Traveling isn’t cheap. One trip can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. So, finding ways to fund your travel adventures is critical if your dream is to ditch a traditional job and explore the world.

Social media platforms provide a unique opportunity to make money on-the-go, exploiting your passion for exploration. If you build a strong enough online presence and flex your content creation skills, you can generate a solid income to fund your travels.

Here’s how you can leverage social media platforms to build a healthy travel fund and sustain a world-wanderer lifestyle.

Monetize Your Content to Fund Your Travel Adventures

More people have a chance to make good money online thanks to social media platforms. You can put your content to work for you in various ways, like through brand partnerships and affiliate marketing, and can generate a healthy income.

Those who want to turn their travel adventures into a full-time gig will find this avenue of making money especially helpful. You aren’t tied to an office to make money.

In addition, your content and online presence can be about your passion for traveling, allowing you to make an income doing something you love.

The first step is learning how to make content to become an exceptional social media content creator.

Dive into content creation

Monetizing your content starts with becoming a serious content creator. This does two things:

1. You learn how to create various types of content well. You can leverage these skills to create unique content for your social media pages and to build your personal brand and better your content monetization efforts.
2. You can use your content creation skills to craft content for other businesses and brands. This opens up another income stream for you. And, as a freelancer, you can travel and work anywhere with an internet connection.

To do the latter, decide which types of content you want to create, for what businesses or brands, and across what channels. Build a portfolio to showcase your skills. Then, network and shop your portfolio around to grow your client list.

As far as being an individual content creator for your personal brand, know your audience first. You’ll get better results when you know who your travel content is for, how to create for them, and which social media platforms they’re on the most.

Then, publish content consistently to grow your brand awareness. You’ll eventually build a community of followers who engage with your content. And that, in turn, boosts your earnings when you use content monetization efforts, like affiliate marketing and brand partnerships.

Try affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a revenue-sharing marketing method where businesses partner with third-party affiliates, like bloggers and influencers, promote their products and services.

They provide affiliates with a special link and compensate them whenever a sale happens, or a certain amount of traffic is driven to that link.

You can find general affiliate marketing platforms and travel influencer-specific ones. Check the requirements for becoming an affiliate on the platforms you choose. More importantly, make sure they have products that you actually use or are interested in.

For example, if your angle is taking solo road trips, you can make a list of products that are road trip essentials and see which affiliate marketing programs have links for them.

People can tell when you’re being genuine in your use or review of a product or service. They aren’t likely to click on your link if your promotional efforts come across as unauthentic. So, make sure you’re promoting links for products you have real experience with.

Affiliate marketing can be incredibly lucrative when you figure out how to best promote to your unique audience.

Partner with brands

We see brands partnering with influencers a lot these days.

Much like affiliate marketing, businesses partner with individuals with a solid following on social media and give them specific products or services to promote.

These companies might also work with them to create specific kinds of content and refine their promotional approach.

Brands pay influencers in different ways, such as:

• Per post
• In a lump sum payment for a large project
• With free or discounted merchandise or services
• Ongoing royalties from sales and traffic

You can negotiate your price and payment method with the travel brands you choose to work with. Keep in mind that certain brands may require you to not work with competing brands, which can limit your income potential.

Finally, don’t feel like you have to be this huge influencer with millions of followers to get brand partnerships. The engagement you get from your followers is more important because that’s what will lead to sales for brands. So, don’t count yourself out.

Must Do’s to Make Money Consistently Using Social Media

Transforming your social media presence into a way to fund your travel adventures won’t happen without a few key things.

The first is a strong personal brand. It will help you stand out from the millions of profiles on social media. It’ll also help you develop a loyal following that regularly engages with your content.

Take The Bucket List Family as an example. They’re a family of five documenting their extreme travel adventures with beautiful visuals and stories. They’ve amassed almost 3 million followers with a solid, niched-down personal brand that caters to a family-friendly audience.

Once your brand is intact, you can move on to growing brand awareness through captivating content. Unique content not only helps people get to know who you are in the travel world, but it’s also what you make money with on these platforms.

Jimmy Chin is one of the top travel influencers in the world right now. As a National Geographic photographer and filmmaker, he gives us emotionally stirring mini-films and photographs across his social media presence. His content sucks his followers in and forces them to engage with it.

It’s important to note that the most successful travel personalities on social media understand how crucial it is to stay safe on these platforms while traveling and sharing their content.

You don’t want your private information falling into the wrong hands because it can disrupt your ability to generate income on social media. You may have to shut your entire online presence down until you get everything figured out if you do fall victim to cybercrime or other crime.

Don’t overshare on social media and turn off your location-reporting settings. Ask that anyone you’re traveling with not tag you in photos and refrain from posting identifying photos. Share your travel adventures but keep where you are exactly to yourself and your family.

Building a strong personal brand as a travel writer, influencer, or passionate traveler and actively building brand awareness through captivating content will put you in the position to make real money through social media.