If you’re reading this, you probably love to travel. With the ever-growing digital nomad population taking over the entrepreneurial sphere, people around the globe are increasingly able to work remotely which directly translates to more travel time. Since more employees are working remotely than ever before, it only makes sense that more people are becoming nomads and turning to travel to make the most of their careers.

With so many unique places to explore and coworking spaces to work from, traveling while still being a dedicated employee or entrepreneur is simple. All you have to do is pick a destination, and the rest comes easy. Oftentimes, traveling inspires a desire to share your experiences, photos, memories, and videos with your family and friends back home. This desire leads many digitals nomads to one thing: creating a travel blog.

Having a travel blog that showcases your favorite destinations and travel stories is a great way to reflect on the opportunities you’ve had. And, depending on your network, a travel blog can help you to connect with other like-minded individuals who are willing to go along on your journey with you. Blogging allows you to self-design a storehouse of your travel memories while sharing your insights and all that you’ve learned.

But what if I told you that you can also use your travel blog to make money?

That’s right. Once you have your blog set up and traffic coming your way, you can actually monetize your blog.

By now, you’ve probably heard of bloggers who make a good amount of money from their posts and use their following to assemble an impressive passive income. These bloggers have discovered the secrets of monetization, utilizing marketing skills to reach a target market and grow their audiences.

But even if you aren’t an expert in marketing and haven’t grown a blog following before, you can still begin monetizing your travel blog. Follow these simple tips and before long, you can use your blog to generate additional income.

Tip #1: Affiliate Marketing

One of the most popular ways to monetize blogs is to integrate techniques of affiliate marketing. This means offering or promoting links to another business’s product or service through their affiliate program. When someone from your blog clicks on the link and makes a purchase, you then receive a percentage of the cost (and thereby, income!)

When choosing an affiliate program to add to your travel blog, you will want to make sure that you are promoting products/services relevant to your target audience. Trying to sell travel-junkies something like a weekly food delivery service or dentistry package will not be appealing, and will reflect badly on you. Readers don’t want to feel like they are being scammed, especially when they are primarily visiting your blog to enjoy your travel insights.

There are many popular affiliate programs to test out—just be sure that you are upfront with your readers when promoting the program. Some of the most popular programs for small and medium-sized blogs include:

  • LinkShare
  • Commission Junction
  • ShareASale
  • Amazon Associates
  • Google Affiliate Network
  • ClickBank

You can also ask entrepreneurs in your network for affiliate opportunities to promote their product or service. Sometimes, smaller businesses will be more willing to draw up an affiliate program with smaller blogs. As long as you have a solid following, having affiliate links can lead to a surprising income for you.

However, while this is a successful method in most cases, it should not be the foundation of your monetization strategy. You should never depend on affiliate links to make readers interested in your brand. Rather, you are ultimately in charge of building your travel blog and your income—and you shouldn’t focus on sending your visitors off to some other website.

Tip #2: Paid Reviews/Banner Ads

If your blog is generating a decent amount of traffic and views, you can also monetize your blog by being paid for reviews. This option is really only applicable if your blog following is substantial and impressive to businesses looking to advertise.

Once you have reached a certain threshold of subscribers, businesses will oftentimes approach you with a desire to sponsor your site. You probably have seen this type of marketing via influencers on social media. In a similar vein, if you have an impressive blog following, businesses may send you a product for free and ask or pay you to write a review about the product on your blog.

If you decide to do paid reviews, it is ethical that you also let your readers know that you’ve been sponsored to do so. While you won’t be obligated to write a positive review, you should still be upfront with your readers about this type of marketing so that they continue to trust your opinions and insights.

Integrating banner ads to your travel blog can also bring in an income for you. Usually in a banner-like style (often on the sidebar of your blog), you can place an advertisement sponsored by an outside business. Again, this type of opportunity will probably only come after you have secured a strong following, but it is not impossible to do so if you are dedicated to the task. Businesses will simply reach out to you and ask to sponsor a banner ad on your blog, knowing that you have a substantial readership. And just like that, the money will roll in!

Other Tips to Consider

In addition, there are several other straightforward tips that you can try out to monetize your blog, including:

  • Building and offering a paid online course
  • Offering a service (like writing blog content)
  • Providing one-on-one mentoring sessions or consulting opportunities
  • Writing and selling eBooks
  • Creating a self-hosted blog solely for ads (Google AdSense)

No matter what method you choose to try, monetizing your blog does not have to be an insurmountable challenge. As long as you focus on growing your following, you will soon realize that there are many opportunities through affiliate marketing and advertising to generate an income from your blog.

 

How did you monetize your travel blog? Share your tips and best practices in the comments below!