Insider Tips: How to be a Travel Blogger and Make Money
Ever wonder how travel bloggers earn money? Do you want more freedom in your work life? Imagine traveling the world and making some extra pocket money doing what you love! Well, I’m going to describe how to be a travel blogger and make money.
Hi, I’m Jackie Rezk, the blogger behind Jou Jou Travels. With over 5 years of blogging experience and a background in data analysis and marketing, I’m here to teach you how to scale your income blogging.
It is all something very achievable, believe it or not! I will explain to you how I transformed from the 9 to 5 job to regularly earning passive income while doing what I love the most: TRAVEL!
One of the stop methods is affiliate marketing and ads on your site but it doesn’t end there! In this post, you’ll learn all the ways on how to make money and travel.
Be sure to read to the end to find out how much I make as a blogger and the breakdown of my income streams!
Just a heads up! This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to purchase something through the links, at no additional cost to you. Your support helps me continue doing what I love ♡. Thank you! Read our Affiliate Disclosure here.
Best Travel Blogging Resources
– BEST SEO travel course: Salty Academy by @saltinourhair. They have a successful blog generating 30k a month in passive income. Learn from the best!
– Travelpayouts: Affiliate link to booking.com, GetYourGuide, and 100+ other travel brands in one place.
– Stay22: A fantastic tool for linking to hotels! Their AI pop-up feature generates extra revenue by leaving a link to the user’s preferred hotel provider, potentially earning you hundreds of extra dollars.
– FREE Influencer course by @professionaltraveler
– Become part of GetYourGuide’s travel community and unlock access to FREE activities, tours, and even paid opportunities! If you have at least 3,000 followers on social media, you can apply to join. Once accepted, you’ll have the chance to experience and create content for exciting GetYourGuide tours in cities worldwide. It’s a great way to enjoy fun experiences while growing your content portfolio, with the possibility of earning money through select paid collaborations. Simply sign up via the link here to start exploring new adventures with GetYourGuide!
– Want to travel the world without the high cost of accommodation? Join TrustedHousesitters and get free stays in exchange for pet sitting—perfect for bloggers looking to save while exploring new places!
– Lyrical Host: Experience fast and reliable website hosting with exceptional customer service. Use code JOUJOUTRAVELS10 to save 10% on your hosting plan!
– Keysearch: Simplify your blogging keyword research with this handy SEO tool, ensuring your posts rank well on Google. Use code KSDISC to save 20% off your membership!
– LinkDM – This handy tool automatically sends people a DM with your blog link whenever they comment a keyword on your Instagram post. Such an easy way to get your followers over to your website.
👉 Book a coaching call with me to learn my best tips to grow your account! Don’t struggle to get on the right path, I will be there to help you achieve your goals the right way. Are your reels not going viral? I can have a look at your account and give you tips to improve in my coaching call.
What is the Difference Between a Travel Blogger, Influencer, and Content Creator?
- Travel Blogger: Focuses on creating detailed written content (blog posts) about their travel experiences, providing tips, itineraries, reviews, and personal stories on their own website or blog.
- Influencer: Primarily builds an audience on social media platforms (like Instagram or TikTok) by sharing engaging content, influencing their followers’ decisions, and often collaborating with brands for paid promotions or sponsorships.
- Content Creator: Produces a wide variety of digital content, including videos, photos, blogs, and graphics, for various platforms. They may not always have a large following but focus on the creative aspect of producing content for themselves or brands.
Some people can fit into more than one of these categories, depending on their focus and platforms.
What are the perks of the job?
- Paid travel opportunities
- Complimentary stays at hotels/resorts (LEARN HOW HERE!)
- Free meals at restaurants
- Free tours and excursions
- Access to exclusive events
- Product sponsorships and collaborations
- Free travel gear (luggage, clothing, accessories)
- VIP access to attractions and experiences
- Networking with tourism boards and brands
- Flexibility to work from anywhere
- Increased social media visibility and influence
- Opportunity to monetize content through brand deals and affiliate links.
Do you want to know my secrets to getting FREE hotel stays as a travel blogger or influencer? You don’t actually need a massive following too – I have known someone with 200 followers to get a hotel collaboration using my pitch template!
How to become a Travel Blogger & Instagram Influencer
How to become a travel blogger
To become a travel blogger, you just need to get started by making a WordPress website (<–read my full guide on how to do this) and posting your travel tips and guides. The most important thing you can do from the start is to learn SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Don’t just start posting things here and there without learning it the right way. You don’t want to go back and fix everything you’ve done, trust me.
When you set up your WordPress site, picking a good and fast theme is important. I have a Kadence theme by Heartenmade and I also suggest Angie Makes’ themes. Both of these are cute and feminine, yet still fast!
I took an SEO Course after starting my blog and had to go back and fix everything after I had already written 40 posts. I’d recommend taking the course run by the most successful bloggers I know, Salt in Our Hair.
You can find the link to it below:
How to become a travel influencer
To become an Instagram Influencer or Content Creator, I’d also recommend learning it the right way first. You don’t want to start growing your account inauthentically or buying followers. I am a strong believer in education. I grew 100k followers on Instagram in 3 months after taking THIS free course and buying the full course after I found how useful the free course was. You can read my full review of the course here. One of the keys to success is creating a viral recipe for your Instagram reels!
What’s in My Camera Bag as an Influencer
Some of my favorite cool gadgets as an influencer are:
- The trick to getting smooth video footage is to use a Gimbal Stabilizer by DJI.
- The Insta360 GO 3S is one of the coolest gadgets I own especially as a solo female traveler. You can take videos solo by clipping it to your jacket or just about any surface!
- I have 2 tripods, one is for DSLR & Phone and this one is just a compact & easy to set up one for phone.
Find out what else is in my camera bag and how I take photos solo!
Free Guide!
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How Travel Bloggers Make Money
1. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is like being a digital matchmaker. Imagine you love a product or service, and you think your friends would love it too. In affiliate marketing, you share a special link related to that product or service. When your friends use that link to buy something, you get a small reward or commission at no extra cost to the end user.
So, it’s a bit like recommending your favorite hotel to a friend, and the hotel thanking you with a little gift because your friend decided to stay there. Just about anything you think of can think of that you want to recommend may have an affiliate program so it’s worth checking! It’s a way for people to earn money by promoting things they genuinely like or believe in.
Now say you have a few people a day book through the links you recommend. That means, this small gift multiplies like crazy and you could be earning thousands a month by recommending what you love! You don’t even need a huge amount of traffic to get started with affiliate marketing. So don’t be afraid to get started right away.
I’d recommend getting started with Travelpayouts & Stay22 in order to affiliate link to travel-related services. I use both – Travelpayouts for all my direct linking and Stay22 for their cool AI pop-up feature explained below.
- Travelpayouts: Affiliate link to booking.com, GetYourGuide, and 100+ other travel brands in one place.
- Stay22: A fantastic tool for linking to hotels! Their AI pop-up feature generates extra revenue by leaving a link to the user’s preferred hotel provider, potentially earning you hundreds of extra dollars. Read more about how Stay22 works in my full blog post.
2. Website Ads
Display Ads can be placed on blogs, and money can be earned based on the number of ad impressions or clicks.
Now, I don’t recommend adding ads to your website until you have nearly 10k sessions a month, as you won’t be earning a ton before then, and it will have a slight impact on user experience.
I also don’t recommend joining Google AdSense, as you’ll be earning pennies! I would recommend small bloggers of around 10k sessions to join Journey by Mediavine, SheMedia, Monumetric, or Ezoic (in order of preference).
The real goal is to get onto Mediavine, but the session requirement is 50,000 per month. Mediavine has a high reputation for earning bloggers tons of money!
I finally reached my goal to join Mediavine in May 2024 and have since been earning $1,000 to $2,000 in passive income a month. With increased traffic and higher RPMs, I expect to earn much more than that.
RPM (Revenue Per Thousand) is the amount of money you earn from ads per 1,000 visits. It is calculated by dividing your total ad revenue by the number of impressions, then multiplying by 1,000. So if you had an RPM of 20 and 50k sessions, you’d be earning $1,000 (20*50).
Plus, some insanely successful bloggers I know have earned nearly 10k a month from ads alone on their website.
In August of 2025, my traffic started to increase rapidly. I got accepted into Raptive, which has an even higher requirement than Mediavine. You need 100k Views (not sessions) to be accepted. Apparently, Raptive has a higher RPM and can earn you more than Mediavine. I just added the Raptive ads to my site this September, so I’ll report back on how it’s done.
3. Sponsored Content
Press trips
Hotels, tourism boards, among other companies will invite you to a destination in order to promote it. Please don’t get too excited like some new bloggers do and think, “oh, a free trip!” As, on top of the trip, you should be compensated for the deliverables asked! I’ve made $6,000 to go on a trip and create an Instagram reel or blog post.
For example, I’ve had a paid collaboration with the Umbria, Italy Tourism Board & Michelin Guide to promote Michelin’s new Michelin selected hotels. It was a dream! I got invited again to work with them and visited Hungary too!
Sponsored Blog Posts
Some companies will ask you to create a blog post about their hotel, product, service, or destination. It’s important to indicate that the post was sponsored to your reader for full disclosure and to mark links as sponsored.
Social Ad Campaigns
If you have gained a following on social media, you can charge a minimum of 10% of your following size for a sponsored ad. I’ve worked with brands like Airalo (an eSIM company), Michelin Guide, Costsaver Tours, Emirates Palace, and more. You can find examples of what ads and collaborations I’ve done under #joujoucollabs on Instagram.
I grew my Instagram account by 100K followers in only 3 months! How? I learned through an Instagram course. You can get started with a free course here. I found it so useful that I then joined the paid course, which helped me grow my following quickly. You can read my full review of the course here.
👉 Book a coaching call with me to learn my best tips to grow your social media account! Don’t struggle to get on the right path, I will be there to help you achieve your goals the right way. Are your reels not going viral? I can have a look at your account and give you tips to improve in my coaching call.
4. Selling Digital Products
Another revenue stream is selling digital products like travel guides, eBooks, or online courses. These products leverage their expertise and cater to their audience’s interests.
I sell eBooks, Canva templates, Mobile editing presets, and more!
5. UGC
One of the growing ways to make money as a travel blogger is through User-Generated Content (UGC).
UGC refers to content—such as photos, videos, or reviews—created by everyday users so this means you don’t need a huge following or any following for that matter to get started.
As a travel blogger, you can create UGC for brands, such as hotels, travel gear companies, or tourism boards, that they can feature on their websites, social media channels, or ads.
Brands value authentic, relatable content that resonates with their audience, and travel bloggers who specialize in high-quality, real-world experiences are perfectly positioned to provide this.
Unlike influencer partnerships, UGC doesn’t always rely on the size of your audience but rather the quality and relevance of the content you produce.
As a travel blogger, you can pitch UGC packages to brands or get discovered via UGC platforms, earning anywhere from $200 to $2,000 per piece of content, depending on the brand and project scope.
6. Social Media Management
Another lucrative way to make money as a travel blogger is by offering social media management services for businesses such as restaurants, hotels, or tourism companies.
As a travel blogger, you already have experience creating engaging content, growing an audience, and understanding social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. You can use these skills to manage the social media accounts of businesses, helping them create content, schedule posts, engage with their audience, and grow their online presence.
Many businesses, particularly in the travel and hospitality industries, struggle to maintain a consistent social media strategy, which presents an opportunity for you to step in and offer your expertise.
Social media managers typically earn anywhere from $500 to $3,000+ per month per client, depending on the scope of services offered.
Managing a few clients at once can be a steady and reliable income stream while allowing you to work remotely and utilize your creative content skills.
6. Selling a Course
You can sell a course after becoming a successful blogger or travel creator. Spilling all your secrets to success. After filming the course, it will be there forever (with updates of course to industry changes). You can then sell it and earn passive income this way.
The most successful influencers and bloggers who earn over $1 million a year usually have a course they sell for 1k a seat!
7. Hosting a Group Trip
Hosting a group trip is another revenue method. The blogger sells trips to their audience and earns a commission. Many popular companies like Trutravels, Flash Pack, and Trova Trip work with influencers. They plan all the logistics, and you advertise to your audience through social media, blog, and email to get people to join you. Typically, you need to sell 8-10 spots minimum for the trip to go ahead.
8. Other
There are many other ways to earn money as a blogger too. You can get creative as the possibilities are endless. Whether it’s selling image rights or through email marketing or through FB Groups. There are just too many ways to list!
How much can you earn as a travel blogger?
Earnings as a travel blogger vary widely and depend on several factors, including your audience size, the quality of your content, and how effectively you target posts for affiliate marketing.
Studies show that 80% of bloggers make little to no money from their blogs. Blogging is a long-term game that doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to rank on Google, and you must really love it in order to be dedicated enough to work on it. Many of these bloggers give up before they see progress, or they haven’t learned properly how to scale their blog.
A beginner travel blogger might expect to earn anywhere from $50 to $1,000 per month in the first year. As your traffic, audience, and brand partnerships grow, so will your income potential. It takes time to build momentum, but with consistent content and marketing efforts, earnings can steadily increase.
Bloggers with a large, engaged audience tend to earn more through brand collaborations, sponsored posts, and affiliate commissions. By strategically placing affiliate links in high-converting posts (like travel gear recommendations or hotel bookings), you can earn a substantial income.
When combining affiliate marketing, ads, sponsored posts, and other streams, a mid-level travel blogger might earn $2,000 to $10,000 per month, while top-tier bloggers can easily bring in $20,000 to $100,000+ per month. Success depends on audience engagement, traffic volume, and diversification of income streams.
- Read how these bloggers make $30k a month! And take their SEO course here to learn exactly how they did it.
- Niche Pursuits has a whole section on blogger success stories where you can find out how much people are making through blogging.
Each month is also very variable. In terms of my income, I’ve made anywhere between $3K to $17K a month!
Here’s the breakdown of what a month of mine looks like:
| Source | Percentage of Income |
|---|---|
| Brand Partnerships | 63% |
| Affiliate Marketing | 25% |
| Ads on Blog | 10% |
| Sponsored Blog Posts | 2% |
| Digital Products | 1% |
In November 2025, I had one of my highest-earning months. I made $9.5K in passive income from my blog alone. On top of that, I earned from brand deals $7.8k via Instagram, making my monthly total $17k!
Here was the breakdown:
- Raptive ads: $4,529
- Travelpayouts (mostly getyourguide and hotel bookings): $3,440
- Stay22 (via the hotel booking leave behind): $1,628
- Brand deals on Instagram: $7,179
Hopefully, this post has given you some valuable insight on how travel bloggers make money & how you can start doing the same! If this post helped you, please comment below and let me know. I love to hear from you.
