Travel blogs are a great way for you to have an excuse to visit awesome destinations and share your experience with others around the world. The only thing that would be better is if you got paid to do it…
And you can!
There are many travel bloggers out there that not only get to do what they love, but make money while doing it as well. The best part is, it’s not really that hard to do. With a little creativity, some patience and a lot of adventures, you can fund your lifestyle. Here are a few pointers when you want to start making money with your travel blog.
Design a Great Blog
If you want to make money with your travel blog, then you should take it seriously from the start. Before you figure out where you want to go and what you want to write about, find a great blog design or sit down with a team to create one from scratch.
While people will be visiting your page (hopefully!) to follow your travels, they will not stay long if your blog is unpleasant to look at or to navigate through. While you want to find a layout and color scheme that matches your personality, you need to think about your audience first. Make sure that whatever design you choose, that all of the menus can be easily located and that all of the different sections of your blog are obvious.
Your blog should be user-friendly and sleek. Don’t clutter up the page with random quotations or pictures: keep it simple, but good-looking. If you have too many things going on, it will not only distract your visitors, but it will also slow down your blog’s loading speed — another big no no.
Write Great Content
A great man once said that “content is king” when it comes to the internet. Sure, there are get-rich quick schemes that may work every once in awhile, but if you want followers — and you definitely do if you want to make money! — then you need to offer original, well-written content that will keep them coming back.
This doesn’t mean that you need to rival Shakespeare in vocabulary or Hemingway in prose: it just means that you must make sure that everything you write is as good as you can do. People are interested in follow your travels, so give them stories that come from you. Your blog posts shouldn’t only be about where you go and what you do, but how each adventure makes you feel, the lessons you learned and the relationships you build. These are the things people have always cared about, and always will.
Sell Ad Space
Once your blog is up and running and your are wowing readers with you tales of travel, you can finally start thinking about making money. One of the easiest ways to do this is to sell advertising space on your blog.
Selling space on your blog can be tricky and will depend on one thing: how many visitors you get each hour, each day, each week and each month. When you first start out, it will be tough to find companies willing to spend money on ads that only a handful of people will see. It’s possible, but you won’t exactly be raking in the cash. As you grow, though, you can reach out to companies that may be interested. If you have thousands of visitors each day, you should have no problem finding a few that may pay good money.
If you keep posting great content and gaining more followers, larger ad revenue will surely come.
Find Other Funding
There are some alternative ways to make money as a travel blogger as well.
You can use a crowdfunding service like Kickstarter to reach out for donations. Of course, any funds you make this way should be used to further your adventures, not for personal use. There are also paid press trips where you reach out to a magazine or newspaper about writing an article for them and they will pay your expenses. If your blog is popular enough, you can even look for sponsorships.
If you want, you can also offer public speaking services to people who would be interested in your stories. You can make a lot of money giving presentations to groups of people who want to live like you do!
It’s not impossible to live your dream of traveling while making money.
Benjamin loves to travel and exploring new countries. Has been on 3 continents and hopes to reach all of them.