Travel Blog Diary: Week 1 — Starting Out

On a random day of no particular importance (September 25), I began my travel blogging journey and started explorewithalice.com. I’ve always loved traveling and wanted to create a blog of my own. Now that AI tools are making things easier than ever (plus I have some extra time on my hands after leaving my job), I finally decided to start building. Armed with ChatGPT by my side, here’s what I accomplished in my first week:

Setup

• Platform – I chose WordPress because it’s the most popular blogging CMS with endless plugins and community support.
• Hosting – I signed up for 1 year of Bluehost since it’s WordPress.org‘s longest-recommended host and affordable.
• Domain – I bought my domain on Namecheap for 1 year because they had a .COM promotion and include free WHOIS privacy protection.
• Icon – I asked ChatGPT to generate one.
• Theme – I started with Bluehost’s default “Blueprint” theme.

Content

I find rankings and tips the most useful when I read travel content, so I began by writing Top Things to Do and Tips for the trips I went on. I worked backwards from my most recent trips and was able to cover most of the places I’ve been in the past year: Indonesia, Singapore, New Zealand, Croatia, Peru, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

I also thought it would be fun to document the process of building the blog, so I started this series of weekly updates.

Monetization

• Ads – I signed up for Adsense but it took a few days to set up since I had to add a script to verify I own the site, wait for Google to crawl my updated site, then wait for Google to review it. Once approved I enabled auto ads and added the Site Kit plugin so I can see my stats right in my WordPress dashboard.
• Commission
  • Amazon Associates – Easy signup, but I’ll need at least 3 qualified sales within 180 days to keep the account.
  • Viator Partner – Required ID verification but was approved the same day.
  • Seek Sophie Ambassador – Approved within a few days.

UI

• I used the PostX plugin to display posts in the Home and Blog page in a pretty grid.
• I added a Popular Posts section to the Home page with the Popular Posts plugin.
• I added a Related Post widget to the single post template.
• I installed the Ivory Search plugin so I can have a site-wide search bar with live results.
• To cover legal basics, I added a Privacy Policy and Disclaimer to the footer. I used the Ad Inserter plugin to display affiliate disclosures on posts with affiliate links.

Stats

Cost	$67 (Hosting $60 + Domain $7)
Posts Published	14
Views	~300 (mostly me testing!)
Revenue	$0
Profit	-$67

Interestingly, I received 2 submissions to my contact form, both offering help with SEO. Not sure if this is a scam or just creative marketing.

High / Lowlights

• ✅ The basic setup was quick and painless.
• ✅ Going through old photos was a fun trip down memory lane. I just wish I had taken more to capture all the moments!
• ✅ It’s cool that Google can automatically add ads on my site and lets me configure the format (I disabled bottom banners since I find them annoying).
• ❌ I broke the blog multiple times since I didn’t realize the difference between “Template” and “Page” and kept on editing the wrong one.
• ✅ I eventually discovered the staging site option in Bluehost and it was a game-changer! Now I can experiment freely without worrying about breaking the live site.

Final Thoughts

I’m impressed how much I got done in just one week with the help of tools. WordPress takes some getting used to, but the plugin ecosystem is amazing. Bluehost’s default theme helped me get started quickly, and the staging support made editing safe. Finally, ChatGPT was the patient expert on everything who guided me the entire way, helping me brainstorm, edit and troubleshoot.

Next week, I plan to:

• Draft more guides
• Polish the UI more and get some feedback from friends
• Do some SEO optimization

Stay tuned for Week 2’s update!