Travel Blogging - Should You Be Using Affiliate Marketing On Your Travel Blog?

If you have a travel blog, you may want to consider how it relates to affiliate marketing. It's not uncommon for a travel blog to turn into an affiliate by way of the third party advertising programs that many bloggers sign up for. This does not mean that you can't make money off of your travel blog though.

The first thing to do when signing up for an affiliate program is to write some product reviews. Why? A lot of these products will not offer anything unique to your readers, and there are millions of blogs out there already offering similar opinions and recommendations. But when you write these reviews, you have more control over the content than you do on a blog that offers free stuff.

You also have more information to offer on the products you're writing about. You can discuss them in a way that makes them seem useful to your readers. It's not a bad idea to write reviews that offer testimonials from people who have used the products in question. If they like them, you will most likely have at least one or two of them as customers. The testimonials also give you an opportunity to promote the affiliate program if you want to.

What about affiliate programs that require that you write reviews about something different than what you normally would in a travel blog? For example, you could write about work from home services. Many people that take online surveys are very particular about their home office setup. It's an excellent opportunity to get a bunch of sales for your travel blog, as many of these online surveys are done via email.

You also have another avenue of marketing when you write reviews for other blogs. Consider writing them for other travel bloggers. If they are popular, your opinions will be passed on to their visitors and they will certainly appreciate your favoritism. Of course, you must remember to include a link back to your own site.

If you have a travel blog that is related to affiliate marketing, you can take this process a step further. You can begin by promoting the affiliate programs that interest you. You can write articles that you promote and submit them to various article directories. Your travel blog can get free traffic through your links in these articles.

The article directories can also be a great source of traffic. If you're not so skilled at writing articles, a service like EzineArticles is good enough. They can provide you with various topics to write about and sub-domains to promote. By looking at their list of categories, you can pick the ones that relate to your travel blog niche.

Once you have your posts posted on the different websites that allow advertising on their sites, you should continue to promote them. Some will pay you for each click on your links, but others will allow you to earn money based on the number of page views your site gets. Either way, it will still take work to keep your affiliate links active. Your blog will need to be updated regularly in order to stay relevant.