One of the first questions that people ask us is, “So how do you guys make money on your site, anyway? Are you selling vacation packages??”

Nope. No timeshares, people. I know you’re disappointed.  However, we do still need to consistent money. (The site takes a lot of upkeep and time!)

We thought this would be a good chance to show you behind-the-scenes how our blog runs. If you’ve ever had questions about running a website for profit, you can ask away.

First of all, we’re still in the start-up stages of our company, so our revenue model and strategy change often. Here are our current top options to make money on our travel blog.

Ways to Make Money on a Travel Blog

1. Sell something – We don’t have a unique product created yet, so anything we sold would be from another company. Plus, we’d have to stock inventory and be ready to ship at any moment. We chose to wait on this option.
2. Get sponsorships – The trick here is that sponsorships require certain web traffic, which is not always consistent in a very beginning company. This might be a good future option for us.
3. Show ads on our website – Okay, I’m in marketing, but even I don’t like advertisements. With some of the company ads, you can earn per click or per view…..but with many you don’t get a choice of which ad shows on your site. Nope. We didn’t like that at all. We want to approve whom we’re promoting.
4. Affiliate links – This means that we have an agreement with certain companies, and we can send people to their site through links. Whenever someone purchases through our link, we get a small percentage.  (Usually somewhere between 2-4%). This options seems to fit us for now. It’s not making much yet, but there’s potential.
   • Example: If I say I use the website Hostelworld.com when booking hostels <– that is an affiliate link.

   The cart of the medicine ordered will reach to you in early days. order viagra It should be taken positively and one should levitra sale continue reading to find out more possess something extra to be in the comfort zone in receiving and giving sex to each other. Crossing these boundaries may not benefit women viagra australia you in any situation. Sexual activity can be just as crucial cialis tablets india to a life as eating or sleeping, believe it or not.

As of now, our site includes affiliate links. (We list this throughout site, as per federal guidelines). Here is why using affiliate links fits our current strategy:

Why We Use Affiliate Links

• No annoying ads or popup ads. All you see is a regular link on a page. We like that. It keeps the site clean. (We can include pictures as links, but it looks much cleaner than ads)
• It doesn’t cost our readers anything. If you click through our links for, say, Priceline tickets, you pay the same amount. The exact same. We like that too.
• There is no daily monitoring, and it’s scalable. This means we can travel and it still be working. We don’t have to ship anything during the day or be ready with stacks of inventory. And we like the idea that if a gajillionty people visit our site one day, it will still work the same way.
• Favorably viewed. So far we’ve had great reactions from people about us doing this. They know we need to make money, and this doesn’t feel like we’re always trying to sell something.

Know that when we include affiliate links, we have some basic ground rules – it helps keep our branding consistent and integrity intact.

Our Ground Rules for Using Affiliate Links

• We ONLY recommend product/places that we or our friends personally use and approve of. If we won’t use it, we won’t recommend it. Period. Most of these products we’ve been using for years.
• If we like a product that has no affiliate program, we recommend it anyway. Case in point, some of our favorite hostels, such as the Mountain Hostel in Switzerland, don’t have affiliate programs. We don’t make any money if we drive business their way. It doesn’t matter – we send them business anyway.
• We only recommend products that are consistent with our image of adventure, female-friendly, in good taste, and on a low budget.

How Much Have We Made?

Very, very little. But we’re just starting out, and the site is just beginning to grow. That’s the thing about building a blog – it takes time. But at the very least, we’re building something that is helpful and that we can be proud of.

This is our current strategy – it will probably evolve once the web traffic increases even more. What questions do you have about running a blog for profit?  Is this a topic you’d like to know more details about and updates on?