From the days of Marco Polo and Lewis and Clark to recent travel adventures of Brian Kelly (Points Guy), Kiersten Rich (The Blond Abroad) and Damon Dominique and Jo Franco (Shut Up And Go), savvy travelers have been able to figure out how to turn their love of seeing the world into hard cash.
The strategies for making money from travel have changed over the years but the idea that one can turn wanderlust into bankable income is nothing new.
Not everyone is successful at turning their travel adventures into a salary but there are enough savvy sightseers who are supporting their lifestyles by their travel blogs, websites and social media posts that mainstream travel companies are taking note.
Some of these writers earn money from paid promotions and corporate sponsorships while others use their blogs and streams to sell merchandise.
If you want to earn the same kind of money from your travels that you can get from PlayCroco casino bonuses, check out some of techniques that have worked for travel writers in the past.
Content
Don’t assume that, just because you’ve purchased a plane ticket, you’ll be able to start raking in the big bucks as soon as you type your first few words into your new blog.
You need to create a blog or a website that people see and that means that you must post relevant and valuable content.
You should certainly travel to the places that you want to see but you should also be prepared to write about those places from a place of knowledge and authority.
You’ll need to learn more about your travel destinations than the average traveler so that you can write authoritatively about the place.
From that point, see out new and different angles about each place. Write about locals that you meet, out-of-the-way places that you see, local stories, unusual customs, etc. Give your readers a reason to keep coming back to your blog by giving them the feeling that each post will provide them with new and exciting information.
Spend some time and invest some money by optimizing your website or blog for SEO. You’re not going to get too far if your content is buried on page 93 of the search engines…..you want to write or stream in a way that your posts will be noticed by readers and viewers.
It’s a worthwhile investment to turn to an expert to optimize your site for SEO because if you’re relying on your site for future income, you want to make sure that you are up and ready to roll once you start out on your trip.
Ads
Placing ads on your site is one of the first and easiest ways to monetize your work. Ads can bring in hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month if you proceed properly. It’s passive income which costs you nothing but allows you to realize income from your posts.
To get ads on your site, you need to sign up with an ad network or an ad management company. The more traffic you have on your blog, the more interest you’ll get from these networks and companies who will be looking forward to having their ads on your site.
Choose your ads wisely. You want ads that support the kind of content that you’re producing. If you’re traveling with your dog, you might want to allow ads for dog products but otherwise, having dog product ads is a waste of space and time.
If you’re camping you might want to allow ads for camping gear, if you’re traveling by plane you might put ads up for airlines, etc. Make sure that the ads going up on your site are suitable for the content that you’re producing.
Affiliate Marketing
You can create relationships with brands and products and market for them via your site or blog. Affiliate marketing involves marketing by recommending products, places or other items and then providing a link to that recommended commodity.
When a user clicks your affiliate marketing link it automatically triggers a connection to the account that you’ve created with the brand, thereby ensuring that you receive a percentage of the sale.
Digital Products
If you’re prepared to put time into writing an ebook, travel guide, printable travel planner or other digital product, you can sell that digital product directly from your website or to email lists of your subscribers.
Many travel writers rely on their digital product sales to make money which require no more effort on your part after the product has been created. You just promote your product(s) on your website or blog and let the sales take care of themselves.
Press Trips
If you can get chosen to go on a press trip, you’ll have the cost of your trip and accompanying expenses covered in return for your promotion of the site in your blog. Contact the tourism board or tourism office of a place to which you want to travel and find out if they would consider you for a place on their press tour package.
The downside is that the trip might be more about sites that the tourism board wants to push and not necessarily about the places that you want to do or activities in which you want to participate. Also, you need to write nice things about the place because if word gets out that you’re not complimentary in your reviews of the site, chances are that you won’t be asked to join future press tours.
Sponsored Posts
Like affiliate links, a sponsored post is a post that you write that speaks highly about the brand that is paying you to write. Luggage companies, travel agents, hotels, airlines……all of these services look for travel writers who will write nice things about their brand.
Links
You may also be paid to place links in your posts to a brand. The links link back to the brand so someone reading your post might click on a link and then purchase something from the company that paid you to add their link to your writing.
There are no free rides in life and the life of a travel writer isn’t anywhere near such a free ride. However, if you have a hankering to travel and believe that you have the discipline to accompany your travels with a travelogue, you might be able to support yourself while you travel in the grand tradition of Ernst Hemmingway.
