Why You Won't Make Money as a Travel Blogger

Why Travel Bloggers Don't Make Money

Let me start this post out by saying my first blog I ever started was a travel blog. I had just returned from a trip to Negril, Jamaica and right around this time I was becomming interested in blogging. Upon returning from my trip I made a few trip reports on Trip Advisor and realized I really liked writing about my experiences so I decided to start a travel blog. I soon grew frustrated and dropped it after a few months, but I definately understand the desire to share your passion about travel and/or a particular destination. That said it's a tough nut to crack in terms of a money making venture or even driving decent traffic. 

It seems everyone today wants to be a travel blogger. Myself and many other affiliate marketers and people who make their money online will tell you it's a terrible idea.

It's definately understandable, traveling is fun and when we find a destination we love it's a topic we are very passionate about and we want to share that destination and our experience with others.

The travel niche however is a tough one to crack and the vast majority of people are not going to make any money or drive any traffic to their site.

If you have a love of blogging and traveling more power to you, but starting a travel blog as a money making venture is a losing proposition and here is why...

Saturated Market

Think about websites like Trip Advisor and Lonely Planet. Not only do they have reviews for destinations and hotels but people also post "Trip Reports" about a particular destination. There's literally tens if not hundreds of thousands of "travel bloggers" on Trip Advisor.

Typically when we think of bloggers and competition we would probably think of people who go buy a domain and hosting and setup their own stand alone site but in reality Trip Advisor is probably the largest collection of travel bloggers out there and you are competing with them for search rankings.

Travel Not Suited To Affiliate Marketing

In many ways the travel industry is not suited to affiliate marketing. Say for example you're running Banner Ads for Apple Vacation. Maybe I read a blog post of yours and decide Playa Del Carmen, Mexico sounds like a great destination I would like to visit.

Even if that happens, what are the chances I'm going to book my trip within the 24 hour window that your cookie is active on my computer? Typically when we decide we want to take a vacation we have to check with our travel partners to make sure our dates line up. We have to check with our employer and make sure we can get those vacation days off work. Typically this takes at least a few days and with most affiliate programs having a 24 hour cookie your cookie is likely to expire before someone books a trip and then you don't get your affiliate commission for that sale.

Now that said you can advertise more than just trips,  you can sell travel guides, you can sell luggage or advertise sites that sell luggage but travel itself is not really ideal for affiliate marketing.

Your Competing With Huge Names

An excercise I encourage people to do when exploring a niche is to do to do some Google searches for relevant keywords. If a bunch of small sites show up that shows me it's a niche I can break into. If the first page results are all huge names such as Huffington Post, Yahoo, Salon, Wikipedia, etc that means it's going to be tough, if not impossible, for me to gain any significant rank.

Most travel destinations are very competitive. For example, I just pulled a search on the term "Negril Jamaica" which happens to be one of my favorite destinations.

As you can see from the image above, if I wanted to write a travel blog on Negril, Jamaica and I were trying to rank on first page of Google I'm competing with the likes of Trip Advisor, Lonely Planet, Beaches Resorts, Wikipedia, and others. It's unlikely that I will outrank them.

Also keep in mind that regardless of what destination you choose to write about not only are you competing with other travel bloggers, but typically every resort or vacation city has a tourist board publishing articles and trying to get people to their city. Pretty much every resort and hotel has a blog pushing their resort as a place to stay and their destination as a place to visit. My point is it's very competitive.

You Don't Have The Personality

I think one thing a lot of people don't realize is travel shows and travel blogging is as much about the personality of the blogger or host as it is about the destination. Think how enjoyable it is to watch a show like Anthony Bourdaines No Reservations versus watching a travel show on PBS or public access. The personality of the host is as important if not more important than the actual content or destination the blog or show is about.

If you're a vlogger do you have the sense of humor and personality to keep people engaged? As a blogger do you have an easy to read writing style and sense of humor to add some entertainment or comedy or an interesting perspective in addition to just sharing facts about a destination?

How To Make It Work

Personally, I'm not trying to enter the travel blogging space, but I do think there are a couple ways to break in if it's something you really want to do. I'll cover this more in depth in a follow up report but the couple secrets to actually ranking and making money as a travel blogger is to do a top 10 blog. Top 10 places to eat in Rio, top sites to see in Mexico City, top 10 cheap eats in Miami, etc.

Top 10 articles do great, they are quick and easy to read, and they get shared on social media so doing a blog full of top 10's can be a good way to make some money.

My other tip is to become a location expert. Don't write a blog about your travels all over the world. Focus on a particular destination. For example write a blog about Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. On your blog however have literally everything anyone would want to know. Focus on search terms people visiting would be looking up. Things such as where can I watch the Super Bowl in Playa. Many sports fans hate being on vacation during big sporting events and will actively seek out a place to watch them. How to get from the airport to my resort. Focus on things your readers will be wondering about and searching for and write blog posts which answer those questions.

As I said we'll dig deeper into this on a future post but here are a few tips for making it as a Travel Blogger should you choose to pursue that avenue.