[My Journey] Scaling a travel blog to $5K per month in 18 months
- Thread starter canellle
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- my journey travel blog
UPDATE #8 - SEPTEMBER REPORT
Hi folks,
Another month another update (I will try to catch up with you more often tho, I really promess!) hope you are surviving the HCU massacre!
September was my best month yet traffic and income-wise even when I took 15 days off for a trip to México. I lost some #1 spots due to the algo update but I also gained some too so I would say that my average traffic is remaining stable, although I am starting to sense a slowdown in traffic due to seasonality (90% of my current posts are summer focus).
WHAT HAPPENED IN SEPTEMBER
Honestly not much in terms of content, I took 15 days off for a work/pleasure trip to Mexico so I only got the chance to write one post that I have just uploaded today. However, in terms of SEO I did spend some time improving my EEAT
I decided to focus a little bit on HARO and managed to get a nice chunk of backlinks, nothing huge but after 5 or 6 pitches I got featured on a MSN (no follow sadly) and a CNN article and gained more links from other outlets that replicated them. I also did one link exchange through a Facebook group with a guy who had 2 travel blogs with a 30 DR so we triangulated a link for each site
My DA according to Semrush went from 21 to 23 but Ahrefs keeps me on 11 without recognizing any of my latest wins.
I also invested a couple of minutes on adding an author bio to my posts and creating an author page as both things were missing. Hopefully these little tweaks and more and more links coming under my name will improve some rankings too.
RESULTS
Last month I wrote my first ever 100% commercial post on hotels (best hotel in XXX for XXX) and it started to pay off. It is currently ranking #7 but the 38 pageviews that I got from it made 3 sales for €57.11 (around $60) so I am definitely going to focus a little bit more on these super-targeted keywords as, as long as it wasn't beginners luck, the ROI from each visitor seems insane.
In August I also spotted on TikTok an activity trending on a destination that I wasn't covering and wrote a full article about how to do it as there was no one covering that. As a result, I got +1,100 pageviews in September, making it my biggest article by far.
I don't expect this post to rank for a longer time as 1)the trend will go down eventually 2)anyone covering that destination can outrank in a heart bit so I am creating a lead magnet to at least gain some emails for my list before I get hit
So far, these are the results of the month. A +54% traffic increase is really good but I would love to reach 10k pageviews before December so I can apply to Monumetric and take advantage of December's high RPM, I will definitely need to find more time to write:
A/B TESTING
On August and September I have consistently made $10 from a post about something like "cheapest cities to stay in Florida". The post gets 500-600 pageviews per month but the search intent is not 100% commercial so I decided to use Tripadvisor affiliate links on them. If you are not aware, Tripadvisor pays really low fees BUT they have a 30 day cookie and you also earn whenever a user clicks on their booking/hotels.com/etc links so you don't need a sale to earn something.
On the other side, I have a "best hotels in Miami with private jacuzzi" style of post made $60 from 3 sales at Booking.com, which has a 1 day cookie window. It was insane to see these results as this was a 29% conversion rate per user
At first it made sense to use the CPC model on posts not that focused and leave Booking for those posts where the reader is actually with their credit card on hand waiting to buy something but seeing the average commission rate I got ($20) I am starting to doubt it.
I have decided to make a test and just changed all my links from the "untargeted" posts to Booking. My theory is that even if I make 1 sale I will end up earning more that with Tripadvisor but I am actually expecting to geat at least a 3% CR and earn +$240.
Let's hope this works!
Hi folks,
Another month another update (I will try to catch up with you more often tho, I really promess!) hope you are surviving the HCU massacre!
September was my best month yet traffic and income-wise even when I took 15 days off for a trip to México. I lost some #1 spots due to the algo update but I also gained some too so I would say that my average traffic is remaining stable, although I am starting to sense a slowdown in traffic due to seasonality (90% of my current posts are summer focus).
WHAT HAPPENED IN SEPTEMBER
Honestly not much in terms of content, I took 15 days off for a work/pleasure trip to Mexico so I only got the chance to write one post that I have just uploaded today. However, in terms of SEO I did spend some time improving my EEAT
I decided to focus a little bit on HARO and managed to get a nice chunk of backlinks, nothing huge but after 5 or 6 pitches I got featured on a MSN (no follow sadly) and a CNN article and gained more links from other outlets that replicated them. I also did one link exchange through a Facebook group with a guy who had 2 travel blogs with a 30 DR so we triangulated a link for each site
My DA according to Semrush went from 21 to 23 but Ahrefs keeps me on 11 without recognizing any of my latest wins.
I also invested a couple of minutes on adding an author bio to my posts and creating an author page as both things were missing. Hopefully these little tweaks and more and more links coming under my name will improve some rankings too.
RESULTS
Last month I wrote my first ever 100% commercial post on hotels (best hotel in XXX for XXX) and it started to pay off. It is currently ranking #7 but the 38 pageviews that I got from it made 3 sales for €57.11 (around $60) so I am definitely going to focus a little bit more on these super-targeted keywords as, as long as it wasn't beginners luck, the ROI from each visitor seems insane.
In August I also spotted on TikTok an activity trending on a destination that I wasn't covering and wrote a full article about how to do it as there was no one covering that. As a result, I got +1,100 pageviews in September, making it my biggest article by far.
I don't expect this post to rank for a longer time as 1)the trend will go down eventually 2)anyone covering that destination can outrank in a heart bit so I am creating a lead magnet to at least gain some emails for my list before I get hit
So far, these are the results of the month. A +54% traffic increase is really good but I would love to reach 10k pageviews before December so I can apply to Monumetric and take advantage of December's high RPM, I will definitely need to find more time to write:
A/B TESTING
On August and September I have consistently made $10 from a post about something like "cheapest cities to stay in Florida". The post gets 500-600 pageviews per month but the search intent is not 100% commercial so I decided to use Tripadvisor affiliate links on them. If you are not aware, Tripadvisor pays really low fees BUT they have a 30 day cookie and you also earn whenever a user clicks on their booking/hotels.com/etc links so you don't need a sale to earn something.
On the other side, I have a "best hotels in Miami with private jacuzzi" style of post made $60 from 3 sales at Booking.com, which has a 1 day cookie window. It was insane to see these results as this was a 29% conversion rate per user
At first it made sense to use the CPC model on posts not that focused and leave Booking for those posts where the reader is actually with their credit card on hand waiting to buy something but seeing the average commission rate I got ($20) I am starting to doubt it.
I have decided to make a test and just changed all my links from the "untargeted" posts to Booking. My theory is that even if I make 1 sale I will end up earning more that with Tripadvisor but I am actually expecting to geat at least a 3% CR and earn +$240.
Let's hope this works!
ashishs036
Regular Member
- Apr 14, 2011
- 455
- 205
Wow, bro, keep it up. Blogging is king if you work consistently. Following you keep us updated.
Thanks! sometimes I feel like I am not devoting the amount of time that I should to it but if I am being honest I am proud of the consistency that I am managing, even when 2 hours per day on the week feels very little it is the most focused that I have ever been on a side project
ashishs036
Regular Member
- Apr 14, 2011
- 455
- 205
The same happens with everybody. Don't worry, it's human nature.
UPDATE #9 - A/B Partial results
It's been more than a week since I changed the links of "cheapest cities to stay in Florida" (example title) from Tripadvisor affiliate program to Booking.com and I haven't made a single sale yet. I am back to my theory that Booking and its 24hs cookie only works for hyper-targeted keywords such as 'best hotels to stay in Miami with private jacuzzi' but I am still letting this test run until the end of the month so I can have a proper conclusion.
Traffic wise I am down baby! My 1,600 pageviews per month article was hit in this last update
I am still the only website covering a proper answer but I lost most of the rankings. So far it seems like it is the only post that got hit this hard so my assumption is that this happened because I didn't have more content on this destination which means poor interlinking and bad topical authority.Overall the rest of the rankings remain the same (some downs covered by some gains) but traffic is still low so I am guess I am entering the low season of traveling, which makes sense as the 3 destinations that I am covering right now are mainly summer destinations.
Does any of you recommend a (not so expensive) tool to keep track of rankings? I am having a hard time following it through GSC, would love to know if there is any tool that can make it easier.
UPDATE #10
THE WORST MONTH SO FAR!!!!!!!!!!
I thought I'd survived the September update but Google decided to shit on me in October
WHAT HAPPENED IN OCTOBER
My main post that was bringing +1,500 pageviews per month went down, and when I say down I mean not even ranking on page 10. The post was about how to get a reservation for a popular restaurant, sure it makes sense that the official website of the restaurant ranks #1 but the thing is that it is impossible to get a reservation there and my article was the only one in the whole internet (I swear, I am not exaggerating) explaining the secrets to secure one (like, for example, staying at a hotel owned by the same company and ask them to secure you a spot).I am not gonna work on that article anymore because it is already original, detailed and helpful content that you won't find anywhere else so if Google don't want to rank that there is nothing I can do. The moral of the story is: next time you have an overachieving article make your #1 priority to create a lead magnet to capture the traffic, I was planning to do it but I prioritized other things and now is too late.
Overall the rest of the articles are ranking the same (maybe one going up and others going down) but I am still seeing a decrease in traffic so I guess is just the low season.
I managed to post 3 new articles but during 2 out of 4 weeks of the month Google Search Console had a bug and I couldn't index any of them, so we will see in november how they perform.
A/B TESTING EXPERIMENT
If you remember my last update I was earning around $10 per month on a "Cheapest cities to stay in Florida" article (different city) with Tripadvisor program. In case you don't know, tripadvisor pays for every click that a person does on their rate comparison table so you earn just cents from it BUT you don't need to make a sale to see some money.My strategy was to use Booking for commercial intent posts ('10 hotels in Miami with private jacuzzi') and Tripadvisor for posts where the search intent is not that focused on an inmediatly sale. However, in October I tried an experiment and switched all the links to Booking.
My rationale was that even if I only make 1 sale on Booking I will still earn more than Tripadvisor, WRONG!!!!
The clicks on Booking escalated but nobody booked so this month I am going back to my original plan. I am still happy that I tested it anyway
NEXT STEPS FOR NOVEMBER
- WRITE WRITE WRITE: The algo update hit my morale so now more than ever I need to squeeze more content. I was diagnosed with a rare disease this month and I have a 5 day trip planned but I have to still manage to write more
- Give Pinterest a shot: I got 57 clicks from Pinterest this month, it is not much but I only dedicate 15 minutes per day to it and those 57 outbound clicks are a +170% increase from september so I am trying to learn more about Pinterest, and see how I can use AI to speed up content
- Steal competitors keywords: I was only writing about topics that no one covered before or topics with posts from 3 years ago ranking #1 but if I want to grow fast I need to be more agressive, I paid for a Keysearch sibscription and I am now looking for starter travel blogs with DA 25 (like mine) or less to check their top performing keywords. I only steal a keyword when it is about one of the destinations I am already covering so I can keep expanding the topical authority and use my own pictures to make the post look unique
dinokrizty
Regular Member
- Dec 11, 2022
- 438
- 145
Good luck with your journey!
bottingisfine
Power Member
- Apr 13, 2022
- 590
- 222
Nice! I created a programmatic site with thousands of posts in a day. Travel niche.
Were you accepted in the Booking program very fast? Thanks
Were you accepted in the Booking program very fast? Thanks
How is that working for you? how many posts and pageviews are you getting?
Honestly I don't remember well how long it took but I am sure it was pretty straight-foward. At first I tried to apply through TravelPayouts and was instantly rejected but then I applied directly to Booking's program and they accepted me in a couple days
blogmen
Elite Member
- May 16, 2021
- 1,919
- 2,333
Ditto. When the bulk of the traffic comes from one or two articles, the risk is too high to lose the traffic. Need more articles to spread the risk.
I hope it's nothing too serious.
Zher0
Regular Member
- Nov 18, 2011
- 237
- 78
How are you selling these blogs? Like what marketplace do you use?
Hope that too! Apparently it's not but because it is so rare I will need several tests to check that it is not affecting something else on my system.
In my opinion for such small blogs like the ones I sold the best thing are Facebook groups, I think I sold mine on 'Website flipping' but there are a lot, just make sure to use escrow so you don't get scammed
samvolcano
Newbie
- Sep 12, 2022
- 39
- 13
Any update?