How We Made $17,730 In 3 Months While TRAVELLING: Income Report Q3 2024

Salt and Charcoal Travel made $17,730 between July and September 2024 – the third quarter of the year. 

That’s $5,910 a month made while… TRAVELLING!

To say we are grateful is an understatement. And we will never not pinch ourselves.

But the reason we are sharing this isn’t to brag, it’s simply to show you it IS possible to earn for travel. 

So, let’s break down how we earned this.

This income came from two sources – the travel blog and Instagram. We’re spilling all the tea further down.

Some key things to know before moving on:

• This blog started mid-2021, but we weren’t consistent with it until late 2022. Right now we have ~120 blogs published.
• In blogging, how much you earn is directly related to the work you’ve done in the past. Your first blog posts won’t make much money, but it’s a snowball effect – the more helpful posts you publish, the better.
• We have experience monetising websites, we’re trained and have been working on websites since 2016, so this is far from our first rodeo. We learnt how to do it here. 
• We’re not doing this to gloat, but to show you other lifestyle options than a regular 9 to 5. Honestly, anyone can do this – if an ex-FIFO (Chris) and a social worker (Bec) can do this, so can you!
• This report might get a bit technical. We’ve done our best to explain the concepts but feel free to leave any questions in the comments! 

With that in mind, let’s talk NUMBERS!

Travel blog (website income): $3,230.96

This was all earned via affiliate marketing, we’re not running ads on the blog yet. 

“Affiliate marketing” is an income form where someone promotes a product on behalf of a company.

If people buy it through their link, the promoter earns a commission at no extra cost to the customer. 

We use affiliate marketing to earn money with:

• Tours and experiences we recommend in our blog posts, with providers like Viator or Get Your Guide.
• General products we use and recommend, like Caravan RV for purchasing bus parts and equipment, or the eSim from Airalo.
• Things we think might help people in their travels – travel insurance, caravan rentals, etc.

So, the $3,230.96 we earned this Q3 was via promoting tours, products and travel insurance, etc.

We achieved this with a blog traffic of 40,000 (an average of ~13,300 per month). 

“Traffic” is essentially the number of people visiting your blog. Usually, the more traffic you have, the more income. 

Affiliate income breakdown

Most of our affiliate income came from two main sources – Commission Factory and Viator.

Commission Factory

This is an affiliate network, i.e. they connect you to dozens of brands with affiliate programs, so you can earn commissions from promoting their products/services. 

We earned $1,950 this quarter with them:

The main product was travel insurance, and it makes sense if you see the chart!

See the peaks in August and September? It’s when most people go on vacations and might need travel insurance!

Also might add, it’s a great travel insurance brand so we are happy to recommend it (It’s Cover More if you’re interested!)

NOTE:

If you’re just starting with your travel blog and want to make income via affiliate marketing, head to Travel Payouts.

This affiliate network is easy to start with and connects you to dozens of travel-related affiliate programs like Booking, Viator, Get Your Guide, car rentals, flight tickets, etc. 

It’s made for travel bloggers specifically!

Sign up for Travel Payouts here!

Viator

If you don’t know, Viator is a marketplace for tours. Tour operators all over the world list their tours here to reach a wider audience. 

This Q3, we earned $885.13 with them:

Things that affect affiliate income in a travel blog

1) The traffic to your blog

More traffic means more people visiting, thus more chances of any of them buying something from your affiliate links. 

So in theory more traffic = more income. 

But the travel industry is QUITE seasonal. Some months will inevitably have peak earnings while others won’t, regardless of your traffic. 

Take us as an example.

Our traffic increased in July vs April. You’ll see this in the chart below – July is the continuous line and April is the dotted one:

See how the dotted line is under the continuous one? That means the traffic in April was less than in July.

So, if July had more traffic than April, it should have had more income from tours, right?

Well, the reports in Viator show a different story:

In July we had more traffic, but made half in affiliate tours compared to April.

This is to show how seasonal the travel industry is! Keep that in mind if you want to start your travel blog. 

2) The quantity and quality of your blog posts

The more blog posts you have, the more chances of someone visiting your website – that’s simple maths.

But your blog posts have to be high-quality for this to work!

They have to give readers the information they need, presented in a way that’s easy for them to understand.

3) The type of product or service you’re promoting

The products and services you promote have to be useful to your audience, otherwise, you won’t make any income from it. 

For example, most of our affiliate income comes from tours. People book a tour we recommend and we earn a small commission. 

Tour commissions range between 4-8% depending on the operator. That’s pretty solid!

But other services like car rentals pay MUCH better – up to 75% commission.

That sounds great on paper, but in practice, we haven’t made any commissions from car rentals yet. 

Looks like our audience is not a good fit for that service 🤷🏼‍♂️

This happens, it’s part of the game! You have to try different products or services to find what your audience is looking for, then double down on what gives you results.

Instagram: $14,500

This is a sum of paid gigs and free things we’ve received from brands thanks to our Instagram presence.

Sadly, for privacy reasons, we can’t disclose the exact projects or brands. But we can give you estimates of earnings!

This Q3, the general breakdown is:

• Paid gigs: $7800. This was in exchange for creating content for different clients. 
• Additional free things (that we needed or REALLY couldn’t turn up 😅): $6700 (estimate value). For example, sometimes clients will give us free gear, flights, experiences or rentals, in addition to paying for our services.

Let us know if you’re interested in learning HOW we monetised our Instagram:

Getting paid

The problem with working with different affiliate programs, clients, etc, is that payment comes in different currencies – AUD, USD, EUR, GBP, etc.

As a travel blogger, you need somewhere you can receive all these payments without the hefty conversion fees of most banks.

Paypal is not a great option – their commissions are ridiculously high and seriously eat up your revenue.

Plus, we have been scammed too many times on there. We don’t recommend it at all.

That’s why we use Wise. You can receive money and make payments from dozens of currencies, plus transfer them to other bank accounts.  

And their conversion rates are unparalleled – they’re some of the lowest in the market.

And the whole thing is so easy to use that even my grandma could do it!

You can also have a debit card with them free of charge to pay internationally while you travel. Talk about a win-win!

Check out Wise here to see if it’s right for you.

Want to follow in our footsteps?

We learnt how to make money off websites (like this travel blog) from the eBusiness Institute back in 2016, with their course called “Digital Investors”. 

Since then, we’ve built, renovated, and sold several websites – one for $250,000 and our last website sale was for $76,000. 

The founders of the institute (Matt and Lizz Raad, a couple from Brissy) created this course for beginners to teach how to buy and renovate websites for passive income and profit.

Honestly, we cannot thank Matt and Liz enough as our life has changed exponentially since their training. We are still good friends with them to this day!

And they’re offering a FREE masterclass exclusively for Salt and Charcoal readers! It includes several bonuses at the end, watch it here:

It explains how we pay for our travels, save for the future, and fund our digital nomad lifestyle!

They also have other courses. We have done all of them and reviewed them in this blog, check it out to know if the eBusiness Institute is the right fit for you.

The bottom line

And there you have it – that’s the breakdown of how we earned $17,730 in just three months for simply travelling and sharing content. 

Other travel blogs that make that in a week! Our website is relatively new and small.

It’s inspiring to know all the potential that’s there. We hope this income report has been insightful and gives you some motivation to start or improve your own travel brand. 

If you’re looking to learn more about earning through blogging, check out the free masterclass from the eBusiness Institute – it’s how we got started, and it could be the stepping stone you need.

And if you’re thinking about starting a travel blog, remember to focus on quality content that genuinely helps your readers. 

Try different affiliate products to see what sticks, and don’t be discouraged by the seasonal ups and downs – it’s part of the journey! 

As for Instagram, building relationships with brands, engaging with others in your niche and offering quality content to your audience can lead to both paid projects and awesome perks.

Let us know if you’re interested in learning HOW we monetised our Instagram next: