Monetising the travel niche?

Hey Snowy

I used to be in a couple of travel niches, not long after I started online. I don't do it any more.

I tried by writing about a really obscure/expensive/specialist form of travel, and promoting an upmarket affiliate offer. (I did actually earn quite a lot from it but the company whose offer I was promoting is no longer trading ... "victim of the recession" ).

My big problem with travel niches, in general, as an affiliate, is security of payment. It's all too easy to imagine that a significant proportion of customers, though they'll look at websites, of course, won't book anything other than the simplest deal without making a phone call or two, talking to a real, live person, and paying a deposit by credit-card while they're on the phone. It's not easy to see how reliably the affiliates get paid their commissions, that way.

If anyone has a really good answer to this, I'd love to know what it is. But the couple of former travel agents here with whom I've discussed it seemed not really to have an answer to it that got me interested again. Which is a shame, because in some ways there's a lot of potential in "travel", I think, and it's certainly easy enough to write about.

No experience in this but start with getting an email list?

Are there affiliate programs with travel sites?

I'm sure you could put up ads as well.

Take a look at-

A Couple Travelers By The Numbers: June

Write and sell your own guidebooks.

Become hotel and airline affiliate.

Language and phrasebooks.

Lots of opportunities.

Use Google adsense , Sell banner using BuySellAds and use Affiliated product .

I was thinking about the whole guidebook thing. But I also want as many other monetisation options as possible.

There's also the option of selling ad space on your website. Not adsense, but rather, contacting travel agents, destination hotels, etc and striking up a deal.

Interesting stuff.

As some of you may know, I am planning a travel social network site (which wont be up for a while) and planned to use affiliates as one way of making money from the site. I planned to use online only travel agents or 'travel' companies, like skyscanners.com and hostel.com.

I also planned to have certain parts on my site membership based. Premium areas for A* travelers.

Another Idea is selling discount voucher books for cities. I read a book called '$100 startup' by Chris Guillebeau where this was descirbed in more detail. Basically, you talk to local tourist atractions in a certain city or area to see if they can get entry discounts for their discount book, like $100 off boat hire, or 20% off admission, selling the book for like $100's and having $1000's of of discounts in the book.

"It's about as targeted as a North Korean missile."

The NK Military is no joke. North Korea Releases Video Of Paratrooper Attack On South Korea | NK News – North Korea News

Don't travel to North Korea!!!

http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/8045...5295475770.jpg

lol

As a 20year veteran of the hotel industry I can tell you first hand that this is a very competitive niche with lots of big name players such as expedia, hotels.com, Travelocity, Priceline, Booking.com, BCD Travel, Hotwire, Orbitz, etc, etc, etc. Most large corporations have their own travel coordinator who have a preferred brand that they REQUIRE their employees to stay at with regards to hotels. The corporate traveler has no say so as to where he stays, for the most part. The rates set at these hotels are negotiated between the franchise and the corporation. The leisure traveler is more savy today and typically doesn't even call the hotel. He/She typically books a room and/or flight thru the brands own website or thru the big name online travel sites mentioned above. With that said, I believe you would be better off targeting foreign leisure travelers to specific US cities where you offer hotel, flight, tours etc. As Adam stated above, you can incorporate big online travel agency API's into your website. Be prepared to have a lot of high value content on your site that can not be found elsewhere. You may be able to target leisure travelers going to destination locations. i.e Europeans traveling to Mexico, Aruba, Carribbean, etc. Again, you must have high value content on your site. Hope this helps.

Hotel affiliate.

You can setup a blog using either Blogger or wordpress and write some quality content and monetize the blog by putting banners from affiliate companies in the travel industry. You can use google to find companies that offer affiliate programs like hotels or travel agents. You can also set up adsense on your blog to earn money.

Interesting conversation going on here. I'd suggest to take action, start with anything and over the run, you'll learn lucrative stuff to follow later on. Best of luck mate!

I agree with John. Stick to one city and become the ultimate resource.

Seems that dude above me says business travelers stay at certain hotels, plus I wouldn't touch the cheap traveler/backpacker market.

What about something like digital nomads? This is going to become huge over the next 10 years and there are already thousands of people in certain places.

Take Bangkok as an example. There is literally nothing telling you what to do.

Apartments at various locations around the city with different price points.
Co-working spaces with prices.
Different swimming pools, gyms, buffets, theme nights at clubs, etc.

I'm sure digital nomads would love a resource for a certain city, plus they are already used to buying e-books so you could easily come up with one about something. They're already making thousands per month, or at least have a big savings account.

If you networked with all the lifestyle deign blogs I'm sure they would promote you.

You could also sell advertising to local businesses too. Or arrange meetups and parties in the city. You'll be the ultimate connector.

Sell high priced affiliate cruises and out of country tour/vacation offers. Commission rate is sky high, and many people are making a good living selling this.

Like a Jack-in-the-box, you never know when the goddam thing is going to spring.

Usually right after the food aid has arrived.

Alright, back to Reddit with these jokes.

Why not offer local tours in your own area to be one of your income streams? Or perhaps plan a larger tour to a destination such as Hawaii or Europe? These could be additional streams of income that have their platforms derived from your website. It also will give you credibility in the travel niche.

Can someone post Ken Evoy's daughter's site or PM it to me, I like to take a look.

Sign up for affiliate programs. One is Click Bank and the other is Commission Junction. Look for travel related programs or products then run text links and ads or banners on your website. Believe it or not, whatever your niche is, there's a way to make money out of it. As long as you have good content and heavy amount of traffic, I'm sure that you'll do great.

Use adsense, because - from what I know travel keywords have high CPC on adsense.

Best,
Ean