You’ve probably just come back from a well-deserved vacation, or you’re still enjoying it. Would you like to be on vacation all year and get paid for it? Well, some people do just that: they’ve turned their travel blog into their profession.
Running a travel blog and making a living from it isn’t easy; quite the opposite, it’s a long professional journey. Living off your blog is a long-term project that takes years, consistency and a lot of work.
Bloggers are active, sociable, entrepreneurial and brave people, eager to try new things and share them with others. Passionate about a hobby that, over time, has become their business.
Can you make money with a blog?
Definitely, yes. And not only with a travel blog, but with a blog on any topic. The essential requirement is to write about what you’re truly passionate about and have the skills and knowledge to pull it off.
The most important thing is to build the blog’s foundations. And by foundations I mean the following:
- Brand image and the message you want to convey
- Solid, quality content
- A subscriber list, through a newsletter
- A functional, professional website
- A catchy, easy-to-remember URL
- A social media community
- Networking
- Passion and dedication
The next step, and no less important, is building an audience.
Blogs have followers because people like the articles, the tone is natural and approachable, and the writing feels fresher than specialist sites.
Let’s be honest: building an audience isn’t easy.
To get people to read and follow what you write, you need a social media presence and frequent, quality content.
How can you monetize a blog?
What funding methods can you use?
Several techniques can help fund a blog. Here are the methods most used by successful blogs, whether about travel or any other topic.
Google Adsense
This is contextual advertising: videos, text or images displayed as ads, earning money every time someone clicks on them.
For this method to pay off you need significant website traffic, since the price per click is very low.
Be careful with the number of ads you show, as overdoing it can harm your image and cost you readers.
Sponsored posts
These are articles you publish on your blog and get paid for. The article will usually include a link to the advertiser’s site and promote their products and/or services.
This can be seen as an SEO strategy, as long as the post is directly related to the blog’s topic; otherwise it may be considered black hat.
Customer care
The goal is to keep subscriber churn as low as possible, and the only way to do that is by looking after your followers. Offer them quality content, regular posts, special events such as webinars on specific, topical subjects, discounts on courses, trips, activities…
Direct advertising
As the name suggests, this means publishing ads on your blog from companies that pay for them. The ads appear as banners or widgets that link directly to the advertiser’s website.
It’s the most profitable way to monetize a blog, as advertisers can pay quite well. But to get there, you need fairly high traffic to attract advertisers who pay well.
Affiliate marketing
This is when you promote other products and/or services through your blog and earn a commission. On a travel blog, this would be sales of travel services such as accommodation, flight or car rental sites… and for every booking made through your blog’s link, you earn a percentage.
It’s an excellent funding method if the blog attracts a very significant number of visits and the ad is well placed.
The leap to eCommerce
With high blog traffic, you can sell products related to the blog’s topic (on a travel blog, destination guides) or, if you have the content, write your own eBook.
Products can be shipped via drop shipping, which lets you sell from anywhere in the world without storage costs.
Another increasingly popular funding strategy is pay-per-content, where users pay only for what they were looking for.
In short, for anyone thinking of starting a blog and turning it into a profession someday, the most important thing is to do it with passion and dedication. Most successful bloggers didn’t start writing to build a career; over time, only those who are truly committed to their blog remain, becoming leaders in their field.
