Hey you guys, there is one question I
am asked the most and that is 'how the heck do you make money as a travel
blogger?' It's a question people really want the answer to So today, I thought
I'd answer it Here's everything I know on how travel bloggers make money how
much we make and how you could make money as travel blogger too We make our
money a few different ways So I'm gonna take you through all of them Basically,
we're paid for our time, our skills, access to our audience as well as the
content that we create So a brand may pay us to come and stay at their hotel and
write a review They may pay us to go on a tour and review the tour company or
just create some content around our experience We may also be paid to simply go
somewhere, enjoy ourselves and create some video content photographic content
or some written guides about the area Another way we make money is may be paid
to make video content, photographic or written content and we sell it back to
the brand who commissioned us to do it You can also be paid to write about something that's current So, for example, there might be a destination that is
trying to push itself and get in front of travelers so they may pay bloggers to
write a post about it or share a video that they've already created Some
bloggers like to work under advertising and affiliate programs So they will
place banner advertising and affiliate links on their website or in their
YouTube channel descriptions that kind of thing Personally, I really don't like
pop up advertising I find it clouds the webpage sometimes I can't even read the
content So we made a conscious decision not to place any kind of banner
advertising at all The same goes for affiliate links
We want you guys to just read our
experiences and decide for yourself whether or not that is something that works
for you without any kind of pop-up ads or affiliate links in your face.
Bloggers can also be paid for social media promotions So that could be things
like posting a photo on Instagram posting a photo on Facebook sending out a
tweet, maybe putting something your Insta Stories or Snapchat depending on the
size of your following bloggers can also make an income through SEO So that's
Search Engine Optimisation if you haven't heard of it before So companies might
approach bloggers and they might ask them to place a sponsored post or a
sponsored link in existing content that
I look to do is package these things up.
So we offer promotion packages to
brands So it might be package A, B or Cand each one offers a different level of
coverage We offer discounted rates for those kinds of things so that the brand
is more incentivized to purchase But I
still make money from different sources because really, the blog alone isn't
enough I freelance as a Travel Writer So
I might write for somebody like CNN or CNBC and get paid from them to create
some travel content based on places I've been also earning a small income from
some educational type stuff. So I offer Blog Coaching and Brand Coaching
sessions, where I teach people everything that I know We're also paid for
speaking jobsSo I might be asked to go and speak somewhere and talk about the
blog life or talk about YouTube or something like that's not all our income
comes from the travel blog We have different revenue streams Which I think is
important because you never know when a platform is going to go under.
If your entire income is based on Instagram
What are you gonna do when Instagram is replaced? Don't go putting all your
eggs in one basket you wanna spread your income revenues out so that no matter
what happens you are covered if one of those platforms goes down. Absolutely
not But I can see how it would look that way When a brand approaches me they
never ask me to write a good review or say you had an amazing time They write
to me and ask me to share my honest experience about their product, their
destination, whatever it is that I am experiencing So that could be positive or
it could be negative But really if you think about it, a brand wouldn't invite
you to come and experience something If they weren't confident it was
good...right? Before we agree to anything we always let the brand know what we the share will be completely and totally honest based on our experience I also
figure that it's not really up to me to decide what everybody out there likes
so, for example, I stayed at a noisy hotel and I was traveling by myself and I
really liked the noise of the outside world. My mum, on the other hand,
wouldn't have liked the noise So what I do is I just tell the truth I say to
the hotel, it was a bit noisy at night if that kind of thing bothers you don't
stay there. If it doesn't bother you, it's a great fit for you. Sometimes you
get the best customer service when things go wrong. I mean, nothing's ever
going to be perfect right? So why not give the hotel a chance to address it and
see what are your customer service skills actually like? So if I do have a bad
experience, my first thing is to raise it with the hotel My second thing would
be to raise it with the PR person or the Marketing person who hired me the third thing I would do is just share my honest experience. That is a fantastic
question and it's hard to know because there isn't some kind of standardized
index and travel bloggers aren't really... we don't really talk too much about
I made this much or I made that this much From my experience my income
fluctuates a lot like any small business some months it might be a bit leaner
can take as little as a couple of hundred dollars other months it might be
thousands of dollars How much money you make as a travel blogger is going to
depend on how big your following is the more following, the more of an audience
you have the more brands are going to pay you to get exposure and get in front
of those audiences So it's safe to say the really big bloggers They're earning
quite a bit of money. I've heard rumors of some really famous Instagrammers
getting over 10 thousand dollars per Instagram post For Matt and me, I gotta be
honest, we don't really keep track of how much money we make... In terms of
counting it all up, All we know is we have enough money to live a life we love
and that's all that matters If Matt and I did have a lot of money let me tell
you what we would be spending it on...
Travel Fortunately, for work, we get a lot of travel opportunities So what we do is we wait for those and we travel on
those opportunities ahhh.....no I wouldn't call it traveling for free If we
aren't getting paid, it's an exchange of services It's our time, our skills,
our knowledge and experience in exchange for this experience. It's never free,
you always have to do something for it In my mind, free means someone gives it
to you You take it... you don't owe them anything That's not what happens in
the blog world No. I wish we did, but we don't That said, it is really, really
important that we do get paid so we don't take a free job unless it's an
amazing opportunity to somewhere we've never been before and could probably
never afford to go to and also, the more free jobs we accept the more it
undervalues everybody else out there and if we don't do something for free
maybe that brand will go to somebody else who will do it for free so we're better
to stay strong together and everybody demand to get paid so that everybody has
to get paid Most of the time, brands find us so they might hear about us they
may see us on an influencer database they may find us on YouTube they may just
find us by searching and then they will check out our blog and then they will
approach us and say hey, we really like your style, we like what you do are you
interested in working with us in this way? Other times we might pitch to a
brand ourselves I might reach out to a regional tourism board and say Hey,
we're going to be in the area This is what our blog is all about his is what we
can offer you Are you interested in working together? My travel blog and the
career it has given me is... I can't even describe the change it has made to my
life is absolutely incredible and I am so... so much happier doing something
that I love every single day than I ever thought I could be But it isn't easy,
it's taken Matt and my years and years of really hard work to get to this point
where it is our full-time jobs and our business and it's still a struggle but
let me tell you it is worth it so if you are planning to start a travel blog I
100% recommend it changed our lives and it could change anybody else's life too
just be prepared for the hard work it's not all glitz and glamour it can quite
often be 17 hours days no sleep, total exhaustion but it is worth it is amazing
If you are thinking about starting a travel blog
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