Are you someone who travels and likes to write? If you want to discover how to become a travel affiliate and combine your traveling with earning money, it’s important to start with these 3 fundamental steps:
- Choosing a Niche for Your Travel Blog
- Blog Setup and Design
- Monetising Your Blog
Choosing a Niche for Your Travel Affiliate Blog
So when it comes to creating a travel affiliate blog, your niche is the main selling point. To put it another way, this will give your blog its value, and eventually translate into bookings.
Go for niches with a low amount of competition. Make quick Google search to find the top blogs in your chosen niche. Also, use free SEO tools to find out how low or high is the competition for your keyword group:
- Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends
- SEMrush (7-day trial)
- Moz Keyword Explorer
- Wordstream
Share ideas you are passionate about. Are you an expat in India? If so, start a travel website with a focus on Indian expats. Do you enjoy traveling across Thailand? In this case, share your experience in getting around the country.
Some popular travel blogging niches for your inspiration:
- Country-focused: such as travel to destinations inside a specific country
- Region travel: for ex. Bangkok-focused
- Demographic-focused: for ex. Thai expats
- Solo travel: describe the realities of traveling solo
- Travel on a budget: affordable travel methods
- Adventure travel: tours and trips for adrenaline activities
- Family travel: how to travel smarter and cheaper with kids
- Luxury travel: exclusive travel experiences and destinations
- Female travel: adventures and comprehensive guides from a ladies perspective
- Seniors travel: special considerations to keep in mind, available benefits, a wide range of discounts
- Travel for people with disabilities: such as accessible routes as well as rentals for the disabled travelers
Blog Setup and Design
Most startup blogs choose WordPress CMS because it’s easy to learn; moreover, it has various plugins to make your life easier. After the CMS installation, set up your website design by choosing one of the free or paid WP themes.
No matter what niche or strategy you choose, there are always some fixed costs. They include setup costs:
- Domain — starting at $1/year
- Hosting — starting at $12/year
- SSL certificate — starting at $7/year
- WordPress theme and setup — starting at $20 one-time
If you do most of the setup yourself, without recruiting developers, total costs to start a blog will be around $30-$40.
Monetising Your Blog
Develop a Booking Funnel from the Travel Source
First of all, you should keep in mind that the purchase funnel of the ticket booking can be very complex. For example, it typically involves potential customers visiting multiple websites for the inspiration and price comparison. Your goal as a blogger is to create meaningful content that would encourage conversions. Help your readers make the right choice.
Earn Money on 12Go Asia Transportation Services
12Go Asia travel affiliate program is one of the largest in the industry and offers an excellent chance to start working in the travel niche.
Becoming a travel affiliate program partner is not really as complicated as you could think. As a content creator, you have to place links and widgets in your text or display ad banners. So, when the reader clicks on the affiliate link and makes a purchase at 12Go Asia website, commision for this sale is credited to your partner account.
When creating your blog content, try to focus on placing contextual links in the text. Wrap your ideas into sentences that let you include link references to the 12Go Asia affiliate program. In fact, statics shows that a nicely placed in-text blog link can be more effective in traffic generation than a banner.
On top of that, 12Go Asia offers easy-to-use partner tools such as ticket search form and a timetable, which you can add to your blog in just a few clicks.
Who Can Become a 12Go Asia Travel Affiliate?
The affiliate program is open to various partners; so you can join if you are:
- Travel website or blog owner
- Owner of the social media community
- SEO or SMM specialist
- Specialist in traffic arbitrage
- Online travel agency
- A traveler who books tickets for themselves
- Travel agent, and everybody who wants to earn on selling tickets online
How Much Can You Earn?
12Go Asia offers a CPA payment model for its affiliates; thus, your commision will be credited every time the sale occurs. Becoming a partner, you will get up to 50% of 12Go Asia commission, depending on the operator, travel dates, departure time, currencies, as well as transaction amount.
The average affiliate reward is ~$3.25 per booking.
12Go Asia affiliates can earn rewards by promoting a wide choice of destinations by offering flights, bus, train, ferry tickets, transfers and other travel-related services. The network includes 10+ countries of Southeast Asia (see full coverage here).
- Thailand
- India
- Vietnam
- Philippines
- Cambodia
- Singapore
- Malaysia
- Myanmar
- China
- Hong Kong – Macau
Besides, more destinations are opening in the upcoming months.
Learn more about joining 12Go Asia program and stay tuned for more affiliate tips and tricks.
If you have any questions, please contact affiliate managers via affiliate@12go.asia, they will be happy to help you.
