What Affiliate Marketing and Online Income Actually Earn Us on the Road
By trade, I’m a writer. I write articles, blogs and websites for other companies, they find me, I do the project, and they pay me for it. That’s freelance writing, and it’s genuinely how we fund a good chunk of our own travels.
We’ve written before about how we personally fund our big lap, so if you want the fuller picture on that side of things, it’s worth a read. This one’s about the online income side specifically, because there are a lot of different possibilities, and also a lot of traps to watch out for.
If It Sounds Too Good to Be True, It Is
Before getting into it, one real warning first. There are a lot of promises out there on the internet, especially once you’re chasing this kind of travel lifestyle. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you can make money in your sleep just by buying someone’s course.
Unfortunately, for 99.9% of people, it doesn’t actually work that way. So if it sounds too good to be true, it is.
Affiliate Marketing: A Small Cut, Not a Quick Win
Affiliate marketing is basically when somebody buys a product from your web page or social media, and you get a small percentage cut. You might have seen on our page that we’ve got some products we use all the time, and if you click through and buy, we get a small percentage of what the product is.
There’s also what’s called high-ticket affiliate marketing, where you can get a bigger commission, but there are more potential issues that come with that too.
Freelancing Is the Most Normal Online Option
Freelancing would have to be the most normal way to earn online. It’s where you use your existing skills, or new ones. Years ago I wasn’t a writer, I learned it and took courses to build up my writing experience. If this is an option for you, it’s genuinely worth upskilling yourself.
What Ad Revenue Actually Looks Like
Social media by itself is generally about ad revenue. Full disclosure, on our YouTube channel we make about $250 or so a month. But the amount of effort it takes to put into a video, plus the time, compared to the money you get back, it’s probably not worth it on its own.
Facebook has a monetisation program too. Full disclosure again, last month we made about $250 from Facebook ads. Our Facebook page is Margie and Tim, same as our YouTube, and we’ve got about eight and a half thousand followers, earning roughly $200 to $250 a month.
Other Ways People Earn Online
If you’re selling a product or a service, say you’re a hairdresser wanting new clients, you might start a YouTube channel about hairdressing to find those clients. YouTube becomes a way to find your customers, rather than the income source itself.
There’s also UGC, where brands send you products to film content with, and pay you for the video. You can use this one with any number of followers, because generally the brand sending the item wants the video for their own social media page.
- How to Find Casual Work While You Travel Australia
- FIFO Work or Taking Your Job Remote: Another Way to Fund Your Big Lap
Our Thoughts
Between freelancing, affiliate marketing and ad revenue, there’s no single answer for funding travel through online work, it’s really a mix of a few smaller streams rather than one big one. For us, freelance writing does the heavy lifting, and the rest tops it up.
If you’d like a hand working out your own real numbers for the trip, our budget planner walks you through it.
👉If you want to work out your own real numbers, our budget planner can help here.
