How regions can make money on tourism through business

How much can you earn on a travel website?

On average, one visitor in the tourism niche brings about 0.1-0.6 rubles. This figure is significantly higher than in the entertainment or software sectors, but slightly lower than in the financial or commodity sectors.

This means that a travel blog with traffic of 100,000 users per month brings its owner 10,000 - 60,000 rubles. Total income depends on three key facts:

• Traffic quality;
• Monetization methods used;
• Ability to properly use promotional materials.

If your project collects traffic based on selling requests (commercial), then you have a greater chance of high income. This means that you will earn less from traffic for the request “photos of China” than from commercial traffic, for example, “buy Moscow-Beijing air tickets.”

Earning money from travel traffic also depends on how exactly you monetize your project. Below we have collected information about the five main ways to monetize travel websites, and also shared tips on how to monetize travel blogs more effectively.

Income from the sale of tourism goods and services

The most profitable way of monetization is the sale of tourism goods or services. You don’t need to open your own airline or organize tours, you need to connect to a travel affiliate program that offers tools for making money on tourism products.

For example, you can earn 5% of the cost of a hotel stay for the fact that a person booked a hotel using your link, or 20% of the price of travel insurance, etc.

The travel affiliate network Travelpayouts is the main platform for monetizing travel websites in Russian.

Information on how much and what you can earn is presented in the table:

A promotional code is available for readers of the Templatemonster blog: TEMPLATEMONSTER

, which gives +10% to the base rate for 2 months when registering before 10/31/2018.

Tourism site monetization scheme:

• Register with Travelpayouts;
• Choose suitable products - air tickets, hotels, insurance, etc.;
• Choose the appropriate tools - banners, widgets, links and others;
• Place advertising materials on your own website;
• You receive income from every sale made through your affiliate link.

Travelpayouts is a travel affiliate network where various affiliate programs are collected, for example, the network presents affiliate programs of the following services:

• Aviasales.ru – air tickets and hotels;
• Booking.com – hotels;
• Tutu.ru – tickets for trains and buses;
• Level.travel – tours;
• Cherehapa – insurance;
• And more than 30 other travel offers.

You can connect an unlimited number of affiliate programs to your Travelpayouts account and earn money on various travel services. Try selling several services to one person, for example, hotels + air tickets, or air tickets + insurance, etc. This way you will increase the average income for the same number of visitors.

Payments are made once a month to a bank account or e-wallet. The minimum withdrawal amount is 500 rubles.

Reviews of Travelpayouts show that not all users register to earn money. Alternatively, you can connect to Travelpayouts for yourself personally and use the platform as a cashback service for your travels.

Business models in e-travel

Let's take a closer look at the most popular channels for attracting traffic from the point of view of working with travel offers.

Domainers

These webmasters occupy free domains that are distinguished by misspelling of the names of hotel brands, airlines, and travel companies. Several years ago, before the advent of offers for railway tickets, there was a case: one webmaster bought a domain that was in tune with Russian Railways and redirected visitors to the website of one of the airlines participating in the affiliate network. People compared air and train tickets and chose the more profitable option. With the advent of offers with train tickets, it became possible to apply directly to railway transportation offers.

Domainers use deeplink (they immediately redirect from this domain to the advertiser’s service, or create a clone of the site, masquerading as the advertiser, its booking system, using search forms and widgets. Such forms are often provided directly by the advertiser for placement on the webmaster’s website. By entering a search query on the form, the user is taken to the results page on the advertiser’s website.Widgets can present a feed of hot tours with pictures or a calendar of low prices, or some other visually active elements that will help users navigate.

Important: you can work according to this scheme only with the approval of the advertiser. If the affiliate program prohibits working according to this scheme, and you have already made a website with widgets and search forms, it is better to transfer it to a neutral domain name and promote it through SEO using content.

Old school SEO

These are white catalogues, forums, blogs, pages on cities, countries, resorts and so on. The Moneylink tool is suitable for them - you install the code from Admitad on your website, and it automatically turns all the links on your site into affiliate links. This is a very convenient option for content projects, especially for forums: you don’t need to monitor what links users put, whether they work from the point of view of affiliate marketing - if they lead to the advertiser’s website, they will be tracked by the system and monetized.

There are also gray SEO specialists who create a “sort of” official website for an airline. For example, when the airline was launched in a hurry, they talked on TV about the launch and the name of the airline, as well as about the first tickets for 99 rubles, but they did not have time to launch the website. Netizens ran to the Internet in search of such an attractive offer, but Yandex had nothing to show them. This was a rare success for “gray” webmasters: it was enough to create a website with relevant content, and it would automatically rise to the top of the search rankings. Gray webmasters used unbranded search forms and deployed a white label: a person was looking for tickets for a certain airline, but no brand was shown to him. He believed that he was on the real airline website (in this case, Pobeda), but then he bought an S7 or Aeroflot ticket, and was not very upset.

In this situation, as with domainers, you should first obtain consent from the advertiser to use the brand name in the name of the site. And you certainly shouldn’t act on “gray” schemes and copy the advertiser’s website: your resource should serve as a useful addition to the partner’s website, but not compete with it or replace it.

Bloggers

They partially overlap with SEO specialists, but usually they write text not for search engines, but for subscribers, how they had a great trip to some country and had a rest. They usually sell little because they are read either by “couch travelers” who travel little, or they are read by fellow bloggers who know where to buy what and don’t follow other people’s affiliate links. However, there are cases about a narrow specialization: there is a project about Montenegro with a local player who provides car rental at cheaper prices and with better conditions than international companies. And with only two articles about how to rent a car in Montenegro, he makes quite decent money thanks to the fact that he worked out the content in detail and tailored his offer to a limited market.

Among the tools, bloggers actively install search forms, widgets, and use deeplink. The main advice for bloggers is to write not so much about yourself, but about the country where you were: what you saw, where you should go, where you shouldn’t go, what are the prices in the country, where is it better to stay, how to get around, what to be afraid of. One hundred and fifty identical beach photos, of course, can get you likes somewhere on Instagram, but they are unlikely to help monetize your travel offers.

Arbitration

Unfortunately, there is practically no such thing in travel. If we go into contextual advertising, it is almost impossible to compete with such global players as booking.com, which is ready to buy up any rates per click in order to be in first place in the search. The webmaster is not ready to pay 2000 rubles per click, or even 200 rubles, and sometimes this happens.

Bad economics also speak against the context: the webmaster can be one of the links in a large chain of intermediaries (the webmaster, metasearch, the agency that sells the ticket, the distribution system and at the end the airline), each of them pays each other a commission, and the web -the master receives “percentage of percent of percent” - it is quite difficult to compete with those at the top of this chain, since they earn more and have a higher share of income. Plus, the turnover of money is very long - for example, hotel offers only pay a commission when the client has checked out of the room. Some people can buy hotels six months in advance, so the webmaster will see this money only after six months plus two months for reconciliation. Travel itself is not an impulse purchase; you cannot generate traffic and immediately sell an offer: usually people start planning a vacation six months in advance, so the money will appear in the publisher’s account at least after this period, and there will not be enough turnover for arbitrage. Also, affiliate marketers love all sorts of thematic landing pages and pre-landing pages (which are often provided by the advertisers themselves), but this is not very popular in travel.

Cashback service

Can do very well in tourism. If you buy packages of travel services for 200,000 rubles, then 2% cashback is 4,000 rubles, and for this money you can drive a Mercedes to the airport J This is quite a significant amount that people will not mind returning. You can create a showcase of cashbacks for travel, or use cashback for a specific offer as a tool to stimulate demand.

Mobile applications

The world is becoming more and more mobile, which means ignoring smartphone applications means losing a large piece of the market. There is a case when a person translated a travel application into Arabic, launched it on the Arabic AppStore and it got to the top in the region only due to the fact that there was no competition there, while the moderators themselves put the application in the proposed ones, and as a result it collected a lot of traffic. We don’t recommend that you copy other people’s applications, but be inspired by the ideas of services from AppStores in other geolocations and transfer them to new markets - why not? It happens that advertisers themselves create a separate application SDK for placement in “stores” - you can find out about this upon request from the affiliate program.

SMM

These are people who run VKontakte public pages, a Telegram channel and any other social activities. They mainly write about ticket sales, saving tips, and travel hacks. Accordingly, they can either send traffic to advertisers directly via Deeplink, or create some kind of intermediate site on which they can install search forms, widgets, links and provide some more detailed text information. For those who can’t help but play with brand names, there is a life hack: we look for top hotels in a destination, look at their presence on social networks (for example, VKontakte), and if they are not there, create a group dedicated to the top hotel (of course, if this is not prohibited offer rules). The best hotels can be searched both on booking sites and by reviews of bloggers and queries on the Internet (WordStat to help). Often foreign hotels do not have the opportunity to provide themselves with such a presence, at least due to the language barrier, so here you have every opportunity to rise well by providing users with reviews, photographs and guest reviews.

Everyone is fighting for the client - airlines are fighting with metasearch engines and agencies, trying to drag customers directly to their website, hotel chains are fighting with offer aggregators. Moreover, almost all of them are presented in the program catalog on the Admitad website. Sometimes, when there is some kind of promotion, it is more profitable to send the buyer to the website of the direct seller of services. This way you can get more commission, plus some promotions only work on the advertiser’s website. It is also much more likely that the tourist himself will make a purchase on the official website - this way he has more confidence in the seller.

Income from AdSense and other advertising networks

Earn money by advertising. You don't have to look for direct advertisers, just connect to any advertising network and the main work will be done for you.

The main advertising network for 2018/2019 is Google AdSense. This is a platform from Google, thanks to which you can automate advertising placement and earn money on clicks. The monetization scheme is as follows:

• Registering with Google AdSense;
• Passing moderation;
• Placement of code for displaying advertising on the site;
• Receive income from every click.

You post the code once, then Google displays various ads on your site. These can be either text ads or graphic ones, such as banners.

This monetization model is called CPC – cost per click, and you earn money for every click. In RuNet, the average cost of a click is 3-4 rubles. When Travelpayouts is a travel CPA, that is, a platform for making money on actions.

AdSense is not the only advertising network. You can connect to the Yandex Advertising Network (YAN) or any other platform.

Affiliate programs for travelers

This is the main source of income from travel. To put it simply, the partnership works on the principle “you give me, I give you.” You share offers from large companies and help sell their services or products. For this they pay you a percentage of the transaction or a fixed fee.

Important! This does not affect the buyer in any way. Conditional Vasily will not pay more for an air ticket or hotel if he switches to Aviasales or Booking using your affiliate link. No matter how he gets to the site, he will remain just a client. It is not Vasily who pays you, but the partner company.

For beginners, let's look at an example. Let’s say you decide to make money by selling air tickets and join the Aviasales affiliate program. How is your income formed:

• When you connected to the affiliate network, you received a personal link with an embedded individual code.
• The second step is to figure out how and where to place it. Personal website, VK or Instagram account, blog – whatever. You can correctly include a link in an article with life hacks for tourists or in a story about a personal trip. Well, or silently hang up the banner (it works poorly, but it’s better than nothing).
• People click on the link and “stick” to you. The cookies do not disappear for several days. Conditional Vasily read your article and decided to look at the price of Saratov-Moscow tickets. Paid - you received a bonus. Even if Vasily decided to consult with his wife, he closed the site, and a week later he returned and still bought them.

Income from direct advertisers

This monetization method is only available for large projects. If your project is a leader in its niche, then you can count on income from direct advertisers. For example, you can sell placement of a banner in the header of your website with a monthly payment.

There are two ways to work:

• You yourself are looking for an advertiser;
• Advertisers are looking for you.

In the first case, you need to search the Internet for sites that may suit your audience and contact project owners. In the second case, you need to process requests coming from advertisers. The latter, of course, is available only for very large projects, and smaller projects can only independently reach each advertiser.

Some advertisers will require a contract from you, and therefore a legal entity. Therefore, the method of monetization through direct advertisers is not suitable for everyone.

Be prepared that some advertisers may pay in goods rather than money. For example, a car rental service might offer you free rental days in exchange for an article about your experience. This is also monetization of a tourism website.

How to make money traveling: main directions

What professions will allow you not only to travel, but also earn good money? I have selected several directions that are most suitable for such a lifestyle. I'm sure there is one among them that is right for you.

How to make money traveling: programmer, website creator

Good programmers generally have no problems finding employment.
They can easily find a job anywhere. But they studied and developed hard, worked for several years until they reached their level. What should you do? Very simple! It is not always necessary to have too deep knowledge of programming in order to create websites at a professional level. There are special platforms that allow you to design websites even with minimal knowledge.

For example, among such platforms is WordPress. There are many educational courses available. Information is freely available on the Internet. The developer community is friendly - they are always ready to help and answer any questions.

With a little effort and time for your development, you will be able to master the platform and create simple websites. Then, as you develop and improve, you will move on to more complex projects. This will have a positive impact on your income.

Having received the basis, the basis for working in WordPress is actually in my author’s free courses. They last only four days online - that is, you can actually study from anywhere on the planet. The courses are based on practical exercises. By repeating simple steps after me, you will create your first website with your own hands. And you will understand the basic principles of WordPress.

As my experience shows, website development is currently the most profitable option. Orders should be sought on freelance service exchanges:

• Freelancer;
• Weblancer.net;
• Fl.ru and others.

Designer, artist, illustrator

Income from own services or products

Your travel website is your platform, which means you are free to do whatever you want. You can come up with a product or service that your audience needs and make money from your own services. For example, you can offer services:

• Photographer;
• Guide;
• Shopping consultant;
• And others.

You can also sell goods, for example, if you live in Greece, you can send oil to clients in Russia. There are also universal products:

• Banknotes and coins – sending to numismatists;
• Postcards – sending to philatelists;

You can come up with a completely unique product. For example, handmade notebooks made from exotic materials.

What to sell and how to sell depends only on your imagination.

Problems and prospects

Every month we serve from 50 to 100 clients, however, this flow cannot be called constant - it varies greatly from month to month. The average bill for a one-day excursion is about 1,500 rubles.

In general, active tourism is becoming more and more popular every year. Organizations similar to our club have appeared in neighboring cities. Perhaps the increased interest in the domestic market is associated with sanctions and currency fluctuations, perhaps with the crisis, or perhaps simply with the natural desire of people to learn the history of their region and visit very unusual places in their own country, in Russia.

In 2020, there was an increase in demand for our services, although some partners from other cities, on the contrary, complain about a decrease in the number of tourists. Some companies have even begun to refuse to organize active travel.

The biggest problem in our business is finding clients. Tourists are becoming more and more demanding; it is important to simultaneously develop interesting routes, maintain a high level of service, and build trusting communication. I communicate with many clients personally.

We advertise in every possible way, but mainly on the Internet. The least effective tool for us is the press; there was practically no return from newspapers. The Internet and social networks work best. Personal selling also helps. For example, we recently launched a line of children’s tours: a pilot project of a children’s equestrian camp started in August. To attract clients, we went to schools and spoke at parent-teacher meetings. Over the past summer, we managed to teach the children horse riding, as well as the skills of an active tourist: how to cook food over a fire, set up a tent, and much more.

Income from placing links

Link placement has partially lost its relevance in 2020, but nevertheless remains an attractive way of monetization. You can place links on your project and get paid for it.

Other site owners agree to pay for a link from your resource if it has existed for a long time and is attractive to search engines.

Buyers, as a rule, do not care how many clicks the link will ultimately receive. The purpose of placement is to promote their project on the Internet, since Yandex and Google take into account backlinks when creating search results.

To automate the process, you can connect to special exchanges such as Sape. If you want to post manually, which is more secure, then you can also use exchanges to find clients - GoGetLinks, Miralinks, Rotapost, WebArtex and others.

Tour organization

Before publishing an offer, you need to describe everything in detail to Airbnb employees (they will also help with advice) and send several photos. I went to the market, photographed everything and settled on the final program. Of course, it changed a little along the way. Here you need to take into account the opinion of the first tourists; I was very lucky with them. They immediately advised me to bring water, print out a map of Russia, and give fewer gifts so as not to go into the red.

I think I was a little miscalculated with the price, given the demand and price offers of travel companies. You also need to remember about the sellers; they also won’t like it if everyone takes tourists just to try it, so I try to buy tasting portions from them and often take something for myself. Tourists, as a rule, do not want to take food with them. Except sometimes they buy smoked cheese.

Based on the questions from the first clients, it also becomes clear what they are interested in and what is not so much. I always collect feedback and ask about expectations. The main thing for me here is to treat people as my guests and new friends, and not as tourists or clients.

It is also important to take into account the peculiarities of the platform: you cannot change the price and time after booking by at least one person. You cannot change the group size for just one day: if you set a maximum of five people, then this will be the case for all tours. Some people ask for a custom one, but I can't close the booking. Another problem is that my tour is advertised in English and Spanish, but people can’t see who has already booked that day. Therefore, the groups turn out to be mixed, you have to translate on the go, this is very inconvenient.

The best way to make money from a travel blog

The best way is to combine several options, and constantly experiment. You can connect to Travelpayouts, install AdSense blocks and at the same time sell your own services from your travel blog.

There is also room for creativity within each monetization method. For example, try advertising various travel services - air tickets, hotels, tours, train tickets and others. As part of the experiment, you will find the most effective way to monetize a travel website and ultimately get a high income!

In pursuit of income, do not forget about the user. Do not overload the site with advertising and try to make even advertising materials useful to the user. For example, you can embed a train schedule widget into your website, which will allow your audience to learn about trains without leaving your project, and allow you to earn money.

Share your ideas and experience of making money on a travel website.

A hobby turned into a business

I come from the Sverdlovsk region, from the city of Nizhny Tagil. I graduated from school there in 1991. The difficult 1990s did not allow me to continue my studies. I moved to live in Novouralsk, where I first worked as an operator in a building materials store, then for another five years in an electrical store. But my main profession in life is an accountant. For a long time I worked in this specialty in a company that manufactured custom-made furniture.

In addition to work, my entire adult life has been accompanied by my hobby - sports tourism. While still at school, I started visiting the tourism section and visited many attractions. I still remember how we spent the night in large, old-style canvas tents with my girlfriends, four people each.

Sports tourism has its own characteristics. It is very different from the usual routes, which are divided into six categories depending on difficulty. Each category has requirements for footage and terrain features.

In 2020, I decided it was time to turn my hobby into a full-fledged business. This is how the “Third Pole” travel club appeared. The initial investment amounted to about 500,000 rubles, these were personal savings and a regional grant under the program to support small businesses in the Sverdlovsk region. We also managed to win the city competition “Entrepreneur of the Year” in the category “Best Entrepreneurial Project,” which helped us purchase new equipment and equipment. The club has already broken even, but I expect a return on the initial investment in two to three years.

We immediately decided to focus on active, sports tourism. This is what sets us apart from our competitors, because an ordinary travel agency cannot just enter this market. There are some nuances here, primarily related to ensuring the safety of clients: for each route you need to obtain permission from the Ministry of Emergency Situations, which can only be done by confirming the qualifications of the group leader. All instructors working in our club have a rank in sports tourism and can lead groups along difficult routes of different categories.

We have developed original tours that combine outdoor recreation with educational excursions, as well as weekend tours (a mixture of local history excursions with master classes in archeology and mineralogy). We are trying to organize trips to the Chelyabinsk region, Perm region, to natural monuments and mountain complexes. We are now actively developing routes to Arakulsky Shikhan in the Chelyabinsk region and to Kamenny Gorod in the Perm region. In winter we go to Nurgush in the Chelyabinsk region, Konzhakovsky Kamen in the north of the Sverdlovsk region. During the cold season, the demand for active routes decreases; people are afraid to spend the night in tents, even with heating. Therefore, we try to select places where you can stay at full-fledged camp sites. Our target audience is not only residents of Nizhny Tagil, but also tourists, to whom we reveal all the beauties of the Urals.