Over a million Internet users are looking for a vacation tour every month. This is a huge market: people may use the same laptop or car for many years, and probably they will not buy another house over dozens of years, but every single year they need to rest. At least, once. And you can earn on affiliate programs for clicks. Best affiliate tourism networks let you earn the commission for every new customer.
How Affiliate Tourism Programs Work
You use the referral link to encourage the visitors of your website to visit the tour company or agency website. The link contains an indicator that defines if the customer was engaged by you or someone else. When the person buys a tour, you get a commission to your bank account, e-wallet or accounting system.
If you have your own website related to tourism, travelling or countries, you can just put a link or a banner there for your visitors to click and buy tours. Meanwhile, you get your benefits. If it does not work like that for you, this is not a problem. There are tons of additional ways to make a profit.
Forum Posts
People trust each other more than they trust an abstract advertisement. So, if you are engaged in communication on the forums dedicated to travels and tourism, you probably see various questions like:
- Where to go this summer?
- What agency to choose to buy a tour?
Answer such questions with your referral link and get the clients even without having your own website. Stick to the network ethics: avoid spamming in the topics and answer correctly and politely. This will increase the chances that the potential customers will pay attention to your link and buy a tour. You can include tour ads in your posts and earn while chatting on tourism forums.
Posts on Social Media
Vkontakte, Facebook and Odnoklassniki are social media networks where people not only exchange their impressions about the vacation, share photos and memories, but also plan future trips. The affiliate link in the right place at the right moment can bring you revenue from selling tours on the social media.
Additionally, pay attention to the fact that visual perception is the greatest source of information about the surrounding environment. So, use it to your advantage! The best way to demonstrate visual content on social media is to register on Instagram or Youtube.
Instagram provides the opportunity to share images, short videos and stories on the platform. Travel blogs stand out here: people have always been attracted to amazing pictures of lovely landscapes, and Instagram allows you to enjoy impressive views without leaving the room. Inspired followers want to know more about the beautiful locations and how to get there, so this is your chance to get one more client for your affiliate program.
- Youtube
Youtube requires more efforts and special content. Here, you can share videos with both views and places to visit and interesting stories about trips or locations. The point is to catch viewers’ attention, and sharing videos is a great way to do it and to make them click on an affiliate link and choose their next travel destination.
- Telegram
There is another powerful and promising way to earn on tours promotion. Lately, Telegram has changed its place in the ranking of the most used social media platforms and almost reached the top. The platform is actively used not only for communication purposes but also for blogs and business promotion.
Here, you can share your stories and photos as well. The point is to pay enough attention and use a unique approach to draw the attention and stand out. While Telegram remains one of the leading social media platforms, there is a great opportunity for you to promote your blog.
Advertising for Profit Increase
If you have the experience in cooperating with banner networks and teasers, you can buy traffic related to the topic you need and direct it to your affiliate program referral link. If you deal with this on a regular basis, you need to know the statistics and make white- and blacklists of platforms. Analyze the conversion rates to spend less money and multiply the profit.
Articles on Thematic Sites
If you are a good storyteller and an interesting author, post an article on one of the tourism websites and include your affiliate link in the text in a way that seems natural to the reader. If your readers like it, it will bring you clients for months or even years.
Your Own Travel Blog
Even if you travel only once a year, it makes sense to start your own travel blog. You can provide your readers with the tips, recommend places to visit and ways to get there, and of course, advertise the tours. There are 2 possible ways to start your blog:
- use ready-to-use platforms,
- or develop a custom website.
Interesting posts packed with useful information and eye-catching photos will help you promote your blog and make more people click on your referral link.
Word-of-Mouth Advertising
No doubts, there is no better way to encourage people to take advantage of a great opportunity than to recommend it personally. Your friends and family will definitely take your recommendations seriously and participate in your affiliate program.
Key Tools of Affiliate Tourism Programs
There are various tools for successful interaction with the visitor. Each of them has its own impressive advantages that can convince the person to buy a tour:
- Referral Links
This is believed to be the easiest method to add new clients to your list. Affiliate programs provide you with a link to the tour page that contains your own unique ID. When a customer pays for the tour, you get a certain amount of the commission fee. These links can be used anywhere, including forums, articles, emails, websites, blogs, etc. There are two important things you need to remember: a link must evoke the desire to click on it, and it should not look like spam.
- Landings
Colourful, appealing and effective landing pages gather all the information about the advantages of the tours or the company itself. These details encourage a potential traveller to pick an attractive option. It is possible to make a purchase right on the landing page.
- Search Forms
If you have your own website or a blog with the tourism traffic, you should integrate search forms to the web pages. The search forms may contain the information about plane tickets or accommodation. The visitors can find out about prices and buy tours without even leaving the web page.
- Widgets
Widgets are optimized for providing the potential customers with the information about the most popular directions, dates with the lowest prices, subscription to the newsletter about the direction they are interested in, sales and special offers, etc.
- Banners
Many affiliate tours programs offer you a lot of eye-catching banners for free. You can pick a static or animated banner, choose its format and size. You can post the banner on your website, blog or banner network.
Some affiliate travel programs offer 2 options:
- you can either choose pre-made tools,
- or ask the support team to redesign the existing ones according to your needs.
How to Choose Which Tour Offers to Work with
How to choose the advertiser from dozens of tour operators, agencies and affiliate programs in Russia? We would like to tell you about 4 tour offers that definitely deserve your attention.
What is common for all of them? There are a few features we found to be the most significant:
- high affiliate commissions,
- in-time regular payments,
- a wide range of advertising materials and formats,
- individual promos,
- a fast and professional support team,
- conversion rates above average.
Your commission is 3,3% of the tour price.
The affiliate program unites more than 120 tour operators and guarantees the best conditions for the customers.
The most popular directions are Turkey, Russia, Greece, Thailand.
Your commission is 3,3% of the booking price.
Here, more than 80% of Russian clients buy tours with the flight, transfer, accommodation, food and insurance included. There are offers for a few thousand hotels in Thailand, UAE, Cyprus, Dominicans Republic, Seychelles, etc.
Your commission is 5% of the order price.
This affiliate tourism program supports more than 80 countries and provides flights from 50 Russian cities. The main directions include Thailand, Greece, Cyprus, Russia, and Abkhazia. They offer millions of tour packages in various combinations including insurance, tickets and accommodation. On their website, you can take a look at the photos taken by the tourists that have already used this website’s services to visit beautiful places.
Your commission is from 3,5% to 6% of the tour price or 50% of the company’s revenue.
This is the first Ukrainian affiliate tourism program that allows users to book tours without visiting any tour agencies. The website is actively developing and it pays the affiliates 50% of the company’s revenue. It is perfect for working with the Ukrainian traffic. Misto.Travel focuses on booking online. The share of online purchases in 2016 was 0,5%. In comparison with 50% in European countries, it is quite low, but the number keeps growing. So, there is a huge potential for promoting and expanding the clients’ database.
Other Affiliate Travel Programs in Russia and Abroad
You need to be aware of the best affiliate programs out there to keep your head above the water and participate in the most profitable ones. Take a look at the best programs and find out how they work:
Your commission starts from €100.
With no exaggeration, Booking is the world’s leader in accommodation booking. It is hard to imagine the travel industry without it nowadays.
This affiliate program is available for everyone interested. Bloggers, website owners, entrepreneurs, travel agencies, etc. get their profits from the Booking program. The simple sign-up process and an extended list of promotion materials allow partners to receive considerable revenues. Booking uses the PayPal payment system which is quite convenient and reliable.
Your commission is 50%.
TripAdvisor reviews are the guide for many travelers worldwide. No matter what destinations people choose, they check TripAdvisor for reviews first. The website offers attractive affiliate program conditions. The service is really easy to promote as it provides the information about places to go in more than half of a million cities, and it is a well-known brand name. Just post the relevant information and watch the visitors increase your revenue.
Your commission is up to 60%.
Agoda has taken the 3rd position in our overview. Its affiliate program is open to all the website owners and bloggers. When you sign up for the Agoda’s program, be ready to wait up to 72 hours for approval. It is manual and may take a bit more time compared to other programs. Hotel Power ads which are available here enable the profit’s growth, and the minimum payout is around $200.
Your commission starts at 50%.
Where do you go when you need to compare prices for a flight? Yes, you use SkyScanner, and millions of people worldwide do the same. So, participating in the SkyScanner affiliate program is potentially highly profitable, too. The travel widget provided by the company will be your first step to making a profit. If you decide to get more engaged as a SkyScanner affiliate, you can hire a software developer (or try to do it by yourself) and use the SkyScanner travel API to earn more.
Airbnb offers to join a referral program. What does it mean? The participation does not guarantee the direct income but you will get a certain amount of points to your account. You can use them to pay for the Airbnb services. In this way, you can earn from a few dozens to a few thousands of dollars per each successful deal.
How Much You Can Earn as a Travel Affiliate
Your profit depends on two key aspects.
- What type of affiliate program have you chosen?
- How much effort do you invest in your success?
It is never enough to pick a profitable program and believe that it will work for you. No doubts, it is vital to select the one that offers the best conditions, but if you do not pay enough attention and dedicate enough time to this activity, your bank account will not change.
Of course, joining an affiliate program is a source of passive income and cannot fully replace the main occupation or work. So, you can earn around $50-$70 dollars per month if you are not extremely active at promoting.
However, as experience has shown, interesting and appealing content posted a few times a week can bring you $400-$2000 dollars of revenue per month.
What Is Next?
Take a look at what experienced webmasters, arbitrators and SEO specialists recommend:
- diversify traffic,
- do not put everything into one basket,
- see what results in the best conversion rates,
- find out where you can get a higher commission,
- discover where customers return more often,
- analyze the statistics,
- get rid of everything that doesn’t work for you.
Conclusion
Travelpayouts offers a lot of tours that meet the needs and wishes of various target audience groups. We have always wanted to save your time, so we fulfilled all those tasks for you. We studied the market, invested in the advertising and analytics, earned, got burned, checked everything more than once, and selected the best affiliate programs. We studied the ones described above and many more under a microscope to find those who pay in-time and care not only about their customers but about their partners as well.So, we invite you to start working with us right now. It’s quite easy and takes several minutes. All you need to do is register, select a campaign, get an affiliate link, start sending traffic and earn on tours online! In our Step-by-Step Instructions on How to Work with Travelpayouts article, we thoroughly describe how to get started with Travelpayouts, get an affiliate link, embed a form or widget on your site, understand the design and adjust the settings. The descriptions are provided with detailed screenshots for your better understanding.