Hello adventurers, digital nomads, and storytellers. Whether you’re trekking the Himalayans or sipping coffee by the Seine in Paris – there’s one question that always pops up – how can I sustain my travel lifestyle and how can I monetize my travel content with affiliate marketing?
In this post, I am going to share a game-changer for every travel blogger – Travelpayouts.
Stick around as we deep dive into the world of high-paying affiliate programs and what Travelpayouts can help you with. This post was sponsored by Travelpayouts.
The Best Travel Related Affiliate Programs For Bloggers
Hands down one of the best ways to monetize your passion and your knowledge around a topic is by finding relevant affiliate programs that you can incorporate seamlessly into the content you create.
As a creator of the Affiliate Programs Masterlist, a database of nearly 800 affiliate programs in 20 different blog niches – I am always on the hunt for high-paying affiliate programs for bloggers that I can recommend to those who follow me for blogging and affiliate marketing advice.
And I believe I found the best affiliate partner program for travel bloggers!
What is Affiliate Marketing & How Does It Work
But let’s start at the beginning – what is affiliate marketing and how does it work?
Affiliate marketing is a marketing strategy in which an advertiser (which can be a brand, a company, a merchant or online retailer) pays commission to an affiliate partner (which can be a content creator or an influencer with an online platform) for driving sales to their website.
The affiliate partner can use their unique affiliate links (provided by the affiliate management software that the advertisers use) to track and trace purchases made through their links, therefore earning a commission on every sale generated.
The best part of this is that it doesn’t cost the end user anything extra. Whether somebody books a hotel through your affiliate link recommendation or goes directly to the booking website for example to make a reservation, they pay the exact same amount.
The only difference is that if they make a purchase after they clicked on one of your referring links, you get a percentage of the total sale as a kickback.
Affiliate Marketing For Travel Content Creators
Affiliate marketing is a popular way of monetizing your content – especially for travel content creators -because it allows advertisers such as tour operators, hotels, flight search engines, hotel booking sites and so on to reach a wider audience and get new customers while only having to pay out for results.
But here’s the thing – not all affiliate programs are created equally. The percentage they pay you as a content creator differs from platform to platform and advertiser to advertiser.
So I’ve done some digging and I can confirm that one of the best and high-paying affiliate program for travel bloggers is the Travelpayouts affiliate platform.
Introducing The Travelpayouts Affiliate Network
In a nutshell, Travelpayouts is an affiliate partnership program specifically designed for the travel industry.
It connects content creators to over 100 travel-related brands such as accommodation websites (like Booking.com, Expedia etc), airport services, bike rentals, bus and transportation companies, car rentals, cruises booking sites, travel insurance providers, loyalty point schemes, package tours and holidays, tours and experiences (like Get Your Guide, Viator, Trip Advisor etc).
If there is anything that I’ve learned from putting together an Affiliate Programs Masterlist and being being a blogger who monetizes her content herself through affiliate marketing and affiliate links myself, is that individual affiliate programs are a pain to join separately and to keep on top of.
Just imagine trying to organize and find 20-30 different affiliate logins, dashboards, link creators, payment thresholds and so on.
The benefits of Travelpayouts are that they connect you to a 100 different brands and advertisers that you can join on just one platform – and that is the Travelpayouts dashboard.
This makes it easy to keep track of advertisers you have joined (so you don’t forget about them and forget promoting them, which often happens) and it makes it super simple to log in, apply to the individual programs they have available and grab your affiliate links from there.
A few other benefits of Travelpayouts are:
- You meet the payment threshold faster and get paid quicker. Most affiliate programs have an individual minimum earnings amount required before they can pay you out. With Travelpayouts this can be accumulated over the multiple brands in there (you can earn $30 from Viator and $20 from Trip Advisor and get paid) instead of needing to reach $50 in both accounts.
- They have Travelpayous exclusive advertisers. Besides the popular brands that you can join as an affiliate separately, there are a few advertisers that you can only become an affiliate for via Travelpayouts!
- The Travelpayouts Link Switcher tool – it allows you to install a code that will turn all your existing website links for relevant advertisers into affiliate links. If you have mentioned Booking com hotels before (via normal links or even via other affiliate networks), these will now be easily converted into Travelpayouts affiliate links. See how to set it up here.
How To Sign Up For Travelpayouts & How It Works
- Sign up for free to Travelpayouts via this link.
- Use the Promo Code “ANA” to get $25 added to your balance!
- Create an account with a chosen email address.
- Create a “project” in the “Content Creation” category and link your existing website or social media accounts you plan to use to promote your affiliate links.
At the moment, they only accept travel bloggers and content creators with platforms that are at least 2 months old and that post on a regular basis.
- Remember to activate your account by asking for a confirmation email, and clicking on the link in that email.
- Set up a payment method to ensure you get paid.
- Once your account is set up, you can navigate to “Programs > All Programs” to find and join advertisers.
- Click on “Details” to find out more about each program. This will tell you how much they pay out their affiliates per sale, their cookie period and more.
- Click on “Connect to program” to request to join their affiliate programs.
- Once you get approved, go to Tools to find your affiliate links & banners.
You will find a default link to their homepage that is ready to be copied and used, but you can also paste in a link to any of their other pages, listings or products that will turn into a direct affiliate link to those.
So for example, if you are recommending a specific hotel from Booking.com, create a link to it there!
You will also find extra Widgets and Banners for each program listed in the sidebar.
For example, the WayAway search engine advertiser allows you to embed a flight finder box onto your website, along with some other cool widgets, allow customers to find travel options for their desired dates.
Travelpayouts Advertisers & Brands
Here are just a few of the brands that you have access to when you join Travelpayouts:
Travelpayouts Most Popular Advertisers:
- Viator Affiliate Program
- Booking.com Affiliate Program
- Get Your Guide Affiliate Program
- Trip Advisor Affiliate Program
- RentalCars.com Affiliate Program
- Cruise Critic Affiliate Program
- Trivago Affiliate Program
- Agoda Affiliate Program
- Bus Bud & Flexi Bus Affiliate Programs
- Rail Europe & Vrbo Train Affiliate Programs
Travelpayouts Exclusive Advertisers:
- WayAway Affiliate Program
- InDrive Affiliate Program
- Hotellook Affiliate Program
Instant Connection Affiliate Programs (guaranteed approval):
- Kiwi Taxi Affiliate Program and Kiwi.com Affiliate Program
- Economybooking.com Affiliate Program
- Tiqets Affiliate Program
- BikesBooking.com Affiliate Program
- QEEQ Car Rental Affiliate Program
- Get Transfer Affiliate Program
- Trip.com Affiliate Program
- LocalRent.com Affiliate Program
- Super Travel Affiliate Program
- We Go Trip Affiliate Program
- Hilton Honors Points Affiliate Program
- A lot more!
Get access to all these advertisers & more by creating a free Travelpayouts account today!
And don’t forget to add the promo code “ANA” when you sign up, to get $25 towards your account balance, all courtesy of the Travelpayouts team!
How To Promote Your Affiliate Links & Make Sales
Affiliate programs and networks like this one make it easier to earn more as a travel content creator, whether you’re a seasoned blogger or you’re just starting out. There’s always room for you!
Now that you know how to join and grab your links, let me show you some effective ways to promote these affiliate offers without being spammy and how to start making affiliate sales.
1. Start A Travel Blog
One of the best platforms to share detailed travel tips and guides is a blogging platform. If you don’t have one set up already, learn how to create a travel blog here. Or take my free course below:
2. Research Relevant Travel Questions
Next up, you want to find out what people actually want to know about the destinations you want to write about. Don’t just assume you know, research it!
Some of the best places to do audience research are:
- In online travel forums, such as the Trip Advisor forum page
- Facebook groups, such as Best Destinations To Travel
- With the help of keyword research tools such as Keysearch
Spend some time in there and see what people are asking. Use the search function to narrow down these posts to specific destinations or search terms such as “question”, “what are”, “recommendation” etc.
The TripAdvisor forums also give you top questions asked about a specific location, but I would spend some time going through some of the posts in there, and taking note of very specific questions you think you can answer.
3. Answer Those Questions In Your Content
Once you have a list of questions, you can turn those into individual pieces of content, specifically created to cater to similar requests.
For example, the blogger behind www.theworldwasherefirst.com wrote multiple 7-10 day Greece guides for various Greek islands, as this was a commonly asked question in online forums.
4. Incorporate Your Affiliate Links
The goal is to create helpful content that answers commonly asked questions and provides solutions. Part of those solutions can be affiliate links, especially since a lot of the travel-related questions I see online have to do with travel logistics or recommendation requests for accommodation or activities.
You’ll see a perfect example of it in this Greece guide, where each island comes with hotel booking recommendations, activity ideas, car rental companies to be able to travel around and a lot more!
All these affiliate links were hand-selected and strategically incorporated in their content, and all the links found there are Travelpayouts affiliate partners.
More Affiliate Marketing Resources For Travel Bloggers
If you’re new to affiliate marketing, and you want to learn more effective strategies to promote your affiliate links and offers and get paid, here are a few helpful tutorials & trainings you need to take:
- How To Make Your First $1,000 In Affiliate Sales
- How To Properly Disclose Your Affiliate Links
- How To Make Money From Your Blog As An Amazon Affiliate
- How To Make Money Blogging – The Ultimate Guide
- How to Use Free Keyword Research Tools to Grow Your Affiliate Revenue
And if you’re ready to take your travel blogging business to the next level, don’t forget to join Travelpayouts. It might just be your ticket to earning while exploring the world!
I have been exploring Travelpayouts lately too and it’s the best, no doubt! 💪🏻💪🏻
I wish there was an equivalent to it for my niche for sure!
This post looks great!