Travelpayouts Review 2024: 6 Figure Travel Blogger Weighs In

Looking for a Travelpayouts review from a travel blogger? You’re in the right place! 

It doesn’t matter if you’ve just started travel blogging or you’ve been at it for a while, chances are you’re looking for better ways to monetize.

Maybe you’ve heard of Travelpayouts or perhaps this is your first introduction (welcome, you’re going to love it!), either way I’m here to answer all of your questions.

I’m a legitimate six-figure blogger (none of that “I made a million dollars but it’s all from my blogging course” nonsense), and one of the biggest niches contributing to that income is travel. I made just over $25k in January from travel affiliates alone!

Travelpayouts is a stellar travel-focused affiliate network that’s the perfect addition to your blog (assuming you’re not already on it).

So, let me break down why I love Travelpayouts and how you can use it to increase your affiliate income.

What is Travelpayouts?

Travelpayouts is an affiliate network built specifically for travel niche publishers. It gives you a single platform (theirs) to partner with the biggest names in the travel industry. Companies like TripAdvisor, GetYourGuide and WayAway can be found on the platform — making it an easy all-in-one choice for travel bloggers.

With Travelpayouts, you can earn commission by partnering with the best brands for your audience and promoting what they sell. Whether you’re a seasoned blogger looking to diversify your income or a newbie just getting started, it’s an easy way to start earning money.

Much like any other affiliate platform, affiliate marketers get a percentage of the sale for promoting things like hotel bookings, travel insurance, flight tickets, and car rental bookings. 

This allows content creators to make some money from their content long before they can get into ad programs like Mediavine. 

💰 Get the best travel affiliates here!

Who is Travelpayouts for?

Travelpayouts is my top-pick travel partnership program for travel bloggers who want to earn money with their content. You get access to a single platform that can help connect you with over 100 different affiliate programs from flights and cruises to insurance.

Off the top of my head, if you’re one of the following that specializes in travel it might be able to help you boost your earnings:

• Blogger (obviously)
• Social media influencer
• Travel agency
• Affiliate marketer and/or writer
• SEO expert
• Travel expert

It’s great for essentially anyone who wants to earn money while naturally recommending travel-related products. If you want to save time and energy, track your progress, and earn, it’s worth taking a look at.

💰 Get the best travel affiliates here!

Affiliate Categories

As mentioned earlier, Travelpayouts affiliate network gives you access to OVER 100 different prospective travel-related partners covering different travel-related products. The categories you’ll discover on the platform include:

• Accommodations — Booking.com, Expedia
• Airport services — Priority Pass, Radical Storage
• Bike rentals — BikesBooking
• Bus transportation — Busbud
• Car rentals — EconomyBookings
• Cruises — CruiseCritic
• Flights — WayAway, Trip.com
• Insurance — Etka, VisitorsCoverage
• Loyalty points — Hilton Honors
• Package tours — LoveHolidays
• SIM cards — DrimSim
• Tours — Viator, Tripadvisor
• Trains — Rail Europe

There’s truly something for every kind of travel content creator.

Want more info on the best affiliate programs for travel? Check out this ultimate guide. 

Features of Travelpayouts

30 Day Cookies Lifetime

I like that Travelpayouts gives you a 30 day cookie lifetime for the travel affiliate programs, which means your readers have a full month to make a purchase from the time they click.

Readers get an opportunity to explore other options before making the decision, and you get the benefit of the commission payout (pending they book).

This means that someone can click from your site to Get Your Guide, wait a week, then book another tour, and you still get the commission (as long as they didn’t click a competitor’s link in the mean time). 

💰 Get the best travel affiliates here!

Easy to manage

I find the Travelpayouts platform to be easy to use (plus it’s completely free). 

You manage multiple programs from their single platform, making it incredibly simple to track and compare programs and progress.

Such a user-friendly experience makes it a pleasure to work in, easy to navigate and perfect for integrating into your already busy schedule. 

And they have a stellar support team if you need help with a Travelpayouts affiliate program or the digital partnership platform as a whole.

Seriously, I’ve used a lot of other platforms and this is the easiest way to convert a ton of affiliate links all in one go. I don’t have to log in to 8 platforms or try to remember which ones I’ve signed up for. 

💰 Get the best travel affiliates here!

Unique affiliate tools

One of the tools that makes Travelpayouts different is their unique set of affiliate tools. These include:

• Widgets
• Tables
• Banners
• Landing pages
• Links (also called deep links)

They also offer API access and white labeling so you can make the platform your own, if you have clients to service or external programs you want to integrate with.

For example, the white label solution allows you to create a database for hotel searches that will pull relevant info from your hotel affiliates. I’ve never done this myself but I know website owners who build this into their sites for more commissions.

💰 Get the best travel affiliates here!

Travelpayouts Academy

Particularly appealing for newer travel bloggers is the Travelpayouts Academy.

With built-in courses and guides, publishers of ALL experience levels can learn to earn and grow their income with the platforms. They openly share winning courses and resources that can help you level-up your blogging game (and income!). 

The best part is it doesn’t cost you anything!

If I’d had this when I started travel blogging in 2018, maybe it wouldn’t have taken me 5 years to make my first proper affiliate post!

Check out my free webinar with Travelpayouts on writing affiliate posts with Jasper.ai!

Low Minimum Payout

Compared to other affiliate platforms, Travelpayouts has a relatively low payment threshold of $50. 

Of course, this minimum payout amount can vary based on your chosen payment method and currency. But overall, $50 is the lowest choice.

What’s nice is it’s not per program – it’s total. So if you make $20 from Expedia, $10 from WayAway, and $20 from GetYourGuide, you’ll get it paid out together. 

This is way better than waiting to hit $50 with each of the travel brands individually.

💰 Get the best travel affiliates here!

No Minimum Traffic

Travelpayouts is open to every publisher, regardless of how big your audience is.

 To get access to the platform, there is no minimum traffic. 

However, it is worth noting that some of the programs require an additional application process and might have requirements of their own.

I’ve seen a lot of travel bloggers use Travelpayouts to get access to Viator and Booking.com if they wee denied at the company’s in-house affiliate program for low traffic.

💰 Get the best travel affiliates here!

WordPress Plugin

Something that you might love if you’re a big fan of getting your blog posts perfect is that Travelpayouts offers access to their own WordPress plugin. 

It allows you to access tables, widgets and other cool elements that make for an great experience for your readers. 

You can even build your own white label flight search widget!

Travel Specific Affiliates

The most important feature for travel bloggers (of all experience levels) is that Travelpayouts is created for YOU. It’s a cost-per-action (CPA) affiliate network that rewards you for creating great content that converts readers. Of course, the amount of money you earn depends on the specific program you’re working with — so make sure to check all the details when you’re deciding what to sign up for.

You can see right in Travelpayouts the kind of commission you’re looking at, the average price of products and services, and how many products and services are available, from that particular program. This information helps you decide which programs are the best ones for you.

💰 Get the best travel affiliates here!

Commission Rates

The commission rates for the major travel companies like TripAdvisor and Viator are the same, if not higher, than the company’s own affiliate program. 

TripAdvisor is 3% on CJ while it’s 8% on Travelpayouts. 

Considering Tripadvisor is notorious for low payouts, you can nearly double your affiliate income just by using Travelpayouts!

Cons of Travelpayouts

While I truly LOVE Travelpayouts, there are a few cons that com with using the platform (nothing’s perfect, right?):

Paypal or money transfer payments

The Travelpayouts network only offers two payout options — PayPal or money transfer. 

These aren’t the best options for everyone, and which you can use might depend on your location and currency. 

Make sure that you check out how the payment options work in your location to make sure you can get paid!

Pro Tip: I use Wise.com to get paid by my affiliates and my ad network. Since I’m Canadian and most places won’t do e-transfers to my CAD bank, Wise.com’s free multicurrency account lets me get my money faster and with lower fees. 

Once a month payment

While this is not specific to Travelpayouts, there is only one payout opportunity per month. 

To ensure that you can get that payout, you need to ensure you meet that threshold. This is not unlike many of the other programs out there.

Still, it sucks not to get paid out from the previous month when you’re trying to up your monthly blog income. 

No raises with affiliate networks

While Travelpayouts itself allows you to get raised commissions when you’ve reached a certain threshold ($3,000 per month) when you’re with their program, you don’t get that same opportunity with other programs in the network. 

Most affiliate networks only give raises with their direct affiliate program when you meet a certain total income from them. It can be as low as $500 a month from a tour company like Viator to get a % raise on your commission rates. But with Travelpayouts, you’ll have to wait longer for this increase.

Though you might be able to strike your own deal!

Limited languages

The network does not support every language, which can be a limitation for users. While it works wonders for English (which is the only language I personally use for it), if you need access to something else, check their language list.

There are only a few languages that the network can access, making it difficult for those who don’t speak one of these limited languages to use the network. 

Despite this limitation, the network is still a useful tool for those who do have access to one of the supported languages.

Travelpayouts Affiliate Commission

The affiliate commissions vary depending on the different programs

You’ll need to check out the different programs inside the dashboard to figure out the best programs for you.

For example, Viator has an 8% commission, Booking.com has a 4% commission, and VRBO has a 1.80% commission rate. 

Is Travelpayouts worth it?

It should surprise no one that I’m a big Travelpayouts fan. I think it’s a seriously great way to monetize travel-related traffic, regardless of the niche you’re working in.

While I go direct with my largest travel affiliates, I often use it for the one-off links I need to build out a post (i.e. if I only have 2 posts on Eastern Europe, I’m not going to join a direct program just for the couple of train links I need). I also use it on my baby sites before they have enough traffic or recurring income for it to be worth going direct.

Not only is it a user-friendly platform, but there is plenty of opportunity and choices for those looking to monetize their traffic and make a profit. As someone with multiple sites within the travel area, I like that I can manage all of my sites from their single platforms. And it’s super easy to add my VA to my account rather than giving them 40 logins to individual platforms.

It gives you all the tools you need to start monetizing your blog (though inevitably you’ll want to expand to other income strategies too) in one platform. You can find programs, choose what to promote, grab your links, and check in with your progress. If you’re ready to start monetizing your travel blog, this is the place I recommend starting.

💰 Get the best travel affiliates here!

Tips to Start Making Money with Affiliate Marketing

Diversify your affiliate partners

The key to securing a stable income is diversifying your affiliate partners. You don’t want to rely on one or two travel affiliate programs, as they could close down at ANY time (seriously, AirBnb did it to us a while back). 

That’s why working with a platform like Travelpayouts is so beneficial. It gives you the opportunity to connect with different partners without too much extra effort, and start building a diversified income from the start.

That being said, start with a couple programs. Look at your travel traffic to figure out the best affiliate networks for you. If your top posts are getaways, hotel rooms will probably do well. 

If your top posts are on a country people find unsafe, then travel insurance or long-term guided tours will be your friend. 

You can join all the programs, but you’ll have the most success dedicating blog posts to one affiliate at a time.

💰 Get the best travel affiliates here!

Disclose affiliate links

You NEED to disclose any affiliate links that you publish in ANY post. This isn’t common courtesy, it’s a legal requirement.

Now, I’m not a lawyer (and even if I was this wouldn’t be legal advice), but you need to:

• Include a CLEAR statement that there are affiliate links in your post and what that means
• Link to your disclosure page (which you should have along with your Terms and Conditions, and Privacy Policy)
• Put your statement and link BEFORE any affiliate link. You’ll see mine at the top of this post under my title

Being upfront and transparent is the best way to go about blogging.

Consider search intent

Search intent is an important factor when considering which keywords to use for SEO if you’re planning on monetizing your blog. Knowing the best keywords can ensure that searchers are directed to your site who are more likely to be ready for a purchase.

However, don’t forget to write content for those who may not be ready yet. Although these posts may not generate money directly, they can play a crucial role in supporting the overall goal of driving sales. You’ll want to build a solid monetization strategy that helps your readers make decisions while earning you income.

Here’s an example: someone searching for “paris weather” is probably just looking for the weather report. But if they’re searching for “best rain boots for paris”, then you know they are looking to buy something and you know exactly what they want to buy. 

If you need more help with this the training programs in the Travelpayouts academy will help you out.

Or take this course that helped me scale my affiliate income to $10k a month! (I made back my investment in the course within 2 months thanks to Mediavine and affiliate income).

Engage with your audience

A blog isn’t a one-way street, even if you have comments turned off. By engaging with your audience, you’re able to provide them both with content and recommendations that they already love. This way you’re more likely to see higher conversion rates for your efforts.

There’s also a higher chance you’ll be able to solicit unbiased and honest opinions that you can use in your content (with permission, of course). Honestly, building a meaningful relationship with your audience and providing trustworthy content are the key elements of successful monetization strategy.

Keep an eye on trends

Trends trend for a reason. Staying on top of them is one of the best ways to have a successful, adaptive monetization strategy. Some of the biggest publications out there (hello, Buzzfeed!) make some serious affiliate income on trending posts.

You essentially want to stay on top of trends and deliver content that your audience wants to read before they know they’re looking for it. I do want to note that your entire monetization shouldn’t be built of trends — you do want to have a healthy amount of evergreen content that can continue to serve your audience, even after the latest trend is over.

Conclusion: Travelpayouts Review

All-in-all, Travelpayouts is a great platform for travel bloggers. Regardless of whether you want to promote the best cruises or review the top hotel, there’s a program there for you.

For new bloggers, they have a stellar education program that helps you learn the best way to monetize your blog (using their program, of course). Their single dashboard allows you the potential to connect with over 100 different potential partners that you can recommend to readers to earn income for those looking to turn their blog into a full-fledged online business.

Travelpayouts also features some interesting things you can use to boost your affiliate commissions. From widgets to an internal tracking system, there’s plenty you can do to make your affiliate experience better.

From novices to experienced bloggers, Travelpayouts is a great way to monetize your content.

💰 Get the best travel affiliates here!

Read More About Travel Blogging!

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• How to Make Money as a Travel Blogger: 15 Ways I Made $30k
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• “How Is This Legal?” Travel Blogger Calls Out Google’s Knowledge Graph
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Read More About Monetizing Your Blog

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• How to Make Money as a Travel Blogger: 15 Ways I Made $30k
• Ezoic Review: Will it Increase Your Blog Revenue?
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• Travelpayouts Review: 6 Figure Travel Blogger Weighs In
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• I Sold a Starter Site For $2k. Here’s Exactly What I Did!
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• Selling Digital Products with Email Marketing for Beginners ft. Kate Doster
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