Diversified Travel Income is More Important than Ever

Do you believe me now that you need to be a diversified travel writer?

Ever since I started this blog around 15 years ago I’ve been preaching the need to set yourself up in a way that you have diversified travel writing/creator income. Then when I launched my Travel Writing Overdrive course years ago, it became the core theme over the 12 modules. As in, “You may not want to do all of these things, but you’d better at least do a few of them.”

Here’s the TL:DR advice for the second half of the 2020s:

– Adapt instead of whining.

– Diversify instead of looking backwards.

– Spend your time on tasks with high leverage.

– Cultivate a relationship with your readers and get them onto your list.

– Concentrate on what you can control and grow.

– If you are a full-time freelancer, find ways to not be just a full-time freelancer: start something that’s yours.

I get knocked down, but I get up again. You’re never going to keep me down.
– Chumbawumba

We travel writers, especially bloggers, have been through a brutal duo of setbacks already this decade and we’re not even halfway through it.

First we faced the greatest threat to the world economy we’ve seen for a century, with travel grinding to a complete halt around the world because of the pandemic. Entire industries were on hold when everyone was forced to stay indoors and off of trains, buses, and planes. The travel industry was one of the worst-hit, with most of us seeing our income fall off a cliff.

Just as we were getting back to normal, Googlegate happened in late 2023 with their Unhelpful Content Update, the first in a series of algorithm changes that pummeled more independent publishers than not. Google has fallen in love with big brands and forums like Reddit, making the organic results you finally get to after scrolling past all their ads close to useless unless you want to go shopping.

(Related post: Why are you still using Google for searches?)

The One-Two Punch for Business as Usual

Now those bloggers who used to get all their income from ad networks or affiliate ads, something I’ve always cautioned against, have seen their income fall off a cliff once again. Without all that traffic that poured in from search for their high-ranking listicles, the corresponding income is a fraction of what it used to be.

Will it get better? I’m not holding my breath since it has been more than a year already since Google’s search results started deteriorating and it has only gotten worse, not better. Google is basically a shopping platform now, with big brands getting most of the home page real estate, so unless they totally reverse what they’ve done for a year, the outlook is not pretty.

From what bloggers who were invited to their headquarters recently came away saying, Google has apparently lost control of its algorithm and doesn’t know how to fix it even if they wanted to. Their AI bots have taken over and the company is so big and disconnected that nobody can dig into the code and right what’s gone clearly wrong. Since the stock price is still solid, they’re in denial instead of sounding the alarm.

After both of these crises we have endured, an income level and lifestyle many travel bloggers and freelance writers took for granted is now off the table…again. When nobody was traveling for a year, the marketing spend we often depend on got cut dramatically between 2020 and 2021. Sponsorships, ambassador programs, direct advertising, network display ads, affiliate commissions, and travel book sales all disappeared or got pushed back.

Now we are faced with our main traffic source going way down or, for some site owners, going away completely. Google looks like an unorganized mess now, a company that has lost control of its own core product. So I don’t have much faith we can ever rely on them again.

Until Bing, Duck Duck Go, and even Chat GPT search get the Google monopoly down to a much smaller market share, the lazy general public will keep getting crap results from their default search engine, not articles from experts.

At the most recent NATJA conference, I was on a panel led by writer Joe Pappalardo that included a few other writers plus professor Adam Pitluk, the former editor of American Way when airline magazines were still a thing. It was quite a full circle because I wrote for Adam once and sitting beside me was Terri Marshall-Holder, who conducted many of the interviews on this blog in previous years.

Then I hosted a deep dive at the TBEX Summit in Alaska on “The Muddy Path Forward After Googlegate,” with a round-up of what we know is working in SEO now (not much) and what we can do to make a buck from methods that have nothing to do with search.

I think the latter is going to be more fruitful, the diversified writing income path. Depending on Google for most of your income worked for quite a while, but I wouldn’t expect it to suddenly start working again.

The Diversified Travel Content Creator

Every person is in a different situation, but here are a few idea prompts to consider when you carve out some time to brainstorm and research. Even putting one or two of these in motion could be a game changer for your career as a travel content creator.

Write about something besides travel

In a time when nobody could travel, even if they wanted to, it was pretty hard to get anyone to read travel articles. For most of us, our blog traffic chart looked something like the stock market chart did at the beginning of the pandemic: heading down a steep mountain.

Sure, we could tell people to read our articles in order to plan for the future, but when there was no end in sight to the bleak situation, most readers couldn’t wrap their head around making future plans.

So what did those of us who made it through okay do differently? For a start, we figured out what we could cover on our blogs or as a freelancer that wasn’t travel related.

On my Latin America travel site’s blog, I’ve always covered spirits from that part of the world on the blog, so I stepped up my frequency of those posts and kept the traffic fairly steady. I knew people would be drinking plenty at home and were looking for recommendations on what tequila to buy or the best rum from Central America. I also stepped up coverage of wine and Mexican craft beer.

On my Cheapest Destinations Blog, I already did a lot of posts on living abroad and that turned out to be something people were still researching while they were wondering why they still lived where they did if they could be remote. So that was most of what I shared on social media and researched new articles for. I also cover gear and outdoor apparel sometimes so I pushed out more of those articles as the online gear stores ran big sales.

As a freelancer, I got assignments here and there from pitching differently. It started by asking an editor I’ve worked with before, “What are you looking for right now that’s not about travel?” After a bit of back and forth, we settled on a good article topic and that was another income stream landing in my account at time when I could really use it.

One of my past Travel Writing Overdrive students was in pretty good shape during the pandemic because in addition to writing about travel, for many years she has been writing about medical issues. That work was still in high demand. Others put more emphasis on food, RV travel, or the outdoors.

The skills that apply to travel writing also apply to other subjects, whether it’s writing about cooking, wine, sports, or finance. If you’re dedicated enough to write a travel book, you could probably also make good money ghostwriting a business book for someone else. When I was younger and less busy with my own sites I did six of those.

Move your writing skills to something parallel because diversity can apply to subjects, not just sources. If you can cover more than your regular beat now and then, you’ll have more ways to earn a buck from your work and appeal to people who don’t make travel a big priority in their life.

Join the gig economy

When the media talks about the gig economy, they often gravitate to Silicon Valley-centric jobs like Uber drivers and software coders working on contract, but there’s a whole huge world out there of on-demand jobs. Tens of thousands of people a day are being hired on platforms like Upwork and Fiverr to do more jobs than you can imagine.

Sure, the money can suck since you’re competing with the whole world, but gigs that revolve around native English language fluency are harder for someone in a developing country to perform. There are some people earning multiple six figures on Upwork from solopreneur jobs or one-person agencies.

Could you pick up some paid hours doing article research? Paid proofreading or editing? Transcription of medical or legal dictations? If you’re a grammar nerd or spelling stickler, you might be a natural.

Some digital nomads teach English online. Some do proofreading and editing. Some edit videos. What skills do you have that people may be willing to pay for?

Consulting, Courses, and Coaching

The three Cs of Consulting, Courses, and Coaching can provide steady payments that keep the lights on when the content side of your business is suffering. Many bloggers run courses or do consulting on “How to start a travel blog,” which kind of makes sense because it’s what they know, but there are better options that aren’t as competitive and will appeal to people with deeper pockets. What else can you get paid to offer advice on that’s not so obvious?

The people I know who are doing much better are the ones who do consulting or coaching in a related but wider-appeal area. Some do social media coaching or account management for small businesses who don’t have the staff or bandwidth to do it right themselves. Some do SEO consulting or courses for companies or non-profits. Some advise on setting up efficient Facebook ad programs or structuring a content marketing plan for the company blog.

Some bloggers use their previous job skill/education (such as legal, accounting, or sales) to offer guidance that few others are offering for a reasonable price. They get paid to consult on copyright infringement, solopreneur bookkeeping, or creating e-mail sales funnels that convert consistently.

Take a job for a while

There are a lot of virtual help wanted signs out there. A lot of publications are running short on staff and many are transitioning to a point of fewer employees, more contractors. There are lots of gigs and temporary positions out there for the taking for someone who can hit the ground running.

Or if you’re at a point where your blog income is declining rapidly, how about giving it a break for a while and taking a “real job”? I know it’s a depressing thought when you’ve had unlimited freedom and have been living as a nomad, but another quick source of income can bridge you to a point where your own business is supporting you again. If you are struggling right now because you had all your eggs in one basket, it might be time to pivot until you can get back to your old lifestyle by building more baskets.

See the Travel Writing 2.0 job resource page for links.

Work on long-term projects that will pay off later

I always advise writers to be simultaneously be working on three kinds of output: the now, the soon, and the future.

The now items are the ones that will pay next month’s electric bill and put food on the table. The “soon” projects are the ones that will pay off three or six months from now, like freelance articles for magazines and e-books you can throw up quickly for $3.99 on Amazon.

The best time to work on future projects was yesterday, but if your income has suddenly dropped, right now is a great time too. Yes, you need to keep making enough to pay the bills somehow if you don’t have savings to pull from, but you probably had far more time on your hands than usual during the pandemic and now you might again.

These slump times are good times to do some deep work while you are able to concentrate for four hours at a time instead of wasting time on tasks with no leverage (such as social media) that aren’t going to pay off right now anyway. Stop chatting, start writing while you’ve got no excuses.

If you do already have a book out or another product of your own, work on promotion now more than you usually do.

If not, this is the time to work on that book you’ve been talking about for years. It’s also a good time to finally develop that tour, those itineraries you were going to sell, that lead magnet or autoreply series you have put off for years. Figure out what your audience wants and give it to them directly rather than sending people through an affiliate link and making 4%.

This is the time to start that second blog when there’s no pressure to create an audience and monetize quickly. Start now on that long narrative article or essay you’ve been putting off in favor of top-10 lists and other travel fluff.

Your turn. What are you doing to weather Googlegate and create a stronger foundation for the future?

Ready for some guidance on diversified travel income? Join the mastermind group of Travel Writing Overdrive.