If you’re thinking about learning how to start a travel blog then one of the first questions you probably have is “How much money can I make from travel blogging?”
Your second question will probably be “Is there still room for new blogs to earn money, or is the market too saturated?” And lastly you’re probably thinking “How do I start a travel blog from scratch?”
In this article I’m going to answer these questions and many more so that aspiring bloggers can get a good idea of what’s involved!
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How Much Money Can a Travel Blog Make?
Let’s get right into it. The sky is the limit when it comes to blog earnings, but the bloggers who make the most typically have a very diversified set of income streams.
Once established, your travel blog itself may earn $3,000 – $10,000 / month, but if you’ve broadened your horizons and started working on other income streams like freelance writing, content creation, social media management and consulting services, you can double or triple this figure.
It’s probably not fair for me to just say “you can make ____” without having any real examples.
- Caz & Craig earn over 6 figures/year from their amazing family travel blog yTravelBlog.com.
- Tim Leffel earns more than 6 figures/year from his diverse set of income streams including excellent books, 5 websites and a successful marketing company.
- Johnny Ward of OneStep4Ward.com earns upwards of $30,000 / month from his websites.
- This blog that you’re reading makes over $100,000 / year and is growing every year.
Of course, I’m not just giving up these bloggers’ income after they told me in confidence, each of these bloggers have been honest and transparent enough to publish their earnings online at some point during their career.
They did that for the same reason that I’m writing this post. To show people that blogging really is a reliable source of income, and to inspire you to start a blog of your own.
There are probably thousands of travel blogs online earning at least $3,000 / month. I believe that anyone who sticks with it and works at it for a year or two, can make this amount.
How Long Does it Take To Start Earning Money From Blogging?
This is a very hard question to answer. We started earning an income after about a year of blogging, but we weren’t going at it very hard for the first 6 months.
We would go on the blog every month or so, add an article and a few pictures and that was about it.
If you were to start a travel blog today and work really hard at it (around 5 focused hours/day), then there’s no reason that you couldn’t start earning around $500 / month from it after 6 months. For travellers, that’s a pretty good chunk of change!
After a year you could be earning $1000 – $1500 / month and after two or three years, if you kept at it and constantly marketed yourself, you could earn $5,000 / month or more.
Of course these numbers would completely vary depending on your individual hustle, your focus on on-page and off-page SEO, and your overall strategy, but they should give you a rough idea of income.
Luckily, if you use our free 10-minute guide to start your blog today, you’ll get our epic Beginner Blogger Course and 200-page blogging eBook for free.
We didn’t have a resource like this when we started blogging, but if we did I think we could have earned more money a lot sooner. Check it out and see what you think.
Read More: From Hobby to Career – The Complete Evolution of Our Blog
Is The Market Too Saturated To Start a Blog Today?
Absolutely not.
Yes, there are way more blogs online today than there were 5 years ago when we started, but there were also fewer people reading travel blogs and fewer companies willing to work with us.
The market is saturated with travel blogs, but it is also saturated with opportunity.
These days though, you need to be a niche website. You can’t simply be a “travel blog”.
You’ll need to be more than that, such as a “couple living in a van, travelling around the USA”, or “a travel blog all about Slovenia”, or “a vegan female traveller who hikes around the world”.
You get the point!
Pick a niche, become an authority, and stand out from the crowd. If you aren’t sure about a travel blog name yet, it doesn’t matter. You can still start your blog today and come up with a name later on.
Don’t let competition in the industry stop you from starting a blog. It’s the best thing we ever did and we honestly believe that there is enough money and brand partnerships available to go around.
In order to attract your potential partners, your travel blog posts need to be perfectly polished in terms of grammar, spelling, and overall writing style.
The best place to seek professional content editors and creators are essay writing services. Besides, such platforms like EssayPro essay writing services can detect and remove plagiarism, which is not a merely university issue. Another option is Copyscape.
Other than that, don’t forget to add nice photos to your posts. We use and recommend Shutterstock for royalty-free media.
How Do Blogs Earn Money?
I’ve written about this extensively in my post: How & When To Monetize Your Travel Blog, but I’ll quickly run over the basics again here:
- Sponsored Content: Most blogs start this way. A company basically contacts you via email (or you reach out to them) and ask you to write a review about their product or brand. They pay for this review and the link to their site (between $200 – $750 USD / article).
- Affiliate Sales: Instead of getting paid for the link, a better way to arrange payment is via commission. Affiliate marketing is when you link to a product or service from your blog and when one of your readers makes a purchase through your link, the company tracks it and sends you a percentage of the sale.
- eBooks & Product Sales: Pretty self-explanatory. You write a book or create a product and sell it to your blog readers.
- Social Media & Blog Management: You run a company’s social media (Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram) or blog (creating content) and get paid for it.
- In content advertising: Relevant ads are placed around your blog, when someone clicks or purchases, you get paid. Mediavine is a popular company to go through for travel bloggers. Click here to learn more about in-content ads.
- Twitter Chats: Once you have a lot of Twitter followers, brands will contact you to host their Twitter chat. These typically pay around $300 each and last 1 hour.
- Sponsored Social Sharing: A brand will contact you and ask you to share their brand or product on your social media. Depending on your numbers, these can be charged at around $200 / share.
- Brand Ambassadorships: A brand asks you to continuously use their product/service and write about it, and they pay you a monthly salary.
- Press Trips: A tourism board or tour company invites you to their country to write about your experiences. They do this because your blog has large numbers and they want to introduce your readers to their tour or destination. The press trip typically includes flights, all transport, food, travel, and entertainment for the duration of the trip and you can charge for your services on top of this (upwards of $10,000).
- Instagram Takeovers: This is where you take over the Instagram account and Instagram stories of a tourism board or brand and document your day or your use of the product (whatever is agreed to). You’ll be paid for your time, and it’s also a good way to get your name out there.
- Something that hasn’t been thought of yet: The key to being a successful blogger is to be creative. There are a ton of bloggers coming up with new income streams every day. Step out of the box and try something new.
Now You Know How Much Travel Bloggers Make
So, what are you waiting for?
Blogging can be a great source of income. The only regret we have about starting this travel blog is not doing it earlier. We love the job. We love sharing our travel experiences and knowledge with hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
We love helping new companies and up-and-coming destinations promote themselves. We enjoy connecting with our readers and bringing travel into our working life.
It’s truly the ultimate job, and now that you know that you can earn as much as $30,000 / month from it, it’s time to learn how to start a travel blog today.
When you click that blue button you’ll be taken to our guide to starting a blog.
Once you buy your domain name (example: www.yourblogname.com), we’ll give you our Beginner Blogging Course to help you get your website started correctly and efficiently ($70 value).
Plus, you’ll receive our $20 Pro Blogging ebook and access to our VIP Facebook group. All for free.
Happy travels and happy blogging.
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Great article and very inspiring for bloggers who are just starting. Keep up the good stuff. Happy Travels Nick.
Hi Nick and Dariece,
Great post guys! I’ve been travel blogging for years, but on a hosted travel blog site. Last June I set up my own blog, but then life happened, I posted infrequently and I didn’t run with it. Now this year, I’ve been actually putting effort into my travel blog since May and I have started getting emails from media companies for sponsored content. I am also doing some freelance travel writing that is proving pretty lucrative. I have another 9 months working in Jamaica, so I’m seeing how far I can get by that time and if I’m able to take the plunge!
Looking forward to hearing all about Columbia! It’s on my list! I’m off to Curacao this week, weeeeeeeeee
Your article about “How Much Money Can You Make From a Travel Blog?” is very informative for people who do not have jobs after must read your article they must create free blogs and work on it and follow your earning rules.
Great article and very inspiring for bloggers who are just starting. Keep up the good stuff. Thank you so much for sharing it.
Thanks for this. It is good to know that so many people are making good money doing it.
Thanks for reading and commenting 🙂
nice article. Thanks for sharing this article with us.
This isn’t a good post. I’m a year in and haven’t made any money yet but it’s helpful to know that it can be done and in many ways.
Very insightful article. Helps me narrow down the monetization strategies that would be a fit for me.
Great article and very inspiring for bloggers who are just starting. Keep up the good stuff.
Thank you for this posting! I was just wondering about the revenue breakdown of $30,000 per month though.. How much of it relies on the e-book that you’re selling? and what percentage is coming from more pure-blogging revenue, like paid contents & advertisement?
Thanks a lot!
Hi Nick
Thank you for sharing this wonderful tip on how to make money on blogs
My question is do the bloggers need to boost their social media to promote their blogs?
What are the strategies coming up when it comes to market your own blogging sites?
Thank you posting this article really helpful 🙂
I’m just wondering on how to attract more readers to the blog. Do you hire SEO company?
Many companies do sponsored content just to get links back. Content quality is often low too. This kind of behaviour is against best practices. So far, we have not got any good sponsored content offer for our website so we have rejected all proposals.
Thanks for commenting. For us personally, ebook sales are definitely not the main source of income. For us, affiliate marketing and in-content advertising and content creation and social media management of other websites are how we mostly earn an income.
Thank you.
SEO (both on page and off page) is key when trying to get readers to your site as is other off-page marketing of your brand, such as collaborations, social media, big media features, etc. We did have an SEO team for quite a while but we don’t anymore.
Yes, you should never accept links that go against Google guidelines.
Hello all!
Really great article, it inspires me a lot as a newbie blogger. Thanks a lot