Lately, I’ve heard of more than a couple of people planning to take off for the unknown with the intention of earning all the money they need to live by blogging about their travels. I hate to say it, but this idea may be a little more than optimistic. I’m not saying it can’t (or hasn’t) been done, but travel blogging may not provide the income that a lot of new bloggers seem to expect from it. Those travel bloggers who make a full-time living from their blogs put in plenty of time — often more than the full-time hours required in an office.

That said, a blog can help you at least increase your income as you travel in several different ways.

Pure Blogging

Building up a travel blog requires plenty: good writing, interesting adventures and so on. If you’ve got a good following, you can put advertising on it, use it to sell affiliate products or otherwise make money. There are different levels to each of these monetization methods, but the money you make usually winds up depending on the number of readers you have. A few thousand readers can translate into a couple hundred dollars from various advertisers; more readers equal more money.

Selling Your Own Products

Having your own products can help you make more money through a blog. Just what that product looks like can vary wildly, depending on your readership, your style of writing, the phase of the moon and everything else. You have to discover what the readers of your particular brand of travel blogging are interested in.

Maybe they’d love to buy prints of the photographs you post. Maybe they want a guide to the area you’re visiting so that when they travel, they know where to go. Test out a couple of ideas and see what sticks.

Writing Elsewhere

This may be a bit of stretch, but if you’re writing a blog about traveling, I’m going to guess that you like writing about travel in general. Why not pitch a couple of the ideas you want to write about to travel publications? Print magazines can be a little difficult to break into, but a good blog provides you with the clips necessary to convince an editor that you can write. There are also a growing number of online publications that will pay for good travel content.

You may also be able to sell your photographs to the same set of publications: great photos can make it easier to win over an editor for a story idea, and they’ll usually bump the pay for an article if it comes with photos. Here are 10 travel writing markets to get you started.

There are also starting to be more than a few sites that are willing to hire writers to blog for them on a regular basis. Find a travel-related company or a publication in search of a regular travel blogger and you can earn a nice income.

Contests

While I’d never want to bet on a contest’s results to pay my rent, having a great travel blog does make it much easier to toss your name in the hat for certain competitions. We’ve talked about opportunities like the Van-Tastic contest in the past, but sites like Tripbase are now creating contests directed specifically towards travel bloggers.

One Last Thought: Cost of Living

Depending on where your travels take you, all of these options can translate to a life not too far off from royalty. In other places, however, working your tail off at all of these options can provide barely enough money to live. If you are in a country with a lower cost of living, it can be possible to live entirely off relatively little advertising income on your blog. It’s important to take the amount of money you’re actually going to need to earn before deciding just how you plan to earn a living.

Building up a travel blog requires plenty: good writing, interesting adventures and so on. If you’ve got a good following, you can put advertising on it, use it to sell affiliate products or otherwise make money. There are different levels to each of these monetization methods, but the money you make usually winds up depending on the number of readers you have. A few thousand readers can translate into a couple hundred dollars from various advertisers; more readers equal more money.

Selling Your Own Products

Having your own products can help you make more money through a blog. Just what that product looks like can vary wildly, depending on your readership, your style of writing, the phase of the moon and everything else. You have to discover what the readers of your particular brand of travel blogging are interested in.

Maybe they’d love to buy prints of the photographs you post. Maybe they want a guide to the area you’re visiting so that when they travel, they know where to go. Test out a couple of ideas and see what sticks.

Writing Elsewhere

This may be a bit of stretch, but if you’re writing a blog about traveling, I’m going to guess that you like writing about travel in general. Why not pitch a couple of the ideas you want to write about to travel publications? Print magazines can be a little difficult to break into, but a good blog provides you with the clips necessary to convince an editor that you can write. There are also a growing number of online publications that will pay for good travel content.

You may also be able to sell your photographs to the same set of publications: great photos can make it easier to win over an editor for a story idea, and they’ll usually bump the pay for an article if it comes with photos. Here are 10 travel writing markets to get you started.

There are also starting to be more than a few sites that are willing to hire writers to blog for them on a regular basis. Find a travel-related company or a publication in search of a regular travel blogger and you can earn a nice income.

Contests

While I’d never want to bet on a contest’s results to pay my rent, having a great travel blog does make it much easier to toss your name in the hat for certain competitions. We’ve talked about opportunities like the Van-Tastic contest in the past, but sites like Tripbase are now creating contests directed specifically towards travel bloggers.

One Last Thought: Cost of Living

Depending on where your travels take you, all of these options can translate to a life not too far off from royalty. In other places, however, working your tail off at all of these options can provide barely enough money to live. If you are in a country with a lower cost of living, it can be possible to live entirely off relatively little advertising income on your blog. It’s important to take the amount of money you’re actually going to need to earn before deciding just how you plan to earn a living.