Tips to earn online
How travel writers make a living from the road.
No "passive income hacks." Just the real ways small travel blogs (ours included) turn writing about places into rent money — what works, what doesn't, and what we'd tell ourselves if we were starting again today.
Why we wrote this page
Every couple of weeks someone messages us asking the same question: can a travel blog actually pay for the travel? Short answer: yes, but slowly, and almost never the way the YouTube ads make it look.
This page is the long answer. We’ve grouped the income streams that matter for a small site like ours — affiliates, sponsorships, ad networks, digital products, and freelance work on the side — with what each one actually paid us, what it took to get there, and the mistakes we’d skip if we were starting Hungrytravelfamily again in 2026.
The five income streams
Where the money actually comes from
Most successful travel blogs we know lean on three or four of these at once — never just one.
01
Affiliate links
Travel insurance, booking platforms, gear, and tour operators pay you a small cut when a reader clicks through and books. Slow to build, but compounds: an article that ranks for one good keyword can earn for years.
02
Sponsored content
Tourism boards, hotels, and brands pay for a written feature, an Instagram post, or a press trip. Pays well per project but it's lumpy income — and you have to be honest about which ones you say no to.
03
Display ads
Once you have steady traffic (~25k–50k pageviews/month), networks like Mediavine, Raptive or Ezoic place ads on your site and pay per thousand views. Most boring stream, also the most reliable.
04
Digital products
Itineraries, photo presets, ebooks, Notion templates. Higher margin than anything else — you make it once and sell forever — but you need an audience that already trusts you before they'll buy.
05
Adjacent freelance
Travel writing for magazines, photography licensing, marketing/AI consulting for travel brands. The blog becomes your portfolio. This is how we pay our rent right now, honestly.
If you're starting today
What we'd do in year one
Most new travel bloggers chase ads or sponsorships from week one and burn out. If we were rebuilding from zero, here’s the order we’d actually go in:
- Pick one country or region. Don't try to cover the world. Search engines and readers reward depth.
- Write 30 articles before checking analytics. Anything less and you're just guessing whether the niche works.
- Add affiliate links from day one. Booking.com, GetYourGuide, SafetyWing — sign up early so the links are in your evergreen articles, not bolted on later.
- Build an email list before social media. Algorithms change every quarter; an inbox doesn't.
- Save sponsorships and ads for year two. You need traffic and trust first. Both take time.
- Keep a side income. Freelance writing, marketing, anything. Money pressure makes for bad content.
“The blogs that survive aren’t the ones that earn fastest. They’re the ones whose owners actually like writing.”
— Joona & Alla
Honest mistakes
Things we wasted time on
Chasing every social platform. TikTok, Pinterest, Threads, Reels, Shorts — we tried all of them in our first six months. Pick two, get good, ignore the rest.
Free hosting and theme bundles. We rebuilt the site twice because the cheap stack didn’t scale. Buy decent hosting and a clean theme once. We use a free Astra setup with a custom look — minimal but solid.
Writing for ourselves, not for search. Our prettiest essays still get the least traffic. Find the keywords first, then write the beautiful version of that article.
Saying yes to bad sponsorships. One thin paid post can cost you the trust of 5,000 readers. The math isn’t worth it. We turn down most pitches now.
The toolbox
What we actually use
No affiliate fluff. These are the things our two-person operation in Rovaniemi pays for (or uses free) every week.
Hostinger / SiteGround
Affordable WP hosting that doesn't fall over when a post catches traction.
Astra (free) + Elementor
Boring on purpose. Fast, light, easy to redesign without a developer.
Yoast / RankMath + Ahrefs Lite
One on-page plugin, one keyword tool. That’s the whole stack.
ConvertKit / Beehiiv
Free up to 1k subscribers. Easy automations once you grow.
Booking, GetYourGuide, SafetyWing
Three travel-relevant programs that approve small sites.
Mediavine / Raptive
Once you cross 25–50k sessions/mo, the highest-paying networks.
ChatGPT / Claude
Outlines, edits, repetitive copy. We never publish raw AI prose.
Want help, not just the playbook?
We help travel brands and small publishers grow with content, SEO and AI workflows — the same systems we run on this site. If that sounds useful, come say hi.