How Travel Bloggers Make Money: Success Tips for the Here and Now

The focus of this blog, my Travel Writing 2.0 book, the free newsletter, and my paid course all have the same objective: helping you be more successful as a content creator. There are many measures of success, but the one you can take to the bank is the most tangible. So let’s talk about how travel bloggers make money and what’s going to work in 2026 onward.

There’s no shortage of advice out there on how to make money as a blogger, a YouTube host, or a social media darling, but the last two years have been especially challenging to navigate. So much of the advice from before 2024 now looks dated or just plain wrong. These days the advice from the mid-’00s is more applicable than the later advice nullified by Google’s dreaded (un)Helpful Content Update and the rise of AI answers.

In short, it’s now about proving that you’re a subject expert, catering to a well-defined audience, and finding ways to connect with your readers/viewers. It has become increasingly harder to make real money relying on anti-publisher social media platforms but increasingly easier to make real money from old-school e-mail marketing and group message boards. Being a generalist who writes listicles about 50 different destinations is out. Being the expert on a subject that returning readers care about is in again.

You’ll frequently see people saying that “blogging is dead” or “blogging is on its last legs” because it is for them personally and they project outward. They were confronted with an obstacle that wasn’t there before and immediately jumped to the conclusion that it’s the end of the world. It may indeed be the end of doing things they way you did them before, but if you just take a different fork in the road instead of treading the same path, you’ll be fine.

I just had my best income year since 2019, before the pandemic. I know from conversations at the best-attended TBEX since last decade (in Quebec City) that I’m far from alone.

Adaptation is required to survive and grow though. Writing a slightly different version of what’s been published 100 times already is increasingly pointless. The AI bots have already scraped those 100 previous articles in a few seconds and regurgitated them. Finding the new story, the unique angle, and the place within the place are better strategies, preferably with original photos, your experience, and your opinions.

What does that mean in practice? Well, two of the most popular blog posts over at Perceptive Travel are a story about sleeping at the CDG Airport in Paris and an article about one specific bar with a story in Austin. On my Cheapest Destinations Blog, one of the most popular is about an overnight ferry between Mazatlan and La Paz in Mexico and another is about travel gear brands with a lifetime warranty. Unlike the bots, I’ve taken the boat trip and tried the gear brands in the field.

Josephine Mae Kraemer of Red White Adventures has been adjusting to the new demands. “My best sources of income this year have been affiliate marketing and sponsored content (on both Instagram the blog). In 2026, I’m going to lean even more into first-hand experiences and detailed personal guides that are optimized for affiliates.”

As we head into a new year, following is a look at how travel bloggers make money in the near future, based on real data on what’s working right now.

What’s Old is New Again: E-mail Marketing

I had success in multiple areas last year, with many streams of income, but a lot of the highlights lead back to good old e-mail marketing. Through the channel that still reaches exponentially more people who are paying attention than any social media platform ever will, I earned tens of thousands of dollars. While I’m lucky to reach 1% of my followers these days on the platforms I don’t control, I reach 35 to 55% of subscribers every time I send a newsletter. And as you can see from the screenshot above, they actually click on the links.

I devoted a whole post to the advantages of Substack earlier, so go read that if you’re interested. My Nomadico newsletter there has become a significant income source. But through my regular newsletters that focus on specific interests or websites, I earned another nice chunk of money by marketing to “warm leads.” I sold 27 spots on three travel tours, made thousands of dollars in book royalties, earned a few grand in affiliate income, got a bunch of students to join me in my Travel Writing Overdrive course, and sold consulting time.

Many other travel bloggers I’ve corresponded with are doubling down on this aspect. Nina Ragusa of Where in the World is Nina says, “I’m putting more energy into my newsletter, growing it with freebies that are genuinely useful, and then naturally leading into either affiliate offers or my paid products.”

Josephine Mae Kraemer says, “I will focus more on email marketing and having my own digital products this coming year.”

If you’re one of those people who has been posting faithfully on declining Instagram but neglecting your e-mail list(s), it’s time to reverse that. As Celeste Klassen says, “This year I am going to foster community and actively keep in contact with my email list. I have had this on my new year’s resolutions for three years in a row, and I need to make it happen. I’m super introverted so it isn’t natural for me, but I need to do what’s best for my business.”

Sponsored Posts and Brand Deals

That photo above is messy writing from the whiteboard in my office in the middle of December, sponsored posts I had already agreed to that I was trying to get published. Add a few link insertion orders in existing posts and I booked more than $5K in brand deal business in the last month of the year. Good thing I was home and working for part of the holiday period because SEO agencies and app brands still seemed to have some money jingling around in their budget.

I’ve never really pursued sponsored trips or big destination deals with a complicated list of deliverables. I’d rather write what’s interesting and right for my audience, even if it means funding my own travels half the time. I’ve been all over the sponsored post requests though because I can insist on complete control in the content and once the article is up, we’re done. Short and sweet transactions.

I make these articles worthwhile to read and unique enough that they can rank in search too, so I often get paid twice thanks to the display ad revenue that keeps on coming. A few of these posts I’ve gotten paid to write—more than I earn from most freelance articles I write for outside publications—have gone on to be one of the 10 most popular posts on that site.

Riana A. of Teaspoon of Adventure agrees: “Sponsored work (blog and social) was really big for me this year, which was a surprise as I didn’t do anything to intentionally seek it out. Every brand I worked with came to me. So I guess it was work I had done in the past to build up some authority and topic expertise that sent them my way.”

Others have done quite well with more complicated brand or destination deals and some have parlayed their video skills into making UGC reviews and videos for brands: user generated content.

Read my interview with Lindsay Nieminen since she spoke about this subject at a bloggers conference. Cailin O’Neil of Travel Yourself has been doing great with this strategy as well. “Currently my highest income earner is creating UGC for and with a brand I have a contract with that is very close to my brand and niche. It’s mostly all vertical video content. Hoping to do more of this in the new year!”

Anna Cook from Stuck on the Go blog says, “Freelancing for local tourism boards (writing blog posts, selling photos, creating short form video, and email marketing—all content for them) and repeat tourism board partners have been huge for me this year! I’ll be doubling down on UGC and reaching out to brands next year, not just tourism boards.”

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Smart Affiliate Marketing for Steady Income

This was the best affiliate income year for me since I sold my travel gear blog last decade. Much of that was through newsletters, but also a big chunk of hotel bookings via Stay22. (See my earnings dashboard above.) I’ve been with them from the beginning and despite me giving them the lowest level of control over my sites that’s possible, monthly commissions lately have ranged from $500 to more than $800.

With my Substack newsletter, Amazon earnings have been huge. Despite their low commission level, it’s a site that most people use already and readers usually buy more than one thing after clicking.

Kevin Wager of Wandering Wagers echoed what I’ve been hearing from a lot of successful travel bloggers when he said, “Hotel affiliates have worked very well for me this year.” Jessie Festa of Jessie on a Journey says, “Affiliate ads still do well for me, including sponsorships and affiliate marketing via email. I think this is a missed opportunity for many.”

I’ve also done well with travel gear and clothing, both through retailers like REI and Backcountry and many individual brands. People buy clothes and use them more often than they get on a plane and fly somewhere, plus product purchase decisions are a lot more spontaneous than vacation purchases.

Podcaster and blogger Jennie Thwing Flaming has had success with direct affiliate deals on her regional blog Top Left Adventures. “The best thing for me this year was the affiliate partnerships I personally created with businesses I know. The personal connection and recommendation was the key here. I used a multi modal way to share the discount codes and links with my audience—emails and podcast were the most effective. I am doubling down on this strategy since it has the most traction now and presents the biggest growth opportunity.”

Tara Shatz of Back Road Ramblers experimented with this and had some success. “I partnered with two vacation rental properties and negotiated the “Airbnb” commission if I brought them bookings (15%).”

Marketing Your Own Products

While selling your own products or services is nothing new, the idea got a lot more popular with bloggers when search traffic tanked for many. While search traffic is great for bringing in general traffic, if you’ve got a real audience that’s coming back, following you on social media, and signing up for your newsletter, you don’t need as many readers to earn a living.

We’ve entered a phase where the quality of traffic and the intent of that traffic means as much as the overall numbers. If you’ve got your 1,000 true fans, then there’s a good chance they’ll buy what you’re selling. Or go to the places you’re recommending. Jessie Festa says, “Selling my own products and services (courses, photo tours, itinerary planning, and paid newsletter) is my #1 income stream now, followed by sponsorships (particularly long-term partners).”

Tara Schatz hopes to get there, saying, “I am doubling down on digital products in 2026.” Renee Hannes of Dream Plan Experience says, “I added bespoke trip planning services, which was a top 3 revenue generator. I also hosted a week-long travel retreat. I plan to offer one per year.”

There’s a range of margins in selling your own products, from travel tours that might earn you 10-20% of the gross to digital e-books and consulting that are close to 100% all yours. Some of these require sweat equity up front, but then little effort after that beyond updates and marketing. Consulting and speaking are pure “trading time for money” services: great margins but hard to scale.

I’ll be doing my own push on this with the third edition of my living abroad book A Better Life for Half the Price. I sell the paperback and audiobook though Amazon, but the e-book directly so I can bundle it with higher-priced options like you see in the photo above.

Cleaning House and Publishing Updates

I cranked out a lot of new material this past year, but about half my published posts weren’t new at all. I did a lot of the clean-up work I’d been focusing on for years, but pumped up the volume this past year and got rid of a lot of clutter. Out with the old and outdated posts that couldn’t be salvaged, in with good ideas that just needed some updates and additions.

It seems to be working: despite AI threats, search traffic on all my sites is close to or above where it was before the HCU in late 2023. The chart above is from one of the blogs, starting from when GA4 completely replaced the old Google Analytics, roughly a year after the big change in Google’s algorithms. I’m getting more search traffic than I was in 2023.

I know that chart is a bit hard to read, so here’s the report from a different blog I run, just showing the traffic increase in the second half of the year from Google:

Celeste Klassen is finally seeing this pay off as well. “Before it didn’t always feel worth it to be updating blog posts, but it seems to be moving the needle this year. Ignoring my competitors and finding true gaps is working too.”

Riana A. says, “I’d like to go hard on updating old posts (something I always intend to do but keep putting off).”

This strategy works especially well for long tail keyword phrases that don’t have a lot of competition out there. Often I’ll add a few paragraphs, update some facts, and will see my search position jump from the fourth page of Google to top-5 overall, just because it’s new and fresh. From what we’re seeing, the AI tools put even more emphasis on freshness than Google and Bing do.

Evergreen content still works for sure, but you need to water the trees now and then to keep search traffic coming.

Persistence and Execution Will Mark the Winners

A lot of travel bloggers gave up when the software-guided practice of gaming Google stopped working. Everything they had been doing to pull in traffic stopped working suddenly and rather than start over or pivot, they threw in the towel and moved on.

In a way that’s healthy: those of us left standing are the Darwinian “adapt or die” bloggers who are going to keep bouncing back from adversity. We refuse to quit, so we’ll keep finding a way to thrive.

Karen Thompson Keathley says Facebook is one social network that’s still worth the effort. “Facebook was on fire for us this year. We grew from 10,000 to 110,000 followers. It drove traffic to the blog and made us a little money from their creator program.” Tara Schatz agrees, saying “With one blog, I have had great success with Facebook, both for income from the Creator program and driving traffic back to my site.”

Several people did well making short videos for the Amazon Influencer program too, including Renee Hannes. Jessie Festa says, “The Amazon Influencer Program continues to grow for me (even though it’s one of those things I often put off), so I want to spend more time on this in the coming year.”

Blogging may not be as easy now as throwing up a bunch of listicles and living off the Mediavine display ad income, but the bloggers who could adapt are doing great. Jeremy Jones of Discover the Burgh and This Week in Blogging says, “I’m actually going to hit a record income year in every category that isn’t display ads: sponsored content, affiliates, social bonus, products, etc. Still not at ‘best year ever’ territory overall because display ads are down too much, but I am happy that my diversification efforts are paying off. I am going to double down on all of those categories next year.”

I’ll close this out with another quote from Nina Ragusa, a blogger who has been making a living bopping around the world for nearly 15 years now and is currently living the good life in Thailand. “A lot of the work I did years ago still pays off now, and at this point, most opportunities and collaborations come to me. That’s been a nice reminder that the long game is real, even during the messy years.”

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