Travel Blogging Tools I Actually Use
I started The Boho Travels in 2012 to document a two-week journey visiting indigenous communities in the Philippines. For years, it was just a personal journal — a place to capture memories and reflect on the people and places I encountered along the way.
It wasn’t until much later that I decided to take it seriously. I learned SEO, invested in a blogging course, and began turning what was once a travel diary into a platform that helps readers plan trips to the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and Europe. Within a year of making that shift — even with a five-month break in between — I reached 10,000 monthly sessions, got accepted into Journey by Mediavine, and started earning consistent affiliate income.
Still figuring out whether to start a blog at all? I’ve written about that too — here’s how to start a travel blog and why you should.
None of that happened by accident. It happened because I finally had the right foundation: the right education, the right tools, and a clearer sense of how to use them together.
This post is a breakdown of everything I currently use to run this blog — from hosting and SEO to email marketing and affiliate platforms. I’m not recommending anything I haven’t personally used. Some of these I’ve had since the beginning; others I added as the blog grew. If you’re building a travel blog and trying to figure out where to start, this is the stack I’d point you to.
💡 Already have a travel blog? Don’t wait until your traffic feels “big enough” to start monetizing. There’s no perfect threshold — the best time to set up your affiliate links, join an ad network, and start building your email list is now. The earlier you start, the more data you’ll have to work with as your blog grows.
🛠️ Quick Links: Travel Blogging Tools
Jump to the tool you’re most curious about — or read through from the start if you’re building your blog from scratch.
- Scale Your Travel Blog (now The Blog & Newsletter Lab) — How I learned to start blogging the right way
- Hostinger — Why I chose it and what’s kept me here
- WordPress — Why self-hosted is the only way to go
- Kadence — The theme I switched to after a costly mistake
- Keysearch — How I used it to find keywords I could actually rank for
- Rank Math — The SEO plugin I use on every single post
- SheKnowsSEO — My go-to SEO resource outside of The Blog & Newsletter Lab
- Kit (formerly ConvertKit) — Why I wish I’d started my email list sooner
- Travelpayouts — How I manage and optimize my affiliate links
- Stay22 — The safety net that catches what I miss
Start Here: Learn How to Build Your Blog the Right Way
Before you pick a host, install a theme, or sign up for an affiliate program — start here. The foundation matters more than the tools.
Scale Your Travel Blog (now The Blog & Newsletter Lab)
If I could go back to 2012 and give myself one piece of advice, it would be this: find the right education before you do anything else.
I joined Scale Your Travel Blog — a course created by Laura — and it changed how I approached everything. It has since rebranded to The Blog & Newsletter Lab, and the evolution makes sense: it’s the same community and support system I came to rely on, but with an even stronger focus on building and growing your newsletter alongside your blog.
It’s self-paced, which means you move through it on your own time, but you’re never really doing it alone. The community is one of the warmest I’ve encountered in the blogging space — a mix of beginners and experienced bloggers who are genuinely invested in each other’s growth. On top of the course material, there are Traffic and Income Strategy Calls, Group Coaching Calls, and Zoom Q&As, plus a weekly newsletter that keeps you updated on what’s changing in the industry and what to do about it.
Blogging is a long game. And with the constant shifts — algorithm updates, platform changes, traffic dips — it’s comforting to know that you have a community to help you navigate it. That you don’t have to do everything alone. That’s what The Blog & Newsletter Lab gave me.
One of the biggest lessons that stuck with me came after a round of Google algorithm changes that affected traffic across the blogging industry. As a blogger, you don’t own your search rankings — Google can shift its algorithm overnight and take your traffic with it. That’s a humbling thing to sit with when your affiliate income and ad revenue depend on people finding your content. The same goes for social media. Even if you’re not actively posting, those platforms can change their rules, suspend accounts, or disappear entirely.
What I can own is my email list. That realization pushed me to start building my newsletter much earlier than I might have otherwise — and it’s something The Blog & Newsletter Lab actively helps you do.
I also learned — the hard way — that consistency matters. I took a break from blogging for a few months, and when I came back, I had to realign and refocus. I started creating new content again, updating old posts, and getting back into the rhythm. Just because content is performing well doesn’t mean you can coast. Readers’ needs change, search intent evolves, and your content has to keep up. A key thing I come back to: the audience must always come first.
Join The Blog & Newsletter Lab (formerly Scale Your Travel Blog) →
Web Hosting
Your hosting is the foundation everything else sits on. Get it wrong, and it doesn’t matter how good your content is — a slow, unreliable site will cost you readers and rankings.
Hostinger
I’ve been with Hostinger since early 2024, when I decided to take blogging seriously. I carefully researched my options and also considered the hosts that I had tried previously. I decided to go with Hostinger for the price and value it offered at my stage. And it has continued to deliver since.
I love that I’ve never had noticeable issues with speed or uptime. The interface is easy to navigate. And their customer support is helpful when needed. I realized how good Hostinger is recently when working with a client on a different host. Comparing the two on these fronts confirmed I made the right choice.
The moment that really stood out, though, was when my blog ran into a problem a few months ago. Hostinger caught it early, and because they back up your site regularly, I was able to restore it to a version from before the issue occurred. That kind of safety net matters more than most beginners realize — until something goes wrong.
If you’re just starting out, I’d recommend keeping an eye out for their Black Friday deals. That’s when I locked in my current package, and the savings were significant.
Blog Platform & Design
Once your hosting is set up, the next decisions are your platform and how your blog looks. These two set the tone for everything you build on top of them.
WordPress
Once your hosting is set up, the next step is installing WordPress. It’s the platform most serious bloggers use — and for good reason. It’s flexible, powerful, and gives you full ownership and control over your site in a way that other platforms like Shopify simply weren’t designed for.
If you’re starting fresh with Hostinger, you can install WordPress directly from your dashboard in just a few clicks.
It comes with a learning curve — more decisions to make, more settings to configure. But that flexibility is exactly what makes it the right foundation for a blog you intend to grow.
Kadence
For your theme, I recommend Kadence (you can get this once you have WordPress) — and I say that having learned the hard way with something else first.
Before Kadence, I designed my website using Elementor. It looked good, but it made my website significantly slower. On The Blog & Newsletter Lab’s recommendation, I switched to Kadence, which allowed me to design my website without sacrificing speed.
What surprised me was how much I could achieve with it. There were designs I assumed were only possible in Elementor — and Kadence handled them without the bloat. That said, I won’t pretend the learning curve is nonexistent. Kadence has a lot of tools, and if you don’t know what each one does or where to find it, you’ll spend more time frustrated than designing. I kept my site intentionally simple for a while because of that.
What changed things was attending a Group Coaching Call through SYTB (now The Blog & Newsletter Lab) specifically on using Kadence to design your website. That one session unlocked a level of design I wouldn’t have figured out on my own. If you’re going to use Kadence — and I think you should — I’d pair it with proper guidance from the start.
💡 Need help with your visual identity? Before you dive into design, it helps to have your branding sorted — your logo, color palette, and brand personality. That’s something we work on over at The Boho Studio.
SEO Tools
Great content isn’t enough if no one can find it. These are the tools I use to make sure my posts show up for the right searches.
Keysearch
Before I invested in a paid keyword research tool, I was relying on free options like Ubersuggest. They were limiting — both in the depth of results and their accuracy. I knew I needed something better, but there are a lot of paid keyword tools out there, and the price differences are significant.
Nina of SheKnowsSEO highly recommended Keysearch. After doing my own research and confirming it had what I needed, I started using it in March 2024. It was the most affordable paid option at the time — a reliable way to find keywords I could actually rank for, plus a content assistant that helped me uncover hidden keywords I wouldn’t have thought to target on my own.
I used it until April this year, when I felt I had built up enough of a keyword list to work from. But for the period I had it, it was worth every peso. A good keyword tool doesn’t just save you time — it gives you confidence that you’re writing about things people are actually searching for. That peace of mind alone is worth the investment when you’re starting out.
Rank Math
Rank Math is the SEO plugin I use to optimize every post before it goes live. I came to it after using both Yoast and AIOSEO — and I never looked back.
Both of my previous plugins felt more complicated than they needed to be. Rank Math simplified the process without stripping away the functionality. Again, it was Nina who pointed me in this direction, and I trusted her recommendation enough to make the switch.
I use Rank Math mainly for three things: crafting meta snippets (setting the title, slug, and description that show up in search results), setting focus keywords for each post — making sure I never target the same keyword twice — and working through its built-in checklist as a final quality check before publishing. It’s become part of my standard process before anything goes live.
SheKnowsSEO
Nina of SheKnowsSEO has been one of the most useful resources in my blogging toolkit — and she’s the reason I use both Keysearch and Rank Math.
The Blog & Newsletter Lab covers SEO as well — it’s part of how I learned to build the blogging business from the ground up. But I’ve always found value in having more than one trusted source, especially for something as constantly evolving as SEO. Nina is the other voice I pay attention to. Her site covers SEO, AI, and blogging tools in a way that’s genuinely easy to follow.
She describes her approach as making SEO simple enough to explain to her 90-year-old Russian grandmother — and that’s not an exaggeration. The way she breaks things down makes technical concepts accessible without dumbing them down.
For me, The Blog & Newsletter Lab and SheKnowsSEO fill different roles. The Blog & Newsletter Lab is where I learned how to build the blogging business. SheKnowsSEO is where I go when I need to go deeper on SEO specifically — whether that’s keyword strategy, understanding algorithm changes, or figuring out how AI fits into my content process. She also offers a program called Profitable Part-time Blogger, which is worth looking into if you want more structured guidance on the SEO side.
Email Marketing
If there’s one thing I wish I had prioritized earlier, it’s building my email list.
Kit
I use Kit for this, on the recommendation of SYTB (now The Blog & Newsletter Lab). I had tried Mailchimp before, but found it more complicated than I needed at my stage. Kit was different. The Blog & Newsletter Lab not only recommended it but walked through how to use it, which made the learning curve much gentler. It’s straightforward, the free plan already allows for some customization and design, and it does everything I need right now — welcome sequences, PDF freebies, and broadcasts to my list.
My approach with tools has always been to start with the cheapest option that gives me what I need, and upgrade when the time comes. Kit’s free plan fits that perfectly for where I am now. When I need more, I won’t hesitate to pay for it — as long as it delivers value.
One thing I’d tell any blogger putting this off: don’t wait until you have 10, 100, or even 10,000 subscribers. Start building your list now. The best time to start was when you launched your blog. The second best time is today.
Affiliate & Monetization Tools
One thing I want to be upfront about: I don’t choose affiliate platforms based on which one pays me the most. I choose based on what’s most useful for my readers — and then I figure out how to earn from that.
Here’s how my affiliate setup actually works.
Travelpayouts and Stay22
These two are the backbone of how I manage affiliate links across the blog.
Travelpayouts is where I do most of my link conversion. It covers a wide range of platforms — accommodations, tours, transport — and has a Linkswitcher tool that lets me convert links from platforms I’m already using into Travelpayouts affiliate links when they offer better commissions. For example, if I’m using a Klook link directly but find that Klook through Travelpayouts pays better, I just run it through Linkswitcher instead.
💡 Already using Travelpayouts? Make sure you activate Drive within your account. It has several tools that work automatically in the background — Switch Links turns existing travel brand links in your content into Travelpayouts affiliate links, Link Relevant Keywords detects travel-related keywords and turns them into affiliate links, and Targeted Offers shows visitors a relevant travel offer when they’re ready to book. A simple way to catch monetization opportunities you might otherwise miss.
Stay22 works alongside it. It has a similar functionality — automatically identifying affiliate opportunities I may have missed and surfacing them to readers. In practice, Stay22 defers to Travelpayouts when it detects that Travelpayouts is already active on a page, so they work together rather than against each other. Think of it as a safety net for anything that slips through.
Frequently Asked Questions: Travel Blogging Tools
What tools do I need to start a travel blog?
At minimum: a hosting provider, WordPress, and a keyword research tool. Everything else can come as your blog grows. If I were starting today, I’d add an email marketing platform from day one — it’s the one thing I wish I hadn’t delayed.
Do I need to pay for all of these tools?
No — and you shouldn’t try to. Several tools on this list have free plans that are more than enough when you’re starting out (Kit and Rank Math, for example). For paid tools, I follow one rule: start with the cheapest option that gives you what you need, and upgrade only when you’ve outgrown it.
Which tool should I start with first?
Education. Before you pick a host, install a theme, or sign up for an affiliate program, invest in learning how to build your blog the right way. It will save you a lot of time, money, and frustration down the road.
Is travel blogging dead?
No — but it has changed. The days of throwing up thin content and watching it rank are over. What works now is writing genuinely helpful, experience-based content for a specific audience, building your email list, and playing the long game. It’s more work than it used to be, but it’s also more sustainable. I reached 10,000 monthly sessions within a year of getting serious about it, and I’m still growing.
Do you recommend taking a travel blogging course?
Yes — with one caveat: choose carefully. There’s no shortage of courses out there, and not all of them are worth the investment. I enrolled in Scale Your Travel Blog (now The Blog & Newsletter Lab) because of the community and the ongoing support, not just the course material. Blogging changes fast, and a one-time course with no updates or community won’t serve you as well as one that evolves with the industry. That’s what made The Blog & Newsletter Lab worth it for me.
Final Thoughts
No list of tools will work if you don’t understand why you’re using them. That’s the honest takeaway from everything I’ve shared here.
A lot of people — myself included, at one point — jump straight to the tools before they have the foundation. But tools are only as effective as the knowledge behind them. That’s why I put blogging education at the top of this list, and why I’d encourage you to do the same.
There’s no shortage of “experts” online telling you what worked for them. And some of that advice is genuinely useful. But we all come to this with different circumstances, different strengths, and different goals. The best thing you can do is dig deep, ask questions, and build your own understanding — so that when someone tells you what to do, you know enough to decide whether it actually applies to you.
If you can’t figure something out on your own, don’t be afraid to ask or get coaching. That’s exactly why I enrolled with Laura at SYTB (now The Blog & Newsletter Lab) and why I stay close to Nina’s newsletter. Technology changes fast, and this industry changes with it. Surrounding yourself with people who are genuinely expert in their fields, generous with what they know, and invested in their communities makes all the difference.
You don’t need every tool on this list right away. Start with what you need for where you are now, and build from there. The blog will tell you what it needs next.
💡 If you’re curious about the gear side — the camera, gimbal, tripod, and laptop I use to actually create the content — I broke all of that down in my travel blogging gear post.
