In 2009, I earned $10,390 from travel blogging:
- $7,251 – Direct banner/text link sales
- $910 – Linkworth
- $840 – TextLinkAds.com
- $785 – Freelance work
- $362 – Google AdSense
- $19 – Miscellaneous affiliate sales
- $13 – Amazon.com
As you can tell, selling advertising directly is by far the biggest way that I’ve monetized my travel blogs. In the second half of 2009, after updating the theme of Go Backpacking, I began to sell much more banner advertising, which is billed on a monthly basis, or 3 months at a time in the case of the 125 x 125 banners. I learned to use PayPal subscriptions to automatically bill the customers.
Advertisers still prefer to pay for 6-12 months in advance on text link ads. I started turning them down for the first time because I didn’t want to see Go Backpacking overrun with text link ads.
I started to monetize Medellin Living through text link ads, and was earning more than I expected for such a niche travel blog. The consistent PR 3 has helped, I’m sure.
The freelance work consisted of 3 articles I wrote for AskMen.com, and a payment for the Colombia trip I didn’t get to go on (through no fault of my own).
I scaled back the Google AdSense on Go Backpacking, and instead, relied on the Lonely Planet’s Blogsherpa program to help me earn those dollars. I continued to earn a minimal amount of money per month on Medellin Living and this blog, but nothing much. At the time I’m writing this, I’ve removed AdSense from ALL of my blogs.
I received feedback through the Problogger.com forum in the latter half of the year that my traffic numbers should equate to higher earnings, and that I wasn’t making more money was a sign that I wasn’t monetizing properly – specifically that I wasn’t leveraging affiliate marketing. As a result, I started to focus on that area more. It’s not reflected above because I have yet to receive payouts from World Nomads, and my first Woo Themes payout was received in January 2010. Together, these two affiliates account for more than $300.
I should also mention that I spent more money on my travel blogging activities in 2009 then any other year. I bought a new laptop, Blackberry, upgraded my hosting package on GoDaddy, registered a bunch of new domains, invested in premium WordPress themes, joined AWeber, and started hiring designers to help with small projects on a freelance basis.
All in all, I’m super psyched that I hit the $10,000 mark for the first time, and that reflected a doubling of 2008’s achievement. The stars are aligning, and I see no reason why I can’t reach $25,000+ in 2010. And that’s just through Go Backpacking and Medellin Living.
To take things a step further, after 4 months of hard work, I’m launching a new membership site called Travel Blog Success. My goal is to help others build quality travel blogs through a 12-week online course blog, and members-only forum. I’ll be offering personalized support and guidance to everyone that joins.
Travel Blog Success launches at 10 AM (EST) Monday, February 1, 2010.
Check it out!
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Tags: earnings
Howdy Dave,
Mind if I ask you a quick question publicly? Are you using a WP plug-in to create your friendly redirection URLs, or are you manually creating them (.htaccess file, etc).
Example: http://www.gobackpacking.com/B...../woothemes
Hi Craig,
Thanks for stopping by Blog to Travel.
Back in mid-2007, I learned how to manually create the redirections as you mentioned, however it was unwieldy. In late 2009, after deciding to treat my blogs like a business, I was willing to spend the money for a powerful plugin to automatically create the redirections, and not only that, but track clicks on those links as well.
The plugin is called MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate: http://bit.ly/9SPRZq
At $97, it’s not cheap, but I’ve found it to be a worthwhile investment. I’m using it on 3 different blogs, and the ability to easily track clicks on affiliate links from within WordPress makes my life a lot easier. I can quickly see which affiliate links are doing well, and which aren’t. Plus, there’s a cool feature whereby I can associate any keyword with an affiliate link, and it will turn that word throughout my blog into the affiliate link.
So I can do mass updates to dozens of posts in minutes. I haven’t even begun to take full advantage of it.
mhmm — I’ve heard of it. I suppose tracking clicks in a consolidated location has its advantages, though am under the impression that most affiliates’ dashboards will show clicks and conversions coming in anyway — no? (those that you aren’t running the campaign for directly, I suppose).
Yes, most affiliate programs have the ability for you to see the clicks your link gets, however if you start experimenting with a lot of affiliate marketing options, then you have to log into different sites to see the info.
Just as an example, I’d have to visit each individual site below to check stats, if I didn’t want to rely on the Ninja plugin:
World Nomads
Woo Themes
Commission Junction
e-junkie
I’m even using it to track my own banners/links from Go Backpacking to the sales page for Travel Blog Success. I can then see whether people are clicking the link in my RSS footer (they are), or the leaderboard banner I’ve got up (they are there as well).