Do you want to start a travel blog and begin a life of adventure and pleasure, then becoming a Travel Blogger is for you.

As your travel influencer status grows, you’ll notice that there are numerous chances to collaborate with tour companies, travel brands, hostels/hotels, tourism boards, and others in exchange for social media coverage, writing reviews, and a variety of other services. But first and foremost, you must have your blog up and running!

Here are a few guides on how to become a travel blogger and make money.

Provide value and good content

Make sure your website is up to scratch, be sure your site isn’t slow to load, that it’s easy to navigate, and avoid having too many pop-ups come on your site, as a visitor it can become very annoying.

Be sure your blog posts have minimal to no spelling mistakes and have good quality photos. If you are going to be pitching brands, the first thing they will do is have a look at your website to see what value you can provide. 

Be clear on what value you can provide the brand, such as X amount of posts shared on X amount of social platforms, or provide high-quality photos. 

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Craft your online persona & build your social media following as a Travel blogger

Be active on your social media accounts, after all, they are called “social” for a reason, being social is a large part of blogging and having a good network of followers is important, gaining authentic followers is hard, but if you provide value and good content (aka- good photographs and written content) your followers will come. 

Don’t overstretch yourself and try to be overall platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Pinterest, youtube, you will soon become overwhelmed, Pick 1 to 2 platforms you want to share most of your content, they all offer different views:

• Instagram is photo-focused and hashtags before the written content
• Facebook is content first, image second. 
• Pinterest is an image that is linked to something like your website or page you want to send people, it is like google, it is used as a web search platform. 
• Youtube is for videos, more long-form videos
• TikTok is short videos

If you don’t have a large following on your socials you can still be noticed by brands if you stay consistent and provide value, but try focusing on growing one particular platform and that will help you be seen as an influencer by more brands.

Create a media kit for your Travel Blog

A Media Kit in a sense a resume, but for bloggers, this is where you can share a short bio, your social media stats – how many followers you have, engagements, visits to your website, previous collaborations, and more.

Media-kits vary on how many pages you should have, depending on how long you have been blogging or how many collaborations you have had, but if you’re new to making a media kit, keeping it simple 1-3 pages is enough, companies don’t have the time to be reading through multiple pages. 

Canva have great templates to get started, be sure to change them up to suit your brand and style, you want to stand out and reflect who you are.  Other places you can find templates are Creative Market and Etsy for a low cost to have a stand-out and different template from the rest. 

Remember to keep your media kit up to date with the most accurate stats of your social media and save it as a PDF file. 

What you should include in your media kit can differ, but as a basic guide, you should include: 

• Your Brand– your logo, blog name, URL
• An intro of who you are, what your blog is about, and include a photo (no need to write your life story) make it quick and punchy
• A tagline – a short description that sums up what your blog is about. For example

Disney- Happiest Place on Earth

KFC- Finger-Lickin-Good

RedBull- gives you wings

I bet you all remember these types of brands for their tagline, it’s catchy. My tagline is – Find your Serenity, the world is our teacher.

• Contact details– Don’t forget your name and email, and phone number if you are available to receive calls, if pitching different countries, sometimes an email is enough, you don’t want to be getting calls at odd hours. 
• Social and blog stats– number of followers, combined or each platform, can include email subscribers, monthly page views, and unique visitors to your site
• Audience demographics (location, age group, gender %)

Include photographs throughout your media kit and brands you have collaborated with and testimonials, brand logos are a good visual.

Pitching Brands

Combined with your media kit, If you are emailing travel brands, you will need to write a short to the point email summarizing information the company will be interested to know, it’s your media kit in a nutshell.

Here is a basic pitch template, use this to get you started on crafting your own pitch, edit the pitch accordingly to what brand you are pitching and choose to add more things like social stats or previous collaborations, this template below is only a basic one to give you an idea of where to start! 

Here’s the interesting part…

Email Subject- Collaborations request with (company name) and (blog/IG or FB handle) 

Hi (person’s name) if not known (To whom it may concern)

(Optional Ice-breaker) Thanks for taking the time to read my email. 

My name is (your name) and I (what you do) run a travel blog (your website) I am based in Melbourne, Australia) 

I am planning my trip to (destination) on/ or from (date/s) and I would love the opportunity to collaborate with (hotel name).

I would like to showcase your hotel on my blog (name of the blog) that receives (number of page views) and is aimed at (whos your audience target) and with my (x) amount of social media followers. 

I am impressed with what your hotel has to offer (name features) and feel your property will be a great fit for my audience. 

In exchange for (whatever you are asking for) (complimentary stay/tickets, tour) you will receive (whatever you can do for them)  

I have attached my media kit for your reference. I would love to partner with you and hope to hear back from you soon.

Regards, 

(sign your name)

But wait, there’s more – Ideas of offers you can put forward to the company are, but are not limited to:

• 1 x 2000 word blog post with SEO keywords that will help them be found
• 3 x Instagram/ Facebook stories with them tagged and hashtagged for more exposure
• 2 x Instagram and Facebook post feeds with hashtags
• 2 x Pinterest idea pins
• 2 x Pinterest Pins to drive traffic to the blog post

>> If you want to Quantify your offer and stand out more, you can add things like >>

• 1 x 2000 word blog post – READ BY (x) amount of readers
• 3 x Instagram/ Facebook stories SEEN BY (x) viewers
• 2 x Instagram and Facebook post – Average impressions of (x) each (total of x amount of impressions)

Generally, you will be the one pitching travel brands, but on occasions, companies will reach out to you, if so **high five**.

Be active with pitching businesses, reach out to the companies that align with your brand and audience, be prepared you will get rejections and you will get no reply at all, but keep pitching, don’t be spammy, but if you don’t hear back, send a follow-up email. 

Keep pitching, you will eventually get a yes. 

Tip: when pitching try asking for times when it is an off-peak season, pitching in peak season, can be harder to get into if you are new to collaborations because why would the place give a free stay when they would generally be fully booked at that time.

Networking, Facebook groups, and Tourism boards

You may choose to pitch the company directly or check out the tourism boards of the city you are visiting like: Visit Portugal, Visit Melbourne, Tourism Australia, you get my drift. 

Be sure to check out their menu or footer area for contact us, or press/media page, they may have a section for influencers/ content creators (check out Visit London they have a form you can submit for collaborations. 

The other way to find opportunities is to attend networking events, try going to some travel expos, travel conferences and join Travel Massive, a travel community, you don’t need to pitch them directly, you don’t want to be pushy or salesy, but have a general conversation around what you do, build a relationship and you may find you will be given a business card to contact their media/PR area. 

Facebook is another great resource to join groups around blogging, or whatever your niche may be, often within the groups, opportunities for press trips come up, or people will be asking questions that might help you gather information.

Nothing is for Free – Be prepared to work for your collaboration

Free isn’t exactly really Free, nothing in life really is, so I use the term “Free” lightly,  In exchange for getting a “free” hotel stay, or tour, you must remember you actually have to work for it. 

It’s not just getting back to the hotel, throwing your shoes off, and relaxing, you will need to be taking photographs of everything, waking early to get that sunrise photo and getting all the details about the hotel and surrounds, or things that stand out on tours or whatever comped trip you are promoting. 

Your trip will be glorious and fun, but you need to remember you are there to promote the business on your social media, your blog, and with photography and this can take a few hours to craft a blog post, edit photos and engage in social media comments and questions. 

Does it beat sitting in an office, 100%, if you enjoy what you are doing, it’s not really like working, is it!

Over-deliver on your promise

Brands talk to each other, word of mouth on an exceptional job done by you can get you way more collaborations in the future. 

Over-deliver what you promised, go that one step further, and give more than you agreed on, so, if you said 3 posts on your socials give 4, share extra value and complete your blog post sooner than agreed.

If live videos were not talked about, you can jump on and do a live video during your stay, showcase the business more than talked about and you will be likely to get raving reviews by the brand and giving you a higher chance of other brands reaching out to work with you.

Recap

• Provide Value – great written content and photographs
• Be genuine, be unique, be consistent and gain social media followers
• Create a media kit (AKA- travel blogger resume)
• Craft a pitch for hotels, tours, attraction passes, and so on
• Free, not so free, you are there to work promoting the company
• Join Facebook groups, go to network events (local travel expos)
• Over-deliver on your promise, companies talk to each other, word of mouth is key.
• Be Humble, be Professional

You got this. The best way to gain press trips is to be “YOU” and be professional. 

Happy Pitching!