How to make money out of a Travel Website – Blog vs Travel Agency?

Steve • Sep 03, 2021

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:

  1. Guest Bloggers / Travel Companies
  2. Google Adsense
  3. 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.

MediaVine Inserts screenshot

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:

Blogger Income Per Annum

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.

By Steve 17 Jun, 2022
It’s been a great week, let’s grab a coffee and catch up … Well… other than political ethics, inflation etc! … sometimes the sun shines both in the real world and metaphorically, and this has been a good week. In today’s update … Reviews, good for business, and good for the soul Why I love … Customer Reviews – Great for Business, Great for your Well-Being Read More » The post Customer Reviews – Great for Business, Great for your Well-Being appeared first on travelmarketingsystems.com.
By Steve 13 Feb, 2022
What’s this post about ? How Julian Richer’s business tactics selling electronics parallels how Retail Travel Agents can market themselves effectively. There aren’t many retailers that compare easily to selling travel – infrequent, high value purchases. So it’s not easy to find examples of how other industries are tackling issues similar to our own and … How to avoid the online asteroid …. business lessons from Julian Richer Read More » The post How to avoid the online asteroid …. business lessons from Julian Richer appeared first on travelmarketingsystems.com.
By Steve 22 Aug, 2021
Introduction The Covid 19 pandemic not only shut down the travel industry, but also ended a number of travel agents businesses. But it wasn’t just about not selling holidays. How did Hayes Travel survive the pandemic ( and hoover up some smaller agents who could not afford to keep going)? How is Trailfinders such a … Is there a new Type of Travel Agent being born? Read More » The post Is there a new Type of Travel Agent being born? appeared first on travelmarketingsystems.com.
By Steve 29 Apr, 2021
Apple has always been about customer privacy. In the latest IOS update, users will have to accept whether they want their activity tracked by Apps like Facebook that collect their data. Why is this change in transparency important? Because surveys suggest, and Facebook acknowledges, that up to 80% of users will say no. (bbc.co.uk) and…. 80% … Apple vs Facebook Privacy Changes – how it affects Marketing & Advertising for small businesses Read More » The post Apple vs Facebook Privacy Changes – how it affects Marketing & Advertising for small businesses appeared first on travelmarketingsystems.com.
By Steve 12 Feb, 2021
When will Travel Restart? For those of you who watched Amazing Hotels, Life Beyond the Lobby last night it was a reminder of what life was like travelling without masks. But also just how important hotels like Jade Mountain are to local communities. Built by hand with no machinery and employing over 500 local St … Follow the facts… and the logic, and travel will restart from June 2021 Read More » The post Follow the facts… and the logic, and travel will restart from June 2021 appeared first on travelmarketingsystems.com.
By Steve 21 Jan, 2021
What a difference a month makes I spoke to one of our clients this week and I thought he summed up where we are with Covid 19 In December 2020 we could hear clients talking about wanting to book holidays In January 2021 – we can see them at the door …hopefully by March 2021 … A Time for some Spring Cleaning Read More » The post A Time for some Spring Cleaning appeared first on travelmarketingsystems.com.
By Steve 15 Jan, 2021
Why Plan? Very few small travel businesses sit down at the beginning of the year to plan out their email marketing. There are loads of excuses…usually along the lines of ‘no time’ and ‘no resource’ or ‘don’t know how to’. The truth is, if you don’t plan, you won’t be consistent in your email marketing. … Travel Agent 2021 Travel Marketing Plan Read More » The post Travel Agent 2021 Travel Marketing Plan appeared first on travelmarketingsystems.com.
By Steve 04 Jan, 2021
Hurray – it’s 2021 , and yes, despite the recent lockdown (let’s face it, we all knew it was coming) I’m really looking forward to 2021. Why? For one – It is not going to be as bad as 2020! We all hope the vaccine will return us to normal, but the reality is that … Welcome 2021 Read More » The post Welcome 2021 appeared first on travelmarketingsystems.com.
By Steve 23 Dec, 2020
2020 Changes As they say in showbiz, that’s a wrap. Phew! we all got to the end of 2020.No, the news at the end wasn’t good with a more infectious strain of the virus, but let’s keep positive. We do have a vaccine which is being rolled out. So yes, I think the start of … 2021 Email Marketing Trends and a Simple Travel Agent Email Plan to boost revenues Read More » The post 2021 Email Marketing Trends and a Simple Travel Agent Email Plan to boost revenues appeared first on travelmarketingsystems.com.
By TMS Help Team 23 Oct, 2020
The key to getting good at videos is of course practise, but in my experience, making it as easy as possible to create a video is equally important. If it takes a long time to set up a shoot it’s easy to always find an excuse to not bother! Ideally you want to be able to set up and record a video in 30 minutes. The iPhone has an auto focus that means you only need one of you to record ( DSLR camera’s require focussing making the whole process more fiddly for one person) which is a bonus – so after much trial and error I always use an iPhone now. I’m going to take you through how I created the video below using just my iPhone – let’s first take a look at the finished product.
Share by: