Once you have started a travel blog and have begun to build up an audience, you may be wondering whether you can grow it into a business. Well, there are multiple ways that you can make money from your travel blog.
By utilizing various money-making methods, you could potentially soon start generating a full-time income. You can then quit your day job and focus on your travel passion. Get started by checking out the following 10 ways in which you can grow your blog into a bona fide business.
1. Add Ads to Your Travel Blog
One of the most effective ways of earning passive income from your travel blog is to place ads on your site. When visitors to your blog click on or make purchases via those ads, you earn a commission. And all you need to do is to activate a plug-in on your website to populate your pages with ads.
However, in order to make good money from ads, you will need to build up your number of readers. The more visitors you have to your site, the more opportunities you will have to make serious money from advertisements.
You can get more traffic to your travel blog by utilizing UX and UI design methods, posting quality and engaging content on a regular basis, and using effective SEO strategies.
2. Join Affiliate Programs Related to Travel
The same concept for ads applies to affiliate marketing. By growing your number of readers, you can earn more money from affiliate programs.
An affiliate program is a tracking system used by popular brands. Seeing as there are a lot of travel brand affiliates out there, joining affiliate programs is one of the best opportunities you have to make money from your blog. There are plenty of affiliate programs that offer products related to travel – so you can easily find relevant programs that suit your site.
You simply need to add specially-created links to your content. When a reader clicks on a link and makes a purchase, you earn a commission.
3. Partner with Travel-related Sponsors
Sponsorship involves three different methods for making money from your travel blog.
Firstly, you can accept sponsored posts, which are blog posts written by professional content writers and which contain sponsored links. Once you start getting high traffic for your site, sponsors will come to you. But you can also go searching for sponsors on your own. There are plenty of travel-related sponsors like hotels, tourist attractions, amusement parks, travel apparel companies, and so many more.
You may be able to find a full-time sponsor who pays you a retainer to promote the sponsor’s products or services.
The latter is a great way to receive regular income from your blog.
4. Sell Travel-related Merchandise and Travel Products
You also have the option of selling your own travel-related products via your travel blog to create another revenue stream. Once you have grown your brand, you could place your branding on items like T-shirts, mugs, and travel gear and sell the items directly to consumers through an online store.
You could also consider selling other products. For instance, you could write in-depth city guides for destinations around the world and sell digital copies on your site.
5. Go on Paid Press Trips
As a travel blogger, you undoubtedly love to travel. So, getting paid press trips should be a no-brainer. You can travel and get paid!
Hotels, airlines, tourism boards, tour companies, and others that work in the travel industry will pay you to fly to a destination, stay in a hotel, and go on tours. Plus, you’ll get paid on top.
All you need to do in return is, after your trip, complete a series of deliverables, such as writing blog posts about your trip, sharing videos, and posting content on social media channels.
You’ll need to have a lot of traffic on your site in order to be accepted by a company that offers paid press trips, but there’s no reason you can’t make this opportunity a reality over time.
6. Build a Mobile App for Your Blog
In today’s digital age, having a mobile app for your travel blog can significantly help grow your business. A mobile app can provide your audience with an easy and accessible way to access your travel blog’s content, which can increase engagement and loyalty.
Firstly, a mobile app can provide a better user experience for your audience than a mobile-responsive website. This convenience can lead to increased engagement with your content, as users are more likely to interact with your blog when it is easily accessible. Secondly, a mobile app can help you establish a stronger brand presence. Thirdly, a mobile app can provide you with valuable data about your audience’s behavior and preferences. With analytics tools, you can track user engagement, traffic sources, and other important metrics that can help you make data-driven decisions about your content and marketing strategies. If you’re curious about the costs of this, you can easily find out how much it costs to build a mobile app.
7. Run Your Business Like a Business
One mistake many travel bloggers who want to make money from their blogs make is not approaching things from a business perspective. If you’re serious about turning your blog into a business, you should approach it like any other kind of business.
That means doing things like identifying your target audience, promoting your blog on other sites, and considering getting funds from investors to grow your business.
It also means doing things like setting up a business structure and registering your business, potentially hiring employees, using a paystub generator, and identifying multiple revenue streams.
The first step is to create a solid business plan. Then, make sure you follow it.
8. Create a Great Brand
To position yourself well in the market and get your blog well-known, you need to come up with effective branding. That means coming up with a backstory and a mission and using consistent designs across your website and social media channels.
By having a strong brand, you can quickly generate more readers. And more readers means more income. The first step is to come up with a great name for your blogging site. You need something suitable but unique to draw people in.
9. Provide Tours
Once you have started to grow your travel blog, you should consider expanding your brand in other ways. One idea, that other successful travel bloggers have done, is to offer tours.
Whether you provide hiking tours, city tours, or any other type of tour experience, you can create a lucrative stream of revenue.
10. Write Travel-related eBooks
Another way of expanding your revenue opportunities is to write and sell books. You can easily use online book publishing services to create paperback and Kindle books and sell them on platforms like Amazon.
And with your quality writing abilities and in-depth knowledge of different destinations, it shouldn’t take you too long to write travel guides or travel memoirs. You may even become a bestselling travel writer!
