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How to pick the best travel offers for affiliate marketing campaigns?

zeropark

Traffic Manager
Traffic Manager
ZeroPark
Hey guys,

Picking the right offer is something that can make or break your campaign.

This is why it’s so important to pick them well. Travel niche or not, this choice is not to be underestimated. ✋

If you want to learn how to assess the potential of an offer from a travel niche, read this article and never make the wrong choice again!

☑️ Affiliate network vs. affiliate program

First of all, there is usually a clear distinction between travel offers and affiliate programs. Travel niche is a huge space encompassing anything related to travel, so it stretches across other verticals such as sweepstakes, downloads, finance, and e-commerce.

Travel affiliate programs are often managed by the given brand/company, so you are working directly with the provider of the offer. Such programs can have restrictions or requirements that make them only suitable for webmasters, travel bloggers, and people with large social media followings. So, travel affiliate programs such as TripAdvisor, Booking.com, or Kayak, might not be ideal for affiliate marketing with paid traffic.

Affiliate networks on the other hand are hubs for all kinds of affiliate programs and offers. They aren’t limited to the travel industry. If you work with paid traffic such as pop, push, display, native, or search, affiliate networks such as Travelpayouts, MaxBounty, or Clickdealer will have a selection of travel offers (or travel-related offers) that will work for you. You can use the offers search box to browse the options.

While you should choose affiliate programs to best match your traffic, it works the other way when using paid traffic. Then, you should pick offers based on recommendations and spying. Ideally, you should ask your account manager or pick something from the top-performing suggestions.

☑️ How to choose the best affiliate program for your audience?

Placing your affiliate link or an ad in a good spot is one of the biggest factors in achieving good results. But the first step is not the ad placement. It’s the audience.
Just like we’ve mentioned in the previous section, offers you can find in an affiliate network are better suited for paid traffic (like the ones you can get from Zeropark). And travel affiliate programs are better for someone with an organically gathered audience. But let’s get into more details.

Travel bloggers and website owners

What travel bloggers and travel website owners have in common is making money online by creating content. Top destination rankings, best travel gear, detailed reviews of private apartments, and car rentals recommendations are only some of the popular travel industry topics. Having a travel blog or website with a sizeable audience and that kind of content makes you the perfect candidate for the top affiliate programs.

And sometimes, that’s a requirement. For example, Lonely Planet Affiliate Program requires you to have your own website if you want to participate in their program.
A person with their own website can easily become an affiliate marketer. Because placing a referral link in thematically related content costs nothing and can generate a solid passive income as long as you have high numbers of daily visitors.

In general, the bigger the traffic volume, the higher you can aim. Some affiliate programs have well-developed banner integration options as well as widgets and customizable ads. Travel sites and travel blogs are the perfect places to make use of those features.

Social media channels

Social media channels with a following allow you to earn money by advertising the best travel affiliate programs to your followers. This method of advertising is similar to the previous one. What you need to do is pick a travel affiliate program that suits your needs and your audience.

Things like hotel bookings, travel insurance, or flight bookings are kinds of offers that will work for someone sharing their holiday journeys via social media. It might be important to note here that while travel blogging attracts an audience that takes a genuine interest in some particular travel destination or holiday package, social media is more likely to reach a more varied audience.

Especially sites like Instagram, which revolve around sharing pictures, might prompt readers to spontaneously plan a trip. Hence – a longer cookie lifetime is especially important. Just give your audience enough time to arrange a trip to some destination they spontaneously fell in love with.

Affiliate marketers using paid methods

Affiliate marketing using paid methods such as native, display, email, social media, PPC, and PPV advertising is the last on our list. Some of the best travel affiliate programs might not be too keen on traffic coming from paid sources.

However, travel is still an extremely profitable niche for paid traffic affiliate marketers. There are plenty of offers that can make you big money and apart from the travel niche. Such a sub-niche as e-commerce is absolutely perfect for paid traffic and you can generate a sizable affiliate income from selling travel-related gadgets alone.
Hence, when choosing an offer that would work for your favorite traffic sources, you need to check what traffic is allowed and compare that to your previous experience.
infographics what to promote where

☑️ Key characteristics of the best affiliate programs and offers

Travel industry or not, if you want to pick a good offer or affiliate program for your paid traffic, there are a couple of telltale signs you should look out for. Picking the best travel affiliate program depends on how well you do your research. So, here’s how to tell if an offer has potential.

They’re on spy tools

Popular affiliate programs might not always find their way to a spy tool’s inventory. That’s because spy tools are for spying on paid ads. And while a travel blogger might have no need to go there, an affiliate marketer going for the paid version of traffic is going to get a lot of valuable intel.

Filtering by volume or time the offer has been around gives you a good idea of whether the program is a popular choice. Usually, if someone chooses to run an offer for a longer time it’s a good indicator of the potential for more money to be made.

An additional benefit of using spy tools is getting insights into the creative aspect of the travel industry. What kind of ads are people running? Paid traffic is not about text links. You need landing pages, banners, and ads and sometimes there’s more money to be made with great copy and landers than without them.

They’re talked about in the community

Good travel affiliate programs get noticed by the community. The travel niche might be full of affiliate marketers that don’t use forums that often… but those that do, aren’t shy to share their opinions. If an affiliate program or offer is talked about in the community, it most likely means it’s worth engaging with.
Unless it’s not talked about in a positive light. Then that’s your clue to maybe skip that one.

In general, forums are where you can find great deals, bonuses, and special offers for affiliate programs, networks, and offers. You can also learn about the newest trends, changes in affiliate programs and you can engage in speculations about new features.

The best travel affiliate programs are not that hard to find. If there’s a new gem, the community will know about it.

They’re among the affiliate network recommendations

If you need good offers and you’re signed up to an affiliate network your best bet is to check out the recommendations. You can try asking your affiliate manager as they might have the most up-to-date information. But you might also check the list of top offers.

Most affiliate networks give you the option to filter by the hottest or most popular offers. The best travel affiliate programs will probably be on the top of that list. And remember, you don’t have to limit yourself to the travel vertical. There are apps, e-commerce products, and offers for various travel services that are perfect for paid traffic.

As long as the offer is recommended either by your account manager or an automatically generated report of the best performing offers, it’s got a fair chance of being profitable for most affiliate marketers who run them.

⚠️ If you want to learn:​

  • How to judge the potential of travel affiliate programs and offers?
  • What features to look out for in travel affiliate programs?


Magda
 
I LOVE THIS! I AM IN THIS NICHE!

Great actionable information here. Well worth the read.

TAKE ACTION FELLOW MARKETERS
This is a very hot niche right now!


flying klm royal dutch airlines GIF by KLM
 
Have you ever been on a trip to Paris?
Yes; 2014 and 2015 (Business then Holiday in Paris)
They are predicting a return to heavy air travel later this year but with fuel costs rising, the pandemic hiding in remission and the nuclear war threats (Thanks Putin!) I remain skeptical.
 
Yes; 2014 and 2015 (Business then Holiday in Paris)
They are predicting a return to heavy air travel later this year but with fuel costs rising, the pandemic hiding in remission and the nuclear war threats (Thanks Putin!) I remain skeptical.
My son and daughter-in-law are going to France in a few weeks (I'll be doing their house and cat sitting). They're very cautious by nature, have the shots, will wear masks on the plane, don't seem worried in the least. As far as I can tell by talking to them, anyway.. Of course, Putin never came up in conversation. :D

Can't speak to cost, as they didn't say and I didn't ask.

They did have their return flight time changed for some unknown reason. So did a friend of mine who is flying to our east coast on her honeymoon. It's only a matter of five hours for one; two hours for the other but we don't know the reason why or how they'd know they have to do that in advance.
 
MI
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