Is travel blogging profitable? Here’s how much I make

Last Updated on August 19, 2025 by Ioana

Many people ask themselves: is travel blogging profitable in 2025? The short answer is yes. I started blogging in January 2024. And after 1.5 years I have a successful travel blog that’s part of the Mediavine ad network, has 80K+ visitors per month, and makes me close to $4,000 per month. My blog is my job and it is my main source of income. In this post I will share everything you need to know about how to monetize a travel blog. 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 start a 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 much money can you make from a travel blog?

You could make anywhere from $0 to $100,000+ per month. It depends when you started your blog and how strategic you are about growing it and optimizing it for monetization.

The cool thing about blogging is that it has no ceiling in terms of income. You could earn millions of dollars as long as you produce a lot of articles and you have a growth strategy.

But blogging is not just hard work, it’s smart work too. You need to understand how search engines work so you have a higher chance of ranking high. Optimizing blog posts for SEO is not a nice-to-have, it’s mandatory. 

All successful blogs do this. No exception.

So you need to get smart about blogging and learn everything about how to grow a blog. There are plenty of free materials online. Or you can invest in a course if you don’t want to waste time researching and understanding everything on your own.

When can you first monetize a travel blog?

From day one through affiliate marketing. But realistically you won’t see 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?

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

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. 

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 am in my second year of blogging, so I can’t give you the full number yet since the year is not over. But so far I made about $13,500 from affiliate marketing and about $4,000 from ads.

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.

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.

How can you monetize a travel blog?

The most common ways to monetize a blog are display ads, affiliate links, paid partnerships, and digital products. I’ll explain how you can use each of them to grow your income and turn your blog into your full-time job.

Display ads

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 premium networks are Mediavine and Raptive. Mediavine requies 50,000 sessions per month, while Raptive requirs 100,000 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 5,000 sessions or less. 

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.

Affiliate marketing

The other very lucrative income stream for a blogger are affiliate links. 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.

There are 2 main affiliate programs 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.

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. 

And as of May 27 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. And the best part is that I’m just getting started. I’m so excited to see the affiliate income growth a year from now.

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 60,000+ monthly sessions I still only make $5-25 per month on Travelpayouts. 

Paid partnerships

There are brands who collaborate with bloggers. For example, you can write a review 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. They are nice-to-have, but they won’t be a main source of income for a blog. Ads and affiliates are the two main income streams for a blog.

Digital products

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.

The other option here is to sell digital courses. For example, I offer a blogging course for beginners where I teach everything about starting and growing a blog.

Even though the market is becoming saturated with online courses, if you’re good at what you do and you enjoy teaching you can create a course. 

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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

Are blogging courses worth it when you are starting out?

Is blogging dead or just getting started in 2025?

Should I start a blog or Instagram? Which is better?

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