How to make money while traveling: what worked for me

Last Updated on February 10, 2026 by Ioana

In this blog post I’ll share how to make money while traveling as a travel blogger. I started blogging in January 2024 and it is my full-time job. After 1.5 years I got into the Mediavine ad network and in 2025 I already earned over $30,000 through my blog. So I’ll explain how to start your own travel blog and how to monetize it. This post contains affiliate links. When you make a purchase I may get a small commission at no extra cost to you. Find out more here.

Ready to grow your blog? Check out these helpful resources:

• Web hosting: BigScoots (use code SSBG9QHYST56 for 40% off)
• Keyword research: KeySearch
• SEO tool for blogging: RankIQ
• Travel affiliate platform for bloggers: Stay22 (get $100 when you get to 100 bookings if you sign up through this link)
• Travelpayouts

How do I start a successful travel blog?

You can read my article on how to start a blog. Or you can join my free blogging course that has video tutorials for every step.

There are a few new skills you need to learn, like writing skills to optimize posts for search engines, but it’s not that difficult.

It’s worth spending the time to learn these skills if you dream of having more free time to explore new places, being a digital nomad, and earning enough money from your online work in the travel industry.

Isn’t it too late to start a travel blog?

No. As I mentioned in the intro, I only started in 2024. I think it’s a good idea to start now. Here are the reasons why.

1. Many large blogs lost ranking, which helps smaller blogs get traffic

Plenty of bloggers who had large blogs lost a lot of traffic in 2023 due to Google’s HCU update. In this update, Google prioritized unique, valuable content that is the most relevant to search queries.

This update is actually good news for new bloggers. That’s because now it’s the best time to have a unique voice on a specific topic in the blogging world. Google actually rewards that by showing your articles higher in search results.

This is why people who started blogs in 2024 or after in various niches were able to grow and monetize them.

Of course, to get traffic and have a profitable blog you still need to learn search engine optimization and offer a unique perspective in your long-form blog posts. 

But that’s a skill you can learn. If you want to know how I grew my blog, you can join my free blogging course where I have video content explaining everything I’ve done.

2. People want high-quality content written by humans, not AI

There are people who want to read about the recent experiences of actual people. While artificial intelligence overviews can give them a few highlights, that’s not enough for a lot of people.

They will still click on the links below the AI overviews to get proper answers for their questions.

The way I look at it, is that social media and AI are just additional competition for a blogger. Now you’re not competing with just other bloggers on who ranks the highest, but you’re also competing with AI blurbs and social media. That’s it. 

As long as you’re employing the right strategies you can definitely win in 2026. Remember, there are 5.56 billion internet users. Why wouldn’t you be able to get 50,000 of them as a travel writer? 

3. You don’t need to rely on social media platforms to grow your blog

If you don’t like to make videos for a Youtube channel, dance on TikTok, or make new content for Instagram every day, then blogging is the perfect fit for you.

You don’t need social media accounts with lots of followers to grow a blog and you don’t need to be a travel influencer or travel photographer. You can just focus your content creation efforts on writing.

I have an Instagram account with over 80K followers and many people assume that’s why I was able to grow my blog. And that’s now the case at all. I was getting under 1,000 clicks to my blog from Instagram.

I recently stopped posting on Instagram because the return on investment is very low for me and my blog was not impacted in the slightest.

There are better options to get traffic to your blog: ranking in search engines, Pinterest, email newsletter, and even having AI mention you as a source in their answers.

Blogging is perfect for people who want to be a content creator and have an online business, but don’t want to be social media influencers.

How do I monetize a travel blog?

I want to start by saying that travel blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It takes about 2 years (sometimes more) to build a successful blog that has at least 50K sessions per month.

While a lot of people call blogging passive income I don’t fully agree with this statement. It’s a lot of hard work and you need to put in long hours to write hundreds of blog posts, learn search engine optimization, do research for relevant keywords, and get high-quality backlinks. 

If you want to do this full time, then expect to put in the hours and not see amazing results for a long time. Even after you see results you still have to do work.

So it’s not passive income, but it’s a much nicer experience than going to a 9-5 job in corporate. I can say this from experience.

With these caveats, let’s go back to taking about how to monetize a blog. I think the key with both traffic sources and income streams for a blog is diversification.

If you rely on just one traffic source and one income stream it can all crumble in a day. If you are diversified, even if one of your income streams goes down, you have others that make you money.

I personally make money through my blog in 4 ways: affiliate links, display ads, paid partnerships, and digital products.

1. Use affiliate links to recommend hotels, activities, and other useful things

There are affiliate programs for pretty much every niche such that you can include these links in your articles no matter what topic you write about.

Once a person buys something using one of your links you make a commission at no extra cost for them. And you can use affiliate links from day one.

There are 2 main affiliate platforms that aggregate providers in the travel space. That way you only have to sign up for these two platforms and you can add affiliate links for a lot of travel brands.

The two platforms are Stay22 (get $100 when you get to 100 booking if you sign up through this link) and Travelpayouts. 

Stay22

My favorite one is Stay22 because the conversion rate is so much higher (at least for me). Stay22 offers affiliate links for hotels, flights, car rentals, and activities. 

Once you get accepted to Stay22 you can automatically use all these affiliate partner networks. There is no extra application step for each of them.

The main advantage of Stay22 is that you make a lot of money when you use them. And at the end of the day I think we can all agree that this is the most important thing when choosing an affiliate marketing platform.

They use AI-powered affiliate tools to drive conversion rates up. Stay22 uses a combination of their Let Me Allez script, interactive maps, and traditional affiliate links to earn you money.

I personally mostly use the Allez affiliate links and I had incredible results. Let me tell you a bit about my results.

My results using Stay22

I made my first affiliate booking the day after I installed the Stay22 Allez script on my blog. It was only $1.97, but this was the proof of concept I needed and I knew things would grow nicely from there. And that’s exactly how it was. 

In June 2024, the first full month I was with Stay22 I made $191. This number made my blog profitable, so it was a huge win for me.

In December 2024 I was already making over $500 per month. 

In May 2025 my overall affiliate earnings for May were over $2,200 and I had 184 total bookings. That’s roughly an 11.5X or 1,150% increase in revenue compared to June 2024.

In less than a year my income skyrocketed. That’s why Stay22 must be part of your affiliate scheme! Last year I made over $20K through Stay22 alone.

Travelpayouts

Even though I like Stay22 better I still use Travelpayouts because they have some brands that are not Stay22 partners, such as bus and train ticket providers.

Travelpayouts has a longer list of partners compared to Stay22. They partner with 100+ top travel brands.

The main disadvantage of Travelpayouts is that their conversion rates are low and you don’t make much money through them. At least this was my experience with them.

I used Travelpayouts ever since I started this blog in January 2024. In May 2024 I was at 5,000 monthly sessions, but I still hadn’t made any affiliate income through Travelpayouts.

Even though my blog didn’t have that much traffic I was still expecting to see at least a few hotel bookings via Travelpayouts. But this was not the case.

Even though I could see that people clicked on my accommodation links, I literally made $0 in hotel affiliate revenue.

This was what made me look for alternatives. And that’s how I switched to Stay22 for hotel, car rentals, and activities links.

I now use Travelpayouts only for programs that are not yet available on Stay22. As soon as these brands will join Stay22 I will stop using Travelpayouts. 

Even though my blog is now at 80,000+ monthly sessions I still only make $5-25 per month on Travelpayouts. 

2. Join an ad network

Display ads the the ads you see pretty much every time you read a website. Most websites use display ads today. Every time a person reads your blog posts and the ads are playing in the background you will make some money.

However, not all ad networks are made equal. For example Google AdSense pays very little. For 1,000 sessions you only get $1-3 dollars. 

Other networks like SheMedia or Ezoic pay a bit more (around $5 – 15), but they slow down your website. Or they make it hard for you to get out of contracts with them when it’s time to switch to a premium ad network.

So I never used any of these lower-tier ad networks, I waited until I had enough traffic to apply to a premium ad network. 

The best ad networks

The best ad networks are Mediavine and Raptive. Mediavine requies 50,000 sessions per month, while Raptive requires 100,000 page views per month.

The good news is that Mediavine has a program for smaller blogs called Journey by Mediavine who accept blogs with 10,000+ sessions per month.

Some people even say that they got accepted with 1,000 sessions or less, so it’s a great opportunity for new bloggers. So that’s why I think you should apply as soon as you hit 1,000 sessions.

When I reached 10,000 sessions per month I applied to Journey by Mediavine and I got in. This income stream brought me about $250 – 700 in income. The income grew every month since my traffic grew every month.

Once I got to 50,000 sessions after 1.5 years from starting my blog, I applied to the full Mediavine program and I got in.

For a travel blog with 50,000 sessions you can expect to earn about $1,000 – 2,000 per month from ads. The exact sum depends on seasonality and the countries you get traffic from.

3. Post sponsored content

There are brands who collaborate with bloggers. For example, you can write a sponsored blog post about a product they sell and they will pay you to write that blog post.

Or if you collaborate with hotels you can stay at the hotel for free for a few nights in exchange of writing a blog post about your experience staying at that hotel.

However, these partnerships don’t happen all the time and they definitely won’t happen early on. 

They are nice-to-have, but they won’t be a main source of income for a blog. Affiliates and ads are the two main income streams for a blog.

​Sponsored content is pretty rare for just travel writing. Brands and tourism boards usually also want video content and a large following on social media platforms.

If you also want to do social media, then you’ll be able to get more brand deals and this can be a lucrative revenue stream. But you don’t have to. Blogs can still make you 5-6 figures per year even when you don’t have a strong social media presence.

4. Sell online services and digital products

If you offer services like travel planning or booking travel awards with points for people, you can sell them through your own blog.

You just need to write optimized blog posts that draw in your target audience. And if you have social media presence, you can also advertise your services there and send them to your blog to read more and book.

You could also monetize by creating digital products. For example, if you’re a photographer, you could offer presets or you could sell your pictures.

Or you could sell online courses, have an online store for physical products, templates, guides, printables. There are a lot of options available here.

I created a reinvention journal with the questions I asked myself when deciding what career I want to pursue after leaving the corporate world behind.

Some folks who read my about me page and read my story might find it helpful to have a series of prompts to guide them through navigating a career change.

For me this digital product is not a main source of income, but it’s an added bonus when I sell a copy.

I found it that it’s pretty difficult to sell digital products with travel content since so much high-quality content is free online.

You could create the nicest travel guides about a destination, for example, but the sales will be low since people can find a lot of articles online that are free.

When can you first monetize a travel blog?

From day one through affiliate marketing. But realistically you won’t see a high income from day one since you won’t have traffic.

So for the first year just focus on publishing as much high-quality, optimized content as you can. This will grow your traffic and then the money will come.

I made my first $1.97 through an affiliate program 4 months after starting my blog. I probably could have earned even sooner if I were using the best affiliate program out there, Stay22.

If you put in the work and understand SEO, realistically you should see money coming through your blog in the first 6 months.

How much traffic do you need to monetize a blog?

Affiliate programs usually don’t require a minimum traffic amount to accept you. And you can monetize through ads as well with as low as a thousand sessions per month. 

If you use a great travel affiliate platform like Stay22, you should see some conversions and income, regardless of how much traffic you have.

How many blog posts do you need to write to monetize a travel blog?

I had about 20-30 blog posts written when I started to make income from my blog. This number can vary, use it as just a benchmark. The more blog posts you have published, the more traffic you get, and the more you earn. 

How much can you earn in your first year of blogging?

Realistically you will make about $1,000 – $5,000 in your first year of blogging. Don’t expect to make good money in year 1.

Blogging is a long term game and you won’t get rich after a year. But if you’re able to stick with it and be patient, you will see the income going up year after year.

I personally made about $2,000, mostly from affiliate links.

How much can you earn in your second year of blogging?

Realistically you could make about $20,000 – 40,000 in your second year of blogging. I made about $30K last year, in my second year of blogging.

The second year is usually when you hit 50,000 sessions per month and can get into a premium ad network. So the ad income grows a lot in year 2.

And since you get more traffic you also see an increase in affiliate income. Starting in year 2, you should see steady income that can cover your travel expenses and pay your bills if you live in a country with a lower cost of living. I am based in my home country of Romania when not traveling and it works great for me.

I think that being based somewhere with a lower cost of living is a great way to maintain a travel lifestyle. It allows you to travel more and learn more about new cultures, while not having to spend extra money just to pay rent and bills.

How much does it cost to start a blog?

Only about $100. Technically all you need to pay for is the domain name and hosting. If you pick a cheap hosting option, like Bluehost, you will only have to pay about $80 for the first year.

However, I also recommend investing in a keyword research tool and a content assistant tool to help you write SEO-optimized posts. It’s very difficult to succeed as a blogger if you don’t use these 2 tools.

I personally use Keysearch for keyword research and RankIQ as a content assistant / SEO tool. They are very good tools and they are also the most affordable tools on the market.

RankIQ is $49/month and Keysearch is $240/year. So if you add up this cost, then you will have to spend about $900 in your first year of blogging.

You should be able to be profitable in your first year. Realistically, you can make more than $900 in your first year of blogging, so you should be able to cover this cost and keep some profit too.

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Do you want to learn more about blogging? Check out some of my other articles.

Amateur blogging: complete guide to start a blog

Stay22 review: is this affiliate platform the best?

RankIQ review: is this the best SEO tool for blogs?

Stay22 vs Travelpayouts: which platform is the best?

Affiliate marketing for travel bloggers: the best platforms