How to Make Money from a Travel Blog
Traveling as a profitable job can seem like an impossible dream. But, in reality, it’s more attainable than you may think. The biggest step is ensuring you have a monetization plan. So, we will dive into that along with the best tips and tricks for how to make money from a travel blog.
Expenses
Before getting into how you can make money by being a travel blogger full-time, it’s important to understand how much you’ll be spending every month doing your job, traveling. Depending on what type of travel you’re doing, your expenses will obviously fluctuate from month to month. But it’s crucial to take into account where you plan to go and do before deciding if you are able to take the leap full-time. The good news is, you can start with as little budget as you need. Because where you travel and where you take your blog is truly up to you.
Monetizing your Blogs and Vlogs
There is no one-size-fits-all for monetizing your content, however, the most significant source of income will most certainly be ads. For many, it is a significant portion of their monthly and annual income. The best part about ads is that once you do the work, in the beginning, the income is passive. This means you make money while doing the dishes, running errands, and sleeping simply by people being on your site.
Ads
To get your ads up and running, you’ll need to sign on with an ad management network to incorporate into your blog. Remember, you probably will not make money overnight once deciding to include ads on your site. Blogging and creating content is a long game. If you put the right work in, you will see fruit from your labors! Several ad networks that are trusted by bloggers are Mediavine, AdMaven, Google Adsense, and more.
Affiliate Sales
In the same family as advertisements, affiliate sales have become one of the most popular ways to make money from a travel blog. What this means is if a website viewer clicks the link on the blog and buys it, the blogger gets a part of that sale. The best part is that the buyer does not pay any more to get the product, since the owner of the product is aiming towards a specific population by having the travel blogger post it in their content. It’s a win-win for everyone.
Sponsored Content
Different from advertisements and affiliate sales, sponsored content is another way to generate viewers from your site, guide them to a partner brand, and create a flow of income in the process. The difference is in the delivery. While ads and affiliate sale links are passive, sponsored ads are real-time work. Many travel bloggers have brands that they truly love. So they’ll use them on trips to partner with brands, creating content for certain products or lines. Some sponsored content variations are videos, blog posts dedicated to a product/brand, Instagram posts using or wearing the product, or mentioning it in a vlog.
Campaigns
While travel itself can be a lot of hard work, campaigns are one of the more difficult ways to create income once you have established yourself as a travel blogger. There are marketing goals and deliverables involved. This means there is a clear direction for the campaign but requires lots of dedicated hours. Many companies require a specific amount of posts, photos, videos, etc, when asking to partner for a campaign. This creates brand awareness and a relationship between the blogger and the brand. This is why many bloggers are so picky about their campaigns and sponsorships.
Wrap Up
There are plenty of answers to the question of how to make money from a travel blog. But you have to be willing to put in the work beforehand to get yourself to a place where the monetization plans will work. Now that we’ve gone over the most popular ways to monetize your travel blogging, you will be able to set out to find your income stream while traveling.
