751 – Take a trip and plant a growth seed: Tom talks Travel Vlogging

Episode 751 – Travel Vlogging
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 751 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about travel vlogging or blogging, whichever way you want to talk about it. You know, I want nothing to do with this topic, actually. I've been lots of places in the world, I think about 12 countries, and I'm happy to sit home and and work my business. You know, I'm starting a drone business and hey, you know, come to think of it, a drone would be really handy in a travel vlogging business, you get some spectacular shots. So anyway, I'm not going to be doing any traveling, travel blogging or blogging anytime soon, but it is a viable business. And I know many of you would love to be out on the road after being cooped up for a couple of years with COVID. So I'll talk today about how to make money. Travel vlogging Now. I hope you didn't miss Episode 750. That was social selling versus versus social commerce. You need to know the difference. I concentrate on social selling, but I'm going to be forced into doing social commerce. So that episode explains the differences. That's episode 750. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, and then the episode number. That was 750. And let's see, make sure you follow me on TikTok at tiktok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire and pick up a copy of our automation book. It will save you hundreds of hours into the future if you implement just one of the things in the book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree.

[00:01:58] All right, Let's get to the main event. First of all, most travel vloggers or bloggers who just jump in without a plan rarely make money. I mean, they might have a lot of fun, which that might have been their main goal in the first place. But when it comes to making money, they usually lose way more than they make. So if you want to do this and make it sustainable while keeping all your bills paid and actually profiting, you need to have a plan on the ways to monetize what you're doing. All right. So here's some ways you can do that. One is ads on your site. Now, there are plenty of places that will put ads on your site. They'll sell the ads for you and give you part of the revenue. Now, this is not the first thing you should try because the networks usually require a minimum amount of traffic before they'll bother with you. A better bet would be affiliate marketing. I mean, you can join many affiliate programs and they don't care if you have any traffic or not. They're happy to let you in in hopes that you'll sell something for them eventually.

[00:03:03] And then you get a commission from that. An even better bet would be to as soon as you can come up with a product or products of your own to sell on the site and of course to promote in your videos, you're going to also promote your affiliate products in your in your vlog or your videos. Again, once you get some traffic to your vlog or your blog and a decent social media following, you can go for press trips. You would contact the tourism board in some country you want to visit and try to negotiate a deal. Negotiate a deal where they will sponsor your trip and you'll vlog about your experience. And they do this to get more people interested in coming to their country or city or wherever. Now, if you have loads and loads of people with a big social following, they're going to start contacting you. But in the beginning you can contact them. Next thing is a sponsored post. This would be when a company pays you to do a review of their product. Let's say you're into camping. Well, some company might give you a camping stove and have you blog about it. Now, to keep your reputation good, you need to make it clear to the company you will be giving an honest review of the likes and dislikes of the product.

[00:04:24] Some companies just give you the product without extra cash and let you keep it. And I guess you can sell it on Facebook marketplace or offer up or something. See, I buy a lot of stuff from a local guy who's an Amazon reviewer. He gets he's got a garage full of stuff that he he sells on offer up in Facebook marketplace after he reviews it. And I mean, you know, what's he going to do? How many dash cams can he use in his car? So so, yeah, he's got a whole garage full of stuff. He makes money that way. Sponsored links. Now, some companies will ask you to put a link back to their site in exchange for money they'll pay you. This is a post or different from an affiliate program where they put the site for free and you only get paid if somebody buys something. So this they're paying you for the link. Now the only downside to this is if the link goes to a totally unrelated product to what your blog is about. Now, this could hurt your search engine positioning. But you know what? I'd still do it if they were offering enough money and the product was good. That's something I could be proud to promote. Other things. You could speak at travel expos to promote your stuff. You could be a spokesperson, a paid spokesperson.

[00:05:44] They make 15 to 3500 bucks a day to stand at trade shows and and do a spiel on something. You could coach others on all the mistakes you're going to make when you travel blog so they don't make them. And there's lots of Facebook groups you could join that would give you lots of tips and other travel vloggers are there giving you tips and helping you out. So that's a good thing. All right. Now some things you'll want to get a handle on, like what camera sound and lighting equipment you need. Many people just use their cell phone, but, you know, getting better quality takes better equipment. And it it changes so rapidly. I'm not going to recommend anything here. So you just Google it at the time you when you're doing this. And now that I'm into drones, that's a way to get spectacular footage and you'll probably get way more visitors because your footage is so great and they'll share it to other people with really cool drone footage. You just have to make sure you aren't violating any drone laws and they're different wherever you happen to be. Now, if you plan on going to remote areas, how are you going to get an internet connection or will you have to wait to upload your footage until you get back to civilization? And are you going to buy an RV and give up your regular home or apartment? Are you going to go only go to warm places or are you staying in your own country or are you going to other countries? And there's lots of questions to ask before you do this.

[00:07:16] This is what I'm talking about, making a plan. Now. Are you doing Airbnbs? Anyway, there's lots of decisions you got to make before you just head out into the world thinking you're now a big shot travel blogger. Right. Now, this can be an extremely rewarding endeavor, both from a lifestyle standpoint and financially, but it all takes planning. So I suggest you Google the most successful travel blogs and see what other people are doing. Also one other thing. If some of them are boasting the money they're making, I think I would divide it in half or maybe even take 25% of what they're claiming, because most people online just brag about how much they brought in. And that's called gross income, not how much they kept, which is called net income. All right. So chances are you're not going to see me out on the vlogging trail. But I'll tell you what, it's it can be very lucrative and a lot of fun If you haven't done all this traveling that I've done and you really want to get into it.

[00:08:19] So if you'd like to help with this and every other thing it takes to be successful online, especially with that vlog setup and marketing and all the other things to help more people see your stuff. I'm the guy. So check out great internet marketing Training.com. Great Internet marketing. Training.com is the longest running, most successful, most unique ever in the field of internet and digital marketing mentor program. And then also I have a new program called How to Be a Great podcast guest. And of course this topic would lend itself beautifully to being a podcast guest. Now, most people think, Well, I'll just do a great interview. Well, there's so many more things that you need to know to impress the heck out of the host. It's not just the interview part. It's what you do before and after the interview that really gets you invited back and referred to other podcast hosts. And this can put you in front of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. So check that out at screwthecommute.com/greatpodcastguest. I think we have four slots left at the introductory price. It's all one on one. And also you get a feature here on screw the commute as part of the deal. All right so we'll catch you all on the next episode and let me know how your travel vlogging is going.