Monetization Archives - This Week in Blogging

Travel affiliate programs are our second highest income stream, just behind CPM advertising with our private ad network Mediavine.

We made roughly $25,000 on travel affiliates in 2023 (or about $8 RPM on page views all-in). This includes on our global travel blog, Living the Dream, our local Pittsburgh blog, Discover the Burgh, and our wine blog with limited wine tourism content, The Grape Pursuit.

In this one, we wanted to share our highest-paying affiliate programs for our travel blogs and take a look into how we use them to make money, how much we make on each network, and what we do to promote them the best. As with everything, odds are good we are not the most optimized even though we have spent months, if not years testing out the placements for these programs.

It is likely you could have a travel blog that is virtually identical to ours and not have the same results (for better or for worse). All this post is meant to be is a collection of best affiliate programs that work for us, and our attempt to highlight why that is.

At This Week in Blogging, we feel it's our duty to continue to showcase ways that bloggers can do things a little differently. The truth is, what worked five years ago in blogging probably doesn't work now, and what works now probably won't work in five years.

That's the reality of an ever-evolving and changing industry such as blogging.

It's also the case that if we don't keep our eye on what's changing in the industry, we may get left behind, but that's why we're here, and why we feel fortunate to have so many remarkable experts so willing to share what's working for them.

One topic that we haven't tackled yet is Patreon for bloggers or, in other words, how bloggers and content creators can use Patreon to establish a new revenue and reliable revenue stream.

We've got Kate McCulley here to talk from personal experience about how she's harnessed the power of Patreon.

Kate McCulley has been blogging at AdventurousKate.com for the past 10 years, teaching women how to travel solo safely from Colombia to Lebanon to Antarctica. Kate has traveled to 83 countries and Forbes named her one of the Top 10 Travel Influencers in 2017. Her non-travel obsessions include progressive politics, literature, and cured meats. Originally from the Boston area, Kate now lives in Prague and has recently launched a course into all things Patreon called Earn Like an Artist.

What Travel Affiliates Pay the Best? Data of Top Performers

Patreon Tips for Bloggers with Kate McCulley