How I make money from travel blogging

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I’m asked regularly about how to make money travel blogging, so I’ve decided to finally write this detailed explanation of how I do it in 2025. There are a lot of articles on monetising a blog out there online but I’ve found that most are unrealistic and/or outdated. Many are also very American-centric or not specifically about travel blogging. 

I don’t know why people are so fascinated by how to make money through travel blogging, but they are. I’m asked almost every time I tell someone what I do: ‘How do you make money from that?’. As if writing, photography and digital skills (the three areas that make up blogging) aren’t all fairly established jobs already. I don’t know whether this curiosity is specific to travel blogging, or whether finance, recipe or gardening bloggers get the same interrogation.

This article is not about how to set a blog up and start writing (although I might do another one on that). I’m just going to talk about the different income streams my blog has. Hopefully, it’ll be interesting and also maybe helpful for other travel bloggers just starting out.

Get the kettle on and have a read…

A warning if you want to make money travel blogging… 

Before I get into it, I just want to start out with a wee warning.

Earning money from a travel blog takes time, effort and skill. It is far from being an easy way to earn money. And even with a successful blog, you’re not guaranteed to make a decent income. There are far easier ways to earn money online, and far easier blogging subjects to earn from. You’re going to have to really love it if you want to stick at it.

If you’re considering trying to become a travel blogger, bear in mind that there are apparently over 600 million blogs on the internet and less than 5% of them make money. These figures are bandied around a lot online (I can’t find a decent source, though). I actually think it’s even starker than that. The vast majority of blogs are abandoned after a few months when the blogger realises it’s all too much work.

For a new blogger juggling the work alongside an existing full-time job, you’re realistically looking at several years before you see much income. It took me three years before I made anything. And omg, did I put the hours in. Even now, I could be earning a lot more but simply don’t have enough hours in the day.

On that cheerful note, let’s begin.

How to make money travel blogging: how I do it in 2025

1. Qualify to join an advertising network like Mediavine

I’m starting with this because this is the main way the blog earns me money.

Mediavine is an advertising manager for websites, known as an ‘advertising network’. It’s what most aspiring bloggers aim for in order to generate money. You need to have 50,000 views per month on your site in order to apply to join, and a certain % of those views have to be from the most lucrative countries for advertising (such as the USA). I spent years growing my monthly views to be able to apply. I started my blog in 2016 and it took me until 2019 to get the numbers. It was not easy. I could (and might!) write a whole post on growing traffic on a blog but in summary: it’s hard work. I know plenty of bloggers who have been trying for five or more years and still only get 5,000 a month.

Mediavine isn’t the only advertising network you can join. There are others, with lower views-per-month thresholds to get in (Ezoic, SheMedia and Monumetric are the main ones). I didn’t bother joining them in my pre-Mediavine years as they have varying reputations and some massively slow your site down (Ezoic!). But if you were very keen to start earning, you could try one.

How Mediavine and similar advertising networks work

Mediavine works by placing adverts within the text on your blog posts as well as along the sidebar and footer. You’ll be seeing those adverts as you’re reading this. These are targeted adverts, like most adverts online. So you’ll see adverts for clothes if you do a lot of online fashion shopping, adverts for EasyJet if you’ve been looking up holidays, and so on.

The more views (readers) the blog gets, the more eyes on those adverts. And therefore the more money you earn each month.

It’s not about clicking the adverts, though, which is a common misconception. The advertisers just want people to see them. So it’s about adverts loading on the page and being seen. You can also control the frequency of adverts through Mediavine, which I like (I have mine on low-medium as I’m unhinged and would rather have a cleaner-looking blog than earn more money). You can also block certain topics for adverts, such as gambling.

Mediavine also supports you with your ads setup once you’re in. They’re very nice when I’m crying at 3am because everything has broken I’ve done something stupid.

How much can you earn through an advertising network?

How much you can earn through advert placements depends on various things. The main one is obviously how many views you get, as explained above (more views = more eyes on those adverts).

But there are less obvious factors, such as the country most of your views come from. If you have a lot of US-based readers viewing your blog, ka-ching! Sadly, I don’t. The vast majority of my readers are from the UK. And you lovely lot earn me about half of what I’d get if you were American. Can you all please move house? Ta.

Suffice to say, though, plenty of bloggers (not just in travel) earn a six-figure sum through Mediavine. Again, sadly, I don’t. But it is by far the top way the blog earns me money.

2. Join affiliate schemes and use their links

The next way I earn money through travel blogging is affiliate linking. This is probably an easier thing to get your head around if you’re unfamiliar with digital jobs and earning money online. It’s basically commission from sales.

You join an affiliate scheme, which then gives you the ability to make links (URLs) with a code built into them. Whenever someone buys something online through that link, you earn a small % of the sale, at no extra cost to the person. The commission is usually about 2 to 4%.

What affiliate schemes do I use as a travel blogger?

The main affiliate scheme I use is the Booking.com one. I can make an affiliate link to a hotel or apartment that I recommend and include this in a blog post for my readers. Then, if they book a stay through my link I get a bit of commission. On the odd occasion, my Booking.com income can surpass my Mediavine income, usually when the payment comes in following a lot of hotel bookings being completed over the summer.

I also use Get Your Guide (for links to guided tours and discounted tickets) and a handful of other specific travel-related ones like Trainline.

Sometimes I’ll also link to the outfits I’m packing for a trip (which I do a lot over on my Instagram). So I use the affiliate schemes for various shops where I buy my clothes and accessories, like ASOS, Rains (for all the chic waterproof rain jackets I wear all the time) Etsy, ACAI (for my non-fugly walking/hiking trousers), New Look, Marks and Spencer, and so on and so on. I even get readers tagging me in photos of their outfits, which is so lovely.

Oh and one very random item I recommend regularly is my dual-voltage, powerful travel hairdryer from Boots. It works in any country and folds up to fit nicely in hand luggage. I’ve had it for nearly 10 years now and it never lets me down. I cannot tell you how many people have bought it on my recommendation; I should be receiving some kind of award from Boots. Maybe a gold-plated hairdryer…

The ethics around affiliate linking – how to make money travel blogging with them ethically

I only link to things that I have tried or would personally spend money on myself. Obviously, not all bloggers do the same. And I only include links when they’re naturally part of one of my travel guides. I don’t shoehorn them in everywhere to try to boost sales. The public has definitely become a bit sick of that, given how much some social media influencers do it.

Also, I naturally want to give tips in all my travel guides. If I’m going to link to an amazing hotel to help my readers out with their travel planning, I may as well earn some commission through it. And it’s quite nice when I get feedback from my readers when they’ve enjoyed what I’ve recommended, whether it’s a dress, hotel or (you guessed it) a hairdryer.

Never would I do irrelevant affiliate links and I turn down offers quite regularly (no, I don’t want to join the affiliate scheme for some random carpet company, thanks). 

3. Write sponsored blog posts

Sponsored posts are a popular way to make money from travel blogging. I hardly ever do them, for reasons I’ll get into in a minute.

Basically, they’re articles that a client pays you to write because they want a mention and a link to their site.

For example, when I wrote my guide to things to do in Rye, Sussex, a company that owns holiday cottages paid me to test out one of their new cottages and to mention it in the guide (with no obligation to say it was nice, but luckily it was). I loved doing this piece of work! But it’s one of the very few examples I have of a sponsored blog post as I normally turn them down. Why? Read on…  

The problem with sponsored blog posts

First off, it’s rare that I want to write about anything other than stuff I’ve chosen myself. My list of places I want to go to and write about is very long! It takes something good to divert me from that. I get a lot of offers to go and review campsites (can you imagine me camping?!) and to stay in new hotels on the other side of the country. Obviously, I thoroughly research when I’m considering an offer. It’s vital to make sure it’s somewhere I’d genuinely like to go and am likely to recommend to my readers. That rules out many potential sponsored posts.

Second, it also has to be a blog post I can earn long-term money from. Let’s say a client – a hotel – offers to pay me to visit and write a blog post called ‘The newly refurbished Acorn Hotel is amazing’. No one is going to search for that on Google, so it won’t get any views. And therefore it won’t earn anything in the long run and all I have is the one-off payment from the hotel. On a technical note, it may also harm Google’s trust in my blog if I have blog posts languishing with no readers, which could cause long-term damage to my traffic. I’m breaking into a cold sweat thinking about this.

Are sponsored blog posts ever worth it?

Even if I think a sponsored blog post would work and I’d like to go ahead, it often falls through because the client will rarely pay my rates and agree to my terms.

I write very high-quality, detailed travel guides that take hours and hours of research, thought and editing. I have to charge for my time and can’t afford to work for a pittance. Sadly, clients often just want a link to their site as cheaply as possible. They don’t recognise the longer-term value of a good blog post that will bring in readers for years.

And they often want you to pretend you just happen to be writing about it and they didn’t pay you to, so you don’t disclose the sponsorship. I will only mention things honestly: I won’t exaggerate or lie. And I will always, always follow the Advertising Standards Agency rules. These set out that you must declare that a post is sponsored: even if you’re under no obligation to say anything specifically (have a look at my disclaimer at the top of my Rye post as an example).

So I have to turn offers like those down. And I suppose that’s one way to not make money from travel blogging!

4. Go on press trips

A press trip is a trip organised especially for a travel blogger (or group of bloggers and/or journalists) by a travel agency, brand or tourist board. They’ll cover most or all travel expenses for the trip. They also usually create a full itinerary for each day, from the moment you wake up to the evening. This is so that you experience all the museums/day trips/restaurants they want to promote.

Are press trips worth it?

As mentioned above in the sponsored posts section, I like making my own choices. Having an itinerary made for me and what I cover dictated to me with no flexibility isn’t my cup of tea. In order to do this kind of work, which isn’t necessarily enjoyable or to my taste, I charge for my time. That means both while I’m on the press trip and for all the hours I spend when I get home and have to write the blog post(s). However, travel agencies/tourist boards very rarely want to pay anything other than covering your expenses for these trips. Therefore, I’m not a huge fan of press trips and almost always turn them down.

The only time (twice!) that I’ve accepted a press trip has been when it’s to somewhere I especially wanted to go and the itinerary had some gaps in it so I could do my own thing. I would say press trips, in general, are the most hours for the least return. The exception is if you manage to write a blog post afterwards that pulls in long-term high traffic and earns you a fortune through your Mediavine adverts.

5. Monetise your associated social media channels

If you have a travel blog, you more than likely also have public social media accounts associated with said blog, which you use to grow a community and drive traffic to the blog. You can monetise these accounts, most frequently Instagram, by using them for sponsored content. A bit of dabbling in being an influencer. As a side note, if you’re interested in the differences between blogging and influencing, I have a full guide to this.

Sponsored Instagram content is not really for me, for similar reasons I listed above regarding sponsored blog posts. Most offers I get don’t interest me or aren’t at all relevant for my audience (you should see some of the weird offers I get!). All of them are just a one-off payment; they don’t generate a long-term income like putting the hours in on the blog does. And as I don’t have a huge Instagram following, I’m never offered enough money for sponsored content to be worth my time. I could be working on the blog and earning much better and more stable money, so I’m not going to waste that time faffing on Instagram.

Of course, if I grew my Instagram following, I could ask for more money for sponsored content. But my focus is my blog. There’s a reason I’m not bothered about putting more time into Instagram to get thousands more followers so I could earn more through it: it’s too risky.

The downside to earning through social media influencing

The huge risk with social media work is that you do not own the platform. As we’ve seen with the recent Twitter fiasco, a social media platform can die overnight. Or it can die a slow and painful death (RIP MySpace; I still miss you). Either way, that’s your platform – and your income source – gone. That’s very different from owning and running your own blog, which is yours forever.

Still, that’s not to say I won’t do the odd sponsored Instagram post. For me, these are usually for outfits and accessories I’ve been sent to wear on my travels, which I’ve been able to choose myself and genuinely like. It’s not a huge thing but it is an occasional income source. A good example is my recent sponsored post when I was in Annecy, France. I worked with ACAI Outdoorwear to promote some hiking/walking leggings (as shown below). I’ve bought stuff from ACAI before so I knew I’d like the leggings and I ended up loving them (even wearing them as I type!).

6. Sell merchandise and/or photos

Another way to make a bit of money as a travel blogger is to actively sell stuff. 

This is an excuse to plug The PackTheSuitcases Shop, which I’ve just opened!!! I’m selling high-quality art prints of my photos, tote bags and some t-shirts. Let me know what you think because I am far too excited about it. Especially the tote bags.

I use Teemill for my shop, which is a sustainable, ethical printing and production company in the UK. You can even send old and damaged tote bags back to them for recycling. If you’d like to use Teemill to make merchandise for your own blog, I have a referral link.

A lot of travel bloggers also sell non-physical stuff, like:

• Selling photography to stock image sites (like Shutterstock and Getty Images). This can be handy for generating income in quieter months. For me, it’s never seemed worth it as you don’t get much per image.
• Selling custom Lightroom presets. Lightroom is the Adobe software most photographers use to edit their images, often using ‘presets’, which automatically apply certain lighting effects/contrast/sharpness etc to the images without having to manually do it. This isn’t something I do because I only ever use one preset… and I don’t want anyone else to have it!
• Selling online courses, such as on how to write for SEO, how to take good travel photos and so on. I’ve thought about doing this because SO many of them are awful (‘how to start a successful travel blog’ by someone with barely any readers per month?!) but it’s not something I’ve found time for yet.

None of those non-physical things sounds as exciting as my tote bags though, right? How many times can I mention tote bags here?

7. Use a tool for people to thank you by buying you a drink/coffee

Out of all the ways to make money as a travel blogger, this is probably the most awkward.

Over the years, I’ve had lots of regular readers ask if they could buy me a drink if I’m ever in one of the places I’ve written about (usually Madeira) when they are too. I’ve met up with quite a few regulars this way and it’s been lovely. But obviously, I can’t always meet up with people IRL so I also use the online service ‘Buy Me a Coffee’, where you can buy me a virtual coffee/tea/drink. I genuinely do use the money to buy drinks, never coffee as I’m a tea person but I also save it up to spend on beers/G&Ts/cocktails on my travels. 

The reason I find it awkward is that it’s so obviously ‘Here’s how to send me money!’. It’s daft really as I’m supplying over 100 travel guides here on the blog, entirely free of charge, and it’s not unlikely that people want to say thank you through the medium of a cuppa or a beer. It just feels odd. I stick it at the end of every travel guide but I don’t really promote it otherwise.

I should add that using things like Buy Me a Coffee or giving out your PayPal details aren’t ways to make a profit. You’ll only ever get lovely messages and a few quid to spend on bits and bobs. If you’re hoping you’ll get some billionaire sending you a huge tip, I’m afraid that isn’t the case. Unless any generous billionaires are reading this… in which case, go and read one of my recent travel guides and thank me later. Please.

8. Design bespoke travel itineraries for readers – aka how to make money travel blogging with a lot of effort…

This is something that some travel bloggers offer and make a fair amount of income from. Personally, I don’t offer it as a service. In seven years of blogging, I’ve twice ended up agreeing to do something resembling an itinerary for long-term readers as a one-off (a two-off?). It takes forever and I just don’t have the time. But I thought I’d include it here anyway as it is something I’ve dabbled in and other travel bloggers definitely do as part of their business.

Creating bespoke travel itineraries usually involves planning out flight times, hotels, transfers, and even restaurants. You don’t book it because you’re not a travel agent (and not insured as one, either). The person does all that themselves. But you do normally offer a 15- to 30-minute video call with them to talk through it all and make any requested changes.

Bespoke itineraries are quite an undertaking. You can charge your hourly rate for however much time you put in, plus a bit extra for the video call. It all comes with a lot of pressure, though, as if something goes wrong, the person might give negative reviews (even though it wasn’t your fault). 

How to make money travel blogging: how I do it in 2025

So that’s it! All the ways I regularly and not-so-regularly make money through blogging about travel. If you’ve found it interesting, you might also like my other blogging-related articles:

• Blogger, influencer, vlogger: what’s the difference?
• How to start a travel blog [coming soon!].

If you have any questions about travel blogging or how to make money from it, do get in touch and I will edit this post to add some FAQs if I get enough.

Save and share: how to make money travel blogging

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I don’t normally blog about blogging, but I’m planning on a few more pieces on it in the next few months. 

If you’ve used one of my travel guides and enjoyed it, you can also buy me a drink. Cheers. 

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