Often I get asked by other Travel bloggers if joining the Travel Blog Success (TBS) Travel blogging network is worth the time and investment.

I’ve been an active member of Travel Blog Success for a few years now and I thought I would put together an honest review to help those who are currently making a decision if they should join or not.

First of all I would like to highlight as a member of TBS you can earn a commission Based off every referral through their affiliate program, this is available for every member.

I will use this link at the end of the post (If I’ve done a good enough job telling you about TBS, might as well earn a coffee and hostel night for myself, everything is appreciated at the end of the day, thank you in advance!).

However, I would not like to use the Affiliate link program for TBS to cloud my judgement and I will keep this blog post 100% honest to help you make a decision as TBS is not for everyone, here are my thoughts:

UPDATE: Travel Blog Success has been changed to SuperStar Blogging

At the start of 2018 Matt from Nomadic Matt purchased the Travel Blog success company and is in the process of merging the company into his current course Superstar Blogging which I’m also a part of and have used.

The course is more updated and bringing all the best stuff over from Travel Blog Success, which will only make the course stronger and better value.

As the course is joining Travel Blog Success and transferring some of the course material over, My opinion of doing a course to get started with Travel Blogging still remains and my opinion.

I still support this so I will keep this blog post live as a form of guidance to those seeking information when starting out travel blogging.

Just wanted to update you with what’s going on with Travel Blog Success which will no longer be around, but the Superstar blogging course from Nomadic Matt will keep the course going on a different platform. Hope that all makes sense. Feel free to email me directly if I can help with any other questions you might have about the take over, I’m happy to help.

Why Did I join TBS?

My travel blog up till 2011 was simply for fun, I enjoyed writing about my travel adventures and sharing helpful travel tips with the internet. Only problem was I happened to be writing a lot of content, but no one was reading it and I was a little clueless on how to make money travel blogging.

I wanted to locate a network I could relate to and all I could find was Travel Blog success. After watching the promotional video and reading some reviews, I decided to sign up instantly, fork out the high fee and jump in at the deep end.

Was Joining TBS Worth it?

I saw Travel Blog Success as an investment in my travel blog, as I wanted success so badly. I had put hours of work into my travel blog and I thought about investing my money into a program such as TBS, I would earn instant success like it was unlocking some sort of secret.

Did this travel blog success instantly happen?

Simple answer: no….

Just like anything in life you have to put in the time, I see all over the web these sorts of programs where you pay an expensive fee and they promise instant success! They often have references from other successful people who have followed the course and along with the promise of a money back guarantee of 30 days, you think surely this will work for me too? No brainer, right!

It’s important to understand that by chucking money at something does not unlock the gravy train of instant success, these courses simply offer the tools to duplicate other peoples success following a pathway that they took, you’re simply cutting out all the A/B testing, they just point you in the direction of which pathway best worked for them.

Put in the work and you too can replicate what others have achieved.

I will hold my hands up high and say personally, I fell for this!

In fact, I never did the course or logged on for the first year, I paid the fee and thought that the success would come, it didn’t.

What Happened next with Travel Dave and Travel blog success?

(I was getting too lazy and I lost focus with my Travel blog)

One day I woke up, very angry with myself, I’ll never forget this day as I had a massive hangover from a crazy night out in Holland and I hadn’t put together a blog post for a few months. I was kicking myself and upset that I had let go of something great, I had poured a lot of hours and investment into Travel Dave But didn’t get anything out of it, so I simply gave up.

It was demotivating, working so hard and not gaining any results at all, but yet seeing others around you become successful.

This is the number one reason why some travel blogs succeed whilst others fail, never giving up is so important towards becoming a great travel blogger, many travel blogs seem to stop after a year, the best travel blogs keep on going and have noticed huge success because they have a schedule they stick too and keep at it consistently.

That’s when it hit me, I remembered signing up to Travel Blog success and thought to myself, OK, Lets sort out a plan over the next month, each day work on each bit, take action on what you took out of that section of the course and move on to the next one.

At the point when I had enough, I pulled my socks up and decided to do something about it.

How did it go?

(Break up the course and aim to complete goals over a set period of time.)

I have to say, that day making a decision to take action, was a fantastic one, I’m happy I did it.

Working out easy manageable steps and goals to complete over a set period of time was encouraging and noticing improvements after taking action from each module, pushed me to move onto the next one as I could see that with each brick I laid on the foundation the wall started to get bigger, I could finally notice the difference with the time I was putting in to my blog, it was worth while time that was actually doing something.

Was a massive encouragement.

I fully understand, all the module material that the course outlines can be easily found on Google or YouTube for free, I get that.

What you have to understand is there are a hundred ways to explain SEO, everyone has their own secret sauce, you can spend hours wasting time trying to find the best course to best explain what you need to know.

What I wanted was simple steps towards simple success that I could work towards in a manageable environment, Travel Blog Success offered that.

Travel Blog success just has everything you need step by step, laid out in an easy, actionable format, so you can take action.

The money is worth the investment for the time you will save and the focus, structure you can create to complete the course, you can split up each bit over a month and get it done.

That’s the secret to success, getting things done (GTD), pushing yourself to complete each task but getting it done.

As I explained earlier, I use to be that person that didn’t take action, I didn’t have any structure, I put in a lot of work, but it was in the wrong area and this puts me off travel blogging. I thought by chucking money at something my success would just come, it doesn’t work like that.

Did the course work once you took action?

(Once you can work out a system that fits your lifestyle you can work anywhere, perfect for travel blogging!)

Completely! 100% no doubt, I slowly started to notice a growth pattern each time I tweaked areas. That’s the secret to Travel Blogging success, working each day on little bits that build the bigger picture, if you took small action each day by working on one area, after a year you will notice a huge difference with your investment in time.

If you get lazy like I once did and only write a blog post here and there, you never kick off your travel blog, now I have a schedule in place, endless to do lists on actions I must take, all this was taught in the course and I’ve instantly seen massive improvements to where I was 4 years ago till now.

With a structure in place and noticing what I do has an impact and gets notice encourages me to write more. Over the past year I’ve never typed so much in my life, but that’s because every day I enjoy writing, I enjoy building the bigger picture and when your work gets noticed it makes all the difference in wanting to write more.

Each post I write improves my writing craft and I get better each and every day because I’m constantly writing. When I go back to pre-2011 and read my blog posts I almost laugh at how terrible I used to be, I wouldn’t read those posts myself! Then I read my blog posts now and simply amazed at how far along this travel blogging journey I’ve come, it’s great to personally notice the difference, take pride in your work and I owe a lot to Travel Blogging success for laying down the simple steps to follow to gain that success I needed from a beginners level.

Should I purchase Travel Blog success

If you have just read the above and you see yourself in the same shoes that I once was:

• Writing blog posts, but not seeing any engagement
• Not making money with your travel blog and wondering why?
• Seeing other successful Travel bloggers doing well and wanting that success for yourself.

Then Travel blog success will explain to you the same path that other successful travel bloggers have followed to get where they are now.

Yes, you can find this information on the internet for free but you’re paying for the guidance of the exact information you need to be successful in speeding up your pathway to success, you’re putting your energy into the areas you should be which helps your focus towards achieving goals.

What does the membership cover?

(Travel Blog Success unlocks a huge amounts of benefits and materials you can spend some quality time consuming)

I’ve talked a lot about the course, but that’s only a small part of why you should consider becoming a Travel Blog Success member, here is what you get with your membership:

The Travel Blogging Success Course

The main value of the membership is unlocking access to the TBS Course which contains 47 lessons within 6 modules and explains from the very start how to set up a Travel blog, down to more deeper complex subjects such as SEO for travel blogging and how to create a media kit. It outlines everything you would possibly need to know in order to become successful in Travel blogging.

Many new modules are added annually (Just noticed a few new lectures have been added, better get to work!) and I often go back to the course to refresh my mind on the subject areas I’m currently diving in, it’s like a useful database of information you can use as a helpful reference tool.

It’s often updated to keep current and up-to-date which is important as the web constantly changes.

Unlock Discounts

TBS comes with a host of different discount exclusively for members of TBS called perks, I’ve used my TBS membership to get discounts on past TBEX (Travel Blog Exchange event for Travel bloggers) events, PTBA membership (Professional Travel Bloggers Association) and even Hostgator, 99 designs, Wootheme and hotspot shield. All additional costs, many Travel bloggers pay for when starting out, by having TBS membership, you will unlock all these services you would use anyway, but at a discount, one other way to reduce the membership fee.

Job boards

TBS has its own internal job board section, if a travel blogger is overloaded with work or has completed some work with a client and they want to network with other travel bloggers its posted here for others to see and apply for the role that’s offered. Great way to pick up additional work or off load what you can’t do to someone else, it’s a help you, helping me environment that works very well.

Useful Webinars worth listening too.

There are over 30 top quality webinar interviews with leading travel bloggers that offer helpful advice on how they do what they do. If like me you love podcasts, then this is an additional bonus of why you should become a member. One Webinar is hosted by Nomadic Matt all about how he uses SEO as an example, there are 30+ more of them, all useful and worth your investment in time to understand how the pro’s do what they do.

The most valuable reason for joining Travel Blog Success: Private Groups.

By Becoming a member of Travel Blog success you will be unlocking a whole network of valuable private groups that only members can join, Why is this important? When you have a lot of free options out there I’ve found locked down private groups add more value as you have to take a step to enter such domains.

Yes, you might see that as elitist, but if there is one thing I hate, that’s spam, constant silly questions and Ray-ban discounts, if you’re in an exclusive, well moderated, controlled group, I feel the quality improves as you can put the time in and you get stuff out, not a constant stream of junk, your building quality over time.

Travel blog Success Private Facebook group

I’m on multiple Travel, blogging, Facebook groups that cover a range of different travel blogging related subjects and to be honest the Travel Blog Success private Facebook group is the one I get the most value out of. First its small, its over 600 members, but under 1,000 and have a wide range of members at different levels. From professionals to those starting out, which is great as you can ask questions and get a great response. The admins do a great job at moderating the posts, introducing new members, making the rules clear and hosting online events and discussions, it’s perfect for finding out answers to questions you might have and then helping others with questions you can answer. It’s a perfect ecosystem and is way better than all the other Facebook groups I’m a part of which in my opinion, anyone can join as this doesn’t create a helpful environment.

Travel blog success Triberr private group

Triberr is dead, but within Travel Blog success private Triberr group I get a lot out of it. This is because you must share others work every few weeks so your content gets shared and you can share good quality content from others with your readers. If you don’t share then you get kicked out, this is great as before I was part of triberr group where I was sharing, but nothing was happening, now in this closed group it works well and with the moderation and closed aspect, it works wonders.

Travel blog success private Slack group

Travel blog success as its own private slack group, I use Slack already for the Digital Nomad list, adding this on as an addition was no worries at all and the slack group is being used already for a monthly reading club where members vote monthly on what book we should read and discuss, this is encouraging to motivate me to read books that are Travel Blogging relationships and discuss with other like minded individuals on what we thought.

Travel Blog Success Secret Forum

The TBS forum can be located in the membership login section and was the first way that we used to communicate with other members, this has slowly shifted over the Facebook Group as its easier to ask questions there. Still the Forum has been around for many years and contains a lot of useful knowledge from the earlier years, you can easily search for Frequently asked questions here which might be easier to find what you’re looking for.

You can also use the forum as a sort of time capsule to set your goals. Many first time bloggers like to write up their goals which they want to achieve over the next year, it’s fun to put it here, then come back a year later and see if you’ve managed to reach them. You can go back to the start of this thread and see many successful Travel bloggers here, posts their own goals when they first started, encouraging to see and reminds you that we all have to start from somewhere!

Travel Blog Success Social spread sheet

When you become a member of TBS you can place your information on the membership spread sheet. This allows new members to see other members Facebook, twitter, blog link, email amongst other useful information. I notice often that when new members sign up to TBS they start to follow my Social media links, perfect for self promotion and to connect with other members of the community.

Travel Blog Success Twitter group

When you Sign up TBS has its own Twitter group which your Twitter handle will be added to, this is a great way for other Twitter users to find you on twitter and follow you, I notice a few follows from this group each month. Again, a great way to connect with other members.

What if you are already a successful travel blogger and don’t see much value in the course?

Ok, it makes sense, the course it might not be of any value to you at all because you already have success, but then you might already easily have the money to afford membership and you can still unearth some value in the membership as a whole.

Just take all the private groups you will have access to by becoming a member, that alone is worth the membership price. You can also go through the course like an espresso train and maybe spot areas you haven’t looked into yet and might find some small value in the course still by refreshing some areas.

The Discounts as well will deduct a lot of the membership costs so it might be of some value still.

Again, it’s up to you if you want to make the jump as a successful travel blogger, it’s still a fun group to be a member of and I still enjoy it and get value out of it even though I rarely use the course side of the program, the other areas such as the job board I use frequently from time to time, still some value in it.

Should you become a Travel Blog success member?

(It’s great to have a travel blog that helps to support what you love.)

• If you have started travel Blogging and determined to take your Travel blog to the next step, then the Travel Blog success course will totally help you to get there.

• If you are looking for a platform to network and get to know other Travel bloggers, again, sign up to Travel Blog Success.

• If you want to find Travel blogging jobs, discover a host of interviews with top travel bloggers and a wide selection of discounts, then Travel blogging success is for you.

• If you’re looking for something to chuck your money at in hope of success, I’m sorry Travel blog success is not for you.

It’s that simple, if you put the work in you will get a lot out of if it.

As Stated above if you have come to the conclusion from my blog post that you would like to join me and many other travel bloggers and become a member of the Travel Blog Success community, I would be delighted to welcome you on board and you can sign up via my affiliate link here: Click here to sign me up to Travel Blog success!

Thank you for reading and I hope it’s helped you to make a decision on becoming a member of Travel blog success. It’s not for everyone, It worked well for me and I’ve definitely been able to get out the value from my initial investment that I put into my TBS membership.

Be sure to say hi in the private TBS Facebook group and talk to you soon, Awesome! Best of luck with your journey into Travel Blogging.