Here’s How to Become a Travel Blogger and Make Money (Tips from a 6-Figure Blogger)

Wondering how travel bloggers make money?

As a profitable travel blogger — I made $272,175 from blogging in 2022 — this article shines a light on how to make money as a travel blogger.

There are 10 common ways to make money travel blogging, but the most successful travel bloggers also think outside the box.

👩‍💻 If you’re serious about making money from a travel blog, I highly recommend taking a course! Head here for info on the best travel blogging courses. If you want to read a full review about the best one I’ve done, head here.

But, Isn’t blogging dead? That’s something I see come up a lot, and a question you may have as well.

I am personally making over $40K+ per month (click here to see how), and I know plenty of other travel bloggers making that and even more — so if blogging is dead, we didn’t get the memo 🤷‍♀️ 

Now, plenty of travel bloggers don’t have a monetization plan for their blog, and therefore, don’t make money.

Unfortunately, this is the vast majority of travel bloggers. In short, if you don’t have a plan to use proven strategies to make money blogging, you likely won’t. 

Ready to discover how to make money as a travel blogger? Let’s get to it!

How to Become a Travel Blogger

Wondering, How to start travel blogging?

The first question to consider is: Do you want to make money with your travel blog, or will this be a hobby blog?

If you have no interest in making money, starting a new travel blog is easy! If you want to make money blogging, that’s more involved.

How to Start a Travel Blog

Easy — You can start a blog from home with a free Blogger account right now!

All you need is a travel blog name (you’ll also want to take the corresponding handles on any social media channels you use). Next, start sharing your best travel tips, epic stories and more — and you have a travel blog.

How to Start a Money-Making Blog

Like most things, I believe there’s a right way, and a wrong way to start becoming a travel blogger.

If you want to make your own travel blog to start earning money, I highly suggest investing in a travel blogging course with step-by-step instructions, so you start it off right.

There is a system to travel blogging success, and either know the system, or you don’t.

You’re either writing SEO-optimized content with high volume, low competition keywords that will rank on Page 1 of Google, or no one will ever see your content. In fact, stats say only 25% of users even go to Page 2 of Google.

Through travel blogging courses, I learned that I need to write the articles you want to read, and not just the articles I want to write.

I learned how to get my content on Page 1 of Google with search engine optimization (SEO) — in fact, that’s likely how you found this article!

The way I see it, you can spend time, or you can spend money.

You can either spend your time trying to find good free content, which could take years and still not pan out, or you can pay a professional to learn what they’re doing, so you can simply replicate their success.

Ready to invest in a travel blogging course? 👉 Head here to see the best ones!

How to Make Money From a Travel Blog

If you’re wondering how to make money with a travel blog, there are really countless ways.

You can pursue the ones that work best for your blog and your ideal audience, but whatever income streams you go after, know that multiple income streams are essential for success.

Below, I will show you 10 common ways to make money from a travel blog — but they by no means represent the only ways to make money blogging about travel.

1. Ads On Your Site

Did you notice the advertising on my site? Those ads account for 45% of my income right now.

The coolest thing about them is they are completely passive income, meaning as I sleep, I still earn money from the ads simply being on my site.

Yep: I do nothing, and collect money. There are few better feelings in the world than this!

To have ads on your site, you’ll need to sign on with an ad management company. Below, I will compare the six companies that can place ads on your site.

1. Mediavine

Among bloggers, many consider Mediavine and AdThrive (#2 on the list) the best because they pay the most and have great customer service.

To apply for Mediavine, you need 50,000 sessions per month (50K people visiting your site in a 30 day period), which is a lot.

🤑 How much I make on Mediavine: About $9,000+ USD per month with 250,000 monthly page views and mostly U.S. traffic (U.S. traffic pays the most).

When you first start out travel blogging, 50,000 seems impossible. As a new blogger, I also thought it was impossible, but eventually, I got there!

Now, it was a lot of hard work, and I invested in travel blogging courses so I could get on Mediavine fast.

On a personal note, before I was on Mediavine, I was with SHE Media (#3 on the list).

The month I switched, I 6X’ed my ad income going from SHE Media to Mediavine — though from what I hear, most bloggers only double or triple their ad revenue doing the same.

2. AdThrive

Besides Mediavine, other top-level travel blogs that make money are on AdThrive.

To apply, you’ll need 100,000 page views in a 30 day period. This means that in total, the visitors to your site have visited a total of 100,000 separate pages on your site.

3. SHE Media

For bloggers with less traffic, there’s SHE Media. They say you need 20,000 monthly sessions to apply, though some bloggers get approved with less.

The thing many dislike about SHE is they require you sign a one-year contract, something no other company asks for.

I was with SHE Media for about four months in late-2021. If you read other reviews of SHE Media, you’ll see that most bloggers say their payments are good, but their customer service is hit or miss.

I completely agree with the majority of this — that overall SHE wasn’t terrible, and they also weren’t great.

🤑 How much I made on SHE Media: About $800 USD per month with 30,000 monthly page views and mostly U.S. traffic (U.S. traffic pays the most).

4. Monumetric

For bloggers with less traffic, Monumetric only requires 10,000 monthly sessions.

The thing many dislike about Monumetric is they require a $100 USD set up fee to put the ads on your site, something no other company asks for.

5. Ezoic

Before SHE Media, I was on Ezoic. At the time, they required 10,000 monthly sessions, but now have no traffic requirement — so you can join Ezoic with basically no traffic.

Now, the more traffic you get, the more you make, so don’t expect much of a payout with low traffic.

While all ads on your site will slow down your website speed, Ezoic is known as the worst with this.

They have tried to make strides in this area with their Leap tool, but if you look through travel blogging forums, you’ll see a generally anti-Ezoic sentiment.

I was on Ezoic for about four months in early-2021, and have nothing good to say about this company. They offered basically nothing in the way of service, and it took me a few weeks to figure out (on my own) how to get ads set up.

🤑 How much I made on Ezoic: About $185 USD per month with 10,000 monthly page views and mostly U.S. traffic (U.S. traffic pays the most).

6. Google AdSense

Like Ezoic, there is no traffic requirement with Google AdSense. From what I understand, you make a few dollars a day, at most.

If you’re considering Ezoic vs AdSense, it seems you’d definitely make more with Ezoic — though I in no way recommend them.

2. Affiliate Marketing

First off, What is affiliate marketing? If you’ve ever recommended a product, restaurant, great book, or anything to another person, you’ve actually done affiliate marketing without knowing it. 

Affiliate marketing is when I recommend hotels, tours, rental car companies, travel gear, etc., on my website.

I’ll then insert what are called affiliate links that go to these products, places or services, and when someone buys anything through my affiliate link, I make a commission.

You can learn more about all this in my How to Find Affiliate Marketing Keywords Class.

🏆 Best Affiliate Marketing Networks

Most travel bloggers are signed up with a few affiliate networks that make sense for your niche. Head here for a list of the 50+ best affiliate marketing networks for travel bloggers.

Since my blog only covers Mexico, you’ll find Mexico tours, Mexico hotels, Mexico rental cars and products for traveling to Mexico.

• Best Car Rental Affiliate: Discover Cars
• Best Travel Insurance Affiliates: SafetyWing (I used to recommend World Nomads, but no longer do)
• Best Hotels Affiliate: Booking.com, Expedia and Hotels.com
• Best Home Rental Affiliate: VRBO (Airbnb doesn’t have an affiliate program)
• Best Tours Affiliate: Viator and Get Your Guide
• Best Affiliate for Physical Products: Amazon

Using a combination of the companies listed above, my affiliate marketing income in 2022 was $162,871. In 2021, I made $5,217 total from affiliate income all year — so 31X more money in just one year.

I attribute a lot of my current success to working one-on-one blog coaching with Laura of Scale Your Travel Blog to Six Figures. But make no mistake, I am successful because I worked hard, and I worked smart.

3. Selling Digital Products

With affiliate marketing, you’ll only get a commission or a percentage of the sale. When you sell your own products, you get all the profits (minus some fees).

For this reason, many bloggers create digital products like eBooks, printable travel planners, travel guides and more.

You can list the products on your website, or work on building up your email list, so you have direct access to those who have an interest in your content.

Digital products are a great way to make money as a blogger because you create them once, and sell them forever!

Many bloggers will use a site like Canva to create a digital product. There is a free version, but the paid version is well worth the $13 USD per month. ▶︎ Sign up for Canva here.

To sell the products, sites like Gumroad or ThriveCart are both great options.

4. Paid Press Trips

On a press trip, you’ll essentially be paid to travel! How cool, right? Well, sort of.

Personally, I find these too time consuming to arrange, and when I travel, I want to enjoy it; not work. However, many travel bloggers make money while traveling with press trips.

To secure paid press trips, you’ll contact tourism boards (sometimes called a national tourism office) or local travel-related companies.

There’s often a lot of back and forth hammering out the details, and contracts everyone will sign, before the actual trip.

✈️ How do you get press trips for travel bloggers?

Let’s say you want to get paid to travel to Morocco. You’ll first contact the Morocco tourism board, and see if they’d pay you to come to Morocco and create content for them.

If so, you’ll both come to an agreement, then you’d take the trip and blog about it afterwards.

Is it really that easy? That depends.

If you have a large social media following, high-traffic blog, or blog with a completely focused niche (if you have a Morocco blog, the Morocco tourism board is more likely to say yes), getting paid press trips is actually easy.

With a Mexico niche site, I do get tour companies and hotels that contact me for free travel — so this is just one reason to have a niche blog, which is a travel blog with just one focus.

In truth, most bloggers just starting out will get a lot more no’s than yes’s for paid trips. 

5. Sponsored Posts

Another way you can make money travel blogging is with sponsored posts.

This is when a company pays you to write a review of their tour company, or a hotel review, or review of a great travel product, or even just write about the company itself.

They are basically just paying you to promote them on your site, but they want it in your voice — the one that resonates with your audience.

If you think about it, no one knows better how to speak to your audience than you, so companies usually give you creative control.

You can reach out to companies yourself and offer to write a post to promote their products or services.

In some cases, they will contact you, especially if you have a Contact page or Work With Me page on your website (like this one) that connects to your email address.

6. Sponsored Links

Some companies will also pay you to put a link to their site in one of your existing posts.

Say you have a post ranking in spot #1 on Page 1 of Google titled “Best shoes for travel.” A shoe company might see your post, and offer you money to link to their website.

As it only takes 30 seconds to insert a link in a post, these will earn you far less than a full blog post dedicated to one specific place or thing.

How much you charge depends on a lot of factors, but you can expect $50-100 USD for a link, though some bloggers charge more.

7. Networking With Other Travel Bloggers

Another one of the best ways to make money blogging, is through leads from other bloggers about paid opportunities.

This might not be a direct payout at first, but the best travel bloggers have a large network of colleagues, who will send jobs their way from time to time.

👯‍♀️ Private Facebook Groups

One benefit to all the travel blog courses I’ve taken is access to a private Facebook group.

In these, you can both ask the teacher or mentor questions you have about the course material, and also network with your fellow classmates, who just so happen to be travel bloggers!

I am in a few, and can attest that the quality of information you get in private Facebook groups for travel bloggers is much better than what you get in public groups.

People also tend to be nicer since the teacher has a presence in the group, and no one wants to get in trouble.

👯‍♂️ Best Free Facebook Groups

If you want to check out some free blogging travel groups, there’s Affiliate Marketing for Travel Bloggers, which is my group, and SEO For Travel Bloggers, which is my friend Nina Clapperton’s group.

There’s also Women Travel Bloggers, Women Travel Creators and Digital Nomad Wannabe, and all five of these are some of best and most active Facebook travel blogging groups out there.

As with most Facebook groups, you’ll want to take all the info you get with a grain of salt.

✈️ Best Travel Blogging Conferences

I started this travel blog during the “you know what” in 2020, so all blogger conferences were been on hold.

When the world opened back up, I got to attend some amazing travel blog conferences like Travel Blogging Summit (where I was a speaker in 2022), and TBEX (where I was a speaker in 2023).

There’s also the popular Women In Travel Summit (WITS), and TravelCon, which was founded by famous travel blogger, Nomadic Matt.

8. Monetize Your YouTube Channel

There are many travel vloggers, like Hey Nadine and The Bucket List Family, who make great money off their YouTube travel videos.

To apply for the YouTube Partner Program and monetize your channel, you’ll need at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the past 12 months.

You can also apply with 10 million views on your YouTube shorts in the past 90 days.

Note: I have a YouTube channel, and keep meaning to get around to actually making videos 🤪

9. Monetize Your Travel Podcast

I had a podcast called Dream To Destination, for one year from 2020-2021.

It was a lot of fun, but definitely a lot of work. However, many travel podcasters do make great money podcasting.

I only had the podcast as a hobby, and still made a bit of money from it because it was monetized with ads.

I wrote a detailed guide, How to Start a Travel Podcast for Free (Like I Did), and if you want a deep dive into this topic, please check it out.

10. Work as a VA for Another Travel Blogger

VA stands for virtual assistant, and it means you can work virtually from anywhere.

This is a great entryway into the digital nomad lifestyle or location independence so many want from being a travel blogger.

You can sign up to UpWork or Fiverr to find virtual assistant jobs with travel bloggers, or join some free Facebook blogging groups and offer your services.

As someone who’s in quite a few of these Facebook groups, I always see successful bloggers to hire a VA.

What’s the average travel blogging salary? 

When it comes to making money travel blogging, there’s no average amount. It’s much like asking how much the average singer makes — obviously Adele makes much more than a wedding singer.

Similarly, there’s no answer to how much does a travel blogger make?

There are some travel blogger salary articles out there, so we know The Blonde Abroad and One Step 4 Ward, both have $1 million+ per year blogs.

In 2017, Nomadic Matt was making multiple-six figures, but I’d assume he too has a $1 million+ travel blog these days.

By contrast, some bloggers make $0.

When I got serious about monetizing my blog, I decided I will absolutely hit seven figures one day, and I started taking steps to do so — like investing in the best travel blogging courses I could find.

I mean, if The Blonde Abroad can, so can I!

What’s the earning potential of travel bloggers?

This really is a better question to ask than How much do travel bloggers make?, or Do bloggers make good money?

I look at this blog (and my other blogs, Travel To Merida, Travel To Oaxaca, Tulum Travel Secrets) as small businesses, and with your own blog business, the sky’s the limit on how much you earn.

For me, I only want to work 20 hours a week. If I were working a full time 40 hour workweek, I could make a lot more money than I am right now.

In short, when you’re a small business owner (yes — bloggers are!) you set your own ceiling on earnings.

Travel Blogging: Frequently Asked Questions

There are many niches, or sub-genres of travel blogs. Mine is focused on Mexico travel, while some travel blogs focus on Paris travel or, or camping travel, or cruises, or solo travel; the list goes on and on.

If you’re a woman, you’ll usually be called a female travel blogger; though the term male travel blogger is pretty much never used.

If you’re unsure how to be a travel blogger, it’s quite simple! In fact, all you need to do is start a travel blog website, then write some travel blog posts.

If you only want to document your travels, this will suffice; if you want to make money, consider a travel blogging course. The one I always recommend is Scale Your Travel Blog to Six Figures — which I have done!

How to Start a Travel Blog Without Traveling

When we all lost the ability to travel freely in 2020, many travel bloggers still thrived. How?, you might be wondering — By blogging about where they live.

While the place you live is familiar to you, it’s a full-fledged travel destination for the people who don’t live there. 

However, setting up a WordPress blog and learning how to blog properly takes time. Blogging is a marathon, not a sprint.

My blog did nothing in year one; it was basically a place to hear crickets.

In year two, I invested in the best travel blogging courses I could find, and made $7,762.22 dollars ($2,435.18 in December 2021 alone).

Now, in year three, I made $272,175 USD in 2022.

While my numbers may seem impressive if you’re making $0 from a blog, I’m still a small time blogger. (OK, maybe a “medium time” blogger 🤣).

There are so many bloggers who make more than me, but since I know blogging is a marathon, not a sprint, it’s only a matter of time before I get there too.

Final Thoughts: How to Become Travel Blogger and Make Money

There are many ways to make money blogging, and the top travel bloggers are doing many of them in tandem.

The one thing to always keep in mind about travel blogging and any blogging is that it will take time to get there. 

The highest paid travel bloggers who make more than $1 million have been blogging for a decade or more before they saw numbers like that.

To really make money as a travel blogger, you need to be in it for the long haul.

From my personal experience, I didn’t start seeing any income for more than one year. When money started finally coming in, it was not much — but I kept at it.

This year, 2024, is my fifth year blogging, and I made $272,175 USD in 2022. My goal for 2022 was $250,000 USD, but I surpassed that.

For the record: I’m not special. I think anyone can be a successful travel blogger, if you have a solid plan.

I learned a lot of what I know from the Scale Your Travel Blog to Six Figures course. (👩‍💻 Read my honest review of the course here.) However, even with the best course, know that blogging takes time.

Ready to invest in a travel blogging course? 👉 Sign up for the FREE live webinar to meet my coach Laura, who helped me grow my blog fast!