The past year has been a trying time for millions of people around the world. It has erased many jobs off the face of the planet that may not ever be replaced. One of the most impacted industries was travel. Borders were locked down and many still are. Travel has been severely restricted.
Now that the vaccines are starting to have an effect, we are seeing some easing of these restrictions. Will travel be allowed soon? It seems that way, but it may be a while before travel gets back to the way it was before the pandemic.
What happens now if you were a travel blogger or planned to be one? Is it still a viable way to make money? Though it may not be as easy as it was a couple of years ago, there is still reason to be positive. It’s going to take a change in mindset, however.
In this article, we will go over several ways that being a travel blogger can still make sense even post Covid-19.
Focus on sustainable travel
The world is getting ready to travel again and being a travel blogger right now will position you well to take advantage of it. However, you do need to understand the trends. People will certainly be traveling in a much different way than they used to.
There has already been a growing trend towards sustainable travel that has less of an impact on the places where mass tourism is causing some issues. Now that Covid-19 has made people take stock of the way they go to places.
People are still going to fly and collect their airmiles as they used to do. In fact, regular customers of United Airlines can earn and redeem points from all of these partners.
So, you can still take advantage of this yourself. Instead of promoting places like Venice, Italy or Santorini, Greece where there are far too many tourists you can instead highlight places like Taiwan where few Western tourists go. Or go to Greece still, but to an out of the way fishing village where the locals could use some tourist dollars.
Mass tourism is having a negative impact on many of the top destinations of the world. If you want to promote travel and make a living at it then travel to areas that could use some more tourists. Especially ones that travel intentionally and are looking to learn about their destination.
Be a local expert
Rather than globetrot and promote places in far flung areas all the time, it is a good idea to settle down in one spot and be an expert on that area. The days of the influencer that takes that perfect photo in that unreal landscape and then again in another country are probably numbered.
There isn’t enough value in that type of travel blogger. Now, more than ever, people are looking for practical information. They are looking to get off the beaten tourist path and want information on how to get there, how much it costs and what life is like there.
There is far more value in this type of travel blog or Youtube channel because the information is actionable. The best part about this approach, however, is that it will make you more money than if you are always on the go without becoming an expert on any particular place.
Many advertisers are not going to have the budget to pay out top advertising dollar to make sponsored posts. But when you are an expert on a place then people will pay for your expertise. You can write a guidebook and sell it on your site. Or you can do travel consulting for people looking to travel to your area. This is not really possible when you are a globetrotter because you won’t have enough of an expertise on a place for people to want to pay you for it.
Stay home
Believe it or not, you could make money as a travel blogger by not even leaving your town. If you live in or near an area that many tourists used to visit, then you can be the local expert on that area. Just like in the previous section about how you have more opportunity to make money with your expert knowledge you could do the same for your hometown.
You can be a tour guide there and bring people to the sites and best places to eat. If there is a good music scene then help people find the best places to see their favorite bands and what to do after the show.
This is the information that people will be looking for when they get back to traveling. They won’t care about your perfect backflip off of a boat in the Adriatic.
Help people move
After seeing how the pandemic has affected people, many are questioning their place where they live. And many of them don’t like what they see. So, they would like to move to some of the places where they have traveled before.
Since you have experience with the bureaucracy of traveling and living abroad, you can help people move to a certain country. You can create content around this topic and will find people that need general information about what it takes to move abroad and others that want to know about the requirements for a specific place.
And you can sell consultations or even ebooks full of useful information for these people.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are still a lot of ways to make money as a travel blogger even in these uncertain times. Even though the industry has been damaged, it only takes a pivot to make income from another way of doing things.
It’s always a good idea to have a diverse income stream. Some of these ways to continue as a travel blogger are also valid if travel restrictions are done away with and people are free to go wherever they want.
