How I Make Money Travel Blogging

Whether you are already a travel blogger, aspiring to be one, or just a curious cat like me, I thought I’d share how I’ve managed to make money travel blogging.

For awhile I held off on writing a post like this because I didn’t feel qualified.

I don’t make tons of money (as nice as that would be) but my blog has allowed me to have a nice little bonus coming in every month while writing about my love for travel.

A Few Caveats

Some things to note before I share my journey:

Blogging takes a lot of time. As you’ll see, I poured years into my blog before I started earning any real money. It takes a lot of learning, effort, and commitment to run a travel blog.

Blogging is a journey. Sure, if I had known everything I know now back when I started, things would have gone a lot smoother. But blogging is a journey, and mistakes have become my teaching moments. The important thing is to start, be okay with making mistakes, and learn as you go.

We all have different starting points. For me, I have a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in creative writing plus years of experience with writing, publishing, and photography. Blogging came very naturally to me (aside from all the other stuff I had to learn along the way, like SEO and affiliate marketing).

My Blogging Timeline

January 2023: Blog Goes Live

My travel blog went live in January 2023 with just a few published posts. I wrote them quickly in the preceding month, wanting to share all of the hard-core travel planning I put into each trip.

October 2023: First Year, No Views

After almost a full year of blogging and a few dozen posts published, I had barely any views, and they were probably mostly my mom.

I had put a lot of work into writing these posts, and I had to have a honest conversation with myself.

What I was currently doing wasn’t working. I was not getting any traffic, and to continue this way would be madness and a complete waste of my time.

October 2023-May 2024: Learning SEO

I decided to stop posting new posts, and focus on learning about SEO.

I found incredible resources online, such as Nina Clapperton’s She Knows SEO blog and She Knows SEO YouTube channel, and I also attended conferences through my day job at the time on SEO and plain language standards.

I re-wrote every post, and, after a few months, things started taking off.

July 2024: Added Affiliates to Blog, Joined Travelpayouts

When my traffic reached about 10,000 visitors a month, I joined Travelpayouts to add affiliate links to my blog.

I honestly didn’t know what I was doing and wondered if it would even work. But slowly, despite my minimal effort and doubts, I started making (very little) money from it.

For example, my first month, I made $46.48, and in my second month, I made $173.58. Not bad for a newbie.

Now, it’s easier than ever with Drive, the Travelpayouts AI tool that automates affiliate monetization. And once you activate Drive, you can earn up to $100 in bonuses by using my referral link.

August 2024-April 2025: Learning, Growing, Updating

My traffic continued to grow as I wrote more posts, learned more about blogging, and updated old posts accordingly.

Every time I learned something new, I would incorporate it into my blog, both old and new posts.

Blogging is a constantly evolving thing, what with Google updates and AI. Updating old posts is part of the routine, as tedious as it is.

May 2025: Blog Hits 50k Sessions, Joined Mediavine

My blog reached 50,000 monthly sessions, a HUGE milestone, and I applied for and got accepted into Mediavine in May 2025.

June 2025: First $2k Month

With the extra income from ads, in addition to the income I was receiving from affiliates, I had my first $2,000 month in June 2025.

February 2026: Google Update Sinks Traffic

Google’s core update sank my traffic back down to 10,000 views a month. But I did not despair. Instead, I took another honest look at my affiliate strategy and realized I was leaving money on the table by not optimizing my posts for affiliates.

The epiphany that I could be making $2,000 from my blog even at 10,000 monthly views changed everything.

So, my mindset shifted from “get more traffic” to “convert the traffic I was already getting.”

And I tried not to think (so much) about Google as it felt largely out of my control.

March-April 2026: Met Nina, Learned How to Optimize for Affiliates

There was a huge gap in my knowledge about optimizing a blog for affiliates, and I realized I needed to learn how to fix this before I did anything else.

Serendipitously, Nina from She Knows SEO (the amazingly smart guru who taught me about SEO back in my first year of blogging) visited my city and arranged a meet-up! I got to meet Nina and thank her in person, and she so kindly gave me wonderful advice on what to do next with my blog.

Not only that, but Nina held a Travelpayouts-sponsored webinar the very next week about—you guessed it—affiliates!—and I learned even more.

When the universe aligns like this, it’s hard not to take it as a sign that you’re meant to keep going.

May-July 2026: Auditing My Blog

Taking everything I learned from Nina and the Travelpayouts webinar, I now had a clear vision of how to update my blog.

My dip in traffic pushed me to revise everything, auditing it to improve my affiliate strategy.

And man, was it eye opening! When you learn new things it changes how you approach blogging. Which is why growth and learning will always be a core value when it comes to my blog.

What I’m Doing Going Forward

With Google core updates and AI, this year (2026) has been a tough year for blogging.

But I’m choosing to remain positive and hold steady on this path of being a blogger, since it’s something I love dearly.

My approach going forward, however, will be a bit different.

I’ll be writing much more personable blog posts and leaning more into storytelling, to show more of the human behind this blog.

General travel tips that anyone could write (including AI bots) are not the way forward.

Blogging is a marathon, not a sprint, and I am hoping to hone my voice and build a readership who chooses to return to my blog because it’s truly the most helpful one out there (ambitious, I know).

That being said, here are the tips I’ve found most helpful in growing and monetizing my blog:

My Best Tips for Monetizing Your Blog

First, How to Get More Traffic (Tips on SEO)

To make any sort of money, you need traffic. You need to learn SEO. And I don’t mean keyword stuffing!

All those posts you’re writing, all the work you’re doing, it would be nice if someone could actually read them.

And to do that, they need to find them.

How to do that? Well, it’s complicated. But here are some tips.

Learn keyword research. As a former journalist, I like to think of keyword research as finding the angle of the story. The longer the keyword, the more specific the search intent, and the easier it usually is to rank for it. I use Keysearch to research keywords, one of the most affordable options that gets the job done. When you find your keyword, stick to just that one search intent and don’t go off topic.

Build content clusters and topical authority. When I first started blogging, I would write posts about the most random destinations, one about Kauai, one about Montana, none of them related. I thought this was fine since I was doing keyword research. Now, I know it’s much better to have 30 posts about one destination than it is to have 30 posts about 30 different destinations. By writing so much about one place, you’re strengthening your topical authority about that destination, and proving to Google that you have authority. This concept has changed the way I travel. I’m much more thorough when I travel somewhere now because I know I’ll want to write many posts about this place, not just one.

Be authentic. Nowadays, to rank on Google, your posts need to add something new to the conversation, not rehash the same travel tips on every other blog. Well, how do you do that? By being yourself. Be authentic, share your story. Prove you’ve been to the place by sharing bits and bobs you would only know if you had been there.

Learn plain language standards. This is an odd tip that I picked up at an editing conference, but one that definitely applies to SEO. Writing in plain language means that not only your readers can better understand and “scan” your content, but so can Googlebot and AI crawlers. When people read on the Internet, they want to easily be able to understand your content, and, when they do, they trust you more (another huge component of maintaining an audience).

Master the EEAT. EEAT is an acronym that stands for experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. It’s imperative to convey all four of these markers in your introduction, and strengthen it elsewhere in the post. Why should someone listen to your advice? Answer this early!

Take your readers on a journey with internal linking. Internal linking is such a huge component to SEO but it gets underestimated. I used to think all I needed to do was add a few related posts at the bottom of an article, but no, that’s not enough. Why not? Because it’s likely someone may not even scroll down that far. Sprinkle them into your content, where relevant, so you can guide your readers on a journey through your content.

Write for your reader. I know we’re all thinking of Google all the time, but Google isn’t the one who will be reading our posts — our readers will. So, answer their questions first, put your best tips at the start of the article, be thorough and help them plan the best trip.

Second, How to Make Money with Affiliates

There are many types of ways to monetize your blog, but I particularly like affiliate links because I get to recommend the hotels and tours I’ve already experienced — and it feels more authentic.

I’ve used Travelpayouts for affiliate links on my travel blog as everything is handily in one place and the user dashboard is incredibly intuitive.

The team is so supportive and wonderful, always there to help or answer a question whenever you have one.

Here are some tips to optimizing your blog for affiliates:

Have an affiliate strategy. The best-converting affiliates are ones you’ve personally experienced. I know it feels a bit icky to put all those affiliate links in your posts, but look at it this way: You’re sharing the group trips and the hotels that you’ve personally experienced and loved. You want others to have just as great of a trip, and that’s not a bad thing. Be sure to share your personal experience at each place you recommend, and talk about it as you would to a friend.

Don’t leave money on the table. I’m guilty of adding just one affiliate link in an article and calling it a day. Friends, this will not suffice. No one is seeing that one link, and if they did, they likely scrolled past it ages ago and may never find it again. Instead, try to have at least one in every section.

Keep learning! Finally, the best advice, is to keep learning. The blogging industry is changing and evolving at rapid speeds and there’s always something new to learn. I love reading the Travelpayouts blog for tips and tricks. They also often offer webinars, like the recent one with Nina, so you can stay ahead of the curve.

Don’t give up. It’s easy to get discouraged when Google is not giving your blog the time of day and things are just progressing way too slowly. But, the main thing is to not give up. If you love blogging, keep at it.

For me, what’s made it all worth it is the lovely comments I get from readers, telling me I helped them plan their trip or inspired them to go somewhere new. If all my work is making some little difference, that’s reason enough to keep going.

So, here’s your sign to sign up for Travelpayouts, activate Drive (their AI automation tool), and start your journey with travel blogging.

If this post has helped you at all, I’d love to hear about it! Feel free to comment below or message me if you have any other questions.