How To Become A Professional Travel Blogger – Going Pro

Exactly 10,731,924 people (give or take a few) have started a travel blog. Of those, maybe (just my best guess here), a couple thousand are professional travel blogs. Admittedly, I may be a little off on the numbers, but the point is this: there’s a whack-load of travel blogs out there, both professional and not.

We started The Barefoot Nomad back in 2008 (which is roughly equivalent to the mid-Jurassic Period in Internet years). For a few years we chugged along, writing occasional updates on our travels for the handful of people who read them (Hi Mom!)

First, though, what makes a travel blogger professional?

We could spend a lot of time arguing the fine points of this, but a professional in any field is someone who gets paid, while someone doing the same thing as a hobbyist does not.

So, at least for our purpose today, a professional travel blogger gets paid for his or her work.

Making money as a travel blogger

There are a lot of different ways to make money as a blogger. Some of the more common ways are placing ads on your site, using affiliate links (where you get paid a percentage of any products you sell) and working with tourism boards, hotels and travel companies to promote their destination or product.

In this post, we’re going to focus on working with sponsors, travel brands and tourism boards.

As of a few years ago, there were really no companies that worked specifically to connect travel bloggers to travel brands and tourism organizations. Most companies that connect bloggers to brands focus on mommy blogs or technology. They occasionally have travel-related campaigns, but they’re few and far between.