own photos. I used my own photos, but having stock photos on hand could definitely save time and hassle!

The End Result

Within a couple of hours, I had a website that I was happy with. Squarespace allowed me, a non-designer, to create a site that was both visually appealing and functional. The built-in features like mobile optimization, SEO tools, and social media integration weren’t as apparent when designing it but as a website owner, are all extremely helpful.

Templates That Look Pretty Darn Good

One thing that stood out to me about Squarespace was the templates. I’ve got to admit, they’re pretty easy on the eyes. They’ve got this clean, professional vibe going on.

And the cool part is, you can just pick one of their templates, toss in your own photos and text, and your website will look pretty polished. No design skills needed!

Another nice thing about the templates is that they’re responsive. That means they automatically adjust to look good on different devices, like tablets and phones. It’s handy because more people browse the web on their mobile devices these days than laptops and desktops combined.

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I used this gorgeous Waverly template to create my site. You can see a demo of the Waverly template I used here at Squarespace. You can customize styles, add features of templates (and more) when you start a trial.

Customization Options

When it comes to styling your website, Squarespace has a decent number of options. You can play around with the fonts (which is great if you’re picky about typography like me), colors, sizes, button styles, and all sorts of other design elements. And you can do all of this without touching any code, which is a relief for those who aren’t exactly tech wizards.

But, if you do happen to know your way around code, Squarespace does have a Custom CSS section where you can add your own coding magic.

Want to browse some gorgeous designs? Get some inspiration from some of the best
designs on the web at their design showcase here.

Built-in Features

One thing to note about Squarespace is that everything is baked right into the platform. You don’t have to go hunting for plugins or extensions. It’s convenient, however it also means you’re limited to the features they offer.

That being said, Squarespace does have a pretty good selection of features, especially for bloggers and small businesses. You can easily add things like a blog, contact form, email signup, photo galleries, event calendar, social media buttons, and even a shopping cart for selling products or digital downloads.

Let’s Talk Money

Now, let’s talk about pricing. Squarespace offers a free 14-day trial, so you can test the waters and see if it’s the right fit for you. After that, you can choose from four different plans: Basic, Core, Plus, or Advanced.

If you’re in Canada like me, you might see these plans labeled as Personal, Business, Commerce Basic, and Commerce Advanced, which I believe is simply the old branding for the same packages offered in the USA.

The Basic plan starts at just $16 USD per month if you opt for annual billing, or $23 USD per month if you prefer to pay monthly. As your business grows, you can upgrade to higher-tier plans that offer even more features and tools to help you succeed online.

Use our code NOMAD10 for 10% off your annual subscription here.

The Bottom Line

So, is Squarespace the be-all, end-all of website builders? It has its strengths, like the attractive templates and built-in features, but it might not be the perfect fit for everyone if you want extreme flexibility or demand very out-of-the-box designs.

If you’re looking for a platform that’s easy to use and gives you a professional-looking website without a ton of hassle, Squarespace is definitely worth checking out.

But hey, that’s just my two cents based on my own experience. Your mileage may vary!

Use our code NOMAD10 for 10% off your annual subscription here.

Most of that is pretty fun. Contrary to what you might think, for us, not so much fun is social media. It’s something, quite honestly, that I’m always looking to improve.

Later this month (May 31- June 02, 2015) we’ll have a chance to broaden our social media skills at the ROAM Social Media conference in Kelowna, BC, Canada.

Not a social media maven? Check out 45 jobs you can do while traveling and how to get them, our hot air balloon ride above the cave houses of Cappadocia Turkey, or (one of my favorite posts from Charles) Leaving the Past Behind: Why You Should Let Go While You Travel.

Instead of spending all our time inside a dry conference center, we’ll be spending our time roaming (get it?) the streets of Kelowna, putting our new knowledge into play in real life. As someone who’s spent years in classrooms, I love the idea of getting outside for some hands on experience.

There’s no denying that there’s going to be a lot of fun socializing and kicking back, too, which I’m really looking forward to.

We even have a 20% off discount for our community if you sign up using this link, or type TheBarefootNomad in the promotional code box.

There’ll be topics from Twitter Parties to creating YouTube videos. There’ll also be topics about running successful Pinterest boards and maximizing Facebook trends.

As someone with a love/hate (mostly hate, honestly) relationship with Facebook, I’m especially interested to check out the Facebook sessions with Sherri-Lee Woycik (Twitter: @socialmediamndr).

We’re constantly working on improving our Facebook page, and I’m really looking forward to getting some expert tips from Sherri-Lee!

Get 20% off ROAM social media conference experience in #Kelowna https://t.co/g0IQYZclXU @ROAMevent #SocialMedia #ylw pic.twitter.com/7Rwlv9UcIa

— Micki & Charles (@BarefootNomads) May 12, 2015

Oh, and if you’re wondering about Kelowna, honestly, the views aren’t that hard to take around here.

There are clear, cool mountain lakes that seem to go on forever.

When you get thirsty, check out the many wineries perched on the mountainsides.

Plus, you can pick up some kick a** craft liqueurs and spirits.

The conference is at the gorgeous Delta Grand Okanagan Resort – here’s a sneak peak at the Delta from Waterfront Park.

Want to find out more? Check out the ROAM conference details website.

Don’t forget – we have a special 20% off discount for our community using this link, or type TheBarefootNomad in the promotional code box.

Hope to see you there!

Exactly 10,731,924 people (give or take a few) have started a travel blog. Of those, maybe (just my best guess here), a couple thousand are professional travel blogs. Admittedly, I may be a little off on the numbers, but the point is this: there’s a whack-load of travel blogs out there, both professional and not.

We started The Barefoot Nomad back in 2008 (which is roughly equivalent to the mid-Jurassic Period in Internet years). For a few years we chugged along, writing occasional updates on our travels for the handful of people who read them (Hi Mom!)

Somewhere along the way, more and more people started reading our stuff, and we decided to make a business out of it, and today we’re more of a digital magazine.

Straight up, it’s been a rocky road at times, and I think we’ve survived largely due to our love of what we do, sheer stubbornness and working hard to be seen as professionals. There’s a world of competition out there (remember those 10,731,924 travel blogs?), and you really need to have a solid, professional image to make you stand out.

This post is written for travel bloggers who are looking for advice on how to become a professional travel blogger. In it we’re going to talk about:

• how to take the next step to become a professional travel blogger (and how to up your game if you already consider yourself a professional travel blogger)
• how to make money as a travel blogger

First, though, what makes a travel blogger professional?

We could spend a lot of time arguing the fine points of this, but a professional in any field is someone who gets paid, while someone doing the same thing as a hobbyist does not.

So, at least for our purpose today, a professional travel blogger gets paid for his or her work.

Making money as a travel blogger

There are a lot of different ways to make money as a blogger. Some of the more common ways are placing ads on your site, using affiliate links (where you get paid a percentage of any products you sell) and working with tourism boards, hotels and travel companies to promote their destination or product.

In this post, we’re going to focus on working with sponsors, travel brands and tourism boards.

As of a few years ago, there were really no companies that worked specifically to connect travel bloggers to travel brands and tourism organizations. Most companies that connect bloggers to brands focus on mommy blogs or technology. They occasionally have travel-related campaigns, but they’re few and far between.

Many bloggers contact tourism boards (often called DMOs or Destination Marketing Organizations) and travel brands directly. We’ve done this in the past, and have forged some great relationships, but it’s also a time consuming process.

Personally, we like to do a mixture of working with influencer networks, and working with brands and tourism organizations directly.

Whether you’re working with a company or contacting tourism boards and brands directly, you’ll need to show that you’re serious about what you do, and set yourself apart from other bloggers. Here are some tips and skills that we think are essential for a professional travel blogger.

Tips and skills for professional travel bloggers

Media Kit

A media kit is like a resume for your blog. It’s a great way to introduce your blog to potential sponsors and advertisers. You can create a pretty digital media kit using something like Canva.

You can also buy some beautiful media kit templates on Etsy.

Check out these excellent sample media kits from travel bloggers at Travel with Bender, Velvet Escape, Travels of Adam and TravelDudes.

Tip: Make sure that you include your media kit (or at least mention that advertisers can contact you to see your media kit) in your Advertising/Work with Us page on your blog.

Join Organizations

Joining an organization can be a way of giving yourself some credibility as a professional. While there are others, the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW) is well known in the industry.

Go to Conferences

Conferences are a fantastic way to get your name known as a professional travel blogger, connect with sponsors and advertisers, and also to get hands on education on many blogging topics.

TBEX is the biggest travel blogging conference out there right now, and usually holds both a North American and a European conference every year.

Learn to Write a Pitch Letter

Well, these days, it’s almost always a pitch email, and not a letter, but the idea’s the same. You’re probably going to be contacting a potential advertiser or tourism board at some point, so it’s a great idea to have your pitch well honed. You’ll likely even use a version of your pitch letter when you’re working with a company that connects you to travel brands and tourism boards.

There are literally dozens of books about writing pitches out there, so I’m not going to go into details, except for one crucial tip: always make your pitch about what you can do for the advertiser. No one cares if you want a sponsored trip or free stay; they care how working with you and publishing on your blog can help their business.

Here are a few good resources to get you started:

• How do I go about pitching? in How to Work with Tourism Boards by Dangerous Business
• How to Pitch a Travel Magazine by Brendan van Son
• 5 Reasons Your Sponsorship Pitch Failed by Katie Hammel of Viator

Get your name out there

I am not a natural marketer, so this one’s always been tough for me. Here are a couple of ways I’ve found to help you get your name out there as a professional travel blogger.

Submit your name to travel blogging lists. These can be lists of travel bloggers in your country, top 100 blogs or for your specific niche (e.g. food or over 50 travel). You’ll have to do a bit of Googling on this one, and keep your eyes open, but when an opportunity arises, throw your hat in the ring. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, right? (Many thanks to my fellow Canuck Wayne Gretzky for that one).

Sign up for HARO (Help a Reporter Out). Reporters (and brands) use HARO to find expert sources for their stories. Keep an eye on the requests, and you just might find yourself quoted in a news story or magazine. The basic membership is free, and you’ll get emails in your inbox at a dizzying frequency.

Give sponsors a way to contact you

Make sure that you have a way for potential partners to contact you on your blog, whether that’s a contact form or masked email address (e.g., admin at thebarefootnomad dot com). (You mask the email address to prevent spammer bots from finding your email and putting you on spam lists).

Conduct yourself with professionalism

If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, chances are it’s a duck. If you act like a professional, word will get out, and people will want to work with you. Return emails and phone calls on time. Deliver (actually, over deliver) on any promises you make. Do all the things you expect a professional would do, and then do a little bit more.

Have we missed anything? Let us know in the comments below. We’d love to hear your take on what it takes to be a professional travel blogger.