Look no further if you’re looking for suggestions on how to earn money as a travel blogger. Anyone who is willing to put in the time and effort can make money online by maintaining a travel blog. You will discover all the ways to monetize your travel website in this post, including affiliate marketing, advertising, sponsored content, selling your own goods, and more.
When starting a blog, a lot of new bloggers are concerned about their potential for income. The fact is that a variety of things affect income. The strategies used to monetize content as well as the quantity and quality of traffic are the most crucial factors.
Naturally, your niche and seasonality are equally important. go bloggers, for instance, make more money in the summer because so many people go then. Additionally, good SEO can change the game.
However, let’s discuss some numbers. According to Nick Wharton of Goats on the Road, newbie bloggers who put in daily effort can earn $500 per month after just six months. You can be making $1,000 to $1,500 per month after a year. If you work consistently for two or three years, you can be making $5,000 or more each month. Currently, Nick makes between $15,000 and $35,000 every month from affiliate marketing, advertisements, and press collaborations.
Contrary to appearances, the market is not oversaturated with blogs and competitors. The market is overflowing with openings. Everyone who is willing to put in the effort will have access to sufficient resources and partnerships. If you can establish authority in your market, differentiate yourself from the competitors, and diversify your income streams, the sky is the limit.
Even if you’ve only recently launched your travel blog, you can already start making money from it. You need the traits of an entrepreneur, not an employee, such as patience, self-control, and mentality.
You need an audience, the right partners, and maybe even a product or service to make money from your travel blog. Your first goal should be the reader’s requirements and making your endeavor successful, not making money.
1. Contextual advertising
One of the most common ways to monetize travel blogs is contextual advertising. Contextual advertising networks, like Google Ads and its competitors, function as middlemen between webmasters and advertisers and pay website owners a portion of the advertiser’s advertising spend.
Networks for contextual advertising eliminate the requirement for the website to find an ad buyer. You only need to place the code; the network will take care of finding advertising and managing payments.
The amount of the commission is not made public, but it is clear that the blog owners do not receive the majority of the money. For travel bloggers, this is one of the biggest drawbacks of contextual advertising.
Income from contextual advertising depends on:
- Geography of visitors. Clicks of users from European countries are more profitable than users from undeveloped countries.
- The number of advertisers. If there is higher competition for the ads place then it’s a higher cost for one click.
- Seasonality. For example, after the New Year holiday, webmasters see serious earning deficits.
- Ads placement. The place where the banner is placed affects the number of impressions and clicks, and this affects the total revenue.
If you choose this method of travel blog monetization, you’ll constantly be conducting experiments with ads placement – where and which ad units you place. Also, don’t forget to test new networks, because contextual advertising is not limited to Google Adsense, there is also PropellerAds Media, Media.net and others.
2. Direct advertising
The process of working with direct advertising is one of the most lucrative and challenging methods for monetizing a website. Your travel blog needs to be well-known to generate income in this manner. A lot of traffic is required.
Here are some illustrations of how direct advertising functions:
- Flight ticket websites can sell ad space for a company that sells suitcases.
- Solo-traveler blogs can sell ad space for travel insurance agencies.
- A blog about budget traveling can sell ad space for banks that offer credit cards.
Young blogs and unpopular websites are, as usual, unsuitable for generating income from direct advertising. Try to get a direct advertiser if your daily traffic exceeds 1,000. Make a media kit to pique the interest of potential media buyers. Make sure to include a contact form on the page you create for advertising on your blog.
The level of income is based on how well-known the website is. If you have already attempted contextual advertising, direct selling ad space typically earns several times more revenue because there are no middlemen involved.
3. Affiliate marketing
Revenue sharing is the foundation of affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, you can get paid for specific actions like installing an app, signing up for a website, booking a hotel, and more.
Many bloggers that write about travel combine contextual or direct advertising with affiliate marketing. You can discover the appropriate offer to test for each travel blog. You could, for instance, add a search form for flights to a blog where readers may discuss their vacation plans and receive money for each ticket bought.
There are numerous affiliate programs available; for instance, GetYourGuide, RentalCars, and Booking.com all have affiliate programs. Through the Travelpayouts affiliate network, which has more than 30 distinct affiliates available, you can also join each of them.
Start your journey in affiliate marketing by learning if you are a total novice. There are both free and paid courses available that will walk you through numerous subjects. It’s time to take action once you’ve arm yourself with knowledge:
- Research and choose the offer
- Join the affiliate program
- Get affiliate tools
- Start promoting
Affiliate reviews will help you find the best options, but remember that high conversion is only possible if you are offering the right product to the right audience. Choose according to the needs of your audience and the conditions you get from the affiliate program.
The following tips will help you boost your earnings with affiliate tools:
- Add affiliate tools to blog pages naturally – search forms, links and other tools should be where people need them: i.e. It makes no sense to place the link before the article, just because it would appear higher.
- Make links visible in the text – they must be a different color than the main text. The reader must intuitively, and without straining, understand that this is a link.
- Make the audience interested in the service you promote – give the reader a reason to want to go. For example, first describe the problem in the text and then place a link as the solution.
- If you create your own creative, always add calls to action (CTA).
- Perform experiments – placement, texts, colors, etc. and look for whatever attracts attention and converts better.
The amount of revenue depends on your quality of traffic, the number of targeted actions, and the size of the commission. This is one of the rare cases when it isn’t necessary to rock a huge website with twenty thousand unique visitors a day to get tangible income.
4. Selling products or services
With affiliate marketing, you can earn even without a product. But, if you have something to offer your audience, use your blog as a marketplace. Here are a few ideas of what you can sell:
- Merch
- Travel advice
- Souvenirs from different countries
It can turn into a real business, which of course will constantly take your time. At least for processing orders and sending goods or providing services.
5. Selling digital products
Some travel bloggers find that selling digital things is the greatest way to make money. This can be automated, requiring simply system maintenance after initial setup.
Simple examples of items you can sell online are travel manuals or ebooks. For people who travel frequently and are knowledgeable about many nations, this is a fantastic alternative. You might engage a copywriter to assist you in creating the content to make the process simpler.
If you operate a blog using the WordPress content management system, you can create an online marketplace using ready-made solutions.
6. Sponsored posts
One of the first methods of monetizing blogs was through sponsored postings. The biggest motivation for writing guest posts is the constant desire for high-quality backlinks.
The cost of sponsored articles typically isn’t directly related to traffic, but rather to the domain’s authority rank, which indicates how helpful the link is for the buyer’s SEO.
You must locate buyers in order to profit from sponsored content. Make sure to provide your contact information on the page you create on your website indicating that you accept guest contributions. Instead of waiting around for applications, try looking for buyers on forums or through specialized services.
7. Native ads
If Google Adsense or other networks don’t accept your blog, native advertisements are a good substitute for contextual adverts. However, native advertisements can occasionally generate more revenue than contextual ads, particularly if the site’s primary audience is one that enjoys news or interesting data.
The attendance, geographic distribution of users, and click-through rate of the blocks all affect how much money is made. Because CPC varies among native ad networks, installing blocks of many systems can help you choose the most lucrative one.
8. Donations
Donations are a powerful form of monetization if you have a committed following. Request the audience’s support for your endeavor. Reviews from webmasters reveal that donations with a clear goal perform better than general donations. For instance, request funds for a new trip camera or travel arrangements to a different nation.
Make it easy for your audience to use this technique of travel blog monetization by including recurring payments and a variety of payment options.
9. Subscriptions
It’s one of the trickiest methods for making money from a travel blog. Access to your blog or a specific section of it might be sold. For instance, you might produce a collection of exclusive guides for various nations and charge a monthly fee.
To monetize travel blogs with paid content subscriptions, you must first build a very popular platform with premium content. Theoretically, people can purchase access to your travel recommendations or other distinctive information, but it’s really challenging to close a deal with subscriptions in the era of a ton of free content on the internet.
10. Flip your websites
Although it is not immediately obvious, selling a website is an excellent alternative for generating income from a travel blog. Some webmasters create new websites on a regular basis and then sell them. There are specific online markets for selling platforms, such Flippa.
Thus, income is huge and only received once. The cost of a travel blog is typically determined by a number of variables, one of which is the present income. Therefore, it’s crucial to efficiently monetize a vacation blog before selling it. The fee is often fixed at 15 to 25 months’ worth of salary.
11. Networking With Other Travel Bloggers
You can expand initiatives together, learn from other bloggers, and target larger audiences through networking. Being a successful travel blogger frequently depends on your network, or the people you know. You can increase your chances of finding out about new job prospects, market trends, and other things by just reaching out and keeping in touch.
Through cross-promotion, guest pieces, and other methods, networking also increases your readership. A certain approach to increase traffic quickly, conversions, and revenue is to reach a larger audience.
Don’t let insecurity stop you from networking if you are just getting started. Even from the very beginning of your adventure, you can make contacts. Here are some suggestions:
- Start commenting on other blogs. This will allow you to introduce yourself, build connections with other bloggers, and encourage them to check out your content. It is important to bring value in each comment and not spam just to take up space.
- Reply to newsletters from other bloggers. Blogging can be a lonely job from time to time, so many bloggers value receiving feedback from their audiences.
- Link to other blogs on your website. When creating content, you can sparingly share links to other blogs so your readers can find more relevant information and learn about great bloggers in your niche. Not only will you not lose your current readers, you will likely get contacted by some of the bloggers you referred to, as many publishers regularly monitor their backlink profile.
Risky monetization strategies, including click-under, iframe, or another, can increase your revenue. However, they might potentially put your project at risk. Consider the method’s endurance and safety as well as its current profitability when choosing a monetization strategy for travel blogs.
