How To Become A Travel Influencer And Get Paid in 2024
Robyn moments after opening her MacBook Air - paid for by our travel account!
We have all seen it, influencers lying around on beaches getting paid to post their idyllic lifestyles all over social media. It leaves us wondering, how on earth are they living a life of luxury and getting paid for it while I am sat in a 9-5 office job.
Firstly, we should never be fooled by what we see on social media as it is crafted to perfection. Additionally, there is nothing wrong with a 9-5 office job! However, it doesn’t stop us from fantasising about the ‘how to become a travel influencer and get paid’.
We are lucky enough to run a travel blog and work remotely. We have been fortunate to experience hidden gems such as Rest and Wild Cabins and discover things to do in Florence. ,
If your dream is to travel the world, work remotely and get paid for it, you need to start working on it as soon as possible. A common problem is that people are always waiting till tomorrow to start, and then tomorrow never comes. So if you want it bad enough, start immediately after reading this article.
Becoming a travel influencer is more complex than posting, flying between exotic destinations, taking pictures and getting paid. There are many strategies behind creating a loyal following and reaching a large audience.
We are combining our Instagram, TikTok, and blogging knowledge to guide you on how to become a travel influencer and get paid for it. Follow along to find out our best advice.
Before we start, check out our 53-page guide on how to travel the world and unlock luxury experiences for free!
How to Become a Travel Influencer
Let’s start off with the basics. We all need to start somewhere.
It can feel like an absolute mind field when it comes to starting something new. That’s why we are going to make it as straightforward as possible when learning how to become a travel influencer. The following steps are the key things you need to consider.
Before we get in, here’s a quick summary:
Finding Your Niche: Successful travel influencers identify a specific niche like luxury travel or adventure travel to create high-quality professional content that resonates with their audience and attracts travel-related brands.
Content Creation and Strategy: To become a paid travel influencer, it's crucial to plan and create valuable content consistently, utilizing relevant hashtags and influencer marketing to engage a broader audience and boost visibility.
Social Media and Influencer Marketing: Utilizing platforms like Instagram for posting Instagram stories and regular updates is essential for influencer marketing. Successful travel influencers engage actively with tourism boards and travel brands, leading to sponsored content opportunities.
Engaging with Travel Brands: Creating sponsored content and forming partnerships with travel brands are key strategies for making money as a travel influencer. This includes pitching to potential partners and showcasing marketing skills to secure paid collaborations.
Consistency and Audience Engagement: Maintaining a regular posting schedule and interacting with followers helps successful travel influencers keep their audience engaged. This engagement is crucial for influencer marketing, attracting micro influencers, and securing more sponsored content deals.
Find a niche: The First Thing you Must do When Learning How to Become a Travel Influencer
Finding a niche as a travel influencer is more challenging than it sounds. Most people think that being a travel influencer in itself is a niche. It is, but you need to be more specific than that. In a saturated market, you need to stand out and to be just a travel influencer isn’t going to cut it.
Take A Couple Things To Do, for example. We are a travel blog specifically aimed at couples. Therefore, our niche is being a travel couple. Other niches could be Luxury travel, budget travel, backpacking or even solo travel.
Now, don’t get us wrong, this does not lock you in a box and throw away the key. It does not mean that travel couples will only pick up your content. It just helps to hone down on precisely what content you want to produce and who your target audience is.
Our earnings from TikTok in a week - not a flex, just for transparency. It can be done!
The best way to think about your niche is that it helps guide you on what to create. If you were to look at travel influencers as a whole, it would overwhelm you with ideas. Instead, having a niche helps narrow down the content you want to take inspiration from and what brands you want to target to become a travel influencer and get paid.
A Memorable Name: Something for People to Recognise When Thinking of Travel Influencers
Now comes the creative part. As much as we stress the importance of starting as soon as possible, don’t rush your name. We understand that picking a name is not what you think of when wondering how to become a travel influencer, but it is essential!
Your travel influencer name will be your brand. It will be with you along the way, so you want to make it something you are:
1) proud of
2) you like
3) something brands would work with
It is the first thing brands, and your audience will see when looking at your content. So you want to present yourself in the way you want to be seen.
Create Social Media Channels: Key when Learning to Become a Travel Influencer
This might sound really obvious. Of course, you need social media to become a travel influencer; otherwise, how do you influence?
That is not entirely true; some people have become travel influencers solely through blogging and no social media platforms. However, that is harder and can take longer in the long run. To give you the best possible chance of becoming a travel influencer and getting paid for it is to spread yourself across social media platforms.
Creating a social media platform is just the start. Don’t worry about growing your followers super quick, as this will come with time. For now, just set them up and follow accounts in a similar niche to yours. Then, simply just start posting your content.
Now, we don’t want to overwhelm you and tell you to need to be on every platform out there because you don’t. However, picking a few to focus on is key. For example, we have a blog (what you are currently reading), a TikTok and an Instagram.
We focus on a few different avenues rather than one because we can share them all. So, for example, if we post a blog here, we can also mention that on our Instagram. Or, if we write a blog that links to one of our TikToks, we can link it here.
That way, you give yourself more chances of creating a more significant following as there are more platforms for you to be noticed.
Plan out your Content and Influencer Marketing Strategy
You might look at travel influencers and think posting their beautiful photos and videos is easy. In the grand scheme of things, it is. However, without keeping on top of planning your content and scoping out what is popular in your niche, it becomes difficult.
To grow an audience and stay relevant in your field, you must keep up to date with trends. On top of that, you need to be planning what you are posting next. For example, if you know you are not travelling anywhere in the next few weeks or months, what content can you post in that time?
Could you reuse old videos and photos and repurpose them? Could you make videos or posts about travel tips? Do you have lots of drafted content ready to post at that time? These are the things you need to think about, especially when becoming a travel influencer.
Specifically for travel influencers, keeping momentum can be difficult if you are not yet full-time travelling and doing amazing things. So, you need to think ahead and plan. If your niche is luxury travel, are there posts you could create showing people how to fly business class?
High Quality
You want to make sure you are producing content you are happy with. You do not want to be posting content for the sake of it.
Creating content people want to see is key to becoming a travel influencer and getting paid for it. So, ask yourself when creating your content if it is something you would want to watch/ see? If it is not, then don’t post.
Now, I know that can sound contradictory as you want to put content out there consistently, even when not travelling. However, that is where you create your own timetable. We will touch on how to stay consistent later in the blog.
What do your Audience want to see
If you think about it, you are your own audience. You have started your travel Instagram account and social media accounts because you are passionate about your travel niche. For us we loved watching travel couples and always aspired to make travelling our lifestyle.
Therefore for us, it is easy to know what our audience wants. We create videos and content that we ourselves would like to see. Therefore, knowing what your audience wants to see should be relatively easy.
You can use analytics to learn more about your audience, which can inform what they want to see - this shows where people visit our blog from.
However, if you are unsure, research other travel influencers in your niche and see what they are posting. Then, spend time researching the content you need to produce and what does well in your niche. This is the key to becoming a travel influencer and getting paid.
What Hashtags do you want to Rank for to Travel for Free
Now, where a lot of creators go wrong is hashtagging left, right and centre. Don’t get us wrong, hashtags are great and help travel influencers out massively. However, you don’t want to saturate each post with them.
To break it down, think of hashtags as subjects. If you add 30 different subjects to your post, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube don’t know what to rank you for. It can come across as spammy and confusing. It is almost as if you don’t know what you really want to be ranking for.
Therefore, you need to be concise. Pick 5-7 hashtags you really want to rank for and align with your travel niche. For example, ours are:
#travel couple
#travel bloggers
#travelgram/ #traveltiktok (depending on the platform)
#traveltips
#acouplethingstodo.
They are all similar and have areas that align completely with our target audience. So don’t overwhelm the system, and keep it simple. Plus, it will save you a lot of time only keeping to a few hashtags!!
Our account growth from 7 to 18.5k followers in ~3 weeks
Consistency: How to Become a Travel Influencer on Instagram
Post, Rinse, Repeat - this is key for content creators.
If we had to pick one thing to focus on, it would be consistency! Consistency is vital when learning how to become a travel influencer and get paid for it.
This is where a lot of people get scared and think, ‘omg, I can’t do that!’, ‘I don’t have the time, ‘What can I post?’. Don’t worry; let us explain.
When staying consistent with your posting, we don’t necessarily mean posting every single day. Some massive TikTokers might post 3 times a day! But if you look at their niche, it is easier to do that. Plus, that might be their full-time job.
For travel influencers, until you reach the ultimate goal of travelling becoming your everyday life, posting every single day, multiple times a day, isn’t realistic. Therefore, you need to create a timetable that is suitable for you and stay consistent.
You could post 3 times a week on your different platforms. As long as you stay consistent with this, then it will help your travel influencer growth. This is where having several platforms comes in really handy.
You could alternate your post if you have TikTok, a blog and an Instagram. So one day, you could post a blog and mention it on your Instagram story. The next day you could post a TikTok and post that to your Instagram story as well. Then, the day after, you could post a reel on Instagram and link that to your next blog. Can you see the pattern?
This way, you stay consistent across all platforms and link them together. Then, once you have found a timetable that suits you, the rest should fall into place.
Connect with your Followers: How to Become a Travel Influencer and get paid
It is super easy to think that once you have posted your content, you can sit back and watch the views and likes roll in. If that happens, great. You are doing something right and well on your way to becoming a travel influencer.
However, if you want to replicate that time and time again, you need to be interacting with your audience. If you get comments on your content asking questions, then make sure you reply. We don’t mean every single comment but responding to a few here and there shows your audience you are real people they can relate to.
As a travel influencer, you are bound to get questions about the prices or locations of places you have been to. Replying shows you add value. Adding value is what is going to keep followers coming back, as you are more than just a pretty aesthetic.
Similarly, you can use comments to create new content. For example, say you keep getting the same question; you can create a video or story answering the question. So, sometimes it helps you and your audience.
It also shows brands you have a loyal audience who respect you and come back consistently. Brands are more likely to work with you if your engagement rate is high. In addition, you are less risky for them to invest in as you have almost guaranteed views/ likes/ comments.
Reach Out to Brands: Build your Travel Influencer Brand
Controversial, we know. But you have to start somewhere.
With the travel influencer community, it is less common for brands to reach out for collaboration or a gifted experience. Unlike the fashion and beauty world, brands are more likely to reach out with gifted clothes with a smaller following.
That is not to say that brands don’t do that in the travel industry, but it is not as common. So, therefore, you have to almost put yourself out there to get brands to notice you. There are a few ways to do this.
First, you have to build up a substantial following and engagement. It doesn’t have to be massive, but you must establish your niche, content and image.
You can either reach out to brands yourself or get management. If you want to reach out yourself, you need to:
Create a pitching template (for emails and DM’s)
Create a media kit
Work out your prices
Make a list of all the brands you want to work with
Have a follow-up pitch
Once you have all that, you can start reaching out to brands with your pitch and why you think the collaboration would suit you. A great course to help you get started is the Blog Lifestyle Mastery. It will help you to get started with everything you need to know.
Or, you could contact a few influencer management companies who will take care of that for you. Your manager’s job would be to connect you with brands within your travel niche. This is where you become a travel influencer and get paid for it!
Be Yourself: How to Become a Travel Influencer and get paid
At the end of the day, people are going to follow you for you. You won't get free accommodation and save money if you're faking it.
Everyone you follow on your own social media is someone you like and can relate to. Therefore, people will follow you if they relate to you and buy into you as a person.
So yes, staying consistent and creating high-quality content will help you to become a travel influencer. However, people will follow you because they just simply like you. We can’t stress enough how important this is.
If you try to fake who you are, it will come across like that. It won’t be natural and will be extremely hard to keep up if you become a travel influence full-time. So just be yourself.
Especially when finding your travel niche, it should naturally come across how passionate you are about that area. That passion will attract the audience you want.
How to become travel influencer FAQ’s
How do I Become a Travel Blogger on Instagram?
To become a travel blogger on Instagram, you need to stay consistent. You need to post consistently to keep your audience engaged and loyal followers. Using travel hashtags to boost engagement on your high-quality posts. Track your analytics to work out what posts do well and who your target audience is.
How can I Travel Around the World for Free?
There are plenty of free ways to travel the world besides being a travel influencer. You can work abroad for free in expat-friendly industries. You could do a work exchange, house or pet sit, or volunteer with organisations in exchange for accommodation & food.
You can also get free flights with a BA Amex card.
How Many Followers do you need to be an Influencer?
It really depends on which kind of influencer you are. For example, micro-influencers can have between 1,000-40,000 followers, whereas Macro influencers have between 40,000 to 1 million followers. So it really depends on your content and your niche.
To learn more about this topic, check out an article written by ACTTD Co-Founder, Henry, on the CIM website.
How do I Become a Full-Time Travel Influencer?
To become a full-time travel influencer, you need to add value. That could be through recommendations, tops, or advice on travel destinations you have visited. Next, collaborate with brands and other influencers on their accounts to boost followers. Finally, be consistent with your posts on your platforms.
Conclusion: How to Become a Travel Influencer
We hope this has helped and you have a better understanding of how to become a travel influencer.
It won’t be easier, and unfortunately, not everyone succeeds. However, if you are determined and really want to live the travel lifestyle, you can make it work. Out of everything we advised in this blog, these are our top 3 tips:
Find a niche
Stay consistent
BE YOURSELF
Please send us a message if you have any questions about how we become travel influencers and our journey.
