The world is a big, beautiful place. There’s countless of amazing things to so, and a nearly limitless amount of things to do. You could spend your entire life just visiting different places, and still not experience even half of what this world has to offer. But despite the fact that they know they’ll never get to see everything in the world, most likely not even a fraction of one location, travellers still pursue the dream of drinking in all of the sights and cultures of the world.
One of the primary factors that often holds travellers back from going where they want to go, as often as they want, is money. No matter how many frequent flyer miles you save up, and no matter how many travel points you earn on your credit card, you’re never going to find a 100% cheap way to travel.
If you’re a traveller, wanting to make more money to head to more destinations, or even if you’d just like your travels to give you something extra, consider the following ways that you can make money while visiting your dream destinations.
1. Leave Reviews about Your Travel Experiences
The internet dominates many aspect of life in the modern age, including business. With the ability to leave reviews with the touch of a button, that millions of people will see, companies have to be cognisant than ever about the impression they leave with their customers, and travel agencies are no different.
If you’re a traveler, you can take advantage of this heightened focus on online marketing. Many agencies, magazines and travel sites now offer to pay travellers to contribute their two cents about a particular travel service.
Did the agency overbook the flight, for the second time in a row? Were the seats on the plane spacious enough to allow for comfortable travel? Did the agency work with you when your flight was delayed, but you needed to get to Tokyo by the evening? These are common questions that many people seek answers to online, and by doing the work for them, you can make good money, while you visit the places you want to see most.
You don’t have to focus exclusively on reviewing airline travel agencies either. The hotels and hostels you stay at, the restaurants you dine in, the shows you take in and more are all valuable review topics that travellers the world over will benefit from.
2. Start a Travel Blog
People love visiting travel blogs because they get to read about and see other countries, and experience other cultures, through the eyes of people who are, by and large, everyday, hard-working people just like they are. If you’ve got a gift for gab, know how to tell a good story, and love to travel, a travel blog is a great option for you to earn some extra money.
When you begin your blog, you won’t make a ton of cash right off the bat; it takes time, effort and quality content to attract and sustain a devoted readership. But as the years pass, and you travel to more places, and upload great stories and photos to share, your blog will grow, and with growth will come the opportunity for advertising, guest posting and sponsorship that will allow you to net a healthy profit to expand your travels even further.
Though growing a large following can be a challenge, starting a blog is not. You just need to pick the theme of your blog (in your case, travelling), register for a domain, setup a basic website, and you’re ready to upload!
3. Do Freelance Reporting in Your Travels
With the advent of better phone cameras, GoPros, and the like, the modern age has seen the rise of the citizen reporter. Almost without fail, when something happens, from a common street fight to a volcano erupting, odds are, someone has already filmed it and uploaded it to the web before the CNN news crew even gets there. As a traveller, you can turn this trend to your advantage, and submit your independent pieces about the goings-on in the places you visit.
I’m not saying that you need to swing by the Houses of Parliament and film a policy debate on your way to visit the Big Ben every time you visit the UK (although you could certainly try). Instead, what I suggest is that you document the places you go, and the experiences you have, in order to better educate people about the culture, food and other aspects of your travel destinations.
Travel guide companies like the Lonely Planet are always looking for freelance contributors, with quality content, to enrich their print guidebooks, TV show and online guides. If you’ve got a passion for media, coupled with a love to see the world, why not help improve the experience for others and get paid at the same time!
4. Start an Online Business
As more and more business is done online, and as more work is done exclusively in the digital domain, more young professionals will launch careers that they can perform anywhere in the world with a working internet connection.
For you entrepreneurial travellers, starting your own online business is the perfect solution to pursue the work you love while visiting the places you’ve always wanted to see. Whether your business focuses on consulting, sales, design or any other number of niches, so long as your work is based around a computer and internet, you can do whatever your talents drive you towards, anywhere you want.
This ties in with my second suggestion as well; if you want to get serious about your travel blog, then think of your blog as your business, and approach your blog with the same mindset of growth, expansion, customer service and revenue as any CEO would their company.
Skip the Lines, See the Sights
These are just a few examples of the myriad of ways that you can make money by putting your passion for travel to work for you. The advantage that all of these options offer is that they can be done anywhere, and allow you to visit other places more often, with more cash in your pocket, so you can focus on what you really want to do: experience all that the world has to offer!
