Earning Money From a Travel Blog – 5 Proven Ways

 

It’s been a long year and a half, no travels as much as we want to, no new photos to share, no new stories to tell of a city recently visited. All we have are memories, and the photos we took as part of that reality while enjoying a city many miles away from home. But don’t fret, today is the best day to start blogging about your travels and earn from it!

Often we are asked, is it legit, is earning money from a travel blog possible? Simple answer, yes. There are many ways to earn and you might find that different bloggers earn differently. Here’s how!

From your Blog

Finding your Niche

Each blogger is different, each traveller has his own preference, and that’s why there are a lot of travel blogs out there catered to the many audiences who like to read, get travel advice, or simply enjoy photos published online. When you narrow down your topic, you somehow become an expert on it, and the more you publish articles on your blog, the more it becomes an authority to a particular subject.

Finding a niche is like pinpointing one thing you enjoy while travelling. If you are passionate about coffee for example, you can center your travel blog on all the coffee shops you’ve visited when in a different city. Your audience will be coffeelovers who will look into your blog on the best coffee shops to visit when they plan to visit a certain place.

If you still doesn’t have a domain name, it is best to pick one that revolves around your niche. This is called branding and it will be the life of your blog for as long as it exists.

Start to Write

When writing a blog post, you have to address or answer a question that reader’s are curious about. Your article should provide solutions or give answers.

There is no set amount of words when you write a blog post, but make sure that you answer or give a solution on the earlier part of your article. People get bored and impatient if they find that the solution is after 5 paragraphs of reading.

You’ve probably heard about SEO (search engine optimization), and that’s one thing you have to implement  immediately on your very first blog post. While you write for your audience, you also need to consider being search engine-friendly so that your audience can find you easily.

Getting visible on search engines means you have high-quality content that users find useful, fast and easy to access content, and a secure website that people can trust. Work on these things to start with.

 

Pick Great Photos

No travel is complete without photos. Even if you use your phone camera, a point and shoot, or your bulky, complicated SLR, using those photos you took will make a blog post come alive. Photos also help in boosting up SEO, by filling in your “alt-text”, search engines can find your photos too.

Also, you can do a side hustle by selling your travel photos, making them to postcards, and other merch you can sell on different platforms, even on your blog.

Promote

Longtime marketer Sue Painter picked Youtube and Instagram as her favorite social media channels. To quote, “I know that some people read, some people listen, some people watch, so the more of that you can hit, the more the people you’re trying to serve will benefit.” As bloggers are different, so is the audience. Some wants to read, some wants to hear, others want to see. That’s why it’s important to have a presence in different platforms. Learn how to promote your blog posts and see which one resonates with your audience.

Collaborate

When you finally establish your blog, brands will notice you and contact you for paid or gifted collaborations. This could start from a gifted travel bag,  to comfortable shoes you can wear while walking in a city, to a 3-night hotel stay, to a full free tour of a city inclusive everything. Depending on a blog’s reach, travel-related establishments will provide you with cash or kind in exchange of reviews.

Become an Affiliate

Prior to lockdowns and restrictions, the travel industry  was Canada’s number one service export, totaling 3% of total exports, generating $105 billion in revenue, and accounting for 1.8 million direct and indirect jobs. So yeah, that’s a big pie you can get a good slice from.

Affiliate marketing is an  arrangement where an online retailer pays commission to an external website (blog for one) for traffic or sales generated from its referrals. Affiliate marketing in tourism mean promoting hotel stays, tours, restaurants, even city passes. And yes, people buy these things continuously. Thankfully, bloggers can easily input a code on their blog that companies can track and translate to money for bloggers.

Ads

There are many ad platforms that a blogger can join where ads can be displayed on their sites for a compensation. While not all established bloggers would recommend this – issue regarding site speed and such, it’s up to you to include or not. It could be extra money too, but research first which the best one is.

Self-publish

Your blog is by extension, ans expression of yourself. You can write anything that resonates with you, you can use it to raise awareness on issues you are passionate about, and you can use it to self-publish your own book. Yes, you can collate your best articles and publish it into a book – amazon is your friend, and you can self-publish without having to pay a lot of costs.

Earning Money From a Travel Blog: Takeaways

With the world going online everything, earning money online is not an impossible thing, earning money from a travel blog particularly is doable.

1. Collaborate with brands that reflects your standards and visions.

2. Become an affiliate to travel companies, hotels, or other retailers related to travel and tourism.

3. Serve ads on your blog.

4. Self publish your own book for passive income.

5. Sell your travel photos – print them as postcards, and/or other merchandise. Sell them on online stores or your own marketplace.