Do you want to scale your earnings from your travel blog in 2020 and beyond?
In this post I will tell you about some of the best travel affiliate programs to make more money from your travel blog.
Many travel blogs use ad network like Google Adsense, Ezoic, Media.net, Infolinks and others to monetize their blog.
The reason is either they don't know what is affiliate marketing or they don't have any idea about these travel affiliate programs.
Apart from other monetization methods, affiliate marketing is the best method for travel bloggers to earn passive income online.
Before we begin, let me tell you in brief what is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a process where you join an affiliate program of any particular affiliate network to promote their products to earn a commission in return.
Affiliate programs may offer fixed commission or recurring commission every month for each successful sale.
So you have the option to join:
- affiliate programs that provides one-time fixed commission, and
- recurring affiliate programs that gives you commission every single month
To save you from hassles of finding the best travel affiliate products, I have compiled a list of top affiliate programs that you can join today itself.
Let's get started.
Note: This article contains affiliate links. When you click an affiliate link and make a purchase, we get a small compensation at no cost to you. See our Privacy Policy and Disclaimer for more info.
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9 Best Travel Affiliate Programs to Earn More Money
Let's checkout the list of all high paying travel affiliate sites that you can join to earn more money.
Tripadvisor is one of the largest travel site in the world.
Travelers can compare low prices on hotels, flights and cruises on Tripadvisor site. After comparing the prices on different websites, Tripadvisor offers the best available price for your online booking.
They can also check 859 million reviews and opinions of 8.6 million accommodations, restaurants, experiences, airlines and cruises on Tripadvisor website.
Tripadvisor site also allows a traveler to book popular tours and attractions, as well as reserve tables at great restaurants.
About Tripadvisor affiliate program
Tripadvisor affiliate program is offered through Commission Junction. If you already hold an account in Commission Junction you can start promoting this program or you can create a new account and join this program.
Travel bloggers can join Tripadvisor affiliate program and promote it's rich content spanning 795 million reviews and 1.4 million places to stay.
As Tripadvisor is a big name in the travel industry, you would find it much easier to bring in more conversions for you.
You would earn a minimum of 50% of the commission that Tripadvisor receives from their hotel booking partners.
To earn commission, users must come to Tripadvisor via your trackable affiliate link, and then click out to their hotel partners.
Tripadvisor offer a 14-day referral window. If your users return to Tripadvisor within the 14 days period and click out to their hotel partners, you'll still get credit and earn commission.
You get commission payout through your PayPal account.
Join Tripadvisor affiliate program today.
Booking.com is one of the world's largest travel marketplaces and offers more than 28 million accommodation listings which includes homes, apartments and other unique places to stay.
You can use Booking.com online portal to book hotels, flights, car rentals and airport taxis.
About Booking.com affiliate program
The affiliate program is free to join with its easy sign-up process.
To promote Booking.com affiliate program, you can integrate the search box on your blog. You can even place banners and use deep affiliate link inside your blog content.
You can also install Booking.com official WordPress plugin on your travel blog and display the search box (see image). This search blog will allow your users to search for hotel accommodation around the world right from your blog.
Any bookings made from this search box will make you eligible for receiving commissions.
Join Booking.com affiliate program today.
Travelpayouts is the largest travel affiliate network with over 60 affiliate programs available. Among them are: Booking.com, GetYourGuide, TripAdvisor and other travel affiliate programs.
Joining Travelpayouts is key to a large number of travel affiliate programs, as well as a professional support service and a huge number of training materials that are available on the blog, on the YouTube channel, and in the knowledge base.
Another key advantage is the wide selection of affiliate tools, classic affiliate links, or advanced tools that are available to you, such as API and White Label.
Travelpayouts' pays on cost-per-action basis - you earn money every time a purchase is made using your link.
Several payout methods are available, among which, of course, are PayPal and a bank account transfer. The minimum withdrawal amount is $50.
The Travelpayouts affiliate network is suitable for webmasters with various types of traffic, such as owners of travel blogs or YouTube vloggers.
You can join the network without moderation, however each affiliate program inside the network has its own rules, which is why some programs require prior approval. Also, when you join a particular affiliate program, pay attention to the rules and allowed types of traffic to avoid violating said rules.
Join Travelpayouts affiliate network today.
Agoda is another big name in the travel industry. It has million of properties listed on its website and provides hotel bookings around the world.
About Agoda affiliate program
To participate in the affiliate program you can either join its own program or you can also join it via ShareASale.
If you apply to Agoda to join its affiliate program please take note that it may take about 48-72 hours to get approval. Having a travel blog increases your chances for approval.
Once you are approved by Agoda you can use the following tools to promote it in your blog:
- Affiliate links: Place deep links right inside your content.
- Search Box: Let your site visitors search properties right from your site.
- Banners: Add beautiful image banners inside your blog content.
Earn 5% commission on each successful booking from your affiliate link.
Agoda has wonderful performance based commission structure, see below.
You get paid through direct bank transfer when your account balance reaches $200.
Join Agoda affiliate program today.
Skyscanner is a leading global travel search site and essentially a meta-search engine for travel services.
You can search for hotel, rental car or flight reservation in real-time.
Skyscanner will search for your query in its database and returns all the available options in the form of comparison table.
About Skyscanner affiliate program
You can join Skyscanner's affiliate program via CJ.
Please note that there is a different affiliate program for most countries.
You will only be paid for the country program you are a member of.
As a Canadian affiliate, you would not get paid for booking traffic from other parts of the world.
So, you must sign-up at CJ for the country you want to direct traffic from.
Skyscanner share the generated revenue with affiliates, starting at 20%.
They pay commission on Skyscanner generated revenue, not booking or basket value.
Example: if Skyscanner earned £10 revenue from a booking, they pay a commission to its affiliate starting at £2.
Join Skyscanner Affiliate Program today.
6. Lonely Planet Affiliate Program
Lonely Planet is another popular website which has partnered with hotels, apartments, hostels, villas around the world and allow its visitors to book their accommodation right from their portal.
A visitor can also book fights and insurance from its website.
A traveler can also buy destination guides, ebook, pictorial & gifts, atlas, etc. from Lonely Planet website.
About Lonely Planet affiliate program
Lonely Planet does not have its own dedicated affiliate program. However they have tied up with the following affiliate network to allow travel bloggers to join its affiliate program.
Get started with Lonely Planet affiliate program here.
Airbnb is an online marketplace that connects people who want to rent out their homes with those who are looking for space to rent.
It currently offers over 7 million accommodations in 100K+ cities around the world.
About Airbnb affiliate program
The affiliate program has two categories - Guest affiliate program and Host affiliate program.
Guest affiliate program. It gives you access to feature any of Airbnb listing on your blog or website. Any bookings made from your blog will earn you a commission.
Host affiliate program. It allows you to showcase Airbnb hosting opportunities to your site visitors. You earn a commission when any of your visitors signs up as a host.
Airbnb also offers a referral program where you can earn up to $22 for each successful referral.
Your referral receive up to $40 off their first trip, and you’ll get $15 for a qualifying stay and $7 for every person who goes on a qualifying experience.
Get started with Airbnb affiliate program today.
DiscoverCars.com makes renting a car easy by connecting customers all over the world with rental cars and making sure the price they see is the price they pay.
They offer all types of cars from more than 500 partners across more than 10,000 destinations throughout the world including one-way rentals.
And throughout the company's history, they have maintained one of the highest ratings in the car rental industry on Trustpilot.
About DiscoverCars.com affiliate program
The program is free to join and very easy to use. Besides that, it offers an absolutely attractive revenue share scheme: 70% from their car rental income PLUS 30% from the Full Coverage.
Average commission earned by an affiliate is 25 euros per booking.
Another great advantage of the DiscoverCars.com affiliate program is their cookies lifetime. It's 365 days, which is significantly longer than most of the affiliate programs offer.
Plenty of integration solutions, so every affiliate will be able to find
which one suits best: general text links, deep links, different banners, widgets and API.
Join DiscoverCars.com Affiliate Program here.
9. CheapFlights Affiliate Program
CheapFlights is one of the world's largest flight comparison sites. You can check flight deals, last minute flights and travel tips to plan your travel itinerary.
Thousands of airlines, travel agents and travel sites has partnered with CheapFlights where customers can compare and book cheaper flights.
About CheapFlights affiliate program
If you've a travel website or blog, you can join the affiliate program offered by CheapFlights.
You can promote CheapFlights using the following methods.
- Travel Widgets: You can add CheapFlights travel widget on your site that allows your visitors to conduct a flight search on your site and display results on CheapFlights site.
- Banners: You can add banners provided under the affiliate program. The banner code contains your unique affiliate link that track your sales and clicks.
- Text Links: You can add text links containing your affiliate link in your travel site.
Payment Structure
Cheapflights offers following commission to its affiliates:
1. $ 0.45 per click-out for desktop and tablet
2. $ 0.25 per click-out for mobile
How to join CheapFlights affiliate program?
If your site gets traffic from US, you can join the affiliate program by signing up at CJ.com.
However, if you get traffic from outside of US, you can sign up at Webgains.com.
Who Can Join Travel Affiliate Programs?
Following are the traffic sources and activities that can join the affiliate program.
Please Note: Above list is only for information purpose only. Always check from the related affiliate program website whether you are eligible to join their program or not.
How To Promote & Make Money From Travel Affiliate Programs?
Check out some of the best strategies below that you can implement to promote these travel companies and earn money form their affiliate programs.
If you promote these travel companies and generate good booking numbers then you could easily earn thousands of dollars every month.
So, if you have a blog in travel niche and want to make money from affiliate marketing, start promoting these wonderful travel companies and earn substantial income every month from commissions.
Let's see what are the best marketing strategy to promote these travel companies.
1. Write A Review On The Travel Company
Before making any flight or hotel booking from a third party travel website people like to read to reviews of these companies to have some trust.
They don't want any last minute cancellations or changes from the travel company.
So, write an in-depth review clearly highlighting why people should trust this website to book fights or hotels.
Clearly mentions all the pros and cons with all the benefits a customer would get on booking through these travel websites.
This will help your visitors to take an informed decisions.
Place your affiliate links at appropriate places inside the review post where your users are most likely to click on it.
2. Add Attractive Banners Inside Your Blog Content
Affiliate programs of these travel companies also provides attractive banners of different sizes of their brands.
The banner size which converts most is 300 x 250, 336 x 280, and 300 x 600.
Place banners of size 300 x 250 and 336 x 280 inside your blog articles. The best position would be Above The Fold where there are maximum chances of conversion. And place the 300 x 600 banner in the sidebar.
3. Drive Traffic Through Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the best method to convert your visitors into customers.
As a blogger, email list is your biggest asset. There is a common saying - Money is in the list.
If you are not building list by collecting emails of your blog visitors then you are making a big blogging mistakes.
Google is releasing its algorithm quite often and many websites new or old has been penalized with decrease in their organic traffic.
You would never want it to happen to your site. So, having a good number of email subscribers in your list allows you to still drive traffic to your site and of course, earn money from it.
Start using email marketing service provider companies like ConvertKit to collect and build your email list.
Once you have a sizable list you can easily promote the travel companies by sending them offers and discounts offered by these travel companies.
Join ConvertKit and unlock 1000 subscribers for FREE.
Conclusion
I hope now you get the idea on how to monetize your travel blog by joining the affiliate programs of travel companies and promoting these companies.
Many travel bloggers are already earning huge commissions from these affiliate programs.
If you also have a travel blog and want to earn by promoting affiliate programs join these affiliate programs and start earning commission every month.
So, what are you waiting for? Join it today and start earning huge passive income.
If you want to create a travel blog but don't how to start, check this comprehensive guide on blogging and start your blog today.
Let us know which are the travel affiliate programs that you are promoting and which one worked best for you!
I would love to hear about your experiences in promoting these travel affiliate programs in the comments below!
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