How would YOU monetize 'Travel' Instagram Accounts?

Ajax4life123

Ajax4life123

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Hey guys,

The last year I've been growing 20 different Instagram accounts in the 'Travel' niche. Before I made them I thought about monetizing them, however, it didn't go as planned.

I thought about selling shoutouts to travel blogs, smaller travel accounts, and such things. Even selling grown accounts was an option for me. It didn't really work out like that. I had a hard time selling promotional space on my account.

Anyway, after this year I have 20 accounts ranging from 25k-70k followers with a decent engagement rate. (around 10%)

I love traveling myself, so I thought about going on journeys with the money made by these accounts. So all those accounts finance my holidays/trips. I thought about sending traffic to a website made by me and collect e-mails. Or make a youtube channel and promote the videos on Instagram. I'm not sure though.

So my question:
What would you do to get the best out of these accounts?
 
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Affiliate programs like Airbnb, you can first let them pass through so you can get their emails then start promoting affiliate offers relating to the travel niche.
If you have a huge following, you can also sell shoutouts.
 
I´m actually currently looking to buy an account in the travel niche with the goal to leverage it for free travels. As you said that you love traveling I would suggest to try the same with your accounts. But first maybe focus on 1 to max. 3 accounts and grow them to a decent size. Cause if you wanna use them for free travels 1 to 3 big accounts are gonna help you more than 20 accounts with less then 100k followers each.
 
RA1NMAN said:
drop shipping airplane pillows, sell travel advice, etc. infinite ways
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I thought about dropshipping too, that's how I monetize accounts in another niche with around the same amount of followers. However, with the travel niche, I found it much harder to set up a complete store for traveling with products they would buy. (especially because most of the time the products are too cheap.)

Travel advice could work, not sure though.

Notion said:
You are also able to leverage these for free travel
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I found out that I couldn't really get free travel from the main travel providers on the web because I have a larger amount of accounts. Not 1 account with 100k+ followers. I've sent out e-mails to them in the past, but never got any free trip or something like that.

Victor E said:
Affiliate programs like Airbnb, you can first let them pass through so you can get their emails then start promoting affiliate offers relating to the travel niche.
If you have a huge following, you can also sell shoutouts.
Click to expand...

I think that Airbnb is a great way of getting a place to stay in like every city that exists. However, their affiliate program is shit for me. I mean, I like traveling and they pay in credits to use with them. But if I want to earn some money from them, it's just not possible.

SocialNV said:
I´m actually currently looking to buy an account in the travel niche with the goal to leverage it for free travels. As you said that you love traveling I would suggest to try the same with your accounts. But first maybe focus on 1 to max. 3 accounts and grow them to a decent size. Cause if you wanna use them for free travels 1 to 3 big accounts are gonna help you more than 20 accounts with less then 100k followers each.
Click to expand...

I think that's definitely true. I could use the other accounts to grow like 1-3 accounts to 100k+ and afterward get some free travels or promote hotels or something like that.

Thanks for the reply's guys! I am looking further and try to grow my accounts to a bigger amount of followers. If you have some idea's, just tell them :)
 
Trip Advisor or Booking.com affiliates - win?
 
br4sco said:
Trip Advisor or Booking.com affiliates - win?
Click to expand...

Trip advisor, booking.com, and Airbnb are the ones I've looked into. Especially Booking.com and trip advisor could work very well if I can make a landing page to collect e-mails. I'll have a closer look at those.

light2298 said:
If you can't monetize you should sell them.
Click to expand...

I know it can be monetized at some point. When they are bigger I might shout out my personal Instagram account where I share everything travel related (+youtube channel). Anyways, we'll see.

King_zyzz said:
There is a lot of competition these days, with shout out space. Especially in the travel.
You need a really big account to compete with others. Might be a option to sell them and get 1 big account for promotion offers or even leverage it for trips etc.

I think they sell for 8-12 USD per 1K followers now days
Click to expand...

So you think it will be better to just sell the accounts and buy one big account instead of 20 smaller ones? I thought about creating my own network of 'travel' accounts and then grow my personal account from them.
 
Victor E said:
Affiliate programs like Airbnb, you can first let them pass through so you can get their emails then start promoting affiliate offers relating to the travel niche.
If you have a huge following, you can also sell shoutouts.
Click to expand...

I am also doing this, and learned that Airbnb affiliate program has limits. I think max 20 referrals per account?
 
Ajax4life123 said:
So you think it will be better to just sell the accounts and buy one big account instead of 20 smaller ones? I thought about creating my own network of 'travel' accounts and then grow my personal account from them.
Click to expand...

it's all about leverage even with that option, shout out for shout groups from which you can grow also, prefer to take in big accounts.
(Ajax Amsterdam for life as well here haha)
 
Hey bro. Why don't you just build personal brand/account and send all the traffic to it?
Man, you have the gold. Do you really need those fast money that affiliate programs can make you?

I'd do the long run -> Make an amazing personal/travel IG account and additionally your personal brand website in travel/happiness niche. Constantly send all the traffic from those accs.
 
Those are already decently sized accounts IMO. Why don't you just continue to grow them like now and occasionally make your own monetized posts with affiliate links, marketing your other accounts for cross benefit etc? Slow and stable growth all the way baby...
 
I grow a food page for a client and he uses it to gets free meals on restaurants every day in exchange of posting the pic of their meal and restaurant name, tag. So not only he gets a free meal but he also gets free original content to post on his account, as I only do the follow, unfollow, like for him. You could do the same but for hotels instead of restaurant, but you would need to tweak the accounts a bit, so for example if you were to request to stay at a hotel in Bali, you could change the bio of some accounts for them to recommend hotels in Bali or something like that. Bali must have hundreds of hotels, so you could live there for free for a few months, maybe.
 
thelastvacation said:
I grow a food page for a client and he uses it to gets free meals on restaurants every day in exchange of posting the pic of their meal and restaurant name, tag. So not only he gets a free meal but he also gets free original content to post on his account, as I only do the follow, unfollow, like for him. You could do the same but for hotels instead of restaurant, but you would need to tweak the accounts a bit, so for example if you were to request to stay at a hotel in Bali, you could change the bio of some accounts for them to recommend hotels in Bali or something like that. Bali must have hundreds of hotels, so you could live there for free for a few months, maybe.
Click to expand...

Do you know if your client was reaching out to these restaurants? Or the restaurants contact her for collabs?
 
DKM said:
Do you know if your client was reaching out to these restaurants? Or the restaurants contact her for collabs?
Click to expand...

He reaches out, the account is about typical food and restaurants from one european country, so he he lives in the capital which has hundreds of restaurants, and whenever he travels within his country he reaches out to the restaurants in other cities before arriving.
 
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Build a site > Funnel traffic from those account to the site > Work with Travel Ad Network (TravelSpike for example) -> they pay good!
 
Before anything else, OP @Ajax4life123 sorry for asking too many questions on your thread. I really liked that you created it and it happens we're on the same niche... hope you don't mind. :)

thelastvacation said:
He reaches out, the account is about typical food and restaurants from one european country, so he he lives in the capital which has hundreds of restaurants, and whenever he travels within his country he reaches out to the restaurants in other cities before arriving.
Click to expand...

Cool, thanks sharing it. Great idea. :)

se900se said:
Build a site > Funnel traffic from those account to the site > Work with Travel Ad Network (TravelSpike for example) -> they pay good!
Click to expand...

I checked their website and I have the impression that they only admit quality sites to their network. I am not sure if a landing site would work. Can you share us your experience with them?
 
thelastvacation said:
He reaches out, the account is about typical food and restaurants from one european country, so he he lives in the capital which has hundreds of restaurants, and whenever he travels within his country he reaches out to the restaurants in other cities before arriving.
Click to expand...

Can I ask how many followers he has to be able to do this?
 
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