It may sound glamorous, but the life of a travel blogger isn’t necessarily as chic and relaxing as the photos of “fun in the sun”, “vacation in paradise” might suggest. While free travel to the world’s most famous destinations and free stays in five-star resorts are almost everyone’s dream, let’s face it, they don’t pay the bills.
The truth is that most travel bloggers are broke, but there is a way out. HOURThere are a number of ways to fix the Busted Travel Blogger Syndrome, and as with most worthwhile businesses, you have to be prepared to put in the time and effort.
Table of Contents
Here are 5 steps to help you create a travel blog that doesn’t just “pay the bills”:
1. Big blog
What is a big blog? This is the art of occupying profitable niches that return “big” checks. In the case of a travel blog, this would mean paying close attention to niches such as cruises, resorts, and travel packages. When you start your blog, keep some of these niches in mind instead of solely documenting your travel stories and experiences. Basically, every time a piece of content goes live, you need to understand your internal monetization strategy.
For example, you can still document your travel experience, offer insane value and entertain your audience, and still rank for a keyword like “surf camp in Nicaragua.”
Let’s say you went to a surf camp in Nicaragua, had a great experience, and then blogged about it. Because it’s a profitable keyword, you can put a CTA (call to action) at the end of your surf camp post that asks readers to leave an email for an “irresistible deal” with a leading Nicaraguan surf camp supplier. (I actually did it with Thunderbomb Surf in Nicaragua).
Then, boom, you could either sell those leads or develop a commission structure for a surf camp in Nicaragua. This would be an “expensive” strategy, because the money made even in one transaction can bring in between $500 and $1,000.
This is a profitable travel blog.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Forget about simply placing ads on your blog page. It’s old school, cheapens the look of your blog, dilutes the reader experience, and here’s the number one reason not to: it won’t make you that much money.
If you want to shed blood, sweat, and tears for every dollar your blog earns, then of course, take the Google Adsense route; but if $50-$200 affiliate commissions are more to your liking, you will need to use affiliate marketing.
The key to achieving this is affiliate marketing. Harassing advertisers and negotiating placement packages for your blog content means you’re constantly in a rut. Every time a deal expires, so does the potential of your blog and you’re faced with sales negotiations again. Even interactive ads are pretty much moot for a blogger looking to make real money, as profits are usually only a few pennies on the dollar.
Famous travel blogger and money-making expert Troy Shanks has perfected this into a science. He has blogged about several travel companies that would be the perfect “upsell” for his audience, and instead of $5 weekly Adsense checks, he funnels that traffic into “big” commission travel deals. Every time someone joins a travel deal through their affiliate link, they earn a commission.
Finding quality partners is worth your time. Some travel clubs, many of which are in direct sales and multi-level marketing (see World Ventures or Wake up now), will pay up to $5,000 per affiliate sale. If you can build the right relationships with the right affiliates, get readers on your blog with the story and photos of the vacation of a lifetime, and you’ll make it easy for readers to book that vacation after reading it.
This is a wonderful thing. And those dollars will keep coming in long after you hit the publish button.
Then combine this with other methods that won’t leave you dependent on big spenders to earn a commission. For example, if you’re promoting an epic surf trip to Bali or a hike in the Swiss Alps, then build relationships with equipment stores that can provide an additional source of income. Negotiate a percentage of every sale made through your blog. Offer your readers incentives, such as discount codes, to make it hard for them to turn down an offer.
3. Use travel boards
Affiliate programs are good. Tourism Boards, the government bodies responsible for promoting tourism in every country, could be even better. Tourism is the main source of income and foreign exchange for countries that rely on it. As a result, huge budgets are allocated to “tourism boards” and “tourism ministries” to promote the destination.
The New York City Board of Tourism reportedly has the third largest budget in the nation for tourism development in New York State. Everyone knows what New York City has to offer, but who lights up New York’s “state”? These are some partnerships that are waiting in the wings.
Find some travel tips that you can start developing a relationship with. Tourism-focused countries typically establish a “Tourism Board” in that country, as well as one in each country where their marketing efforts are most concentrated. Think about what you have to offer that is unique… perhaps your blogging community could provide valuable feedback for their travel board? Perhaps you could promote a specific direction for them?
Study your readers, learn their habits, and use that information to determine which “tourist tips” to turn to. Are your readers primarily concentrated in the US? Do they vacation here more often? Are many of them vegans, sports enthusiasts, or some other unique factor that offers you an attractive publicity stunt?
Use this information to prepare a reliable offer. Offer to cover a certain number of destinations or resorts in a country over a certain period of time. Tourism officials and directors probably know who they want to reach, and a project of this nature could land you in a contract for anywhere from 6 months to five years depending on the strength of your proposal, the success of your pilot project, and the country’s political cycle. with which you are working.
4. Use Baller Promotional Tools
There are MANY tools to help you grow your audience, which is the first key step to monetization. Some of them are even free…use them.
For social networks, tools such as BuzzBundle help both promote content and automate social media posting. You can track and monitor conversations across numerous channels and platforms, find members of your target audience and engage them. Follow other travel blogs and look for people looking to book a quality vacation. Engage them and invite them to your site where you offer what they are looking for and you can make booking easier.
Same, Tweroid, Facebook Insights and Timeing+ tell you when you can best contact them. Timing is everything when promoting your content, especially on popular social platforms where it’s easy to get lost in cluttered news feeds.
5. Find Blogging Communities
More important than knowing when to post is finding legitimate communities to post…use tools like LinkedIn Groups, Google+ Communities and Facebook Custom and Lookalike Audiences to reach new people who are likely interested in what you blog about…
With Google + Communities you can attract like-minded groups who are looking for information on most industries. Needless to say, this is a great resource for finding those who love to travel and want to book their next vacation. (It’s also a great place to promote your “searching for guest writers” posts).
Dan Messina, social manager for Top Ten Reviews, recently shared a post on the popular G+ tech community, and look what he did:
More than 8500 eyeballs (green) from one stock. People underestimate the power of strong G+ communities.
use LinkedIn Groups in the same way to contact industry professionals. Once again, think outside the box. Employees of large corporations often go to corporate parties and attend conferences.
Work with your partners to create compelling corporate event packages. The company books through your travel blog for a deal they can’t get anywhere else, and as always, you earn a commission on every booking. You can also use LinkedIn to find quality partners.
To use these tools effectively, move away from compulsive selling. Readers know that you are only interested in their wallets, and this is very repulsive. From time to time, offer content that is written for their entertainment, interest, and general knowledge only. The good news is that it’s a no-brainer for the travel blogger who literally has the world and all of its interesting yet little-known places and treasures at their fingertips.
Summary
Attractive keywords, quality content, great advertising strategies, solid partnerships and partnerships… that’s what separates a successful travel blogger from poor, frustrated travel bloggers.
Add these deadly strategies to your travel blogging strategy and your blog will take off and take you to the land of top-notch earnings.
(See what I did there?)
Always think big, always think big. Good luck.
Jeremy Page spent 9 months traveling Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and El Salvador making money from his Macbook Air. He teaches passive income at MultipleStreams.org.
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