It feels like everyone around the net is discussing making money from travel blogging but never getting into any specifics. This site was started as an experiment to prove or disprove whether travel blogging can be a viable online income generator for more than just an elite few. As my own thinking about my business plans evolve I am committed to sharing with you my ideas, what works and what doesn’t. But besides thinking through the next stage of my own strategies I have been pouring over hundreds of travel blogs and websites to determine what is and is not working.
Before I get further into my own detailed plans I want to point out 5 great resources I have read recently about travel blogging and making money. As you all know by now, I believe that to be successful at travel blogging we need to 1) approach it as a business 2) work our asses off 3) accept that it takes time (thus is the dilemma of entering a business with no barriers to entry) 4) produce kick ass content that is also useful and leads to sales of “something” and 5) be more creative than the next guy or gal.
Now the “something” is for each of you to decide. You might be selling ad space, click through for Pay Per Click advertising, affiliate sales for information products, affiliate sales for hotels or travel products, selling your own e-books, or even promoting our own services. Next week I’ll be discussing the top lessons I learned, and wished I learned from 5 years of writing Todd’s Wanderings.
But today I want to introduce you to a few different discussions going on around the web regarding what it takes (or doesn’t take) to make money from travel blogging. These are important issues everyone needs to come to terms with as they progress in their site(s) development.
The Dilemma of Press Trips
Andy from 501 Places wrote a very thoughtful piece about the opportunity costs of participating in blog/press trips. He looks at it from the side of travel bloggers who have to weigh their time spent on a trip vs the earning they could make if they stayed home and worked. This goes back to the issue of what is your ultimate goal with your blog, and where you see your money coming from. Check out The Business Case for Blog Trips and the Bloggers Dilemma and let us know if you think they are a good or bad idea for your business.
A Little More Dirt On the Press Trip
Does it sound like I’m bashing press trips? I don’t mean to but they are often held as the holy grail of travel blogging and help to “prove who has made it and who hasn’t.” Karen, from Europe A La Carte goes into further detail about why we need to think of our blogs as businesses and why we should be compensated beyond a “free” trip. Again, it all comes down to what your goals are. For those only looking to continue to fund their travels around the world then press trips are great. But for those looking to earn a living the choices become more difficult. So have a read on Where are Travel Bloggers Heading after their next free trip?
Enough Bullshit about Making Money Travel Blogging
Darren, from Travel Rants, and creator of Travel Blog Camp goes into an inspired rant about what it really takes to make money from travel blogging. I think he nails the subject by saying: “Get your business model right, and write transactional content along with inspirational / useful content…” In addition he recommends focusing on SEO to drive targeted, relevant traffic to your site in his eloquently put Enough of the Bullsh$T about Making Money Travel Blogging. And because I like his work here is a bonus post: Bloggers Need to Think like a Business to Make Money.
Start thinking Like an Editor
Ok, so by now you might be feeling discouraged, and you might be thinking that you’ll never make it as a travel blogger. That’s where David the Grumpy Traveler comes in. While he doesn’t paint a rosy picture of the travel blogging world (it is a difficult business to make a decent living at) he does offer some concrete advice. While I am not convinced about his multi-author site pitch (it really depends on if you are a personality or niche blogger) he does a great job of showcasing the amount of work needed to succeed. His description of how to use a press trip as an asset to develop deep content that is both usable AND can lead to conversions by people searching online is great. Check out the full discussion on Why Travel Bloggers need to Start Thinking like Editors.
A bit of Holiday Cheer
And to leave you with a final example of some concrete advice here is Chris from Pfft who encourages travel bloggers to stop writing to the small market interested in that tiny cafe in Bangkok, and write to the larger audience that go on holidays. The higher the numbers, the more clicks, the more money you make etc etc etc. Now, the trick is that Chris is telling us that we can keep our inspirational tone, writing styles, and voice. We just need to move it to a wider audience beyond the “I’m traveling all the time” market. It’s good advice and well worth a read on why we should Stop Being Travel Bloggers, Start Being Holiday Bloggers
What does this all mean?
So, you might be wondering what does all this advice mean? Aren’t people saying different things? Well, yes, in a way. But there are also some very clear lessons here.
1) You need to have a plan.
2) If you want to make money travel blogging you need to find an audience who will convert on your site.
3) You have to have a plan. Wait, I already said that! But it’s true. Your plan needs to define who your audience is, what they want, how you can give it to them better than others, and then integrate a conversion/sales plan that meets the needs of the readers you attract.
4) Blogging is not a get rich quick scheme. Travel Blogging/writing takes hard work and dedication. But if you love doing it than you are halfway to there. But you can’t forget the practical issues of mortgages, taxes, and 20% tips at bars in America.
Which advice above resonated the best with you? Is there room for us all in the travel writing/blogging business or will only a few succeed? Share your story 
About Todd Wassel
Fantastic and extremely useful post! Thanks! By the way, something else that I find very little information about, and that I would LOVE to see here: how to pitch businesses (hotels, restaurants, airlines, etc.) for sponsored reviews.
Thanks Carla, I’ll see what I can dig up. In general it is not very difficult to pitch. You just need to do your homework on their markets, and what you can provide for them. Show them your numbers, social media reach, agree what you will do for them, and then follow back up with the results. Maybe I can find a person who can do a guest post here who also has experience negotiating ad an sponsorship deals. I would love to hear the hotel industry’s side of it.
Great post Todd. I think the key is to have a plan. We talked about making money off our blog before we left on our RTW, but didn’t really have a plan to make that happen. Sponsors and advertisers started coming to us and it took us a little while to figure out what our site was worth, we certainly made a few mistakes in the process. We finally laid out a plan for where we wanted to go in the future. I think the key is to remember that your site, your work and your time are valuable!
HI Jillian, I couldn’t agree more! Blogging can be time consuming, and I think we all need to think more about the our opportunity costs. I love writing and blogging, but if I am also trying to earn money than there is always something else I can be doing rather than promoting someone elses profit making business over mine
Let’s get all these bloggers together for a roundtable debate on travel blogging. I’d watch it.
Thanks for the mention Todd.
@ Turner – shame you missed last year’s Travel BlogCamp, all of the people mentioned in the post were there speaking. If you are in London in November, sign up for updates on the website in my comments link
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No worries Darren. I’m hoping to make it to London for World Travel Market but I might be “stuck” in the Kosovar mountains doing some rural tourism work
If not then I’ll try to make the Blog Camp.
Wow! You’ve given me a lot to read this afternoon! =)
Thanks for sharing these articles.
I tend to agree about the “free press trip” comment. The amount of publicity we generate just from tweeting and posting articles about a destination are often more valuable then the cost of the trip.
Well, I think it is all a matter of quantifying the results. For me if I go on a press trip, or I’m being asked to write to my audience the sponsor is paying not for my time, but for access to the audience I have built. how we value that is a tricky business but it can be done.
Extremely useful information here. Thanks for the links!
Glad you found it useful Christy!
Thanks for linking to my post about the utility of press trips for travel bloggers.Some travel bloggers seem to measure their success by the number of press trips they attend but if running a blog is the way you earn a living, free trips don’t pay the bills and they take up a lot of your time. As Darren and Chris say bloggers need to give readers what they are looking for, not just what you fancy writing about and reports of your latest press trips.
Hi Karen, thanks for writing such a thoughtful post
I agree that if you are paying the bills then press trips are probably not the best use of your time. Personally, I have yet to travel on one for the reason that my time was better spent working where I was and not traveling. I see a lot of variety in the travel blogging world, with the majority of writer being the RTW bloggers who will eventually go home and their blogs will end. This is OK, but often requires a different strategy from those looking for a longer term business model. I think it also depends on what type of audience you are trying to attract. Is it the transactional pre-sale google searchers, or the loyal fans who wait patiently for your next story. Both occupy the travel “blogging” space but have different approaches. On my main site I lean towards the personality side as a reflection of my current lifestyle and my writing. But this was a decision to help promote my travel memoir writing (soon to be released…hopefully). On the other end of the spectrum I have my Things to Do in Tokyo site that is focus on SEO. Once I get my model correct then I will roll it out to other areas as well.
It all goes back to why you are travel blogging and keeping it real:
http://www.europealacarte.co.uk/blog/2010/11/05/tbex-europe-talk-blogging-tips/
I think travel blogging is perceived as a dream job, earning while you travel. Yes the job does have excellent perks but I need to spend a lot of time doing unglamourous tasks such as SEO and selling ads and still pay my bills at the end of the month.
Surely there is a limit to the number of blogs about RTW travel and quitting the cubicle that will be of interest to readers. Whereas most people do take vacations/holidays a few times a year and are searching for useful information about their destinations.
yeah, i think it can be perceived as a dream job, but that is more to do with people selling snake oil. They hit all the right emotional cues of traveling the world, barely working, etc etc. What they don’t talk about is the actual work that goes into running a blog. How you have to be web developer, editor, internet marketer, writer, journalist, and social media persona #1. They sell people on the idea that you can earn money just writing about your RTW trip. But they usually only focus on the “how to travel blog” and very little on what it takes to make money.
People want to believe it is true but don’t realize that they need to focus more, probably start their blog 1 year before they leave home, and focus on a specific angle that people want to learn about or search for regularly. They can then use their trip as their asset to gather the necessary information to write about their topic. If they are lucky, the investment they put into traveling around the world may either a) have earned them a bit of money through their blog, or b) turn into a profitable business by the time they get home, or a few years afterwards.
No one should buy the idea that travel blogging will earn them enough money to quit their job and travel the world. In most cases you have to have quit your job already and then work your ass off to become profitable. The vast number of travel bloggers will quit a long time before they actually start making any money.
Great post with a lot of useful advice and content! The advice about being holiday bloggers and not just a niche travel blogger is an eye opener for those of us who are just starting out and are on the path of planning to make a plan! Thanks!
Well, also take it all with a grain of salt
Everyone has their own ideas of what does and does not work in the blogging world. The common feeling is that you more niche the better, and I can agree with this. But just because you are writing to a niche does not mean it can’t be a topic with tons of interest. For example, spring holidays in Amsterdam is a niche subject but probably has hundreds of thousands of searchers each year.
Just to jump in here. That’s another problem bloggers have – that it’s all about numbers, and how many visitors a blog gets. It’s not about numbers of visitors but % of conversions where transactional content is concerned. Also remember the competition for the niche; a blog on holidays in Madrid will be tough to SEO where as a smaller city might get less searches but easier to rank for search terms, which means higher chance of getting bookings.
Hi Darren, yes I agree. My example was merely to demonstrate a point
I think numbers can be important if you are chasing after impressions, but when we are talking about conversions, affiliates, and negotiating deals with local hotels then it about the quality and the % conversion as you said. This means that SEO and analyzing the popularity of specific keyword phrases, and the comparative competition for them is very important. At the end of the day it depends on your monetization strategy. In the travel world we have lots of affiliate options, but fierce competition from some very heavy hitters. But then again it depends on the type of site people set up, is it a RTW journal focused on storytelling and eventually selling a book, or is it a focused authority site on a small city (or Tokyo in my case!). There is a lot of room for some creative money making from a story telling site with high traffic. For example I make a considerable amount from consultancies with the United Nations as a rural tourism expert (more details on this new job soon). I never would have had the credibility to sell a hiking guide, and rural tourism strategy to attract visitors without my blog as my main platform.
Great post, Todd with some very useful information.
I’ve taken notes, plan to read and implement a few.
Great!, please report back on how things go!
Great post, Todd. I make a living from my blog, and you’re right that it takes a lot of time and dedication. I go on press trips, and I find that they give me a lot of new ideas for content, so in a way they do benefit me beyond just being free travel.
If it were possible to make a living travel blogging then why are so many travel bloggers going down the road of writing about “How to make money travel blogging?” is there more to earn selling shovels than digging for the gold? As Andy Hayes said in a comment on Chris Clarkson’s holiday bloggers posts, he doesn’t go to a sports blog to read about “How to make money sports blogging” but read about sports. Does this also indicate that a high proportion of travel blog readers are other travel blogers, or aspiring travel bloggers. If so, this is bad news for travel bloggers wanting to earn from affiliate links and banners.
Hi Karen, I think it is natural for many travel bloggers to write about making money as they learn more about the business of blogging. I don’t necessarily think it is about making money through it (although maybe I am reading the wrong posts) but more because they tend to be popular topics, that invite a lot of comments. This goes to your point of many travel bloggers are reading other bloggers. This is a big problem if your monetization strategy is based on booking affiliates, and less of a problem is you are interested in “being a part of the travel blog community” or earning money from text links.
I am still not convinced that it is possible for a large number of people to earn a living as travel bloggers. They may be able to earn money as travel writers, writing for their own sites. This is something different than writing a journal style blog about what you think is a unique journey around the world, but for which has been done a million times before.
As for Andy’s comment (and I really like Andy by the way), I think he was making the point that travel bloggers should not be going off topic. They should keep their blog about travel, or what ever subject they picked, and not about what ever is going on in their blogging lives at that moment. This is actually one of the reasons I created Travel Blog Challenge. I had a lot of things I wanted to talk about with other travel bloggers but didn’t want to “pollute” my site with a bunch of geeky behind the keyboard blogging stuff that the average armchair traveler could care less about.
Good focus and reality check Todd. I think most pertinent is the identification of what your product is. I’ve found that the foodpilgrimage blog is most useful as a springboard for paid journalism, and traditional published (and e-published) books. Part of being clever is “insight”. Read your audience and figure out what content they find useful and how you can turn hat into a product.
Ps: I’m in London for a few months. Poke me if you stop through.
Hey Sage, I’d love to meet up. But I’m in Japan at the moment, then back to Kosovo in Sept. and then to the US for xmass. If I make it to World Travel Market and you are still in London I will definitely let you know. As I mentioned in an earlier post, most people want to believe that a blog is a business. I really want to believe this too, but I just don’t think it is true. A blog is a way to produce content that attracts and engages readers. what you do with them after that is your actual business! Oh, and don’t be afraid to blatantly ask your audience what they want more of, and use that to turn it into a product.
Madrid will be tough to SEO where as a smaller city might get less searches but easier to rank for search terms, which means higher chance of getting bookings.
Thanks for sharing this!
I’ve been running a travel blog on luxury destinations for nine months now and yes, it will remain a hobby for some time to go… It’s time consuming, demands a lot of skills as mentioned above (you should also be an excellent SEO expert as well as a striking photographer…) and it doesn’t pay off. I’ve tried several monetization strategies and make around 100$ a month. And no, I better not calculate the hourly rate!
But then again it’s ‘sort’ of rewarding when hotels ask for my photographs or print magazines ask for copy and photographs for their next issue. In exchange for a link to my blog, that is.
My plan is to make enough money off blogging by the time I retire from my regular job, i.e. in 20 years
Hey Walter, good luck with that retirement plan
I’m curious about why you don’t charge for the usage of your photographs. I was recently contacted by a magazine doing a feature on Kosovo that wanted to use my photos for free. I quoted a price instead. They are for profit and would use my photographs to earn money and sell their magazine. It just makes sense that images and writing costs money 
I also feel that blogging is rewarding, otherwise I would not do it, whether it was profitable or not.
Hi Todd
I actually started to charge for photographs: Image processing, editing, tagging, SEO-naming, publishing, linking doesn’t come in auto-pilot mode… But so far I could ‘only’ negotiate links back to my blog. I take it as an entry barrier and with more and more publications featuring my photographs I will become more picky where I travel to or write about: No deal – no blog post on my soon-to-be most successful travel blog
I was contacted by several luxury travel magazines already but they all started out with ‘unfortunately we have no budget’… apparently times are rough even for magazines in the premium niche!
I tend to build my business more around AdSense, affiliates and blog consulting, i.e. online rather than print. But I guess you need to pick any opportunity that more or less matches your niche.
And of course the nights are way too short to compete with fulltime travel bloggers or experts in the travel industry. But as long as the day job (which fortunately revolves around similar topics as blogging) pays WAY better than travel writing, I’ll have to limit that to the nights…
Well I have some reading to do! Thanks for posting this round up. Looks like there is some great advice out there. Now I’m going to read and figure out how to apply it to me.
really good stuff you’ve got here. i like your sites a lot. about how much seo do you do, and would you consider yourself a pro at it? just curious, as i’m learning it myself, and wonder how much it impacts your content or at least what you choose to produce.
Hey Mack, glad you are enjoying my sites! Blogging is often a lonely road and it really is nice to hear a compliment
As for SEO, yes, I do practice it but would hesitate to call myself an expert at anything really. I am learning constantly about SEO and in the beginning I really stressed out about the fine details, but I have gotten to the point where it is the larger concepts I worry about along with a few specific tasks on each post. I’ll be reviewing a great SEO book by Andy Hayes here and it is a great read for travel bloggers if you are looking to learn more in a digestible manner.
I never left SEO determine what I produce. This is for two reasons, you never know what people will search for in the future. If there is no interest now I’m happy to be the first person with great content on the issue when they do start looking. Second, on most of my sites I write what I feel or what I think my audience will find useful. Many times people don’t know what they need to know and thus don’t search for it. On a more transactional site like my Tokyo site, I do use SEO more to hone my message for individual post in terms of key word selection and trying to rank higher in SERPS. But this is the nature of that site which is different than TBC and Todd’s Wanderings. If I am completely honest, I do absolutely NO SEO for TBC. This is a side project aimed at contributing to the travel blog community. If people in the community find it relevant and useful this is all the traffic I need
I do want to eventually earn some money from this site but only in a way that is helpful and beneficial to the readers here (well that is true for all of my sites).
Hi Todd,
The reason I stumbled upon your post was because I am trying to find out how many bloggers are successful (=making $$$) in building a travel blog. I love to travel and love to work from home, so I created a travel blog sharing travelling tips, mainly to Singaporeans.
The blog has been around for 1 year plus, but I find myself running out of ideas what else I can do to further boost up my earnings. Currently, I am replying on adsense and affiliates. Frankly, I have not been very good in getting direct advertisement.
Anyway, thanks for sharing the information. Guess I just need a little bit of encouragement now and then