How to Monetise Your Existing Travel Content With Travelpayouts

If you already write about travel, you may have articles that help people decide what to book. Adding a useful affiliate link gives them a next step and gives you a chance to earn a commission.

You do not need to rewrite your whole site. Start with five guides people already read, such as a neighbourhood guide, a rental car article or a transport route. Here is how to add Travelpayouts links that fit those pages.

Some links in this guide are affiliate links. If you join Travelpayouts through my link and meet its referral conditions, I may earn a reward.

1. Pick five articles with a clear booking question

Look at your analytics or Search Console and find articles receiving visits. Choose pages where someone is likely to need a booking next.

• Where to stay: readers need hotels or hostels in the area you recommend.
• Car rental: readers need cars at the destination or pickup location you discuss.
• Transport: readers need tickets for a particular route.
• Things to do: readers may want to book an activity in their itinerary.
• eSIM advice: readers need a plan with suitable coverage and data.

Choose the articles that suit your blog; you do not need one from every category. If most of your traffic goes to accommodation guides, start there.

The free five-article worksheet gives you space to note each page, the service you want to recommend and where the link will go.

2. Add your blog to Travelpayouts

Create an account, add your website as a project and describe the content you publish. If you have more than one site, add each so you can keep their activity separate.

Browse the available programmes and choose the ones that match your articles. Before joining a programme, read its requirements, commission details and payment conditions. Some may need to review your project.

If you are opening a new account, my referral link may qualify you for a creator bonus. The Travelpayouts review explains the offer and its conditions.

3. Create a link to the right destination or service

Use the programme’s link generator inside your account. Where the tool supports it, choose the destination, route or product you want readers to find.

For a Jeju rental car guide, send someone towards Jeju car rental options. For a Bali accommodation guide, choose a relevant area or hotel search. You are helping the reader continue planning, rather than making them start again on a generic homepage.

Copy the complete generated link so your tracking details stay intact. Open it to check that it reaches the page you expect.

Some tools let you add a SubID or label. A short label based on your article makes it easier to recognise the link later in your reports. Use the options available in that programme’s generator.

4. Give readers a reason to click

Explain the choice before you add the link. Who does the option suit? Why would someone use it? What do they need to check before booking?

In a car rental article, that might mean explaining when driving is worthwhile, where to pick up the car and how deposits work. Then a button saying “Compare Jeju rental cars” makes sense.

Put the button on its own line after the recommendation. Keep ordinary links inside sentences as ordinary links; a large button in the middle of a paragraph interrupts the reading.

Add a short affiliate disclosure near your first recommendation. If you edit HTML yourself, mark paid links with rel="sponsored".

5. Read the page on your phone

Open the published article on a phone and read it as a visitor would. Check that:

• The button text is easy to read and the button is comfortable to tap.
• The link opens the destination or service you described.
• Comparison tables are readable without stretching the whole page.
• Ads and floating controls leave the recommendation visible.
• Email signup takes up a reasonable amount of space.

Check the full page, rather than just the editor preview. Your theme, forms and ads can change how it looks once it is live.

6. Check whether readers use the links

Write down when you added the links and how many visits those pages receive. Then check your affiliate reports for clicks, bookings and commission.

If a page has readers but very few clicks, look at the recommendation. Is it relevant? Can people find it? Does the link clearly say what it opens?

If people click but do not book, check the destination and available options. They may also still be comparing prices or planning a trip further ahead.

If bookings appear but payment has not arrived, check their status and the programme’s payment rules. A future trip may need to be completed before the commission is approved.

7. Improve the pages that show promise

Once you can see which links people use, make one useful improvement at a time. You might move a buried recommendation nearer the relevant advice, choose a more specific destination link or explain a confusing booking detail.

Keep the date of each change so you can compare what happens afterwards. Give the page enough visits to learn something before changing it again.

Start with those five articles, then apply what you learn to the rest of your content. Download the free worksheet to plan them, or read how I use affiliate links on Backpacking Is Life for examples.