How to Set Up a Bikepacking Blog and Share Your Trips

Some of the best bikepacking content on the internet comes from regular riders documenting their trips on personal blogs. Trip reports with honest details about routes, conditions, gear choices, and the inevitable things that go wrong are genuinely useful to the community and create a lasting record of your own adventures. Starting a bikepacking blog is simpler than you might think, and it does not require any technical expertise.

Choosing a Platform

You have three main options for hosting your blog, and the right choice depends on how much control you want.

WordPress.com is the easiest all-in-one option. The free tier gives you a subdomain (yourblog.wordpress.com), basic themes, and enough storage for text and photos. The paid Personal plan ($4 per month) gives you a custom domain and removes ads. WordPress.com handles all the technical stuff. You just write.

Squarespace is a visual-first platform that produces attractive blogs without any design skill. Templates are polished, photo galleries look great, and the editor is intuitive. Plans start around $16 per month, which includes hosting and a custom domain. This is a good option if presentation matters to you and you are willing to pay for it.

Self-hosted WordPress (WordPress.org) gives you complete control. You need a hosting account (Bluehost, SiteGround, and similar services start around $3 to $5 per month) and a domain name. You install WordPress yourself, but most hosts make this a one-click process. The advantage is full control over design, functionality, and monetization. The trade-off is that you manage updates and security.

What to Write About

The most valuable bikepacking blog posts fall into a few categories:

Trip reports are the core content. Document a specific ride from start to finish. Include the route with distances, daily mileage, terrain descriptions, water sources, camping spots, and resupply points. Be honest about the difficulty, the weather, and what surprised you. Other bikepackers planning the same route will thank you for the specific details.

Gear reviews written after actual use carry far more weight than day-one unboxing reviews. After a week of rain on the Carretera Austral, you know whether that rain jacket actually works. Share what held up, what failed, and what you would swap next time.

How-to guides on topics like bike setup, navigation, nutrition, and route planning help newer bikepackers get started. Write the guide you wish you had when you were figuring things out.

Photography on the Trail

Your phone is a perfectly good camera for blog photography. The key is to actually stop and take photos. Set a rule for yourself: one photo per hour at minimum. Capture the landscape, your bike in context, camp setups, food, and the details that make each trip unique.

Shoot in the morning and evening for the best light. Midday sun washes out landscapes and creates harsh shadows. If you want to step up, a small mirrorless camera like the Fujifilm X-T30 or Sony A6400 adds minimal weight and delivers significantly better image quality, especially in low light.

Writing Tips for Trip Reports

• Write while the trip is fresh. Notes jotted each evening are more accurate than memories from two weeks later.
• Include specific details: distances, elevations, water source locations, campsite coordinates.
• Be honest about difficulty. Saying a route is easy when it is not helps nobody.
• Share what went wrong. Flat tires, wrong turns, and gear failures make for better stories and more useful information.
• Keep paragraphs short. Most people read blogs on phones.

Maps and Route Data

Embed maps and route data in your posts. Ride with GPS and Komoot both let you create routes that can be embedded directly in blog posts. This adds enormous value because readers can see the exact route, download the GPX file, and load it onto their own devices.

If you record your rides on Strava, link to the activity for elevation and distance data. For more detailed route information, export GPX files and host them for download.

Building an Audience

Bikepacking is a niche community, which is an advantage. Share your posts on Reddit (r/bikepacking), bikepacking forums, and social media cycling groups. Engage with other bloggers by commenting on their posts and linking to their content when relevant. The bikepacking community is collaborative, and genuine participation builds readership faster than promotion.

Consistency matters more than frequency. Publishing one quality trip report per month is better than posting daily filler content. People follow bikepacking blogs for substance, not volume.

Monetization (If You Want It)

Most bikepacking blogs do not generate significant income, and that is fine. If you do want to monetize, affiliate links to gear you genuinely use and recommend are the most natural fit. Amazon Associates and brand-specific affiliate programs pay a small commission on purchases made through your links.

Sponsored content from outdoor brands is possible once you build an audience, but keep it authentic. The bikepacking community is small enough that readers recognize and reject dishonest recommendations quickly.

Start your blog because you want to share your rides and contribute to the community. If it grows into something more, that is a bonus. The real value is having a permanent record of your adventures that you and others can revisit for years.