How Much Money Do Travel Bloggers Make and How to Start

How much money do travel bloggers make? This is the burning question that everyone who starts a blog wants to know regardless of the niche they are in. Go here if you’re ready to start a travel blog, keep reading to get some of your questions answered.

Can You Make Money With A Blog?

Whether you’re looking to create a blogger salary as a side hustle or replace your income, it’s totally possible. There are literally thousands of blogs online on every possible topic you can imagine. Choosing the right blog niche can be the difference between seeing success or not.

Before we get knee deep into the travel blog income, I’ve put together some resources to help you get your blog started in this popular niche.

• How to Start A Travel Blog
• 47 Creative Travel Blog Names and What to Avoid

Now back to the question of how you actually turn your passion into a profitable business? Well, it all depends on the following:

1. Is the quality of your traffic worth it?
2. Does your content solve your visitors’ problems?
3. Do your visitors take some type of action and sign up for your email list or buy from your affiliate links?

Website Content

This might sound confusing, but it’s really not. If you want to become a professional blogger then you need to learn how to write blog posts that help your readers.

I’ve seen so many beginners make the mistake of writing content that does not solve problems. It’s so easy to think that just because you’re the one paying for your monthly blog expenses, doesn’t mean that you can write whatever you want.

Unfortunately, your blog is not about you. Yes, you can inject yourself and tell stories in your blog posts, this will only make your readers get to know and like you.

But every blog post that you write has to have a purpose to help your audience. This is the only way that you’ll eventually be able to make a blogger salary that is worth it.

The theme of your content should be the same throughout your blog. This, in turn, will help people know who you are and will eventually buy your products and services.

Website Traffic

Blog traffic is one of the biggest issues that every new blogger faces. If you want to become a successful blogger and actually profit from your hard work, then you need traffic. Without it, you’ll never succeed.

Blog Visitors

Monetizing any blog regardless of niche all comes down to building a loyal following and letting people get to know you. Don’t make the mistake of trying to blog anonymously, otherwise, you may hurt your chances of becoming a top-earning blogger.

People want to know who the blogger is behind the computer screen.

What Is A Travel Blogger?

This is a person who gets to travel the world sharing their personal experiences and adventures with their audience. Many bloggers getting started will start with blogger job like working for a magazine, selling their photography or freelance writing supplement their income until their blogs start to earn.

Once you start to gain a loyal following some companies may offer free travel equipment or may reach out to purchase banner advertising on your website.

How Much Does The Average Blogger Make?

Every blogger is different and no two blogs make the same amount of money. Some are making thousands because they have teams they can outsource to. While others can barely afford to pay their monthly blogging subscriptions.

I’d love to tell you that you’ll earn thousands from your blog, but I’d be lying. There’s a lot that goes into growing a successful digital asset. Not to mention the amount of time that you’ll need to put in at the beginning before it makes a penny.

Related: How to Make $100 A Day Online Using A Simple System

How Much Do Travel Bloggers Make?

Let’s take a look at some top earning blogs in different niches to show you what’s possible. Of course, you need to keep in mind that many of many of these bloggers have been blogging for several years.

Rosemary Gardner from Busy Budgeter started making a full-time income in just 9 months with her blog. Now she is making six figures blogging. She teaches people how to budget and save money. You’ll also find some blogging tips of how she managed to turn her passion into a full-time business.

Michelle from Making Sense of Cents is a finance blogger. She started from scratch and is now making over $100,000 from her WordPress blog. She shares her income reports at the end of every month and reveals everything she did to achieve those statistics.

Top Earning Travel Blogs

Personally, I think it’s always nice to see some income results from people who in the same niche as you are. Here’s a few of them for you to check out and learn from.

Nomadic Matt is the New York Times best selling author who has been traveling for over a decade. He shares advice on how to travel better, cheaper and smarter. At the time of this writing, he has over 1,000,000 people who read his blog.

Johnny from One Step 4 Ward left home 10 years ago with no money but a dream and desire to create a better lifestyle. He started his blog while traveling and working and to date has made over $1,500,000 from his virtual online empire.

Related: 17 Blog Income Reports That Will Inspire You

With persistence and hard work, you could be the next highest paid travel bloggers? If you’re ready to get started, I’ve created a step-by-step tutorial that will teach you everything you need to know about how to start a blog.

How Do Travel Bloggers Make Money?

Now that you’ve seen how much money you can make with travel blogs, let’s take a look at some people monetize their sites.

Amazon Affiliate Sales: If you buy backpacks or travel gear, you can share your experience and links to the products you recommend. If someone makes a purchase within 24 hours, you’ll get paid a commission.

Digital Products: You can create your own eBooks, online courses, Shopify store or anything that you can think of. It does take time to create your own products, but once you create it, you can get paid over and over without having to do a whole lot.

Plus you can set up your own affiliate program and get other bloggers to help you promote them for you. You’ll have to pay them a small commission for their hard work, but this can be a great way to get more sales without you having to spend a lot of time advertising.

Affiliate Marketing: As a blogger, you’re constantly using different products and services to help you turn your personal blog into a business. If you’re happy with the products and services, you can promote those to your readers and some of them will buy through your links.

I recommend setting up the best blogging tools page. Once you start getting a following, people will want to know what you’re using in your business.

Ads: Most bloggers will start out monetizing their sites with Google Adsense or Media.net. Once they are able to increase their page views, they join other ad networks like Mediavine because they pay better.

It takes a while to reach the threshold to join the network and unfortunately, I am still not there. However, everything that I’ve read about it you definitely want to join when you reach 25,000 sessions in a 30 day calendar period.

Social Sponsorships: Once your Instagram, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter following starts to grow and you become an influencer, companies may reach out to you. They’ll pay you to mention them on your social media channels.

You might even use your huge following to get free stuff.

How to Get Started?

Getting started can be a challenge, especially, if you don’t have a lot of money in the bank. However, if you take a look at the two top earning travel bloggers, you’ll notice that they both started with very little money.

The cool thing is if you’re traveling abroad, you shouldn’t need too much money. Usually, the cost of living is a lot less than it is here in the United States.

Work hard on your blog and as soon as it takes off, you should be able to start monetizing it.

Your focus shouldn’t be on how to get free stuff or paid sponsorships. Focus on creating content that helps you grow organically and you’ll have complete control over how you monetize your site.

Avoid any shortcuts to success because they are usually blackhat and will only get you in trouble.

Should You Invest In A Travel Blogging Course?

I’m not going to lie, I’ve bought my fair share of blogging courses online. I wanted to make sure that I had the best chance of success and knew what it actually takes to build a successful blog.

There are literally tons of different courses you can take online. If you are a complete beginner, I would probably avoid buying any type of course.

I’d first start reading everything I could about SEO. This is going to help you understand how to write content that people can find online.

Remember, becoming a successful blogger begins with creating the right content. Once you create the content you need to work hard and get it in front of the right people.

Here are some great resources you can start with to learn about SEO:

• Moz Basic SEO
• Neil Patel

Affiliate Marketing Training

If you have no clue what affiliate marketing is or how to get started. I highly recommend this beginners course. It will teach you everything you need to know to monetize your most popular posts.

Plus you’ll get access to over 80 different affiliate programs in different niches. This alone will take away a lot of the legwork you’ll have to do on your own.

Final Take Away

Starting is the easiest part, you can be up and running in just 5 minutes. It takes time to grow and build an online empire.

Chances are you’ll make some mistakes along the way. It’s okay, we all make them, you just want to keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep striving towards your goals.

One day you’ll look back and realize that you’re one of the popular tourism blogs that people research to help them travel better.

Hand Picked Articles

• How to Start A Travel Blog and Make Money With It
• 47 Creative Travel Blog Names and What to Avoid
• 11 Blog Niches That Get Good Traffic and Make Good Money

So do you think that you have what it takes to become a travel blogger? Let me know why you decided to choose this niche and if you’re happy with it.