According to statista.com, “The United States’ travel and tourism industry contributed the largest sum at 580.7 billion U.S. dollars.”
No doubt, there are hundreds, if not thousands of ways you can make money while traveling around the world.
Most of these ideas can help you add extra cash to your travel budget and a few of them enable you to make a living.
In this post, I’ve compiled 9 best ways about how to make money while traveling that can either add extra money to your budget or encourage you to start a business.
So without further ado, let’s get started…
1. Selling Travel Photographs
One of the easy things you can do about making money while traveling is ‘Selling Travel Photographs’.
You don’t need to be an expert in photography. All you need is a camera and skills to capture the best moments in a great way.
Many of you share your brilliant travel photography on Instagram or other social media platforms.
But can you imagine that you can get paid to sell these photos too?
For this, you’re likely going to start selling your photos on sites like Shutterstock, iStockPhoto than just posting on Instagram.
Now the question comes how to sell your photos on one of these platforms (ex. Shutterstock)…
1st – Step
Join Shutterstock’s global community of contributors.
2nd – Step
Once you’ve successfully joined, start capturing brilliant photographs and videos.
3rd – Step
Submit your best work and wait for 2 days for approval.
4th – Step
After approval, you’ll start making money every time someone downloads your photo. Shutterstock pays $0.25 – $0.38 per image download.
Similarly, you can follow similar steps to start selling on other stock photo sites.
8 Websites That Will Pay You for Travel Photography
This is how you can get commission licensing your photos and selling on any one of these platforms.
2. Start a Travel Blog
Blogging has been a big player for the longest time now in online businesses.
With its incredible power, you can literally make hundreds of thousands of dollars by just sharing your experience, tips & tricks, and other kinds of digital products and services.
In my opinion, this is one of the few lucrative ways to leverage all the rewards you can expect from travel blogging. (For example, Affiliate marking, eBook, online courses, sell travel photography, and more…)
For this, you need to start a blog.
If you really want to start a blog then I’ve prepared a step-by-step detailed guide to learn how to start a blog. You can buy the HOSTGATOR hatchling plan for $2.75/month. (Still confused whether or not you should use HostGator; No worries! Here is my honest review on HostGator)
However HostGator is a heads-off hosting solution, you still need a lot more to learn about travel blogging.
And ‘superstar blogging’ is one of the most popular courses you can take to develop professional travel writing skills to convert your travel blog into a successful business and make serious money.
Helpful resource: 6 THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE YOU START A TRAVEL BLOG
3. Affiliate Marketing
You won’t believe that my first affiliate commission was $149.
It’s a real passive income. And of course, it motivates me to work more.
The cool thing is that you can do the same even if you are traveling the world and can make thousands of dollars while chilling at the beach.
So, the real question comes… how you can start making money with affiliate marketing.
There are two popular ways of making affiliate income.
- By starting a blog
- Or by Social media influencing
The one way that I love the most is ‘starting a blog’. I’ve had already talked about the basics, so I’m not going into the details. (Scroll up to learn more)
Let’s face the real challenge which is ‘affiliate marketing setup’.
One good approach to set up your affiliate product is to ‘choose your blog niche wisely’. (As you are traveling, you’ll choose travel niche obviously.)
Once you’re in, the next thing you need to do is market research, find product/services, and drive targeted traffic to your product or service page.
It is not as easy as it sounds to be… you need to be super professional to make real affiliate income.
BUT…
‘Authority Site System’ is another powerful way to start a successful authority blog that actually makes money from affiliate marketing.
It’s an online course that is designed to help you learn every aspect of authority blogging and affiliate marketing.
As it’s a premium course, you’ll learn advanced skills. A few of them are…
- Niche research and content planning
- Site setup
- Content creation
- Link building
- Hiring & Outsourcing
- Monetizing
- And more…
If you decide to take this course, you’ll build a complete authority blog that can bring you a 6 – 7 figure income every year.
4. Become Instagram Travel Influencer
An Instagram influencer with over a million followers can earn up to $100 per sponsor post.
But wait… TRAVEL influencers can make even more than that.
I’ve found many Instagram travel influencers who earn $70K – $100K per year. It’s huge.
You need at least 10K genuine followers to start making money.
How do you achieve the first milestone 10K? The only way you do this is by producing content regularly and engaging with others.
What type of content is good? In my opinion, photos, reels, and stories are the most engaging content on Instagram.
Out of this, the story is one of the most powerful weapons that can boost your reach incredibly.
A Few Tips
- Publish less content; It’s not about quantity, but the quality
- Shoot a 30-second video and post it to your reel every day
- Share your already published content on the story
- Always reply to comments
- Add 10 – 15 hashtags to the description section. Don’t go beyond 30.
- Publish on time. Decide the best time when your followers are active and post accordingly
- Use highlights to introduce your brand and update what’s coming next.
- Don’t forget IGTV. However, it is less engaging but you can use IGTV to post longer videos.
Commit yourself to follow these strategies for 5- 6 months and it will do wonders.
5. Make Money Travel VLOGGING
It’s totally on you what you want to accomplish with TRAVEL. You can either sell your travel photography or start a travel VLOGGING.
And of course, VLOGGING is a great way to make money while traveling. It’s highly engaging content that can encourage people to follow you.
So if you’re ready, I recommend you to have a VLOGGING camera. In my opinion, Action cameras are the best choice as they are compact and don’t require additional accessories.
The next thing you can do is ‘create a YouTube Channel’ and start uploading daily VLOGs.
In a VLOG, you can cover everything. You can share your experience like about the journey, about the food, and also give a lump-sum idea about your expenses that you did.
Make your VLOG helpful and entertaining. That’s it…
A Few Tips
- Make your VLOG to the point; keep it short.
- Edit like professional
- Use Background music to make it more engaging
- Upload regularly
- Break your expenses; transportation, food, hotel rent, and extra
- Share what products and services that you have used on the way. Also, include affiliated products to earn some commission (Add your affiliate link in the description section.)
- Promote hotel food and services to get sponsorship (before you do it, get permission, and make your deal). This is only possible if you already have a huge following on YouTube or any other social media.
6. Write Books about Travelling
There are so many ways you can make money while traveling and ‘Book Writing is no exception’.
If you are not a good writer, you can start with an eBook. Because it’s easier to writing and publishing an eBook than a BOOK.
In an eBook, you can share a short travel story. You don’t need to go into detail. Just a little travel story is enough.
What you can include in an eBook …
- Start with storytelling. Keep it short, clean, and inspiring.
- Add some good photographs
- Share your real experience
- Share one travel journey. (Ex: you can share a journey from India to Singapore.)
- Keep the price reasonable. Neither more nor less.
- Read top-selling existing books to get some idea
Once you’ve successfully sold your eBook you can think of writing a book.
In a book, you can share every single moment of your journey.
It takes time to write a book. But here I’ve got a little trick that can make it easier for you.
And the trick is that ‘you need to write while traveling’. Write what happens to you every day. It’s similar to your diary.
The only difference is that in the diary you write your daily happenings but here you share the daily experience of your travel journey.
In this way, you’re capable of writing a 1- 3 page daily that can lead to 30-90 pages in 30 days and 100 -300 pages in 100 days.
This is how you can write a book that is ready to get published after you finish your journey.
(If you want to learn professional writing skills then take this course.)
7. Sell Online Courses
Creating online courses can bring your long-time profits.
Just because you love traveling doesn’t mean you are the one who specializes in ‘creating online courses’.
Writing an eBook or book is a different thing. They tell stories & happenings but an online course shows the skills & experiences that one can use to learn something valuable.
You need a completely different approach to create an online course.
If you have been traveling for years, you are capable of creating an online travel course.
What an online travel course includes
- The basic travel mindset; the fear of travel.
- What are the basic travel accessories?
- How to travel on a budget
- How to travel your first foreign/international trip
- Share your strategies to cut expenses
- How to make friends.
8. Teach English
You probably know English already. If you don’t know, then learn before you go on an international trip. Because English is the most spoken language in the world.
If you are a native speaker or well-experienced in English then you are in luck. Because you can use this skill to make additional income while traveling.
So what you need to do exactly…
- The first thing you can get is a ‘TEFL’ (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certification. (helpful guide: How To Get TEFL certificate online)
- Next, become a teacher on GOGOKID or VIPKID.
- That’s it!
Conclusion
Making money while traveling is not that complicated. You just need a second thought to monetize what you already love to do.
And here are 8 ways you can make money while traveling. Just pick one and make a side income.
Before closing up I want to say that none of these options can bring you quick money, it takes time.
Whether you choose affiliate marketing or travel blogging. You need to devote your time and efforts to make it possible.
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