How does my travel blog make money in 2020

Having a website that grows and has thousands of readers is fun. Creating content for my audience feels fulfilling and has a purpose. But getting money while blogging is even more fun! I will share with you how I earn money and ways to increase that flow.

So if you want to earn some extra money while blogging for any kind of profitable niche (topic), then continue reading. This is interesting for you! I have researched also how I will continue making money in the future.

Advertising on the website

I display advertising on my website. I try to keep it non-invasive and to a minimum. It should not impact the user experience. There are those who use adblockers unfortunately and I will never earn some money from them. To you who have these, turning it off for this site will help me. thank you! 🙂

There are more than 20 ad networks out there. These are companies offering money in return of some space on your blog articles. Based on the subject of your article they will display certain advertising to the reader. This is also affected by the country they are in.

Readers from the United States would be more rewarding than readers from Indonesia. This is because the advertisers would pay more money to be seen and amount of diversity of advertisements available is more.

From the many companies available for advertising 3 have caught my attention. Even though I only use one (for reasons)

Google Adsense

One of the most popular way to earn money is using Google Adsense. It’s one of the most used advertising platforms. A lot of companies advertise using their platform and a lot of bloggers and publishers use their platform to display advertising.

Note: Google Adsense does not tolerate advertising stickied on the bottom of the page.

Sign up for Google Adsense

MediaVine

MediaVine is also an advertising platform. They do have some minimal requirement: the website needs to get at least 25000 sessions (about 30000 pageviews).

From what I have been reading, MediaVine does give their publishers (bloggers) more earnings from the advertising campaigns. You just need a lot of traffic to get this. This is a reason I will stick with Google Adsense.

sign up for MediaVine

Trion

Trion is great if your traffic is mostly Mobile. They have optimized all their as for mobile screens. I still have a big chuck that looks via desktop to consider Trion, that’s why I am sticking with Google Adsense.

Sign up for Trion

About placing ads on the website

These advertising companies, Google Adsense, MediaVine, and Trion will first investigate your website. Their purpose is to have a network of high-quality content websites to display the advertising of their clients.

Advertising is however not a main source of income. It’s nice to have something accumulating on the side. But as long as I don’t get tens of thousands of readers a month I am not there yet. But I am determined to get there.

How much does advertising on blogs earn?

It really depends on what pages of the website are being visited. My Cooking recipes don’t earn me a lot for example and bring down the whole average. Currently traveling to Bali is not even possible (June 2020, due to Coronavirus. So all my travel pages don’t bring in much.

On average every 1000 sessions to my website brings in 2-3$. But my blog covers multiple topics: SEO, Blogging, Travel, Cooking, and food.

So if I were to concentrate all visitors to cooking and food, the income would be less, since advertisers are paying less there. In the future this could change, who knows. But for now, advertising on my recipe pages doesn’t earn me much cash. However, it does earn me lots of traffic.

Affiliate Sales on travel

For everyone that will use my travel services in Bali, I do get a small commission. This is at no extra cost for the visitor. However, due to that Bali is now closed (for 3 months) I haven’t been able to make a sale.

What the tourists can expect when using travel service is that everything from landing to returning to the airport is arranged: Tours, Drivers, accommodation, and a whole itinerary custom-tailored to you. With over 12 years of experience in this field, I can estimate the perfect experience.

From those who like to party in busy city centers or those who seek peace and quiet. Quality tailor packages ensure a good experience that my services at the travel agency will be used again in the future.

In the near future when things start to become the new normal I hope to earn some more money becoming an affiliate with either Agoda or Booking. Both of them have a 1-day cookie.

This means within that day after coming to find accommodation via my site they have to book it. Or else I won’t earn any money.

SEO Services for other websites for money

For my blog, I took many hours to learn and apply an SEO recipe that would work. Gaining more traffic every time was a goal ultimately for me. Wanting to help people with quality useful content is my mission. I also attended the Google Webmaster Conference to gain more insight into website traffic and how to get this.

Before I know it, I started helping fellow website owners out. It started in a close circle of people I already knew. Before I knew it, I was contacted with hey I see you know how to get website traffic.

As a reference, I only had this blog. I could show off how some of my articles were on page 1, and that image search was also very doable. I was still a beginner at this, but since the people they know have gotten some rank boost in Google combined with my website I started to gain the benefit of the doubt.

So I started earning as an SEO Consultant, where I perform website audits. The form would be a report, and out of this report are improvements. These action points would make their website more visible in the Search Engine.

Currently, and amazingly I have multiple clients for this. A travel blog owner turning to be an SEO consultant on the side. But this side earning is actually the main earnings for now. How much money this earns also depends on how much time I can put into it. Sometimes the job is small sometimes it’s big. I also have to think about the budget that my clients have,

To show what I know, I started sharing my knowledge on SEO with some articles about Keyword research. I also posted on how to make a blog work. All these have helped my exposure. Making these things for free still landed me some nice assignments.

Other ways to get money from a travel blog

I have been offered to add paid content to my website. However, I am unsure how to feel about it. I am fine with backlink exchanges from high-quality content as this would gain some Domain Authority.

For now, I am just refusing this type of income but others can keep it in mind. It’s a way to make a few extra bucks on the side.

Subscription Model

Getting support from the community is nice. They would pay for example 1$ a month to get access to all content. Some websites would blur parts of their site/content. In order to unlock these, people need to subscribe and pay 1$ a month for example. I have no intention of this. I believe my content should be free and that advertising is already a nice way to get some extra income.

Getting Paid to write content

Some would offer free things or money in return for positive blog posts. It means you cannot really voice your own opinion if you have it. I am going to stop at this. It’s not what I am interested in and I am not going to do this. Also, this is sometimes done to get a free backlink.

Email subscribers

Some people use their email base to earn money. A big portion of that can become returning traffic. I just don’t find the time to write an interesting newsletter. I prefer to write on my blog and share it with you.

Email subscribers often also get some advertising in their mailbox. I myself do not like this and don’t want to do this to my website visitors.

Sponsorship

I have none. But I hear they pay in return for some article or banner advertising. It would be interesting depending on the company that has an interest. It needs to be mutual of course. I find it should have some ethics in adding sponsorship to the website.

Affiliate to sell a web hosting

Websites, or (professional) blogs they need a good web host. The host ensures a good website speed. Some bloggers tell their readers that they need Blue Host, this is because Blue Host gives a lot of money when you refer people to them and they end up buying a host.

There are multiple hostings: Blue host, Siteground, Kinsta, and many more that offer an affiliate earning.

What have I learned from earning money with my travel blog

Unexpectedly SEO service is something that has become a main earning. Many other travel bloggers have different income streams. For me I only have advertising and my services.

I did not expect that my blog will also serve as a use case to show how to rank for keywords. I learned from this and told my friends nearby how an what. This resulted in the mouth to mouth commercial.

There are more ways of earning money as described in this article. I hope affiliate sales for travel and bookings will start after the pandemic. I expect this also to be a nice side income while I do my main job, being a travel agent.

TaleTravels

Hi I am Dwi. I am a blogger, travel agent and a mom of a lovely daughter and wife to a supportive husband. I customize and plan tours in Bali and islands nearby for a living and have been doing this for more than 14 years. Get in touch via contact [at] taletravels.com