I started my travel blog in 2019 with no idea what I was doing, other than the fact that I was determined to replace my full-time job income one day.
I made my first $100 on my travel blog within 5 months, and income grew exponentially from there.
Within less than one year I was making more than $1000 per month.
13 months after I started my blog, the world changed in March 2020 (you know what happened there), and travel virtually stopped worldwide for over a year.
Despite this, I was still able to quit my full-time job in March 2022, 3 years after I began my blog.
In this post I’m giving you the exact outline of what I do to earn over $110,000 per year travel blogging.
You have the potential to make TONS more than that, but this method requires very few expenses to make this happen. You won’t have to spend a lot of money to make money.
This post contains affiliate links, meaning if you click through and make a purchase I may make a small commission. I only share information about things I know, love and trust!
8 Proven Methods to Make Money with Your Travel Blog
While there are dozens of ways you can monetize a travel blog and make a significant income, not all are created equal.
Some require more work than they’re worth.
Here are the exact things I do to make money travel blogging, all of which can be done by a complete beginner.
If I was able to self-teach myself without paying for expensive courses, so can you!
Here are my top tips and pieces of advice for making money from your travel blog, exactly the way I did it:
- Choose a Travel Topic That You Can Write in Depth About
- Learn Search Engine Optimization and Target Low Competition Keywords
- Work with a Premium Ad Agency
- Use Useful Affiliate Marketing
- Start a Complimentary YouTube Channel
- Sell Digital Products You Created
- Use Your Blog to Market Yourself as a Freelance Writer
- Use Social Media for Affiliate Marketing
Choose a Travel Topic That You Can Write in Depth About
The only way you will be able to launch a successful travel blog in 2023 and beyond is to choose a travel topic that you can cover in depth.
Choose something that you could immediately write 30 posts covering different pieces of information related to this topic.
This might seem daunting, but once you write 30 posts, you’ll have 50 more ideas to cover, and it grows from there.
Adding to this, you’ll need to choose a fairly specific topic within the travel niche.
Travel is a monster of a topic itself. Ideally, you should choose a destination or a demographic of travel interests. The more specific the better.
Your travel blog will only get attention from Google or other search engines if you have enough information on your blog as a whole to demonstrate that you’re an expert in this topic.
And that you have the relevant experience to go along with what you’ve written.
Want to know how to start a travel blog without actually traveling? I’ve got tons of blog post ideas for you here.
Read it here: How to Start a Travel Blog without Actually Traveling
Choose a Specific Niche Within Travel
Travel blogs have saturated the internet, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for you. You just have to find a specific niche within the broad and far reaching category.
But you can’t just choose anything.
To make money from this, not only does it have to be a topic that people are searching for, it has to be a topic that advertisers want to buy ads for.
To make money the quickest and easiest way, you must choose niches that are profitable.
Use a Niche Finding Tool
The easiest and fastest way to help you find the most profitable niches is by using a new tool called NicheFinder.io
This provides you a massive library of domains (websites) related to whatever topic you search for, travel for example.
From this you can see how many visitors per month this website gets and which ad network the website is on.
What this tells you is which sites are making the most money (based on how many monthly searches they receive).
From here, you can determine whether your travel topic is profitable or not.
What It Means to Cover an Entire Sub-Niche Within Travel
Whatever you end up writing and creating content about, you need to establish topical authority.
This means demonstrating to search engines that you can answer any and every query that someone might have about that topic.
For example, you’ve chosen to launch a travel blog aimed at people over the age of 50.
You’ll want to cover all the destinations that they might be interested in.
But you’ll also need to cover specific posts about travel insurance, as this will be an important topic for them. You might also consider writing posts about traveling with grandchildren, or destinations that are known for Pickleball.
To take it a step further, write more than one post about the best travel insurance for people over 50.
Write posts for travel insurance for those with a specific medical condition, or for long term travel, like Snowbirds.
Write a post about the best place to travel for Snowbirds from the northern US, and then cover everything about that destination.
This includes the best neighborhoods to stay in, the best long term rentals, things to do, where to eat, etc.
Learn Search Engine Optimization and Target Low Competition Keywords
Now that we’ve established choosing a specific niche to target within travel, we need to identify topics that you can actually rank on Google for.
When someone types a query into Google, we want you to be one of the top 3 search results.
This is the best and most efficient way for people to find your blog. This results in search traffic which allows you to make money from display ads on your site.
To do this, you’ll need to find low-competition longtail keywords.
These are keywords and search topics that don’t have much written about them from other blogs.
To identify low competition keywords, if you Google something and the first several results are from forums like TripAdvisor, Quora or Reddit, or from Pinterest search results, you’ve hit the jackpot!
This means that the only information about this topic is found in forums, and not found elsewhere on other blogs.
Here’s my easy step-by-step guide to SEO specifically for travel bloggers.
How to Find Low Competition Keywords for Your Travel Blog
But how do you find these goldmine search terms? You’ll need to invest in a keyword research tool.
Unfortunately, the blogging world is ultra saturated, and travel blogs are one of the most popular topics in the blogging community these days.
For months I tried to get by without paying for a keyword research service. Don’t make my mistakes.
Any blog that’s getting to the top of the Google search results is using a keyword tool. Without one, it will be almost impossible to do this.
Once I started using tools like RankIQ and KeySearch, my pageviews doubled almost overnight.
Using RankIQ
The best keyword finder tool out there right now is RankIQ.
Currently, there are over 63000 low competition search terms that have been identified for the travel niche.
This software is one of the most user friendly ways to quickly and easily identify low hanging fruit for terms you can rank for.
This piece of software has a team of researchers that are constantly working to identify low-competition phrases that a new blog can rank for.
It doesn’t require any thinking and it displays pages and pages of terms that have little competition.
Using Keysearch
Another way to find terms is to plug search terms into a keyword research tool and do a deep dive into finding related words from your original search to determine the easier phrases to rank for.
I use KeySearch because it’s only $11 per month, so it’s not a huge investment.
And I’ve been able to find dozens of keywords that have brought me to the top of Google results within days.
How I Use Keysearch to Find Low Competition Keywords
Once I make a list of websites in the travel niche that I’ve decided on (using NicheFinder), I visit each website individually.
I plug the URL into the Explorer tab, and then click the result that shows me the top keywords this page is ranking for.
This method gives me hundreds of keyword ideas every time I do this.
It also helps filter out keywords that I wanted to write about, but saw that there was ultimately too much competition.
And therefore, I would never be able to rank, which means there’s no point in writing about it.
Putting It All Together
Once you’ve identified some low competition keywords within your niche and sub-niches, the second most important part is optimizing each article in a way that pleases both Google (search engines) and real people.
Travelpayouts is the best free resource for this and offers dozens of free courses written specifically for travel bloggers who want to learn SEO and increase their income.
Work with a Premium Ad Agency
After you’ve decided on your niche topic, and you’ve written dozens of blog posts, you’ll start to see traffic rolling in.
These are visits to your website from Google searches. Once you reach a certain number of pageviews or sessions per month, you can apply to work with an ad agency.
They will work with you to put display ads on your website, and then you get paid each month!
Display ads are where most travel bloggers make their money. And the best part is that once you’re making money through ads on your website, it’s mostly passive income.
Once you have a significant amount of traffic (25,000 pageviews for example), you can expect to make anywhere from $1000 to 4000 usd per month.
And it only goes up from there.
Ezoic
First, don’t worry about applying for display ads until you’re at 10,000 monthly visits.
Until then, keep building your website with more content.
Once you’re close to 10,000 monthly visitors, you can start to work with a company called Ezoic, the leading ad agency for small websites.
Mediavine
Once you hit 50,000 monthly sessions, you can apply to the Mediavine ad agency.
Here you’ll receive higher RPMs and a higher percentage of overall ad revenue.
AdThrive
And once you reach 100,000 pageviews, you can apply to work with AdThrive, a premium ad agency.
With this agency, you’ll see higher RPMs with fewer ads on your website.
Use Affiliate Marketing for Travel Products and Services
Before you qualify for ads on your website, you can make money on your travel blog through affiliate marketing.
You can start doing this as soon as you have a few blog posts published.
This means that you place affiliate links for products and services in your blog posts and if a reader clicks that link and ends up making a purchase, you’ll get a small commission.
For travel blogs, the best types of affiliate programs are hotels, excursions or experiences, products like travel gear or luggage, rental cars and travel insurance.
For example, you write a guide about the best hotels in Manhattan.
Each hotel you recommend would not just be a link to their hotel website, it would be an affiliate link to where the reader could book that hotel.
For new travel blogs, affiliate marketing is the fastest way to earn money before you qualify for an ad network.
Start a Complimentary YouTube Channel
Another great way to boost your revenue as a travel blogger is to start a YouTube channel in your same niche.
Adding a YouTube channel to my repertoire as a travel blogger started generating an extra $2000 per month after only 4 months.
This is because you can become monetized with Google Adsense once you reach 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time.
Travelpayouts is one of my favorite travel affiliate marketing platforms. Within it, it houses multiple affiliate programs aimed specifically at travel bloggers.
You’ll find hotel booking websites like Booking, tour programs like Viator, rental car programs and more.
Through Travelpayouts you can even get paid when you refer someone to Tripadvisor. This is easy money!
Learn more or sign up for Travelpayouts here.
Creating videos about your blog posts not only adds authority to the information you’re providing, it helps you build an audience quicker.
Sell You Services or Digital Products You Created
The key to making big money with your travel blog is to have multiple revenue streams. It’s not advisable to rely one type of income stream.
In addition to working with ad networks and affiiliate marketing, another one of the best ways to make money as a travel blogger is to sell services you provide or a product you create.
For example, you could charge someone for a curated and customized itinerary based on their needs.
Or maybe you offer to find a perfect hotel for someone for a small fee.
Even better, create a product and sell it on your website. This way, you create one product which could be sold hundreds or thousands of times.
Here are some examples of a product you could sell on your travel blog:
Write an ebook about your best travel hacking tips for getting free flights with credit card points;
Design a packing checklist template;
Design detailed itineraries for destinations that you know well;
Create travel guides for specific types of traveler or destinations;
Build a course about how you find cheap business class flights.
Use Your Blog to Market Yourself as a Freelance Writer
You can easily make money as a freelance writer with your travel blog.
Even if you aren’t getting significant traffic, your travel blog stands as a great example of your work.
Once you have several well-written articles, you can start to apply for freelance writing gigs and use your blog as your resume.
This is one of the best ways to make money early on as a travel blogger.
While your website sits and marinates and waits for Google to start sending you traffic, you can get paid immediately from freelance jobs.
Another way is by writing posts for other travel blogs who are hiring writers.
Some bloggers will pay up to $50 or more per blog post, so if you can churn out several of these a month, that’s an easy extra few hundred dollars in your pocket.
Work With Tourism Boards
Tourism boards or destination marketing organizations (DMOs) work with travel writers and influencers to market and promote their destination.
Once you have an established travel blog, or at least several well-written posts with high-quality images, you can start to reach out to these agencies for press trips.
Sometimes it might just be a few free hotel nights, or it could be an entirely curated itinerary that you receive.
Get Paid to Make Social Media Posts
There is so much potential to make extra money through your social media posts.
From TikTok videos to reels on Instagram and Facebooks, the possibilities are endless.
Short form vertical video continues to grow as one of the most consumed forms of media, and brands will pay big money for something of high quality.