How to make money out of a Travel Website – Blog vs Travel Agency?
In these difficult times – it’s very easy to look at other businesses and wonder if they have not got a better business model to you.
In this paper – we are looking at:
Travel Agent Website vs Travel Blogger site
1. Making Money
Travel Agent Site
A Travel Agent site is primarily used to get leads to convert into bookings. Depending on your target avatar ( potential client) that could be a booking from £1500 – £30,000 or more. In the increasingly competitive market of selling travel, offline selling ( which is most travel agents) is best promoted to holiday makers looking for a more complicated holiday booking ( also known as higher commissionable holidays)
When you get a lead – it’s then up to you to convert that lead to a booking, but the commission from say £150 to £3000 makes this a lucrative sale.
Travel Blogger Site
The Travel blogger site tends to be a niche site ( as in fact do successful travel agent sites need to be) and makes money by ‘selling’ advertising space to:
- Guest Bloggers / Travel Companies
- Google Adsense
- MediaVine adverts
It relies on a lot of traffic ( 50,000 visit per month for affiliate income to be around £1500 / month – see https://worldtravelfamily.com/best-tips-make-money-blogging/ ) Traffic takes time to build and so it takes a good 2 years of constant blogging to get that traffic.
In the end – whether it’s affiliate networks or guest bloggers, traffic is the most important thing to have. Many bloggers also write for other companies and pool all income as coming from their website, when in fact it comes from many sources. As Emily Luxton says “ There are far easier ways to make money online than blogging – check out this residual income ideas list for some suggestions! I would only recommend travel blogging as a career if you already love blogging, writing, photography, or social media (or preferably all of the above) – and you want to turn that passion into a way of making money. “
2. Marketing / Blogging
Blogging is one form of inbound marketing. Search Engines pick up content and list this in order of most noteworthy to anyone searching that topic.
All Travel Agents have a blogging platform – but most don’t use it. Why? Because it takes a long time ( AKA cost of your time) to write content. Travel Agents alternatives are to get out into their offline world and promote themselves as a specialist differently. Some do both, but it becomes a full time job unless you have help.
We would recommend that all Travel Agents blog to showcase their expertise. The amount they blog, will be largely dependent on the time they have to research and write
3. Niches
Google likes experts. Write about what you are expert in. You’ll get traffic
4. Website Design
Most bloggers and Travel Agents use wordpress. The key is to have good structure for your site for your target audience. Audiences like good design.
Most big blog sites use ‘MediaVine’. That shows an advert in between the content you have written. You’ll get paid for any traffic sent to affiliates. With Travel Agents, you make money out of an enquiry, the last thing you want to do is send someone to another site!
Most bloggers know that adverts annoy readers, but because adverts pay, they continue to show them. Check out the page below on https://worldtravelfamily.com/ All the space taken up by adverts – and it can be worse on mobile, which is where most of your traffic will read your blog.
5. Finding Income Sources
(a) Bloggers
Most bloggers have multiple income streams
Affiliate income
- Running tours
- Selling products
- Running courses
- Writing courses
- Presenting
- Social media management
- Freelance writing
- Writing books
- Marketing
How Much Money Can You make ?
You can’t average how much everyone makes – the top bloggers will earn over £100,000 but they have multiple streams.
This useful summary from https://vickyflipfloptravels.com/travel-blogger-salary/ shows:
It’s fair to note that the top bloggers have a team they have to pay …. so looking at Vicky’s analysis ( she says she earns around £40,000 per annum) That seems reasonable for full time after a few years.
Other high profile bloggers can earn £80,000 per annum – see https://www.goatsontheroad.com/journey-six-figure-online-business/ to see how these bloggers made their way to £80k per annum
(b) Travel Agents
Travel Agents can be anything from individual homeworkers to large multi branch agencies.
Typically – a good travel agent working full time ( whether in branch or as a travel agent homeworker) can earn up to and over £100,000 per annum without help. Add in a part time helper and you could still clear £80,000 which puts you comparable to the top bloggers in income terms.
Create a team, expand your agency and the sky is the limit – agents have been known to sell for £ millions in good times. And these days you don’t even have to process bookings …. new models are are emerging where you might not even need to process bookings – just provide leads ( not a million miles away from being a blogger and having this as your source of income – /what-type-of-agent-are-you )
Summary
Travel can be a very rewarding. Whether you are a travel blogger or agent you can enjoy FAM trips / free travel / exciting products and something that is truly inspiring every day.
Whether you want to earn money by writing / presenting / selling courses and keeping track of the best affiliate income streams, or whether you are a genuine people person who wants to plan and book holidays for a growing loyal clientele ( specialist agents tend to build their businesses slowly but end up with a loyal client base that trusts them), you can earn a good income with a Travel website.
The choice of which avenue to take is a really personal one. Both businesses take time to build and both offer the same opportunities to make money.
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