We all have looked at social media with people travelling all year long & wish if we could do the same. But how do they get so much money to continue travelling all year long? Maybe they know something you don’t know. After thoroughly analysing these travellers for years & how they make money, I come up with a few easy ways you can too switch your career to full-time travelling in a few months.
It’s safer to have multiple source of income so that if one fails for any reasons, the others can take care of your travel expenses.
One of the most popular & easiest ways is social channels where travellers create content for others to consume, imagine & wish.
Of course, you need a minimum amout of followers/subscribers & engagement/views to start making money from these channels.
So you can initially start off with your savings, freelancing, WFA for jobs, automating or outsourcing for businesses.
Some of the easiest channels for earning money are –
Youtube
Though established youtubers use expensive equipments, you can just start with the smartphone you already have. You can maximum go for a small microphone & tripod if you wish to in the beginning.
Advertising
You need to have a certain number of subscribers & watch hours to monitize through ads. After that you can place ads on your video & earn. Youtube probably keeps 60% of the ad revenue & give the creator 40%.
Affiliate Marketing
You can give affiliate links of the dress you are wearing in the video, the backpack you are carrying, the shoes you are wearing, the things you are carrying with you, etc. Of course, you have to buy them from places that allow affiliates. Also, you have to brag about their benefits in the video in order for your viewers to check the link in the description & make a purchase. You get a small commission from those purchases.
Promote hotels, car rentals & restaurant in exchange for discounted service
You can ask hotel owners for a discounted stay in exchange of promoting their hotel in your video. Your demand & their response will vary on your number & quality of viewers.
Similarly you can ask car rentals & restaurants for similar services.
Brand Endorsements & Sponsorships
You will start to get offers from brands to endorse their products. It’s a cheap way for brands to reach more target customers & you to earn some extra cash.
Merchandise
You can launch your own merchandise & sell them through the youtube store feature. You will however need an ecommerce store or sell through marketplaces.
Sponsored Travel
Tourism Boards, be it a state based or a country based will sponsor your full trip in exchange of quality content from you in order to promote tourism in their state/country. So, you can basically travel the state/country for free.
Big travel agencies, adventure companies can also sponsor your full trip in exchange of content & their promotions. One an other hand, they can also create travel documentaries featuring you. Either ways, they will sponsor your full trip & will pay you as well.
Ambassador Program
Brands can also appoint you as their brand ambassador for a particular time on a contract basis & pay you in exchange of content.
Product
After you have build a subscriber base in youtube, you can identify a common need among them & build a product to address that need. The product can be a physical product, book, course, app(can outsource development), podcast, etc.
Brand Endorsement
Mostly commodity brands will approach you for product placements in your Instagram posts/stories/reels for them to reach your followers. Remember brands look more at the avg. post engagement than followers.
Blog
Youtube & Instagram are channels where people will engage in your content even if they have no plans to travel there(or just travel) in near future.
But blogs are only read when someone is planning a trip & looking for more information. So the engagement is usually lower than Youtube & Instagram.
Advertising
You can sign up for Google Adsense, place ads across your blog & earn.
Affiliate Marketing
You can place affiliate links for the products you show in images or write about & earn commission when someone makes a purchase from the link.
Online Business that can be Automated & Outsourced
Here the 3 words to focus are Online Business, Automation & Outsourcing. There are many businesses that can be done this way, but the most popular of those being:
Dropshipping
Learn digital marketing, create an e-commerce store, contact a manufacturer to source products from, add them to your online store, run PPC & remarketings ads, let the sales & the cash roll in. Make sure the product you are selling has demand, don’t sell anything nobody wants to buy. You can automate all the in-between processes with softwares & outsource the few that requires someone.
Conclusion
Stop imagining & wishing & give it a try. Even if you can’t, you can always come back & continue from where you had left. Don’t let you life go up with regrets, coz regret is poison.
Who can say? You may find a market need among the locals & get a new business idea.