
Learning how to travel and blog for money is a dream.
I wrote this post to help travelers make this dream a reality and to do it as efficiently as possible.
Most people want to travel the world to experience new things and learn about different cultures, but few are able to create a lifestyle based on travel.
Want to learn how to travel and blog and earn money while you’re at it?
Or do you have a blog and need to turn it into a cash machine to finance even more trips? Then continue reading this article.
How to Travel and Blog for Money?
We analyzed the websites of various popular travel bloggers, and now we’ll take a closer look at how they do it.
If they can do it, anyone can.
As it turns out, creating a travel blog is remarkably easy but not many people earn money from their blogs. They simply write about their travels.
And writing about your travels is great but if you could get paid to do it, that would be even better.
There are thousands of travel blogs out there that do not bring in a single cent.
Why?
It’s simple.
They didn’t turn their blog into a business.
And that’s where we’ll start, how to turn your blog into a business.
Turn Your Blog Into a Full-Time Business:
In simple terms, a business is anything that brings in cash, and there’s no reason a travel blog can’t be turned into a business.
So if you already have a travel blog that gets a decent amount of traffic but you haven’t been able to earn money from it, this section is for you.
With just a few simple changes, a travel blog can be turned into an excellent source of income.
If your totally new to blogging, check out our guide to blogging.
1. Promote Affiliate Products on Your Blog:
Not sure what to promote?
One solution would be to head on over to Clickbank and hit the “Travel” section, or click this link.
And there’s a list of products that you can promote. Make sure you research whatever you promote and that’s it’s something beneficial to your website audience.
Travel guides tend to do quite well.
Product Reviews Work Great:
One thing that you can do to bring in some commissions would be to write a review about one of the products in the category mentioned earlier.
Then, include an affiliate link at the end of the review and use a grabbing call to action to encourage your viewer to click on your link.
If you write a detailed and unbiased review, and if the product is legitimate and helpful, most people will click the link, and you’ll earn some fast affiliate commissions.
In fact, that’s one simple strategy that you can use to turn your travel blog into a source of income.
You don’t need to be a “Sell Out” but the simple act of publishing a review between your regular posts can bring in a lot of cash.
Target Travel Related Products with Amazon:
You can also target travel related products and link them to Amazon Associates. Although Amazon has lower commissions than most affiliates (between 4% – 8%), Amazon tends to convert more sales.
And that’s cash you can use to fund even more travels!
On that topic, there are other – physical – products that you can promote as an affiliate too.
For example, consider reviewing a travel backpack from Amazon, or any other travel related product, and include your affiliate link.
For more information on how to make money from Amazon, read this article.
Take a look at the products that you use during your travels. Can you promote them as an affiliate? I’m sure you can!
2. Collect Email Addresses from Your Blog:
In other words, build a list. If you haven’t heard this before.. The Money Is In The List..
Building a list in the travel niche is easy because there are a lot of people who are eager to learn more about different countries and vacation ideas.
But a lot of travel bloggers fail to build a list and they miss out a lot of potential leads.
How to build your list?
Give away a free eBook, service, or something to get sign ups.
If you don’t want to write an eBook, one idea could be to compile your most popular articles and turn that into an eBook.
Or even a simple call to action such as, “Subscribe for more travel stories!” can be enough to build a list.
The point is that you need to collect people’s contact information so you can send them your articles later, and those are people you can send your promotional posts as well.
So don’t forget to collect those leads! We use Thrive Architect to collect all of ours and they’re awesome!
3. Advertise a Service from Your Blog:
The bloggers who make a full-time income from their blog offer a few different services, the money comes in from a few different streams.
Besides promotion affiliate products, it’s also a good idea to offer other services.
What can you do?
Well, one idea could be to offer a freelance writing service.
Since you already have a blog about your travels, chances are your writing skills are decent.
There are a lot of other bloggers and websites that need decent travel writers and their editors are always on the lookout for more article ideas.
Create a new page on your travel blog where you offer your services as a writer. This can be all it takes to bring in some clients and cash.
And you can always outsource when the workload gets too stressful using services like Fiverr.
But you can offer other services too, it all depends on your skill set.
4. Write a eBook, Sell it Online!
Writing a book is probably the best way to make money from a blog because it establishes you as an authority and also brings in a nice stream of cash.
Most travel bloggers have a book for sale, and if you travel a lot, it shouldn’t be difficult to come up with some book ideas, as you have plenty of stories to tell.
If you’re going to write a book, I recommend giving it away for free for the first couple of weeks to build a list and collect feedback.
You can choose to either publish the book on your website directly, or use Amazon’s self-publishing service.
If you want want to use Amazon, read this article about how to make money selling books on Amazon.
5. Network with Other Bloggers:
There are tons of travel bloggers that you can network with to send even more traffic to your website.
How do you network with bloggers?
It’s simple.
- Follow them on social media.
- Share their articles.
- Leave comments on their articles.
- Get in contact with them.
You can even write articles and link to other travel bloggers, it’s an awesome way to network and make new friends.
How can you benefit from networking with other bloggers?
Well, if you do online favors for them, they’ll likely return the favor, and that means more traffic to your website.
So it’s always a good idea to look for other bloggers and network with them.
You can also write guest posts on other blogs for even more exposure.
Design Your Blog for Max Conversions?
So we mentioned four ways to make money from your website, but now we need to learn how to boost conversions so we can turn your website into a full-time business.
For maximum revenue, aim to complete all four of the tasks mentioned earlier, as that not only will make your website look professional, but it will also bring in a lot more cash.
Here’s some other great tips…
1. Pick a Clean and Responsive Theme:
With WordPress, it’s easy to find responsive themes, and many of them are free too.
In fact, the default theme sometimes is enough for small-time websites.
Wealthy Affiliate (Worlds #1 Online Internet Marketing/Business Training Center) has an amazing website-creation service, and all their themes are super slick and responsive.
Their website builder SiteRubix has several cool functions that improves your ability to rank your travel blog posts naturally in search engines like Google, YouTube, Bing, etc..
Feel free to read our review of their website builder – SiteRubix for more details.
2. Build Awesome Opt-in’s and Landing Pages:
You’ll find increased sales and email opt-in conversions when you’ve got a set of powerful lead-gen tools.
For me personally, I’ve tried Lead Pages, ClickFunnels, and Thrive Architect. The best value and results have come from using Thrive.
Plus you can create what’s called A/B tests and get statistical data for what sales forms covert better.
Check out our Thrive Architect review right here.
3. Make Sure The Most Important Parts of Your Website are Seen FIRST!
In other words, the areas of your website that you want to draw attention to should be the first thing that people see when the page loads.
For example, if you wrote a book, the cover of the book should be on the top right sidebar or within the main menu at the top.
It should be visible as soon the page loads. Something like this…
Likewise, if you want to direct people to your sign-up form, keep it somewhere near the top of the website.
The top of the website is the “Hottest” area because it loads first so it’s the first thing that people see.
Also, Optimize your Website from Day 1:
Travel blogs usually include a lot of pictures, and those pictures take up bandwidth.
Edit your pictures before you upload them and crop them to reduce their size.
You can also use image compressing tools to further reduce the size of pictures to increase website speed.
Read this post to learn how to find and optimize all your website images.
Travel Blog Tips To Dominate Your Niche:
Most bloggers either write about the first thing that pops into their head or the last trip they went on.
Though that strategy can work, it also leaves a lot to chance.
It’s like traveling without a map, internet access, or basic common knowledge of where you are traveling to, hear me out.
Maybe you think a certain trip is interesting but other people might not have the same opinion.
Smart Bloggers Research Keywords:
It’s much better to research article ideas, and one way to do that is to use my favorite keyword research tool.
Look for keywords that are not so competitive and have a decent amount of traffic, even if the traffic is in the double digits it could be worth it.
But don’t worry!
You can still write about your last adventure.
But now you can find keywords to include to bring in even more traffic.
For example, let’s say that I just went to Thailand and I wanted to write an article about my trip for my travel website.
First, I’ll head over to Jaaxy and create a free account.
Then, I’ll type in a generic keyword, such as “Things to do in Thailand”.
As you can see, immediately we see a few good keywords to target.
In fact, all these keywords are decent, and it should be easy to get our article to the top results of search engines like Google.
Personally, I would target the fourth result, “fun things to do in Thailand”.
Why? The QSR (Keyword Phrase Competition) is low at 57 and the SEO score is 92 (The Higher The Score, The Easier To Rank).
Need more keyword research info, read this post to understand the simple subject of keyword research.
So now you can go ahead and write about your trip, but now you have some keywords to include.
Location Keywords Rank Well:
With the next post you create, narrow it down to the specific city or area that you visited.
Finding a very specific keyword to target is awesome because – most of the time – there’s no competition, and you can easily dominate the search engine results.
So it’s always important to drill down and find a really specific keyword to target in your articles.
Easy, right?
So if you go ahead and write an article targeting the keyword above, that will bring in more traffic to your website.
That’s targeted traffic that will convert into sales if you followed our four tips mentioned earlier.
Or use the same method I use with every post I create to rank content quickly. It’s my Free eBook on how to target traffic, place keywords, and dominant your niche.
One of the things I love most about travel writing is that you can include a lot more detail in your articles because you have been to that place.
You have a lot of material to work with and you can also include pictures to enhance the reading experience.
In other words, everything you need to make fun and interesting content is right in front of you.
And people love fun and interesting content.
With this strategy, it’s possible to satisfy that craving for adventure while also making money at the same time.
Blog and Traveling for Profit Conclusion:
We discussed a lot of points in this article, but the main takeaway is that if you want your blog to make money, then you need to treat it like a business.
Thankfully, turning a blog into a business only requires a few small changes, nothing drastic.
You can still maintain you creative nature, while making money. Not a bad thing.
What can do you do to earn more? Change your site to bring in more leads and improve conversions?
And if you haven’t started a blog already, then don’t worry, it’s not too late! It also has never been easier to setup a website!
Don’t wait for someone to steal your ideas… You can start working on your new travel blog in the next few minutes.
Thanks for taking the time to read this article about how to travel and blog for money. I hope you enjoyed it.
Until next time.
amaze to read your article. i want to know more about it specifically about earning money through traveling blog. is it necessary that we can only earn through traveling blogs? if no! then how could i start earning through other blogs?
please guide me if you know anything about it.. 🙂
Hi Rabia,
Happy to help. So what we’re talking about here is mostly affiliate marketing through a niche website.
So your website could be about anything, it doesn’t have to be about travel.
The key is to pick a niche you are passionate about. It could be a hobby, something you know well (better than others) or even anything that you want to learn about.
Then the concept is simple. Bring in traffic, build helpful content and help your niche audience with something. Then you need to find at least one product that is beneficial to your niche audience.
You take that traffic and funnel it to the product. Affiliate marketing is easy cause it’s commission based, like a referral fee, and there’s virtually no risk.
The key is creating your niche site/blog correctly right from the start.
The other key is having simple instructions to keep your moving as your building and to have help when you need it.
For that, I recommend you take the same training that’s 1000’s of people just like me took to make full time income/passive income online.
Get started with Wealthy Affiliate and then just learn and build. You got all the tools you need at WA’s training center.
Hope to see you on the inside!
Todd
What a great post, Todd! Love all your ideas for making money from a travel blog. There are a couple of points that I think are very important, that is treat it like a business and the other is keyword research.
When you decide that you want to earn money from your travel blog you must be ready to put in the work. It will require a lot of time and determination.
Unfortunately most bloggers will probably give up before they start earning any money.
It’s very easy to spend your time writing an article without first seeing what words will be easy to rank for.
I’m sure most travel bloggers don’t understand the importance of keyword research and consequently spend their time writing articles that no one will ever see.
This shows just how important an education in online marketing can be. A training platform like Wealthy Affiliate is a one stop solution for everything you need – site builder, managed hosting, keyword tool and incredible support.
I’m certain any aspiring travel bloggers would be much better prepared after going through the training there.
Thanks for this Todd, I’m sure many will be pleased to find out how to travel and blog.
I hope so Peter. This is one commonality I found while traveling and blogging from Colombia.
I also have a guest home there and would meet so many travel blogger wannabe’s and none of them understood this (meaning keyword research).
Even when I would point this out, most where a bit stubborn to open up and learn. And even give them examples of my rankings for specific targeted keyword phrases. (Click the link to get my Free eBook to learn about keywords, placement, and SEO secrets 😉
There was one German couple who was already very successful and they got it. They actually gave me a few good suggestions to improve my site at the time.
I think this is a bit ironic because you’d think most travelers are open to learning new info, but most were pretty stubborn thinking they would rank because they were targeting specific “local” locations. And while this can happen, it makes all the difference by choosing the right keywords.
Thanks for your feedback Peter and good to hear from you.
Todd
I really enjoyed this article. It is very informative. I already have a website (very new) and the only niche I’m working on at the moment is helping people from my country create online businesses. I have travelled once out of the country, loved it so much that I would love to see more of the world. After that, I’ve just been coming up with excuses why I can’t travel, mostly related to finance.
I would like to start a travel blog and travel more. How do I get started?
Hi Roweida,
The online business niche is pretty competitive. However, if you’re writing in your own language and there is a significant amount of interest, you could really do well do to the low level of competition.
If you want to focus more on a travel blog, then you still want to define your niche. My best recommendation on how to get started is to start taking daily classes at Wealthy Affiliate.
They provide free cloud hosting, so that would save you some money and they have all the training needed to develop small niche sites to gigantic authoritative niche sites.
How big you grow your online business depends on you. Take it like a college education and stay consistent with it on a daily basis.
If you go this route, you’ll be amazed at what you can create. Once your site is bringing in consistent cash, it’s easy to travel and blog at the same time.
Thanks,
Todd
Thanks for the article. I have always been fascinated by travel blogs, but I’ve never really imagined creating my own. I like how you pinpoint the goal of making profit. Of course, we make blogs because we love our niche but making a profit is the ultimate goal. Time to start making travel guides!
Nice Alex,
I’m glad you’ve gleaned some new info from our post. I think if you follow the outlined steps in this post you’ll be way ahead of your competition.
Living in Medellin Colombia for years and working in the travel industry, I’ve met a number of travel bloggers and online business owners.
The travel bloggers that take it as a hobby create OK sites, but have little direction and never realize how to target the posts to their niche audience.
Then there’s those that work consistently at it, but never have a plan of attack or real direction.
To both these groups, I’d encourage travel bloggers that haven’t studied keyword research to check out our FREE guide to targeting traffic.
This will make all the difference in making money with your travel blog or not.
Cheers,
Todd
These are some excellent tips on how to turn a travel blog into a profitable business, as every point that you made would indeed work. The only other thing that would be necessary is consistency, which you mentioned in treating the blog like a business.
Create a goal, focus on it and work towards making it happen. The rest will take care of itself.
That’s exactly right Christian. Thanks for your feedback and excellent point. Whenever I think about my online sales I realize that my focus is off and I should get back to working on my site.
You can always improve on your site to make it more profitable, it’s just a matter to education and dedication.
Here’s my favorite educational source that constantly improves my online business.
Cheers,
Todd
Hello,
Thank you for publishing a very interesting article on blogging and traveling. You’ve given some excellent pointers.
I agree with you, most travel bloggers fail to make money online because they don’t treat they blog like a business. Nothing in life comes easy, that’s why bloggers or internet marketers have to give 100% effort in everything if we want to succeed.
Best regards
Great point Karlo. I always think of working online, or at least getting started out, is like going to college.
If you go with this kind of attitude that you’re willing to learn and ready to work at it, I think failure is not an option.
You can take your dreams, hobbies, knowledge and make them a reality online. Blogging is just the start, but it’s the best way to start.
Why?
Read this post on how long it takes to make money online and why this style of business is where you should start out when contemplating building an online business or a successful blog.
Cheers,
Todd
Very interesting article – and to tell the truth – made me think (and dream)… Why not?
It’s a realistic opportunity indeed – one day I would like to run a travel blog (and turn it into a passive income stream).
I found out that Ann Tran who is TOP 50 social media power influencer, is also a luxury travel blogger. Awesome, isn’t it?
You just don’t travel but travel in luxury AND make money by travelling in luxury!
But you have to know how to do in the first place. Without proper skills it’s very hard to achieve a breakthrough.
That’s why I recommend joining Wealthy Affiliate (especially if you are a novice blogger). They give all the knowledge and skills to succeed online.
Thanks Egon for you feedback on Wealthy Affiliate. They are an amazing source and I am personally a lifetime member there.
The Wealthy Affiliate Education is just so critical for any blogger or online business owner, regardless of experience.
Traveling and blogging should be fun, an adventure and there’s tons of niches just within the travel industry.
I know a German couple that is developing their brand, but they have one site that’s all in German and about every country they’ve visited and they advise what a fellow traveler should bring for a visit. And of course, everything you need can be found at Amazon through their affiliate link.
That’s just one of 1,000’s of ideas. You just got to make it happen and go create you blog systematically for long term success.
Thanks,
Todd
Very interesting your article, definitely there are many ways to Make Money with a blog and more if it’s a traveling blog since there are tons of things to promote there. I just have a question, If I would be interested in writing a ebook how I can do it? Is there a site where I can learn more about it?
Hi Darmendra,
Thanks for your feedback on our blogging and traveling post. As for email marketing, I’ve got a great resource for you.
How to Build an Email List. It’s a great read that’s easy to understand and apply.
Thanks,
Todd