The travel niche is a great evergreen niche to be in as a blogger. A travel blog offers plenty of opportunities for making money online. Affiliate marketing is one such opportunity. But first, you’ll need to find a good affiliate program for a travel blog.
This blog post may help narrow down some options for you or at least provide some ideas of the types of products and services that are available to promote as an affiliate.
I’ll also share my recommendation for making a consistent income with travel affiliate programs.
Tired of not making sales? Learn how I went from zero to making a consistent income online. Click here to learn how I did it.
Travel Affiliate Programs With Great Commissions
Two important things to consider when choosing an affiliate program are high-quality products that will benefit your audience and good commission rates.
The travel niche offers a wide variety of products that you can recommend. Some of these items can include luggage, clothing, shoes, electronics, and more.
Tortuga
This company specializes in carry-on-sized travel backpacks. Their bags are designed to help travelers avoid the cost and hassle of checking-in luggage. What makes this product awesome is that you can recommend these bags to travelers that do not want to check luggage.
Their affiliate program does have an approval process and appears to be managed in-house. They offer a 10% commission with a 60-day cookie length.
- URL: https://www.tortugabackpacks.com/pages/affiliates
- Commission: 10%
- Cookie Length: 60 days
Pacsafe
Bag theft is all too common while traveling and Pacsafe specializes in anti-theft travel bags. They carry a line of anti-theft backpacks, daypacks, cross-body bags, carry-on, purses & totes, slingpacks, laptop bags, and more.
Their affiliate program does have an approval process and requires filling out a simple form. Once your application is approved, they will invite you to join AvantLink, the network that manages their affiliate program.
They offer a 12% commission and 60-day cookie length. Anti-theft travel bags are great products to promote in the travel niche. You can bet their bags convert well and with the large variety of bags they carry, it could mean steady commissions for you.
- URL: https://pacsafe.com/pages/affiliate-program
- Commission: 12%
- Cookie Length: 60 days
Tripadvisor
This website helps millions of people each month browse more than 867 million reviews and opinions of 8.7 million accommodations, restaurants, experiences, airlines and cruises.
As an affiliate, you can earn a minimum 50% commission from Tripadvisor’s hotel booking partners. What’s even better is that your referrals are not required to book a hotel stay in order for you to receive a commission.
Tripadvisor is a great website to recommend to your visitors. It is a well known and trusted travel resource.
- URL: https://www.tripadvisor.com/affiliates
- Commission: 50%
- Cookie Length: 14 days
Travelpayouts
This is a CPA travel affiliate network. By joining Travelpayouts, you receive access to travel affiliate programs, including flights, hotels, car rental, insurance, tours and activities, all in one place.
They have over 60 travel affiliate programs, advanced promo tools, and fast customer support. The affiliate network has paid out over $22 million dollars since 2011.
- URL: https://www.travelpayouts.com/en/
- Commission: varies
- Cookie Length: varies
Lonely Planet
The Lonely Planet website is an online travel guide which consists of articles, books, planning tools, and more. They also have booking options for hotels, car rentals, travel tours, flights, and travel insurance.
The affiliate program offers 15% on all print books and ebook sales. You can also generate commissions from click throughs to their travel partner websites. Their affiliate program is managed through both CJ and Awin.
- URL: https://www.lonelyplanet.com/about/affiliate-program
- Commission: 15% on print books and ebook sales
- Cookie Length: not disclosed
Bluffworks
This company specializes in creating clothing that is comfortable and versatile for travel and at home. Their clothing is moisture wicking, wrinkle resistant, and machine washable.
Besides being fashionable, Bluffworks clothing is also functional featuring pockets for securing phones and valuables. The affiliate program appears to be managed in-house and offers a 5% commission with a 30-day cookie length.
- URL: https://shop.bluffworks.com/pages/affiliate-program
- Commission: 5%
- Cookie Length: 30 days
How to Make Affiliate Commissions with a Travel Blog
If you already have a travel blog, you are already on the right track. If you are in the process of starting a travel blog, keep it up. It is a great niche to be in and plenty of affiliate commissions are ready to be made.
A niche website is an excellent way to earn affiliate commissions. It is how I got started with affiliate marketing and it is what I continue to do today.
When I got started, I didn’t have any guidance and therefore, I didn’t know how to make money online with a blog. I purposely sought out an online training program and found this one.
The training made a huge difference for me and I was able to create my first successful niche blog. With hard work and consistent effort, I was able to transition out of a full-time job to working full-time on my blog.
As you can see from the short list of affiliate programs above, there are many products and services that you can recommend on your blog.
The key to making money with these affiliate programs is your content. The content you create is what eventually attracts visitors to your website.
Creating content begins with learning what people in your niche are searching for. This is easy to do and you can start by using Google search and its autosuggest feature.
Think about what people in the travel niche are searching for. Start typing in keyword phrases into Google search and take note at some of the autosuggest terms.
It helps to create a spreadsheet of all of the longtail keyword phrases that you come across. That way, you have plenty of content ideas for when you’re ready to sit down and begin writing.
Increasing Your Conversions
Besides creating great content for your readers, you’ll also want to include specific elements to your blog that will help increase overall converstions.
One thing you must do is use a call-to-action at least a few times within your blog post. A call-to-action is basically an instruction you give to your readers.
Some basic call-to-actions include phrases such as:
- Click here to learn more
- Check prices on Amazon.com
- Subscribe to my newsletter
- Buy now
I try to include a call-to-action 2 to 3 times in my posts and always include one at the end of my post. I don’t always link my call-to-action link to my affiliate link.
Sometimes I link it to a product review page. Product reviews are great for boosting conversions. I’ve always had the best conversions from recommending products I’ve actually used and reviewed.
Product review pages can (and should) have many more of your affiliate links. In essence, a review page is pre-selling your visitors on the product that you’re recommending.
Staying Consistent
Creating a steady income online requires consistent effort. It means creating new blog posts at a bare minimum, 1 to 2 times per week.
Depending on when you started your travel blog, you may already have some web traffic coming in. If you’re just starting, don’t give up. It will feel like a ghost town for several months. However, with consistent effort, your blog will eventually start receiving free targeted traffic.
I can’t emphasize enough how important it is not to give up on yourself or your blog. If I had given up 6-months in, I would have never achieved success and would have lost out on an online income stream.
Closing Thoughts On Finding an Affiliate Program for a Travel Blog
The travel niche is filled with opportunities to make affiliate commissions. There are so many travel affiliate programs to choose from including in the luxury space such as the Luxury Escapes affiliate program.
A niche website is one of the best options for generating a consistent income online. They are low-cost to start and easy to maintain.
If you are ready to level up your affiliate commissions, consider following the same step-by-step training program I followed.
I use the same training platform to help others one-on-one with creating their own niche websites.