Wouldn’t it be nice to just quit that 9 to 5 job and instead spend your days traveling the world?
Sounds pretty nice, right? Well, what if you got paid to do just that?
Well, this is a reality for the following travel bloggers who earn thousands of dollars each month writing about their travel experiences.
But it isn’t all fun and games. Running a travel blog means putting in the hours – taking quality photos, perfecting SEO on posts, building a website from the ground up, keeping up with social media networks, working with brands and affiliates and so much more.
These successful travel bloggers explain how they earn their monthly income, what goes into their blog in the daily and what’s next for them on their blogging journey.
The Adventure in You
But that wasn’t always the case. Prior to The Adventure in You, Anna was working as a teacher in the Philippines while Tom was waiting tables in the UK.
The two met after on a bucket list solo backpacking trip – and the rest was history.
Tom admits that when they started The Adventure in You, he had no idea where it was going to go or that it would even make any money. He says that their blog grew out of a genuine love for traveling and that it continues to do.
What is ‘The Adventure in You’?
This mission of The Adventure in a You is:
“To Inspire People To Do More and Live Their Life To The Fullest, So They Can Create Unforgettable Memories.”
This blog aims to guide hopeful travelers on how to plan trips, budget for travel and, ultimately, how to make money from travel blogging.
On The Adventure in You you will find:
- Adventure Holidays – Anna and Tom take their readers along on their mission to complete the Top 50 Adventure Holidays in the world.
- Travel Blogging Train – This training teaches blogging hopefuls how to turn a love for travel into a business and make money from it.
- Guide Books – These guidebooks are written based on Tom and Anna’s personal experiences traveling through various countries.
- Tips and Inspiration – Anna and Tom reveal their best travel tips and inspirational articles that will inspire readers to travel the world.
- Recommended Gear – Browse through The Adventure in You’s gear section as they recommend, test, and review different travel gear.
- The Adventure Tribe – The Adventure Tribe is a community of of like-minded people that all love adventure travel. Ask questions, drop by to say hi, or simply hang around for inspiration!
How does The Adventure in You make money?
The following is a list of affiliates/services that contribute to the overall income that The Adventure in You brings in monthly, in order of most to least profitable:
- Sponsored Posts and Brand Partnerships – $12,688
- Affiliates – $5880.62
- Booking.com
- Agoda
- Hostel World
- Liveaboard (Diving trips)
- 12Go (Transport search engine in Asia)
- Bluehost (Blog hosting provider)
- World Nomads (Travel insurance)
- Premier Tefl (TEFL qualification provider)
- Convertkit (Our email auto-responder which was a HUGE gamechanger to our business)
- Tailwind (Our Pinterest secret weapon)
- Amazon
- Display Advertising – $3,685.61
- Products – $825.72
- Blogging Courses and Information Products – $559.68
The Takeaway:
Almost half of The Adventure in You’s income for this month came from sponsored posts and brand partnerships.
Tom says that he and Anna decided to stop taking one-off partnerships and to instead focus on longer deals (around 6-12 month long partnerships).
“This means that we can spend more of our time creating quality content and really integrating the partnership across our site,” he says.
Brand partnerships, also known as co-branding, are a strategic marketing and advertising partnership between two brands, allowing one brand’s success to affect the other (and vice versa).
Co-Branding is one of many ways bloggers are able to earn an income, though Tom admits it can be difficult to close larger, more specific deals.
However, if structured and executed correctly, he says that it can greatly benefit both the supplier and the blogger.
Helene in Between
Helene, owner and namesake of Helene in Between, created her travel blog after a spontaneous decision to travel the world.
She says that she and husband, Michael, had always wanted to see Europe and one day they dropped everything, left their home in Dallas and moved abroad with nothing but two suitcases and their dogs.
Helene admits that this move was only possible because of Helene in Between. She now works a full time travel blogger and has since hired on her husband, who works on the sites photography, social media and and brand outreach.
What is ‘Helene in Between’?
Helene uses her blogging space to share travel experiences, tips and tricks, strategies for creating a successful blog and how to manage social media (specifically Instagram.)
For 6 years Helene worked in online landscape which included: online advertising, marketing, SEO and social media. She implements much of this knowledge into her blog posts for Helene in Between, specifically the ones focused on growing a blog.
In short, Helene in Between intends to help readers explore new places, save money and budget for travel and love your dreams.
How does Helene in Between Make Money?
The following is a list of affiliates/services that contribute to the overall income that Helene in Between brings in monthly, in order of most to least profitable:
- Affiliate Income:
- Siteground – $1,800
- Genius Bloggers Toolkit – $5,671.25
- Other affiliates: $480
- Product Sales – $1,773.25
- Sponsored Posts – $5,000
- Advertising – $1,030.68
In addition to travel related content, Helene also spend a lot of time talking about Instagram.
Social media can play an important role in blog growth and traffic. Helene notes that Instagram is more than just likes and comments – it is a tool for growing a business.
With now over 1 billion monthly active users, it’s definitely the ideal place for boosting traffic. Therefore it’s important to continually monitor your business instagrams engagement rate.
Your engagement rate can help underline how frequently your following interacts with your content and other useful data.
The Takeaway:
Helene notes that blogging isn’t easy. In fact, it took her three years to decide to quit her current job and make blogging her new full time commitment. She admits she started the blog out of a passion for travel and wasn’t sure where it would end up.
It’s important for future bloggers to know that blogging is more than simply writing a new post every week.
Instead, full time blogging means taking quality photos, keeping up with social media, commenting, reaching out to brands, making content SEO friendly and so much more.
Perfecting your blogging style and content can take time… but we think a monthly paycheck of $15,000 is well worth the effort!
Local Adventurer
Local Adventurer was co-founded by husband and wife Jacob Fu and Esther JuLee and has since added two more contributors, Josh and Macy.
Esther initially started the blog as a hobby, searching for a creative outlet after leaving her wedding photography business.
Jacob was running a YouTube channel with his brother and he could quickly see how the blog was organically gaining traffic and attention (he attributes this to his wife’s photography skills and her ability to balance posts that are both informational and inspirational.
Since then the blog has taken off, earning the couple nearly $125,000 last year alone.
What is Local Adventurer?
Local Adventurer was born when the authors of the website decided to spend more time exploring their hometown of Atlanta.
They explain that it’s easy to get comfortable where you live and how you may not realized how many hidden gems are around you.
How does Local Adventurer Man make money?
The following is a list of affiliates/services that contribute to the overall income that Local Adventurer brings in monthly, in order of most to least profitable:
- Sponsorships
- Sponsored Product Posts: $9,525
- Sponsored Social: $350
- Affiliates
- Amazon: $505.36
- Avantlink: $5,780.91
- Commission Junction: $412
- Misc (Ebay, Skimlinks, AWin, etc): $65.61
- Display Ads
- Adthrive: $6,362.56
Local Adventurer plans on adding another stream of revenue through e-courses with their first one covering the topic of how to work with sponsors.
Esther has been putting together her process for anyone interested in growing that part of their business. The e-course will teach readers how to approach brands and craft a successful sales method.
The course is currently in beta mode but you can sign up for email notifIcations here.
In addition to the e-courses, Jacob and Esther hope to put more energy into their email lists, with plans to relaunch their newsletter later this year.
Building an email list is a great way for bloggers to keep in contact with readers when new content, courses or other products launch.
Jacob says most of their numbers come from locked content on the blog (like free downloads).
The Takeaway:
Esther says it’s important to understand that making money off of a blog takes time. It took 6 years for Local Adventurer to make the income that it does today.
Esther even admits that when she attempted to monetize her blog in its first month she made less than $20.
So what’s the secret? She says that the correct tools and trial and error are key. And patience… lots of patience!
Jacob has equally important advice for blogging hopefuls: Be absolutely sure it’s what you want to do.
He says that social media can be deceiving and while it appears they spend their days traveling abroad, in reality most of their time is spent in front of a computer, building the business.
“You have to treat it like a job if that’s what you want it to be,” he says.
The Travel Hack
About the Creator:
The Travel Hack is owned and operated by British travel blogger Monica Stott.
Monica says her blogging journey began in 2009 with a two year backpacking trip around Asia and Australia. She started blogging in order to document her experience.
In addition, she has always had dreams of working in journalism. In college she interned for the local newspaper. She also needed up working as an editorial assistant for a travel website and eventually got into social media and digital marketing.
This journalism and marketing experience greatly benefited the beginning of Monica’s blogging journey with The Travel Hack.
What is Good Financial Cents?
The Travel Hack is a hub for travel-related content with a focus on cheap travel and how to travel effectively with children.
For Monica, ‘travel hacking’ is about getting as much out of every travel experience as possible.
“It’s about travelling more, seeing more, doing more, experiencing more and getting more for your money,” she says.How does The Travel Hack make money?
The following is a list of affiliates/services that contribute to the overall income that The Travel Hack brings in monthly:
- Sponsored Posts
- Brand Partnerships
- Paid Press Trips
- E-Course
- Suitcase Sales
- Display Ads
Monica’s approach to driving traffic to her blog is simple: write long, engaging content. She explains that quality content always does well, so spending an appropriate amount of time on each post is important.
In addition, she tries to balance her posts between informative and inspirational.
With her informative posts, she focuses on content that she knows will perform well in google searches and that contain general, helpful tips.
Her inspiration content, on the other hand, tends to be much more personal in order to keep readers coming back.