Hey you guys, Phoebe here from Little Grey Box
Now look, there is one question I am asked the most
and that is 'how the heck do you make money as a travel blogger?'
It's a question people really want the answer to
So today, I thought I'd answer it
Here's everything I know on how travel bloggers make money
how much we make and how you could make money
as travel blogger too
We make our money a few different ways
So I'm gonna take you through all of them Basically, we're paid for our time, our skills,
access to our audience as well as the content that we create
So a brand may pay us to come and stay at their hotel and write a review
They may pay us to go on a tour and review the tour company
or just create some content around our experience
We may also be paid to simply go somewhere,
enjoy ourselves and create some video content or photographic content
or some written guides about the area
Another way we make money is
may be paid to make video content, photographic or written content
and we sell it back to the brand who commissioned us to do it
You can also be paid to write about something that's current
So, for example, there might be a destination that is trying to push itself and
get in front of travellers so they may pay bloggers to write a post about it
or share a video that they've already created
Some bloggers like to work under advertising and affiliate programs
So they will place banner advertising and affiliate links on their website or in their YouTube
channel descriptions that kind of thing
Personally, I really don't like pop up advertising
I find it clouds the webpage sometimes I can't even read the content
So we made a conscious decision not to place any kind of banner advertising on Little Grey Box at all
The same goes for affiliate links
We want you guys to just read our experiences and decide for yourself whether or not that
is something that works for you without any kind of pop-up ads or affiliate
links in your face. Bloggers can also be paid for social media promotions
So that could be things like posting a photo
on Instagram posting a photo on Facebook
sending out a tweet, maybe putting something in your Insta Stories or Snapchat depending
on the size of your following Bloggers can also make an income through SEO
So that's Search Engine Optimisation if you haven't heard of it before
So companies might approach bloggers and they might ask them to place a sponsored post or
a sponsored link in existing content What Matt and I look to do is package these
things up. So we offer promotion packages to brands
So it might be package A, B or C and each one offers a different level of coverage
We offer discounted rates for those kinds of things
so that the brand is more incentivised to purchase
But Matt and I still make money from different sources
because really, the blog alone isn't enough
Matt often freelances as a Graphic Designer
or Videographer, and I freelance as a Travel Writer
So I might write for somebody like CNN or CNBC
and get paid from them to create some travel content
based on places I've been I also earn a small income from some educational
type stuff. So I offer Blog Coaching and Brand Coaching
sessions, where I teach people everything that I know
We're also paid for speaking jobs So I might be asked to go and speak somewhere
and talk about the blog life or talk about YouTube
or something like that So not all our income comes from our travel blog
We have different revenue streams
Which I think is really important because you never know when a platform is
going to go under. If your entire income is based on Instagram
What are you gonna do when Instagram is replaced?
Don't go putting all your eggs in one basket You wanna spread your income revenues out
so that no matter what happens you are covered
if one of those platforms goes down.
Absolutely not
But I can see how it would look that way
When a brand approaches me they never ask
me to write a good review
or say you had an amazing time
They write to me and ask me to share my honest experience
about their product, their destination,
whatever it is that I am experiencing
So that could be positive or it could be negative
But really, if you think about it, a brand wouldn't invite you to come and experience something
If they weren't confident it was good...right?
Before we agree to anything we always let the brand know what we share will be completely
and totally honest based on our experience
I also figure that it's not really up to me
to decide what everybody out there likes so for example
I stayed at a noisy hotel and I was travelling by myself and I really
liked the noise of the outside world. My mum, on the other hand, wouldn't have liked the noise
So what I do is I just tell the truth
I say to the hotel, it was a bit noisy at night if that kind of thing bothers you
don't stay there. If it doesn't bother you, it's a great fit for you.
Sometimes you get the best customer service
when things go wrong. I mean, nothing's ever going to be perfect right?
So why not give the hotel a chance to address
it and see what are your customer service skillls actually like?
So if I do have a bad expereince, my first thing is to raise it with the hotel
My second thing would be to raise it with the PR person
or the Marketing person who hired me
The third thing I would do is just share my honest experience.
That is a fantastic question and it's hard to know
because there isn't some kind of standardised index
and travel bloggers aren't really...
we don't really talk too much about I made this this much or I made that this much
From my experience
my income fluctuates a lot
like any small business
some months it might be a bit more lean I can make as little as a couple of hundred dollars
other months it might be thousands of dollars
How much money you make as a travel blogger is going to depend on how big your following is
the more following, the more of an audience you have
the more brands are going to pay you to get
exposure and get in front of those audiences
So it's safe to say the really big bloggers
They're earning quite a bit of money. I've heard rumours of some really famous Instagrammers
getting over 10 thousand dollars per Instagram post
For Matt and I, I gotta be honest We don't really keep track of how much money
we make... In terms of counting it all up
All we know is we have enough money to live a life we love and that's all that matters
If Matt and I did have a lot of money let me tell you what we would be spending it on...
Travel
Fortunately, for work, we get a lot of travel opportunities
So what we do is we wait for those and we travel on those opportunities
ahhh.....no
I wouldn't call it travelling for free
If we aren't getting paid, it's an exchange of services
It's our time, our skills, our knowledge and experience
in exchange for this experience. It's never free, you always have to do something for it
In my mind, free means someone gives it to you
You take it... you don't owe them anything
That's not what happens in the blog world
No.
I wish we did, but we don't
That said, it is really, really important that we do get paid
so we don't take a free job unless it's an amazing opportunity
to somewhere we've never been before and could probably never afford to go to
and also, the more free jobs we accept the more it undervalues everybody else out there
and if we don't do something for free maybe that brand will go to somebody else
who will do it for free So we're better to stay strong together and
everybody demand to get paid so that everybody has to get paid
Most of the time, brands find us so they might hear about us
they may see us on an influencer database they may find us on YouTube
they may just find us by searching and then they will check out our blog
and then they will approach us and say hey, we really like your style, we like what you do
are you interested in working with us in this way?
Other times we might pitch to a brand ourselves So I might reach out to a regional tourism board
and say Hey, we're going to be in the area
This is what our blog is all about This is what we can offer you
Are you interested in working together?
My travel blog and the career it has given me is...
I can't even describe it The change it has made to my life is absolutely incredible
and I am so... so much happier doing something
that I love every single day than I ever thought I could be
But it isn't easy, it's taken Matt and I years and years
of really hard work to get to this point where it is our full-time jobs and our business
and it's still a struggle but let me tell you it is worth it
so if you are planning to start a travel blog I 100% recommend it
it changed our lives and it could change anybody else's life too
just be prepared for the hard work its not all glitz and glamour
it can quite often be 17 hour days no sleep, total exhaustion
but it is worth it it is amazing
If you are thinking about starting a travel blog
We have got a tonne of resources
on the Little Grey Box blog just for bloggers
links are in the description box below
Thank you so much for watching I hope you found this useful
Be sure to say hello in the comments below and subscribe to the Little Grey Box YouTube channel
Hope you have a great week, we'll see you next time
Love ya!