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6 Ways to Build a Successful Revenue Model for Your Travel Blog

Blogging in general is one of the best home based business ideas, but for people who love to travel it is probably the only business that comes with a great flexibility, more fun & adventure and freedom of working from any part of the world while enjoying new places!

However, the factor that stops most of the travel enthusiasts from building a good travel blog is the fear that how would they make money out of it. So, they miss a lot of travel and money that comes with travel blogging.

Well, like any other blogging niche, making money as a travel blogger requires parallel effort, i.e. creating awesome content, building a following who is keen to know about your adventures and an optimized revenue model.

Content creation and traffic generation can be done following regular blogging guides, but the most important thing to sort out of the revenue model. This article will be a helpful read if you are looking for answers to queries like:

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  • Can travel bloggers make money?
  • How do travel bloggers make money?
  • How to travel the world and get paid?
  • How to monetize a travel blog?
  • How do I earn from travel blogging?

This article will discuss a list of monetization options that best suit a travel blog or vlog.

1- Join the best travel affiliate programs; there are hundreds of travel affiliate programs, i.e. booking websites like booking.com, Agoda, Skyscanner etc. with which you can earn a decent commission on every purchase. It’s good to sign up for multiple affiliate programs for better revenues, however, your travel blog must have high-quality content and huge traffic to make most out of this method.

2- Sponsored content; if you succeed to establish a travel blog that other travelers trust on, you can offer advertorials and paid blog posts to the businesses that may be interested in promoting their services/products to your audience, i.e. travel services, tour operators, tour guides, travel gear manufacturers etc.

3- Branded content; this one is slightly different from sponsored content (whereby you get one time paid blog posts from an advertiser). Branded content can be a short or longer-term project with big brands (who want to invest a certain amount in exchange for valuable content), i.e. becoming a brand ambassador for an airline (in exchange for free tickets). This can be a great way to monetize your travel blog because these companies have decent budgets, so even if you happen to become an ambassador for just one company, you can earn well!

4- Sell display ads; there are a lot of good ad networks where advertisers are ready to pay a handsome amount for display ads, for instance, BuySellAds, however, your blog must have an attention grabbing design and huge traffic.

5- Contextual ads; your travel blog can also earn a decent passive income from Google/Yahoo/Bing ads, along with other options mentioned above. For some people Google Adsense may sound very good option, but since, it can go wrong anytime (due to Google’s vague policy for publishers), make sure you do not rely solely on contextual ads, and in case if Adsense does not approve your blog, you may apply for Yahoo/Bing contextual ads.

6- Social media promotions; now a day, social media is mandatory for any business, let it be a small scale fashion outlet or a niche blog. So, when you have a huge social media following, you may sell promotions on your social media too. Small and big brands are always looking for active social media pages and groups to promote their products/services.

The Bottom Line:

You may choose a few or all of the above monetization methods to develop a strong revenue model for your travel blog, however, keep in mind that every monetization method discussed above requires a certain level of efforts in order to produce results. So, the more options you include, the more effort and more time is required to earn more money. Ideally, you should pick one option at first and then increase the new revenue streams gradually.

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