Travelling around the world is cool and all, but have you experienced being paid while you travel? Well, making money traveling ranks pretty high in the dreams of many aspiring travelers as you probably may already be aware.
Who wouldn’t want to jump of cliffs, go on a safari, or stay in posh hotels and get paid while at it?
The good news is, if you’re of those on the dream of making money as you travel bandwagon, there are a lot of easy ways to travel and make money!
What's Covered in This Article
1. Sell your photos and videos to magazine and newspapers
While you’re up and about exploring the world, you’re likely to encounter experiences and events that are important at both a local and national level as well as regional and international level.
So let’s say you’re a Kenyan visiting Rio during the carnival and get an opportunity to capture some images of the elaborate parades, plenty of skin, and sexy sequins on the dancers’ spectacular costumes in the city’s Sambadrome, you could sell them to the local daily newspaper such as Business Daily Africa’s lifestyle section.
Or, maybe you’re strolling down the streets of your city and take a video clip of a Chinese being accosted over the Coronavirus pandemic.
During global disease outbreaks such as Coronavirus, Zuka virus, etc, both digital or print publications, local and international such as BBC, CNN, Citizen TV, etc. will always be searching for good quality photographs and video clips.
Give it a try and see where luck takes you!
2. Destination Marketing
Destination marketing aka tourism advertising for a specific destination or location is one of the many ways you can make money while traveling.
Say you’re going to Kenya to research the 7 irresistible best day trips from Nairobi you can find, heated swimming pools in Kenya, hotels with infinity pools in Kenya, or bird nest accommodations in Africa, top 10 date night ideas in Nairobi — reach out to the country’s tourism board, tour firms or hotels/lodges/hostels and pitch them for an opportunity to showcase the country.
This was my experience on Rovos Rail, South Africa.
This you can do either on a per project basis by leveraging things like blog posts, social media, video, and photography.
You can also offer a review on either your website or social media platform in exchange for comped stay, tours and/or food, and then take it from there.
3. Sell your travel pictures
Although not everyone is privileged to travel as they may want to, most are eager to fill this gap through arm-chair traveling, aka through other people’s experiences and the memories they capture through pictures and videos.
This is where stock photography comes in.
Stock photography is essentially is whereby already existing photos are made available for license through payment of a fee to both the photographer/videographer who produced them and the agency manages them. Usually, the buyers get a right to legally use the pictures, while the author retains the copyright of their work.
I’ve mentioned it before and will do so again.
There’s a glaring gap in the market for pictures and royalty-free images of black people on stock photography websites.
Personally, I have struggled with finding a representative look for my blog that features people of color. It’s hard enough even finding a photo of Kenyans that is not Maasai.
A quick glance at stock photography websites will reveal to you the lack of people of color doing regular stuff such as working on their laptop, taking a coffee, addressing a business meeting, or out on safari!
Well, you could start making money while traveling by converting your travel photos into a passive income source by listing beautiful, high-quality, high-resolution images of brown and black people doing everyday things.
People of color photography websites such as CreateHER Stock, Colorstock, Nappy.co, etc, are a great place to start.
Some of these sites charge for picture downloads, some are completely free for users.
But even listing for free could create some visibility, and eventually money, for you.
4. Travel blogging
Another way of earning money while traveling or from your travels is by blogging.
As the internet is not short of travel blogs, you’re gonna need to be really creative to make money out of your travel blog.
But it all boils down to one thing: for your travel blog to generate money for you, the content must either entertain or solving a pain point for the reader.
Period.
Therefore, to get your travel blog off the ground and onto monetization level, you will need to select a niche. A niche is basically the topic your travel blog is about.
It’s critical to have a niche for your travel blog from the get go because it allows you to become an expert in that topic. As the expert, people will come to you for that one specific thing and you‘ll quickly become famous for it much more quickly.
Besides, Google algorithms love niches. If you regularly produce travel content on the same topic then Google will pick up on it and recognize your whole site is about that specific topic. So every time people are looking for answers on that topic, Google will keep directing them to your website.
Here at EvaMtalii for instance, we focus on ‘visa travel on a 3rd world country passport’ and aim to provide tips and hacks to help solo travelers from 3rd world country passport holders fulfill their travel dreams.
You’ve heard it before and you’ll hear it again — by trying to target everyone with your travel blog, you may end up writing for no one but yourself. Whatever niche it is you’re passionate, find it, focus on it, and write about it!
Once your travel blog starts getting decent traffic, there are numerous ways that you can monetize it including: affiliate marketing, Google adsense, selling advertising space on your website, work on paid campaigns and product partnerships wherein you get paid in cash or comped travel based on certain deliverables, etc.
5. Sell eBooks
Are you conversant with a particular travel subject, topic or issue more than the average person on the street?
Well, you could make money selling e-books either on those travel topical issues you’re already familiar with or make a simple photo essay e-book of your travels.
You can either write the ebook yourself or hire an e-book writer from Fiverr or Upwork or any of the freelancing sites.
Of course developing an e-book comes with a lot of upfront investment in terms of time and/or money but once you have your book out there, it will all be worth the passive income potential for years to come.
A little marketing here and there is all you will need once the book is ready.
I suggest for starting off, use popular free social media such as Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram etc, to make sure marketing doesn’t eat up all your profits.
In this day and age of micro-influencing, you don’t need to have a large social media following when it comes to opportunities for making money with your travel.
Brands have come to the realization that engagement is more important than ‘likes’ and that’s where you come in as a micro-influencer (less than 10k followers).
It may take a while to get to a point where brands trust you with promoting them in exchange for cash. But if you put in the work, you’ll get there somehow.
Remember, all dreams are valid, you just need a dose of imagination and hell lota creativity.
The first step towards making money with your social media is by putting in the time to build a decent network of like-minded engaged followers who share similar interests and find value in your work.
Then instead of waiting for brands to approach you, go ahead and pitch to them.
7. Rent out spare room in your house
This has been one of my favorite ways of making money while you travel.
Instead of leaving your house behind locked doors while you’re miles away on holiday, why not let it out via property listing sites such as AirBnB, and Booking.com?
By renting out spare room in your home you can make enough money to cater for your travel expenses.
8. Start a YouTube channel and monetize it
Similar to starting a travel blog above, making money from your YouTube videos and off of your YouTube channel is going to take some upfront effort and resources before you start earning from it.
You will need to narrow down your YouTube channel content to a niche that addresses your target viewers’ pain points and/or offers them entertainment.
You can take advantage of your various travel experiences to find opportunities for creativity in terms of location as well as content topics.
Some examples include vlogging about your travel experiences, offer destination and accommodation reviews,
To benefit from Google Adsense for instance, you will need to have at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time in the last 12 months to be eligible for monetization.
There are several other ways that you can monetize your travel-related YouTube channel such as affiliate marketing, selling your own merchandise, sponsors and brand deals once you become famous and have a decent amount of subscribers, etc.
Well, I hope this post answered all your questions about how travel bloggers make money, how to make money from travel YouTube videos, how to make money creating travel videos, Monetize Youtube channel, how do I earn through YouTube? can you make money from YouTube in 2020?
I hope you get to try one of these easy ways of making money while you travel. Share with fellow readers in the comments below what your experience has been making money from your travels.
Happy Travels, from EvaMtalii to you!
