Gridskipper

Travel blogs are one of the most common blog types . . . right behind high school sex fantasy diaries. And one would think travel blogs would be insanely popular, given that most everyone travels to some degree. But just like travel writing in general, there's a huge gulf between the number of people who travel and the number of people who care to read about travel. Even Gridskipper, a veritable colossus of travel blog traffic, is easily outmatched by blogs about cat pictures, salad recipes, or, say, knitting. On top of this handicap, the sad truth is that many, many travel blogs (amateur and professional alike) are shit. They wouldn't be readworthy if their subject concerned daily giveaways of gold bars. Fortunately, the reasons why travel blogs suck are very easy — often painfully easy — to comprehend.

1. You're a filthy backpacker. The Earth fairly swarms with your kind. If anyone wants to know what a backpacker thinks, all one need do is dangle an energy bar and a Lonely Planet guide outside the window of the nearest hostel, and a torrent of unsolicited opinion will issue forth in exchange. Ultimately, no one needs another narrative of buying legal pot in an Amsterdam coffeeshop. It's been done. We're aware.

2. You're an aspiring elitist. You blog the high life — eight-star hotels, private jets, Moleskine journals sheathed in lambskin cured in Champagne and gentle Tuscan sunlight. Yet you live in a studio apartment in New Jersey with your two cats and incidental coke habit. Sure, maybe you convinced a publicist to send you a bottle of designer vodka, but did that really warrant four posts on the subject?

3. You post too few photos. Readers unfortunate enough to stumble on your site are greeted with massive, impenetrable columns of text, at least a dozen stacked per page. Images, if any, are tiny thumbnails sent from your cellphone, and they depict either huge crowds of people that look like as colorful soup, or impressive world monuments reduced to 1:1,000,000,000 scale.

4. You post too many photos. Even a web browser on steroids buckles under the strain from your tumescent gallery page, with every picture uploaded directly from your high-res digicam. Visitors are thrilled to discover that the enormous image requiring twenty minutes to download and ten minutes of scrolling is actually a blurry portrait of a taco.

5. You post too many photos of yourself. Unless you're phenomenally attractive — and odds are, you ain't — placing yourself repeatedly in frame pleases no one but Mom, and even she's getting a little sick of it. Yes, it's fantastic to actually see you perched atop Chichen Itza, but in case you hadn't noticed it, there is no "u" in "photograph."

6. You post video clips of yourself as host of an imaginary travel show. Let me break it to you gently: You will never in a million years get a television deal. Not even a web television deal. You're not particularly good-looking (see #5), your voice is rather nasal, your delivery is wooden, and/or your ad-libbing is painfully awkward. What poor sap is holding the camera, anyway, for your pretend interview with the hapless kebab vendor? Is it an innocent passerby, or did you have the audacity to bring along a co-host?

7. You're on perpetual safari. Without generalizing, let's generalize by saying chances are good you happen to be a relatively secure citizen of a relatively prosperous nation. Ergo, you find it quite compelling to visit the less "fortunate" and communicate, soulfully through your blog, that you really dig what they're going through, man. Perhaps you're so enamored of the experience that you indulge in flirtations or intercourse with a local — that's a solid month of posts right there, guaranteed. But perhaps this is a harmless win for all concerned, as behind every introspective blog about the natural sensuality of the native people, there's at least one local who got to bang a tourist.

8. You repackage press releases. If you want to get newsy and post about a new venue, product, or event, by all means do so. But don't bother dressing it up in "commentary" unless you actually have something substantive to say. The only thing worse than weeding through a mountain of press releases is weeding through a mountain of eerily similar posts from the hundred blogs that all got the same email blast.

9. You swipe stories and don't linkback. Dick move.

10. You're not funny. Probably the most common problem and, unfortunately, incurable at present. But don't worry, you have lots of company. And if you can't be funny, try being mean. Works for me!