6. Making money with your travel blog

Examples of affiliate links used by popular youtubers. They get commissions by promoting those products.

Making money while you travel means you don’t have to stick to a strict budget because money is always flowing into your account.

By becoming a digital nomad, you can easily make the world your office and travel forever.

A lot of travel bloggers recommend waiting until you’ve built a large and engaged audience before you even start to think about monetizing your site, but I don’t think waiting is necessary.

You can start earning income early by using Affiliate Marketing.

What’s an affiliate sale?

It’s an endorsement of a product. I recommend a product, you buy it through my link, and I get a cut in exchange (cash or credits).

Affiliate programs let you recommend things like clothing, travel gear, photography equipment, tours, or even hotels you stay at within your blog posts and social media. You then earn a small commission whenever someone clicks on one of these tracking links and buys something.

(see the youtubers examples above)

For example, you can share your custom code for a hotel or AirBnb accommodation, and earn commissions every time someone makes a reservation using your code. The same goes for Amazon’s affiliate program (cameras, drones, etc). and many other affiliate programs. 

It’s one of the best existing forms of income since once you’ve done the work, the income becomes passive – meaning you earn money while you sleep – so my advice is, please start this right from day 1!

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links above are affiliate links, including the links for 

SiteGround. At no additional cost to you, I earn a commission if you make a purchase through these links. The price remains the same whether you use my special link or not.

If you want to learn how to make money with your travel blog through affiliate marketing and how to do it right, read the next article and discover how to make money in a short time and with only a few followers online. Also I suggest enrolling in Michelle’s course – Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. 

Get paid when you share travel moments on Instagram, Facebook, VKontakte or YouTube.

Examples of paid partnership with Instagram influencers.

How do travel bloggers stay at hotels for free?

You probably already know that bloggers are often paid for advertising. The more followers a blogger has, the higher is the fee. Hotels are offering bloggers free accommodations and financial incentives in exchange for just a few social media posts.

The main benefit of collaborating with Instagram influencers is to reach a lot of people through just one post. For example, a large influencer with over 100K+ followers will receive around $1,000 for a single Instagram post.

This is how bloggers make money.

But such sponsored Instagram posts can be expensive, and simply not within the budget for many businesses.

This is how the micro-influencer (YOU) marketing comes in. Influencers which have fewer followers, between 1,000 and 100,000, charge significantly less for their paid posts, so brands can save money by working with micro-influencers like you.

Markerly’s study revealed that influencers with less than 1,000 followers actually received a much higher engagement rate (likes and comments) 8% more than of influencers with over 10 million+ followers (which receive likes 1.6% of the time). 

So this means that an Instagram post made by a micro-influencer offers the best combination – both engagement and broad reach – with a like and comment rate significantly exceeding influencers with a higher number of followers.

Sounds unbelievable?

A survey made by Bloglovin’ proved  that 63% of companies increased their influencer marketing budgets in 2017.

Therefore, Social Media became the influencer of your travel plans:

• 52% of Facebook users said their friend’s photos inspired their vacation plans
• 55% social media users liked pages relating to the trip they were planning
• 76% social media users post their vacation photos to social profiles 

This research proves why companies are now expected to spend at least $1 billion on Instagram influencer marketing this year.

Take a look at the over 99 million photos from many Instagrammers out there today which already make a living from traveling and generating income through their social media accounts.

Therefore, brands are now constantly seeking quality over quantity – this means companies would rather pay big bucks for a smaller audience of engaged or niche followers rather than old marketing.

Working with micro-influencers became an excellent marketing choice for many businesses and brands. A sponsored Instagram post from a person with 1,000 to 10,000 followers can be as low as $50-$100 per post.

How to get your first sponsored stay, even if you’re just getting started?

This is so exciting because you already do it for free quite often.

What’s the first thing you do after checking into your hotel room?

I bet you ask for the wi-fi password, eagerly waiting to check in and share on social media the photos of your room and view, your first thoughts about your vacation.

But do you realize that you’ve just made a free #ad for your hotel?

This is the exact moment when you’re showing how delighted you are about your holiday. And your happiness captured on that picture works better than any advertising campaign.

Your friends will want to share the same experience and will certainly ask you how much you’ve paid for the trip so now, you’ll be advertising the travel agent, for free again.

But… do you know that there is an agency who pays you real money and bonus trips for such actions?

This is a magnificent way how you can travel for “free” without being a very popular blogger!

Unless you’re not one of the first Mars’ inhabitants, you probably heard of AirBnb – a platform through which someone else offers you their home as a place to stay. So, instead of an expensive hotel room, you get the chance to save some money yet live in a decent place. Besides, through AirBnb, you can also rent out some extra space in your own home and make money from letting guest stay at your place, too.

But did you know that you could win a free room on AirBnb, using just your Instagram or Facebook profile, even if you have only a few friends and followers?

Introduce a friend to Airbnb. They’ll get $25 in travel credit when they sign up, and you’ll get $15 in travel credit once they complete their first trip.

Sounds too simple?

There’s more.

Let’s say you are on a vacation and your friends can ask you where are you staying.

You can share photos on Instagram, you can write a post on Facebook or even better – on your travel blog while sharing that referral link.

In this way you can earn some extra money for your next trip 😉

While sharing with your friends, it’s ok, having more followers on your Instagram or blog – is the next level.

What would you think if I would tell you:

You can earn enough money to travel the world only by sharing your vacation pics!

I can assure you that this is quite easy if you’ll use some automated tools I can recommend.

So how you can earn money with Airbnb.com, Booking.com, HotelsCombined.com, Skyscanner.net, Momondo.com, Amazon.com etc. by recommending hotels, trips, gear and other stuff?

What are the best companies that pay high commissions?

How to get traffic to your Instagram and promote your blog?

What mistakes to avoid and how to take shortcuts that are proven to work?

There are a few different websites and apps out there which make it really easy for you to promote brands or their products.

Become a “real life” advertisement and you’ll get paid for that, too.

In this article, I’ll show you how to make money on social media and your travel blog, even with less than 1,000 followers.

Also, keep an eye on our Instagram – be the first to discover our latest tips and tricks and beautiful journeys.