Travel Blogging 101
Hello, crew! Every Tuesday, I write an in-depth 101 post about the industry. Today, I want to talk about travel blogging.
A lot of people think travel blogging is dead. I make passive income every month off my blog, and still recommend having one if you’re building a personal brand or business. Let’s talk about it.
What is a blog?
A blog is a website and is no different than the New York Times’ digital site. It’s your home online. In keeping with that analogy, it has all the same components:
A website URL (consider this your digital address)
A content management system (the foundation of the home)
Hosting for your site (your home’s utilities)
A theme and plugins (decorations and customizations)
You can start a blog with very little money, <$50 for the first year.
You also don’t have to write articles on a blog, you can choose to just have a landing page or business info, but having a blog and constantly populating it with articles relevant to your site’s topic helps increase discoverability.
How do you monetize a blog?
There are 4 main ways to monetize a blog:
Display ads
Display ads are all the advertisements and videos you see on websites. They can sometimes take up the full page, start playing automatically in the corner, pop up on the bottom of images, etc.
There are companies that handle display ads for bloggers, you just choose how many you want to allow and collect a check. Those companies include SheMedia, Ezoic, Mediavine, Journey by Mediavine and Raptive. I do not recommend Google AdSense for your blog, the earnings are negligible. You can usually start monetizing with display ads at around 10,000 views a month.
Display ads are paid on an RPM basis, rate per milli, meaning you get paid a set amount per thousand views to your website. To qualify for these programs, your site needs to meet a minimum monthly views threshold. The amount varies per program.
Affiliate links
Affiliate links are popular for bloggers because if you’re already talking about a product anyways, it’s a natural and easy feat to link to it. Then, if someone pitches (either immediately or later depending in the cookie duration) you get paid.
You can’t control when someone books but you can write article to target travelers in the buying stage of the process and maximize conversions.
Companies like TravelPayouts and Stay22 are aggregators that let you add links for multiple programs in one place. There’s also programs like the Expedia Creator Program, Amazon, etc., all of which can naturally link within and help monetize blog posts.
Sponsored blog posts and links
Brands and destinations will pay you for sponsored blog posts. You can include these in an influencer marketing package or as a stand-alone deliverable as an independent publisher.
You can include many factors in setting your price like audience location, average duration of time on page, domain authority, etc.
Brands will also reach out and ask to pay for backlinks so they can build their own site’s domain authority. This is not a recommended practice per Google, but Google has also decimated organic search traffic to blogs by promoting AI summaries so I’ll leave it to you to decide.
Want a list of 150+ travel brands to pitch for press trips and sponsorships? Get the Jet Set Press Trip Vault.
Own products
Have a website? You should be selling your own products. It can be itineraries, checklists and packing lists, downloadable PDFs, courses, even physical goods and merch.
You can have a storefront on your site and integrate it with popular payment processors like Stripe or PayPal. This way, you’re turning traffic into revenue in more ways than one and capturing your readers for longer than a one-time visit.
If your goal is to monetize your blog, focus on generating traffic. The more eyes on your page, the more you get paid!
Drop any questions below, I try to answer them all. I’ll see you next week for another 101 session and in the meantime, check out the library below.
Check out past posts:
Hey Jen I love the advice you’re putting together here it’s a wealth of information! As someone who has done blogging and newsletters, what’s your opinion on blogging vs. newsletters vs. paid newsletters? Should a travel writer attempt newsletters and a blog? Pros and cons of each?