I’ve been blogging for 10 years now.
The main way I monetize my content is through brand partnerships. Also called sponsored blogging, this is my favorite way to turn my posts into revenue. And what I love even more is how many ways there are to do this.
Ways that many bloggers don’t even consider. Such as using your old content to add sponsored links, for example. Or having sponsors for your newsletter.
Lately, I noticed a tendency in the travel blogging niche. And while I am not a travel blogger myself, it’s worth talking about it. This concerns travel content creators in general. And if that’s you, keep reading.
You have the content, and might be exhausted from constantly publishing more.
You also get traction.
It could be a blog post about a weekend in Lisbon from years ago that still brings you steady search traffic. Or a hotel guide from last year that still gets saves and clicks.
Maybe a travel carousel on Instagram still gets DMs asking for links.
And yet, you don’t earn anything from that content.
The monetization piece here is either missing, or inconsistent. And that’s where things feel quite disconnected for travel creators. What they do about it is usually to keep creating a lot of new content, simply because the content they already have isn’t doing enough work.
But what if I told you that you don’t need to do that?
You can monetize what you already have with little effort.
More Traffic Isn’t Always The Answer
If you’ve been publishing for a while, you likely have a small library of travel-related content just sitting there.
Some of it ranks in search. Some posts get shared. And old posts keep getting rediscovered long after being published.
So the value is already there. You may be thinking that monetization should improve when traffic grows. But in reality, the traffic you already have isn’t monetized properly.
You have the visitors, you have the leads. And instead of looking for more by constantly creating new content, you can make the most of the audience you already have.
Brands deals are amazing, sure. But they can also be unpredictable.
A smart approach is to add monetization opportunities to existing posts.
Here are some ways:
Earn from Your Existing Posts
Do that by connecting the content you have to relevant booking and travel services.
This can look like:
Adding hotel booking links inside destination guides;
Including flight search tools on city pages;
Linking tours or experiences mentioned in your stories;
Updating older posts with current travel providers.
This is super useful for users too because you have a visitor already interested in a place. They shouldn’t wonder what the next step is. You can fill the gap by giving them the right next step right then and there, without extra effort on their side.
Streamline Travel Monetization With One Platform
Now, this presents a whole new set of challenges. Such as having to manually manage multiple affiliate programs, constantly searching for individual partnerships, logging into many dashboards just to check earnings, and updating broken or outdated links.
Instead, you can use Travelpayouts, a travel affiliate marketing platform, to plug into one system that connects your content to travel brands like Booking.com and GetYourGuide.
It works with your existing content and adds a monetization layer to them.
Inside the platform, you get access to 90+ travel brands and tools in one place. That includes hotels, flights, tours and experiences, car rentals.
You don’t need to apply to each program separately. You just pick what matches your content. And it’s all for free.
Capturing What You’re Already Losing
And here’s a way to make all this easier. A key tool inside Travelpayouts is Drive. It focuses on where you’re missing revenue.
It does that by analyzing your content and traffic, understanding how users behave and identifying where revenue opportunities are being missed.
It helps you apply the right monetization tools at the right time, without manually tracking everything.
Plus, the setup is super simple (and usually takes 5 minutes) and you don’t need any technical experience.
How to Monetize with Travelpayouts
For a start, you can turn travel mentions into links that generate revenue. With Drive, many of these monetized links can be added automatically, so you don’t have to manually update every article on your website.
If you already wrote things like “Best hotels in Paris”, “3 days in Barcelona itinerary” and “Things to do in Lisbon”, you can go back and add links.
For example, a hotel name can turn into a Booking.com link and an activity can link to a GetYourGuide tour.
Instead of just describing places, you give readers a direct way to book them. That saves them time and provides additional value.
Next, you can add tools.
Travelpayouts gives you widgets and tools like flight search boxes, hotel search tools and interactive booking modules. With Drive, some of these monetization opportunities can also be optimized automatically, helping display relevant booking options where readers are most likely to make a purchase.
If till now you said to readers ‘here are some flights’, you can now let them search directly on your page.
This works especially well on evergreen posts that already get traffic from Google and Pinterest.
Basically, you can add monetized links where people are already making decisions. You can improve posts that rank but don’t convert, and that increases your chances of earning commissions.
There’s so much potential and revenue hidden in your old posts. Update them often. This is where most earnings can come from in your business, not necessarily from new content.
Your Next Step
If you want to get more out of the content you already have, give Travelpayouts a try.
And once you start adding links to your old content, here’s a tip: start with the posts that are already getting traffic.
Let me know how this works out for you. And I hope you found value in this guide.