How to Start a Travel Vlog: Your Comprehensive Guide

Starting a travel vlog makes perfect sense! Video is one of the most immersive and engaging mediums for telling stories. When done well, you can effectively bring people along with you on your journey and make them feel like they’re traveling with you. You’ll also be able to showcase your personality and connect with your audience in a way that words and photographs just don’t allow.

Then there’s the perceived glamour surrounding this line of work. After all, who wouldn’t want to travel to amazing destinations and earn a living from it? It may sound like a dream — and it can be — but it’s a lot of work. Many people set out to be travel content creators and ultimately give up because the path to success is often a slow, sustained effort. If you’re wondering How To Start A Travel Vlog, this guide is for you.

In this post, we offer a step-by-step guide to starting a travel vlog on YouTube based on our learnings over the past year. From deciding on the type of vlogs you want to make and choosing the best filming equipment to video editing tips and promotion tactics, we’ve got you covered.

Decide on the Type of Travel Videos You Want to Make

Before you do anything else, it’s important to decide on the type of videos you want to make and what story you’re trying to tell.

Here are a few types of travel videos you can consider creating:

• Travel guides and itineraries
• Documentaries focusing on culture and local stories
• Informational or marketing style videos
• Niche topics, such as adventure travel, sports tourism, travel hacking, food exploration, urban exploration, and many more. The possibilities are truly vast!

If you’re not entirely sure what you want to focus on yet, a good starting point is to research what other successful creators in the field are doing to get inspiration. This essentially means spending time watching YouTube travel content. You can also simply begin by filming and publishing a few different ideas you have. Pay attention to what your audience seems to enjoy and what you enjoy doing, and then lean into those areas!

People entering a cenote or cave during their first travel vlog filming experience in Tulum, Mexico

How We Decided on Travel & Food as Our Niche

A lot of aspiring content creators struggle with deciding on their niche. This was certainly a challenge for me.

This wasn’t my first attempt at content creation — I originally launched my travel blog in 2013, and the website you see today is its third version. For many years, I created generalized travel content, and as the number of creators exploded, it became incredibly difficult to distinguish myself.

Personally, I associated finding my niche with identifying my ultimate passion, and I was constantly stuck trying to pinpoint what that elusive idea was. It felt like something I just couldn’t grasp, and I was definitely over-complicating the process.

Ask yourself: What do you genuinely enjoy doing? What activities do you already engage in regularly? What can you do consistently over an extended period? The answer to these questions might very well be your niche. It may already be right in front of you, and you just haven’t recognized it yet.

I’ve been an enthusiastic eater for as long as I can remember. I adore food, I’m curious about culinary experiences, and I’m willing to try almost anything once. When I travel, I often structure my explorations around food and frequently eat more than three meals a day. In 2020, I had a breakthrough moment: I’m going to make travel videos, and a significant portion of them will focus on food. It seemed so obvious in retrospect. I was already exploring food extensively while traveling; I just wasn’t filming it.

It’s also perfectly fine if what you enjoy seems unconventional or outside the box. Many successful content creators have built thriving platforms around non-traditional topics or interests that we were often told in school wouldn’t be financially viable. Jason Rupp, for example, has gained almost half a million subscribers on YouTube by posting videos of himself getting barbered and pampered in different locations around the world. People are making sustainable incomes on YouTube by posting videos of fishing that last for hours. Audiences watch YouTube for countless different reasons. You should leverage this diversity to your advantage when deciding on your niche.

Choosing the Right Video Cameras & Equipment

Naturally, having the right cameras and equipment is essential for producing videos. However, we recommend finalizing your niche and the specific story you aim to tell before deciding what gear to invest in, as your content type will heavily influence your equipment needs.

For instance, if your goal is to showcase how you effectively travel hack and secure the best deals, perhaps all you initially need is a webcam and screen recording software to get started.

We focus on creating food and travel videos – our priority is producing high-quality content that immerses viewers and makes them feel like they are traveling alongside us. We also need our equipment to be compact enough to fit into a backpack so we can film easily while moving around. Our camera setup and accompanying gear were selected with these requirements in mind, leading us to make a somewhat larger upfront investment. If you’re looking for a suitable camera, consider options like the best bridge camera for travel or finding the best travel camera under 300 if you’re on a tighter budget.

For those with less to spend and who want to get started quickly, the Sony Z1 Digital Camera for Content Creators is a fantastic all-in-one option often recommended. This camera can film in 4k, features a flip screen and a super-wide filming angle making it easy to film yourself, and includes a high-quality microphone with a windscreen. Exploring the best lens for sony a6000 travel or even the best sony a6000 lens for travel can also be helpful if you opt for a Sony mirrorless system, offering versatility for different travel scenarios.

A travel videographer holds a Sony camera on a JOBY tripod, demonstrating equipment used for a travel vlog

Just Start Filming

It’s going to feel strange when you first begin filming – especially if you’re talking directly to the camera or filming yourself. You won’t feel perfectly prepared, it might feel awkward, and you won’t always know exactly what to say. Speaking on camera can be surprisingly nerve-wracking, even more so than talking in front of a room full of people for some. I honestly used to critique YouTubers for not being perfectly articulate until I started talking on camera myself; now my perspective has shifted to one of pure admiration for their ability to do it consistently.

The most effective way to learn is simply to start doing and to learn and improve from the inevitable mistakes you will make along the way. Being comfortable on camera becomes significantly easier with practice, and you’ll develop a more natural presence over time, even if a little bit of nervousness never completely disappears. Now, whenever I feel hesitant or shy while filming, I remind myself of a bit of wisdom passed on by Lenza – “literally nobody will remember you in an hour.” This perspective helps put things into context and reduces the pressure.

When it comes to evaluating the quality of your footage, watching what you’ve filmed and attempting to edit it will quickly reveal what you’re missing and what you need to capture in the future to effectively tell the story you envision. The best approach is often to simply jump into the deep end and let the learning process unfold naturally.

Editing Your Videos: Process & Tools

Okay, so you’ve successfully captured your raw footage. Now comes the exciting part: transforming that footage into something engaging through editing.

Every creator’s filming and editing workflow is a little different, but here’s a breakdown of how ours typically proceeds:

1. Plan an idea. Whether it’s a dedicated food tour in a specific city or a particular story we want to convey, we map out the general flow of the video and the types of shots we need to capture. If it’s a food tour, I’ll research the locations we plan to visit beforehand. If it’s centered around a specific subject or narrative, I’ll outline how the scenes should progress. There’s always an element of spontaneity and improvisation involved since you can’t predict everything that will happen during filming, which often makes it more dynamic and fun!
2. Film the idea. Execute the plan and capture all the necessary footage.
3. Stitch together a rough cut. This initial assembly can be chronological based on the filming order or structured according to a pre-planned storyline or concept.
4. Trim excess footage. Frequently, you’ll find yourself with redundant scenes or footage that doesn’t significantly enhance the video’s value – essentially, the “fat.” Be disciplined and ruthless in cutting this material. Modern internet users tend to have short attention spans; if you don’t get to the most interesting parts quickly, you risk losing viewers.
5. Add the “frills.” Once the unnecessary footage is removed, we incorporate transitions, b-roll footage, background music, special effects, and other elements that polish the video.
6. Complete a final round of feedback and record any necessary voiceover. Review the cut video and record any narration needed to tie scenes together or add context.
7. Final review and publishing. We watch the completed video multiple times to catch any potential errors or make final adjustments before uploading it to platforms like YouTube.

Video Editing Tools

• Video Editing Software: We primarily use Adobe Premiere Pro for editing all of our videos. Other popular options include Final Cut Pro (for Mac) or DaVinci Resolve (free and paid versions).
• Music: Good music is incredibly powerful in setting the mood and pacing of a video. It’s amazing how a relatively plain clip can become much more engaging with the right musical backing. We currently obtain all the music for our videos from services that provide access to large libraries of royalty-free music and sound effects.
• Voiceover: Voiceover narration can be an effective and engaging technique to weave your disparate footage together into a coherent story. Think about iconic travel shows – the narrator’s voice and storytelling often unify hours of footage into a compelling narrative. When recording voiceovers, using a quality microphone is key. Portable options are great for travel vlogging.

When you’re just getting started with editing, there’s likely to be a noticeable skill gap between where you are currently and the quality you aspire to achieve. Getting even simple tasks done might take hours initially. This can feel frustrating at first, but, like any new skill, you will learn, grow, and become faster and more efficient with practice. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect.

When you get started, there’s going to be a skill gap between where you are and what you aim to be.

Example of an eye-catching YouTube thumbnail graphic with bold text, optimized for attracting travel vlog viewers

Publish Your Video & Promote: YouTube SEO & More

Congratulations, your first travel vlog is complete and ready! Now it’s time to set up your YouTube channel (if you haven’t already) and publish it! However, simply uploading your video is just one part of the process. If you’re new to the concept of SEO, there’s no better time to learn the basics than now, as it plays a crucial role in helping people discover your videos. There are also other strategic considerations to increase your channel’s overall visibility.

YouTube SEO…A Necessary Practice

SEO stands for search engine optimization. You need to understand at least the fundamental principles to improve the ranking and visibility of your videos within the YouTube search results and suggested videos.

Let’s consider an example: Suppose you’ve created a video highlighting the best places to eat in Rome, and you’re trying to decide on the most effective title. Your initial thought might be “where to eat in Rome,” but after doing some basic research, you might discover that people significantly more frequently search for terms like “best restaurants in Rome.” While the keywords convey essentially the same idea, using “best restaurants in Rome” in your title and description is likely to result in many more people finding your video through search.

Think about how users find videos on YouTube. They typically have a question they need answered, a problem to solve, or something specific they are looking for, and they turn to the YouTube search bar to find relevant content. There are common patterns in the way people phrase their queries – specific sets of words or certain orders of words are used more often than others. Your goal is to ensure you are using the most relevant and popular terms in the right context so that the YouTube algorithm understands exactly what your video is about and knows to display it when those terms are searched.

Of course, there are many more nuanced aspects to YouTube SEO, but that explains the core concept.

Here’s how you can begin to optimize your videos for better search performance:

• Learn SEO Fundamentals. While not YouTube-specific, understanding general SEO principles helps. Focus on what keywords are, how people search, and why optimizing content is important.
• Do Keyword Research. Find out precisely what phrases and questions people are typing into the YouTube search bar to discover the type of travel videos you are creating. Tools exist that can help analyze search volume and competition for specific keywords related to your content.
• Optimize Your Videos: Once you have identified your target keywords, ensure you include them naturally and prominently in your video title and video description. When you add tags to your video, include your primary keyword as the first tag and then utilize the remaining tag allowance with synonyms, related terms, and tangential words or phrases. Providing the YouTube algorithm with clear signals about your video’s subject matter helps it recommend your content to the right viewers for the relevant search terms.

How to Promote Your YouTube Video

Unfortunately, there isn’t really a hidden secret formula for making your video instantly go viral or dramatically accelerating your channel’s growth overnight. Instead of obsessively focusing solely on view counts or subscriber numbers, it’s more productive to channel that energy into consistently creating high-quality, engaging content. If your videos are compelling and provide value or entertainment, people will eventually find them and share them. Patience is key in the early stages! In the meantime, here are several promotional activities that are within your control:

• Create Eye-Catching Thumbnail Images. The thumbnail is the first visual impression viewers have of your video when they see it in search results or suggestions. You want it to be so visually compelling that people feel urged to click on your video. Aim for vibrant colors, interesting imagery, and clear, large fonts that stand out on the page. Graphic design tools can be helpful for creating professional-looking thumbnails.
• Post to Social Media. If you already have an existing following on social media platforms, share your new video there. Even if you don’t, sharing it on your personal channels or with friends and family can provide an initial boost in views and engagement.
• Share to Relevant Communities. Research online communities such as Facebook groups, Slack channels, Reddit threads, and forums that are focused on the specific travel topics or destinations your videos cover. Be cautious, however, as many of these communities are wary of overly blatant self-promotion. Make sure you are genuinely contributing to the community in other meaningful ways before sharing your own content to ensure your posts are well-received and not removed.
• Embed and Link Videos. If you maintain a blog or website, make it a practice to embed your relevant YouTube videos within related posts and webpages. This not only provides additional visibility for your videos but can also offer a boost for your website’s own SEO by keeping visitors engaged on the page longer. For example, if you write about interesting destinations, consider embedding a video about places to travel to near me in a related blog post.

We hope you found this step-by-step guide on How To Start A Travel Vlog on YouTube helpful! If you have any questions or additional thoughts, please feel free to leave a comment below.