Wondering how to make money travel blogging?
As a multiple six-figure, profitable travel blogger — I made $327,270 from blogging in the first half of 2023 🤯 — this article shows you how to make money with a travel blog, just like I do!
You’ll find 12 common ways to make money travel blogging in this article, but the top travel bloggers also think outside the box.
But, Isn’t blogging dead? That’s something I see come up a lot, and a question you may have as well.
I’m average about $55K+ per month, and I know plenty of other travel bloggers making way more — so if blogging is dead, we didn’t get the memo 🤷♀️
Now, plenty of travel bloggers don’t have a monetization plan for their blog, and therefore, don’t make money.
Unfortunately, this is the vast majority of travel bloggers.
In short, if you don’t have a plan to use proven strategies to make money blogging, you likely won’t.However, once you’re done reading this article, you will.
Ready to discover how to make money with a travel blog — just like I do!? Let’s get to it.
how to make money with a travel blog
How to Make Money With a Travel Blog: My Top 12 Tips
If you’re wondering How to make money with a travel blog, there are really countless ways.
You will find some of the most common ways in this article, but there’s really no one size fits all strategy to make money blogging that will work for all bloggers.
Regardless of what income streams you pursue, know that multiple income streams are essential for success.
Below, I will show you 12 different ways to make money from a travel blog — but they by no means represent the only ways to make money blogging about travel.
How to Make Money With a Travel Blog
1. Have Ads On Your Site
Did you notice the advertising on my site? Those ads account for about 35-45% of my income!
The coolest thing about them is they are completely passive income, meaning as I sleep, I still earn money from the ads simply being on my site.
That’s right: I do nothing, and still collect money. There’s basically no better feeling than this in the world!
🤔 How do I get ads on my site?
To put ads on your site, you need to sign on with an ad management company or ad network. With most companies, you’ll need to have enough traffic from search engines or social media platforms to qualify.
Keep in mind that getting traffic can take a lot of time — as blogging is a long game! If you want a get rich quick job, don’t pick blogging.
In your first year, you may not even show up in Google search results or get much traffic, but if you stick to it, you can make great money from ad networks.
Below, I will compare the six companies that can place ads on your site:
🏆 Best ad networks for travel bloggers
1. Mediavine (My #1 Choice)
Among bloggers, many consider Mediavine and AdThrive (#2 on the list) the best because they pay the most and have great customer service.
To apply for Mediavine, you need 50,000 sessions per month (50K people visiting your site in a 30 day period), which is a lot.
When you first start out travel blogging, 50,000 seems impossible. As a new blogger, I also thought it was impossible, but eventually, I got there!
Now, it was a lot of hard work, and I invested in travel blogging courses so I could get on Mediavine fast. (The best course I took was Scale Your Travel Blog to Six Figures — and yes, I have scaled to multiple six figures.)
On a personal note, before I was on Mediavine, I was with SHE Media, which is #3 on the list.
The month I switched, I nearly 6X’ed my ad income going from SHE Media to Mediavine. However, from what I hear, most bloggers usually double or triple their ad revenue doing the same.
🤑 How much I make on Mediavine: It varies from about $8,500-10,000 USD per month, with about 250,000 monthly page views and mostly U.S. traffic (U.S. traffic pays the most).
2. Raptive (Formerly AdThrive)
Besides Mediavine, other top-level travel blogs that make money are on AdThrive. (⚠️ Update: In 2023, AdThrive and CafeMedia merged to become Raptive.)
To apply, you’ll need 100,000 page views in a 30 day period. This means that in total, the visitors to your site have visited a total of 100,000 separate pages on your site.
Note: I have not personally used AdThrive/Raptive on any of my sites.
3. SHE Media
For bloggers with less traffic, there’s SHE Media. They say you need 20,000 monthly sessions to apply, though some bloggers get approved with less.
The thing many dislike about SHE is they require you sign a one-year contract, something no other company asks for.
🤑 How much I made on SHE Media: About $800 USD per month with 30,000 monthly page views and mostly U.S. traffic (U.S. traffic pays the most).
I was with SHE Media for about four months in late-2021.
If you read other reviews of SHE Media, you’ll see that many bloggers say their payments are pretty good, but their customer service is hit or miss.
I completely agree with the majority on this. From my personal experience, SHE wasn’t terrible, but wasn’t great either.
4. Monumetric
For bloggers with less traffic, Monumetric only requires 10,000 monthly sessions. The thing many dislike about Monumetric is they require a $100 USD set up fee to put the ads on your site, something no other company asks for.
Note: I have not personally used Monumetric on this site.
5. Ezoic
Before SHE Media, I was on Ezoic. At the time, they required 10,000 monthly sessions, but now have no traffic requirement — so you can join Ezoic with basically no traffic.
Now, the more traffic you get, the more you make, so don’t expect much of a payout with low traffic.
🤑 How much I made on Ezoic: About $185 USD per month with 10,000 monthly page views and mostly U.S. traffic (U.S. traffic pays the most).
While all ads on your site will slow down your website speed, Ezoic is known as the worst with this.
They have tried to make strides in this area with their Leap tool, but if you look through travel blogging forums, you’ll see a generally anti-Ezoic sentiment.
I was on Ezoic for about four months in early-2021, and have nothing good to say about this company. They offered basically nothing in the way of service, and it took me a few weeks to figure out (on my own) how to get ads set up.
🚨 Here’s Why I don’t recommend Ezoic
To be clear: I do not recommend Ezoic, and was happy to leave them.
I had a terrible experience during my two months with Ezoic, and was happy to part ways from them. Ask around in blogging forums and you’ll soon learn Ezoic has a horrible reputation. In my opinion, they lived up to it.
However, I also understand the need for income.
Because of that alone, the best I can say is try Ezoic out for yourself and make up your own mind. Just because myself and thousands of other bloggers had a negative experience, that doesn’t mean you will.
6. Google AdSense
Like Ezoic, there is no traffic requirement with Google AdSense. From what I understand, you make a few dollars a day, at most.
If you’re considering Ezoic vs AdSense, it seems you’d definitely make more with Ezoic — though I can’t in good conscious recommend them. As mentioned above, you can always try Ezoic out for yourself and make up your own mind.
Note: I have not personally used AdSense on any of my sites.
How to Make Money With a Travel Blog
2. Join Affiliate Marketing Programs
First off, What is affiliate marketing?
If you’ve ever recommended a product, restaurant, great book, or anything to another person, you’ve actually done affiliate marketing without knowing it.
Affiliate marketing is when I recommend hotels, tours, rental car companies, travel gear, etc., on my website. I’ll then insert what are called affiliate links that go to these products, places or services.
When someone buys anything through my affiliate link, I make affiliate sales. With my blog, I earn a small commission from these referrals and sales — but those commissions can add up.
In fact, I made more than $160K from affiliate marketing in 2022 ($163,706 to be exact) — and I can show you exactly how in my How to Find Affiliate Marketing Keywords Class.
How to Make Money With a Travel Blog
What are the best affiliate marketing networks for travel bloggers?
Most travel bloggers are signed up with affiliate networks that make sense for their niche. However, some general categories include hotels, tours, car rentals and travel insurance.
Since my blogs are in the Mexico travel niche, I affiliate with Mexico tour companies, Mexico hotels, Mexico rental cars, Mexico travel guide books, products for traveling to Mexico, etc.
Below, you will find some of the travel brands I have affiliate partnerships with and recommend.
- Best Car Rental Affiliate: Discover Cars (They pay the most)
- Best Travel Insurance Affiliates: SafetyWing (I used to recommend World Nomads, but no longer do)
- Best Affiliate Marketing Network: Travelpayouts
- Best Hotels Affiliate: Booking.com, Expedia and Hotels.com
- Best Home Rental Affiliate: VRBO (Airbnb doesn’t have an affiliate program)
- Best Tours Affiliate: Viator and Get Your Guide
- Best Affiliate for Physical Products: Amazon, Etsy, REI (via AvantLink)
Note: There are good companies, but also plenty of affiliate schemes out there, so it’s a good idea to do your homework about any company you work with.
🤔 How much do i make with affiliate marketing?
A lot — Using a combination of the companies listed above, my affiliate income in 2022 was $163,706.
In 2021, I made $5,217 total from affiliate income all year, so 32X more money in just one year.
I attribute a lot of my current success to working one-on-one blog coaching with Laura of Scale Your Travel Blog to Six Figures. But make no mistake, I am successful because I worked hard, and I worked smart.
I also teach courses on this subject, including my most popular course, How to Find Affiliate Marketing Keywords. In it, I show you how to find the keywords that made me more than $160K from affiliate marketing in 2022.
How to Make Money With a Travel Blog
3. Sell Your Own Digital Products
With affiliate marketing, you’ll only get a commission or a percentage of the sale. When you sell your own products, you get all the profits (minus some fees).
For this reason, many bloggers create digital products like eBooks, printable travel planners, travel guides and more.
You can list the products on your website, or work on building up your email list, so you have direct access to those who have an interest in your content.
Digital products are a great way to make money as a blogger because you create them once, and sell them forever!
Many bloggers will use a site like Canva to create a digital product. There is a free version, but the paid version is well worth the $13 USD per month.
To sell the products, sites like Gumroad or ThriveCart are both great options.
How to Make Money With a Travel Blog
4. Land Paid Press Trips
On a press trip, you’re essentially paid to travel and your travel expenses are covered! How cool, right? For many people, yes.
Personally, I find them too time consuming to arrange, and when I travel, I don’t want to work. However, many travel bloggers make money while traveling with press trips.
To secure paid press trips, you’ll contact tourism boards (sometimes called a national tourism office) or local travel-related companies.
There’s often a lot of back and forth hammering out the details, and contracts everyone will sign, before the actual trip.
🤔 How do you get press trips for travel bloggers?
Let’s say you want to get paid to travel to Morocco. You’ll first contact the Morocco tourism board, and see if they’d pay you to come to Morocco and create content for them.
If so, you’ll both come to an agreement, then you’d take the trip and blog about it afterwards.
Is it really that easy? That depends.
If you have a large social media following, high-traffic blog, or blog with a completely focused niche (if you have a Morocco blog, the Morocco tourism board is more likely to say yes), getting paid press trips is actually easy.
With a Mexico niche site, I do get tour companies and hotels that contact me for free travel — so this is just one reason to have a niche blog, which is a travel blog with just one focus.
In truth, most bloggers just starting out will get a lot more no’s than yes’s for paid trips.
How to Make Money With a Travel Blog
5. Write Sponsored Posts
Another way you can make money travel blogging is by writing a sponsored post.
This is when a company pays you to write a review of their tour company, or a hotel review, or maybe a review of a great travel product, or even just a write up about them.
They are basically just paying you to promote them on your site, but they want it in your voice — the one that resonates with your audience.
If you think about it, no one knows better how to speak to your audience than you, so companies usually give you creative control.
You can reach out to companies yourself and offer to write a post to promote their products or services.
In some cases, they will contact you, especially if you have a Contact page or Work With Me page on your website (like this one) that connects to your email address.
How to Make Money With a Travel Blog
6. Sell Sponsored Links
Some companies will also pay you to put a link to their site in one of your existing posts.
Say you have a post ranking in spot #1 on Page 1 of Google titled Best shoes for travel. A shoe company might see your post, and offer you money to link to their website.
As it only takes 30 seconds to insert a link in a post, these will earn you far less than a full blog post dedicated to one specific place or thing.
How much you charge depends on a lot of factors, but you can expect $50-100 USD for a link, though some bloggers charge more.
How to Make Money With a Travel Blog
7. Network With Other Travel Bloggers
Another one of the best ways to make money blogging, is through leads from other bloggers about paid opportunities.
This might not be a direct payout at first, but the best travel bloggers have a large network of colleagues, who will send jobs their way from time to time.
👯♀️ Private Facebook Groups
One benefit to all the travel blog courses I’ve taken is access to a private Facebook group.
In these, you can both ask the teacher or mentor questions you have about the course material, and also network with your fellow classmates, who just so happen to be travel bloggers!
I am in a few, and can attest that the quality of information you get in private Facebook groups for travel bloggers is much better than what you get in public groups.
People also tend to be nicer since the teacher has a presence in the group, and no one wants to get in trouble.
👯♂️ Best Free Facebook Groups
If you want to check out some free blogging travel groups, there’s Affiliate Marketing for Travel Bloggers, which is my group, and SEO For Travel Bloggers, which is my friend Nina Clapperton’s group.
Looking for the best SEO course for travel bloggers? Check out Nina’s SEO Roadmap, which I can’t recommend enough.
There’s also Women Travel Bloggers, Women Travel Creators and Digital Nomad Wannabe, and all five of these are some of best and most active Facebook travel blogging groups out there.
As with most Facebook groups, you’ll want to take all the info you get with a grain of salt.
✈️ Best Travel Blogging Conferences
I started this travel blog during Covid in 2020, so all blogger conferences have been on hold.
Now that the world has opened back up, I’m attending travel blog conferences like Travel Blogging Summit (where I was a speaker in 2022), TBEX (where I was a speaker in 2023), Women In Travel Summit, and TravelCon.
⚠️ Update: Sadly, TravelCon from Nomadic Matt was canceled indefinitely after the May 2022 conference.
How to Make Money With a Travel Blog
8. Sell Your Photos
If you’re a photographer, you’re likely taking a ton of photos for your blog anyway — so this might be the easiest way to integrate more revenue streams 🤑
One easy way to sell photos online is with the FREE Sell Mediaplugin, which you’ll just add to your WordPress website.
Using social media channels is another great way to get eyes on your photos, and might lead to paid jobs and even long-term partnerships.
With apps like TikTok and Instagram now paying users for content creation, this is a great way to earn additional income.
How to Make Money With a Travel Blog
9. Monetize Your YouTube Channel or TikTok
There are many travel vloggers (video bloggers), like Hey Nadine and The Bucket List Family, who make great money off their YouTube travel videos.
To apply for the YouTube Partner Program and monetize your channel, you’ll need at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the past year.
Note: I don’t have a YouTube channel.
How to Make Money With a Travel Blog
10. Monetize Your Travel Podcast
This is a great option if you’re comfortable with public speaking. As someone who did have a podcast, I feel this is the biggest barrier to entry — not any technical know-how or fancy recording equipment.
I wrote a detailed guide, How to Start a Travel Podcast for Free (Like I Did), so if you want a deep dive into this topic, you can check it out.
I had a podcast called Dream To Destination, for one year from 2020-2021. It was a lot of fun, but a lot of work. However, many travel podcasters make great money podcasting.
I only had the podcast as a hobby, and still made a bit of money from it.
how to make money with a travel blog
11. Work as a VA for Other Travel Bloggers
VA stands for virtual assistant, and it means you can work virtually from anywhere.
This is a great entryway into the digital nomad lifestyle and location independence so many travel bloggers want, and add real value for you because you’re learning about blogging from a pro.
You can sign up to UpWork or Fiverr to find virtual assistant jobs with travel bloggers, or join some free Facebook blogging groups and offer your services.
As someone who’s in quite a few of these Facebook groups, I always see successful bloggers to hire a VA.
How much money you make as a VA will depend on your skillset.
If you have valuable skills other travel bloggers seek out — social media management, SEO-optimized travel writing, setting up affiliate partnerships, Google analytics, etc. — you can earn a lot of money.
How to Make Money With a Travel Blog
12. Use Your Blog to Get Freelance Work
If you’re considering VA work or freelance writing work, your blog is a good way to showcase your unique travel writing style. This should only further motivate you to produce great content — because you can use your blog as a selling tool.
If you also make photos and videos, the blog will also seamlessly integrate your social media accounts.
A travel blogger who sees your blog, Instagram account, etc., and loves it is more likely to hire you over another candidate because they want you to do the exact same for them.
How to Make Money with a Travel Blog: FAQ
What’s the average travel blogging salary?
When it comes to making money travel blogging, there’s no average amount. It’s much like asking how much the average singer makes — obviously Adele makes much more than your local wedding singer.
Similarly, there’s no answer to how much does a travel blogger make?
There are some income reports and travel blogger salary articles out there, so we know The Blonde Abroad and One Step 4 Ward have $1 million+ per year blogs.
In 2017, Nomadic Matt was making multiple-six figures, but I assume he too has a $1 million+ travel blog these days.
By contrast, some bloggers make $0.
When I got serious about monetizing my blog, I decided I will absolutely hit seven figures one day, and I started taking steps to do so — like investing in the best travel blogging courses I could find.
I mean, if The Blonde Abroad can, so can I!
🏆 Here are My Blogging Stats
- I made $272,175 USD in 2022.
- I made $40,106 USD from blogging in December 2022 — $24,151 from affiliate marketing, $9,382 from ads on my site, and $6,572 selling my own products, like this Affiliate Marketing course.
- My main website (not this one) received 205,000+ page views in December 2022, and more than 2.6 million page views in 2022.
- Want to know how I did it? Join my email list where I share weekly tips on how I make such a crazy amount of money after just 2.5 years of blogging.
How to Make Money With a Travel Blog
What’s the earning potential of travel bloggers?
This really is a better question to ask than How much do travel bloggers make?, or Do bloggers make good money?
I look at this blog (and my other blogs, Travel Mexico Solo, Travel To Merida, Travel To Oaxaca, Tulum Travel Secrets) as small businesses, and with your own blog business, the sky’s the limit on how much you earn.
For me, I only want to work 20 hours a week. If I were working a full time 40 hour workweek, I could make a lot more money than I am right now.
In short, when you’re a small business owner (yes — bloggers are!) you set your own ceiling on earnings.
What is a travel blog?
A travel blog is a website with information on traveling — like these, Travel Mexico Solo and Tulum Travel Secrets.
There are many niches, or sub-genres of travel blogs. Mine is focused on Mexico travel, while some travel blogs focus on Paris travel or, or camping travel, or cruises, or solo travel; the list goes on and on.
How to Make Money With a Travel Blog
What is a travel blogger?
A travel blogger is the person who’s running the travel blog, or someone who writes travel blogs for other people’s blogs. I am actually a multiple six-figure travel blogger who makes a full time income from my blogs.
If you’re a woman, you’ll usually be called a female travel blogger; though the term male travel blogger is pretty much never used.
If you’re unsure how to be a travel blogger, it’s quite simple! In fact, all you need to do is start a travel blog website, then write some travel blog posts.
If you only want to document your travels, this will suffice; if you want to make money, consider these best travel blogging courses.
How to Make Money With a Travel Blog
How to Start Travel Blogging
Wondering, how to become a travel blogger? The first question to consider is: Do you want to make money with your travel blog, or do you want a hobby blog?
No matter which you chose, there’s information for starting both types of blogs below.
✍️ How to start a hobby blog
You can do this by starting a new travel blog on Blogger for free right now!
All you’ll need is a travel blog name (you might also want to take the corresponding handles on any social media channels you use), and start sharing your best travel tips, epic stories and more.
Now, if you want to know How to start a travel blog and make money?, that’s a bit different.
💰 How to start a money-making blog
Like most things, there’s a right way, and a wrong way to start becoming a travel blogger.
If you want to make your own travel blog to start earning money, I highly suggest investing in a travel blogging course with step-by-step instructions, so you start it off right.
There is a system to travel blogging success, and either know the system, or you don’t.
You’re either writing SEO-optimized content with high volume, low competition keywords that will rank on Page 1 of Google, or no one will ever see your content. According to stats, only 25% of users even go to Page 2 of Google.
Through travel blogging courses, I learned that I need to write the articles you want to read, and not just the articles I want to write.
I learned how to get my content on Page 1 of Google with search engine optimization (SEO) — in fact, that’s likely how you found this article!
The way I see it, you can spend time, or you can spend money.
You can either spend your time trying to find good free content, which could take years and still not pan out, or you can pay a professional to learn what they’re doing, so you can simply replicate their success.
The best blogging course I’ve done is Scale Your Travel Blog to Six Figures — and I’ve been in quite a few courses.
How to Make Money With a Travel Blog
Is it worth starting a travel blog in 2023?
As someone who makes a full-time income from my travel blog, works only about 20 hours per week, from any location on Earth I want to — FU+K YES it is!
However, setting up a WordPress blog and learning how to blog properly takes time. Blogging is a marathon, not a sprint.
My blog did nothing in year one; it was a place to hear crickets. In year two, I invested in the best travel blogging courses I could find, and made $7,762.22 dollars ($2,435.18 in December 2021).
In year three, I made $272,175 USD in 2022.
While my numbers may seem impressive if you’re making $0 from a blog, I’m still a small time blogger. (Ok, maybe I’m a “medium time blogger” now).
There are so many bloggers who make more than me, but since I know blogging is a marathon, not a sprint, it’s only a matter of time before I get there too.
How to start a travel blog without traveling
When we all lost the ability to travel freely in 2020, many travel bloggers still thrived. How?, you might be wondering — By blogging about where they live.
While the place you live is familiar to you, it’s a full-fledged travel destination for people who don’t live there.
Final Thoughts: How to Make Money With a Travel Blog 2023
There are many ways to make money blogging, and the top travel bloggers are doing many of them in tandem.
The one thing to always keep in mind about travel blogging and any blogging is that it will take time to get there.
The highest paid travel bloggers who make more than $1 million have been blogging for a decade or more before they saw numbers like that. To really make money as a travel blogger, you need to be in it for the long haul.
From my personal experience, I didn’t start seeing any income for more than one year. When money started finally coming in, it was not much — but I kept at it.
In 2022, my third year blogging, I made $272,175 USD. My goal for 2022 was $250,000 USD… and I surpassed it.
For the record: I’m not special! I think anyone can be a successful travel blogger, if you have a solid plan, and if you remember that blogging is a marathon; not a sprint.
Personally, I learned so much from the Scale Your Travel Blog to Six Figures course). 👩💻 Read my honest review of the course here.
Ready to invest in a travel blogging course? 👉 Sign up for the FREE live webinar to meet my coach Laura, who has helped me grow my blog fast!
