Features of making a travel blog on YouTube
Travel is one of the most difficult topics to make a YouTube channel about. You cannot just sit in front of the camera and explain how beautiful the Maldives are; you have to go there and capture it. And this, first of all, needs money, and secondly, you need to process a ton of information on the Internet for every journey.
After a day of shooting, you should return to your hotel, edit and upload the video. Internet abroad does not always work well, especially in Asia. A large file of high quality video can take up to 3 days to download.
Good content does not include flying in the air — to make an interesting travel blog (especially now), you need to constantly invent a unique angle as ordinary travel to Thailand is something very few people are interested in.
One more difficulty — not all viewers are traveling in real life. There’re different reasons for this, but most people come to YouTube more to relax and have fun, watch something funny and get distracted from work. That’s why channels with the format of a travel show usually are more interesting to watch.
Of course, niche has also a lot of advantages. Travel — this is like a drug in the good meaning of the word, once you’ve tried it you can’t quit anymore. Travel blogging becomes a lifestyle. It’s very interesting, develops you, and constantly brings surprises and obstacles that you have to cope with. Travel introduces you to amazing people who become friends. That’s cool!
Travel is easy to shoot; you do not need a scenario and props. You capture your feelings, emotions, pictures or people around you — this is your content.
The audience is an independent and biggest plus. Usually it’s lively, bright and energetic people. Moreover, the travel audience usually consists mainly of adults. Adults mean solvency, so advertising is more expensive and such audiences buy more.
How to develop your own channel
Firstly, you have to create high-quality and interesting content. For this you need to invest money in equipment. Today even phones can take good quality pictures, but a special camera with a wide angle or even a drone can improve the quality of your channel’s content. Don’t forget to consider audio not just video quality.
Secondly, you need to care about the backend part. You have to:
- Create good titles;
- Always insert tags;
- Make subtitles.
At the same time try to be alive and yourself in the video. Follow the popular trends so as not to miss a wave. Give people what are they interested in. And do not forget to communicate with the audience, respond to comments, arrange meetings, create contests, give gifts — it’s very important.
Promotion of your channel is also important, but creation of good quality goods is the foundation of success. If you do not have the relevant skills, you can hire a person who will take care of your video editing. It will give you more time for the creation of content and may increase the quality of your travel YouTube channel.
How to earn on a travel related YouTube channel
The logic is simple: more views = more money with embedded advertising. But total income from the channel depends not only on the number of views but also the channel’s audience. For example, embedded advertising on a children’s channel costs $1–2 for 1000 views, and embedded advertising on a business channel can cost $6–9 per 1000 views. Of course, the number of views on the children’s channel and the business channel will be different.
One more thing that will influence your income is language. There is more money to be made from the English speaking market than the local markets such as Russian, Spanish, French and so on. But, at the same time, the English speaking market is already more occupied, and you have to spend more time and money gaining popularity for a new channel there.
The article on how to earn from YouTube includes different methods that we have collected here.
Embedded advertising for YouTube videos
Embedded advertising is shown at the beginning or the end of the video. It can be skipped, but sometimes it’s impossible. (This is decided by YouTube itself.) If it’s impossible, that is more valuable.
You also can set up pop-up banners but we don’t recommend putting them on a 30-minute movie more than 3 or 4 times.
Cooperating with various companies and brands
Another type of earnings comes from cooperation with various companies and brands. The most popular methods are pre-roll (30 seconds before the video) and integration or product placement — the native mention of a product or service embedded in the content. The use of this type of advertising is limited only by your imagination.
Selling your own services or goods
How else can you earn? Selling your courses or souvenirs from your travels can be an additional way to make money on a YouTube travel channel. If you have built a well-known brand, you can even produce your own goods, such as a hoodie with your logo and so on.
Affiliate marketing for a YouTube channel
You can use affiliate links to boost your income. On a travel-related channel, this works well for:
- Flight tickets;
- Hotels;
- Car rentals;
- Other travel-related services.
All of this can be solved thanks to the Travelpayouts affiliate program. You can find flight and hotel affiliate programs in the same place. Also, there are various offers such as car rentals, airport transfers, and so on. A full list of available options can be found in your account.
You can even use affiliate marketing to increase audience loyalty. Offer cash back for buying through your affiliate link, and share your income with your audience. Just be careful, as some travel affiliate programs prohibit cashback traffic.
The most important thing is to advertise a product that you actually use or would use. The recommended service should be of high quality and valuable to the viewer. This allows your channel to build trust and generate a good amount of sales. Choose the best flight affiliate program for tickets and the best hotel affiliate program for accommodations among the affiliate programs for YouTube bloggers.
It’s not a good idea to promote casinos, bets, and so on. This can provide momentary income but strategically it creates a loss for your channel. If you respect your audience, they will respect and listen to you and buy what you honestly recommend to them.
Best formats for making money on YouTube from affiliates
When it comes to the best format to make money on YouTube with affiliate marketing, we advise you to combine all the methods. These are the points to keep in mind while promoting affiliate links to visitors;
- You can share the affiliate link in the description part of your video but put it somewhere visible. Your visitors shouldn’t need to click the ‘Read more’ button.
- Do not use pop-ups too often.
- Create quality content to persuade visitors to buy through an affiliate link.
How much can you earn on YouTube?
To be involved in the YouTube travel market, you must understand how much money you can get through it. Your income from a travel YouTube channel depends on the method of monetization you choose.
YouTube pays for each 1,000 views of the advertisement. This method is called CPM (Cost Per Millennia). The amount of money for each 1,000 views is related to the complex parameters of YouTube (for example, the type of visitor or the advertisement itself). However, it is possible to say that profit ranges from between 50 cents to $10. It is very hard to get a high amount per millennia.
For example, YouTube pays you $1 per 1,000 views, so you will get $1,000 for 1,000,000 views.
When you do organic advertising of a brand, it depends on your agreement. One of the most fruitful methods is affiliate marketing. You are able to earn with the partner programs of over 100 travel brands, such as Booking.com, Tripadvisor, Kiwi.com, and effective tools like affiliate links, widgets, banners, API, and more. You’ll receive up to 20% reward for each sale, but the amount of the reward depends on the terms of the partner program. You can find them in the brands’ cards in your Travelpayouts account.
How to include ads in YouTube videos
After signing up for YouTube and developing your channel, you must place advertisements into your travel videos to get a profit through YouTube. Don’t worry, as placing ads in your videos is not complicated.
First, you must go to your video manager in YouTube, and then go to the video in which you want to include ads. You will see the edit or monetisation icon. Click it and choose the ‘Monetise my video’ tab. After this, you will need to choose the format of the ads and then click the ‘Save’ button.
In this way, you monetise only one video. You can also monetise all your videos automatically by enabling the settings for all your videos now and in the future.
Tips for channel and video promotion
Your main goal should be receiving recommendations. The more your channel is recommended the more views there will be. Most importantly, optimize the video metatags: title, description and tags. Intriguing titles catch viewers’ attention and increase views. In the first few hours after publishing try to pump your video as much as possible.
The video thumbnail is also important. Ideally, it should not duplicate the title but complement it. That means the labels should not be duplicated on the title and on the thumbnail, but this is very difficult to do and is not always possible. The thumbnail should cause the “WOW!” effect so that your viewers want to click on it.
Clickbait is a very popular trick, but do not overuse it as unnecessary people will come to the channel and put a dislike for your video. These are not “your” people, and even if they subscribe, it does not bring anything good.
Interaction with the audience: it’s important to have more comments attached to your video. If everything is super sweet, people will not write comments. It’s important for the video to evoke the people’s emotions; it can be good or bad, doesn’t matter, but it should burn viewers’ emotions. Therefore, you can intentionally make mistakes in the video (people like to correct them). You can even do some slightly annoying things like chomping, licking your fingers and so on. People love to write about and focus on small things. Or you can simply ask for their advice, this also works.
How to start from zero
Come up with your own format, your way. If you want to create another travel blog on YouTube that’s similar to everyone else’s, it’s not worthwhile. Go right away with quality content and with something trendy. Care about audience loyalty and do not bombard them with advertisements. Be yourself and recommend to your viewers only those goods and services that you’re using or would use yourself.
We at Travelpayouts are proud that with our travel affiliate program you can offer your audience high quality travel services. Join us today to earn on your travel related YouTube channel.