Every Writer Travels. Almost None of Them Earn From It.

You write. You travel. You're not getting paid for it yet.

Jun 12, 2026

Two years ago I was sitting in a camper van outside Sicily, Italy, writing a blog post about the best spots in Sicily. Our second European road trip. Wifi from a phone hotspot that dropped every 20 minutes.

And somehow, between the bad connection and the smell of the gas stove, I managed to publish.

That trip wasn’t actually a typical “content trip.” I wasn’t researching travel guides or reviewing hotels. I was a writer who happened to be living out of a van for a few months, driving through Italy, France and England writing about whatever came up. Sometimes that was a Substack growth strategy. Sometimes it was a restaurant in Palermo that had the best nonna-made pasta I’ve ever tasted and cost three euros. 😱

Travel ended up in my writing because it was part of my life. I didn’t plan it that way, and I don’t think most of you did either.

You’re writers who also happen to go places. You mention the hotel that surprised you on a weekend trip, or recommend a restaurant because a reader asked. Maybe you opened a newsletter with a scene from a cafe in Barcelona because that’s where you happened to be when the idea hit.

Those posts keep getting traffic for months, sometimes years. People find them through search, they get shared, someone mentions a trip to Portugal and a friend sends them your post about Lisbon. And every one of those views earns you exactly nothing.

The Part That Took Me Two Years to See

I was so focused on the “real” monetization paths. Paid subscriptions, coaching, digital products. Those were the serious revenue streams. Travel posts were just... content. Nice for engagement, maybe. Never something I thought of as an income source.

What was actually happening: readers were landing on my posts about Sicily, finding the hotel I recommended, and then opening a new tab to go book it on their own. Some of them even messaged me asking for the exact name and address. I’d just reply. In a DM. For free. With no link to anything.

I was recommending things to people who wanted to buy them, and I wasn’t earning a cent from it.

Another beautiful Sicily image from my camper van

What Changed

A few months ago I found Travelpayouts. And I genuinely wish I’d known about it back in that camper van.

Travelpayouts gives you access to affiliate programs from brands your readers already use: Booking.com, GetYourGuide, Trip.com, and more. You go back to the posts you’ve already written, add tracking links to the hotels and tours and flights you already mentioned, and when someone books through your link, you earn a commission.

Your content and workflow stay exactly the same. You’re just connecting the recommendations you already made to the brands your readers are booking with anyway.

If you have content like that, even a handful of posts that mention a hotel or a destination or a tour, give Travelpayouts a look. Sign up through my link and you get up to $100 extra when you start earning with the platform.

For me, that meant going back to posts about Italy, Portugal, Spain. Posts where I’d mentioned places by name and readers had already asked for details. The traffic and the intent were already there. All I’d been missing was a link.

I also set up Travelpayouts Drive on my website. One piece of code, took about 5 minutes. It scans your content and traffic automatically, finds the spots where you mention hotels or destinations without any monetization, and connects them for you. I had posts I’d completely forgotten about that Drive caught. Stuff I would have never found going through my archive manually. Here’s the setup guide if you want to see how quick it is.

Local cheese and wine in Italy for 2,50€

Why This Matters For You

A lot of writers dismiss affiliate income as “not for them.” I did too, for two years.

You don’t need a travel niche. You need content that occasionally mentions travel. Maybe it’s your remote work setup post that names the Airbnb you stayed at, or a personal essay about a trip that changed how you think. Even a “what I packed” post or a productivity newsletter that opens with a scene from some cafe counts.

If you have a website and you’ve ever mentioned a place, a hotel, a flight, a tour, a booking platform, you have content that qualifies. And if that content gets any traffic at all, there’s revenue sitting in it.

I spent two years building every other income stream and ignoring this one. I could have set it up in an afternoon.

One More Thing About That Camper Van

We drove 11,000 kilometers across Europe on that trip. I wrote more during those three months than I had in the entire year before. Something about the movement and the new places every few days just made me want to write constantly.

I wrote about all of it. The places, the food, the weird little moments. Those posts still bring people to my site, and for years I let all of that traffic pass through without capturing a single euro.

If you have content like that, and want to earn from it, just sign up here, it’s easy:

And once you’re set up, you can earn up to $600 for every fellow creator who joins through your referral link. Worth mentioning to anyone in your circle who writes about their travels, even if “travel writer” isn’t in their bio.

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