We’re late, I know. The first quarter of 2023 is almost over, and we haven’t published our travel blog income report for the last quarter of 2022 yet.
Life got very busy, but we’ve finally collected all the numbers and are ready for the report.
This income report covers the fourth quarter of 2022, so we’ll be looking at October, November, and December. And I can already tell you that there are some massive differences between the individual months.
So let’s dive right in.
Travel Blog Income Report Q4 2023
Why an income report?
We’ve done two income reports before (for Q3 2022 and Q2 2022), where we dive into our reasons for revealing our travel blog salary.
To sum it up, we have three main reasons.
First, when we started blogging, I always found it inspiring to look at how travel bloggers make money. I could spend hours searching the internet for bloggers who made their income and expenses public. When your blog is small and barely receives traffic, it’s very motivating to know that it’s possible to grow.
So by writing our own income report, I want to give back to other travel bloggers, especially those who just started out.
Second, we want to be transparent about how much we earn with our blog. If you click one of our links to book your hotel, we might receive a small commission. Have you ever wondered how much money that is? Now you can find out!
And the last reason for revealing our travel blog earnings is that these income reports are great for us to get an overview of our income. It takes a moment to sum them all up, but in the end, I always have a much better idea of what works and what doesn’t.
So let’s look at how all of this worked out at the end of 2022.
Our traffic in Q4 2022
On our blog, our traffic directly correlates with our income. If we have a lot of people visiting our blog, we make lots of money.
If nobody clicks on our blog, then we don’t have any income.
Therefore, we like to start those income reports by revealing our traffic.
Compared to Q3 2022, our traffic stayed stable. We had a bit of a dip in October and November but then got more traffic in December. This was to be expected because we have a few posts related to Christmas markets.
Here is our travel blog traffic for Q4 2022:
In total, 64,600 users visited our blog in Q4 2022 (in comparison: in Q3, we had 64,700 users – that’s what I call consistency). Some users came multiple times because we had 78,600 sessions.
Here is a breakdown by month:
| October 2022 | November 2022 | December 2022 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Users | 20,458 | 21,045 | 23,266 |
| Sessions | 24,890 | 25,663 | 28,045 |
| Pageviews | 28,845 | 29,884 | 32,339 |
While Q4 wasn’t bad overall, we also didn’t manage to grow our blog. We expect traffic to stay slow throughout winter and hope it will pick up again in spring and summer next year.
Our income in Q4 2022
In our first travel blog income report, we give a detailed overview of how travel bloggers make money.
Let me sum it up for you here.
At the moment, we earn all of our income through affiliate links. When we recommend a hotel or a tour, we put in a link to the provider. If you, or any other reader, then book through that link, we get a small commission.
We only recommend places and tours which we have extensively researched and that we would book ourselves. Okay, maybe some of the nice hotels we recommend are way above our budget, but if we had enough money, we would stay there.
Anyway, here’s a breakdown of our affiliate income:
Booking.com
Ever since we started monetising our blog, booking.com has been our most successful affiliate program.
The last quarter of 2022 was no exception.
As expected, income slowed down in November because only a few people travel during that month. But it peaked in December, making it our most successful month ever.
Here is what we earned:
- October: 338.12€
- November: 231.22€
- December: 831.88€
Total income from booking.com: 1,401.22€
The Euro is gaining a bit in value compared to the US dollar, but for Q4 2022, they were still almost equal, so we made pretty much the same amount in USD.
Amazon
Ah, Amazon.
If you look at our Q2 2022 income report, you’ll see that we made some money from Amazon. It fell in Q3 2022. Now it’s stable, but it’s not much when you compare it to booking.com.
Some websites make almost all of their money from Amazon. For us, it’s just a small piece of income. Still, we have a few packing lists that are doing well, and they regularly earn us affiliate commissions.
Here is what we made:
- October: 88.55€
- November: 81.54€
- December: 62.36€
Total income from Amazon: 232.45€
Get Your Guide
Get Your Guide is a great platform. It makes booking tours so easy. That’s why we love linking to it.
They’re also great to work with as an affiliate partner, and while we earn much less from them compared to booking.com, we get a steady stream of income.
Here is what we earned from recommending tours:
- October: 46.34€
- November: 47.10€
- December: 141.60€
Total income from Get Your Guide: 235.04€
Travelpayouts
Travelpayouts is a very convenient platform that combines multiple affiliate programs. We mostly use it for Rentalcars.com and Viator, but in Q4 2022, we also had some bookings through Omio.
Being able to join all of those affiliate programs through one platform has a lot of advantages for us. We only need to sign up once, and we only have one website where we can see all programs.
Plus, most programs have a minimum payout value. If we only earn 10€ through a program, we usually wouldn’t get that money in our bank account. On Travelpayouts, however, all of our income from different programs gets combined, so it’s much easier to meet the threshold.
Here is what we earned through Travelpayouts:
- October: $124.13
- November: $70.79
- December: $115.95
Total income from Travelpayouts: $310.87
Directferries
If you’ve looked at previous travel blog income reports, you’ll notice that we have a section about Directferries. For Q4 2022, this one is very easy. We didn’t have any bookings and had no income through Directferries.
Total income in Q4 2022
So how much did we earn in total in the last three months of 2022?
This makes Q4 our most successful quarter ever. For comparison: in Q3, we earned 1,824.51€.
Here is what we got by month:
- October: 597.14€
- November: 430.65€
- December: 1,151.79€
Our expenses in Q4 2022
When looking at what travel bloggers earn, you can’t really look at the income only.
Running a blog doesn’t cost much money, but it isn’t free either. We have a few recurring expenses. Here is what we paid in Q4 2022:
Hosting & Domain: 36.69€
We need to host our website somewhere, and we’re using Siteground. We know there are cheaper providers out there, but so far, our experience has been very good. They’re available when we have problems and always help quickly.
Keysearch: 28.37€
One of my favourite activities is keyword research. I love coming up with article ideas. Keysearch is a great keyword research tool that helps us figure out which posts are worth our time. We don’t want to end up writing an article about a topic that has already been covered by a hundred different bloggers. Instead, we’re looking for niche keywords where we have a chance of showing up on Google – and Keysearch helps us do exactly that.
Tailwind: 43.62€
Tailwind helps us schedule Pinterest posts. We don’t use it very often, but Daniel keeps talking about how he wants to make more pins for our posts. So maybe it’ll become more useful at one point? In any case, we still get some traffic from Pinterest, so it’s worth paying for.
Grammarly: 33.81€
Before we publish a blog post, we always revise it. Grammarly helps us correct typos and grammatical mistakes. It’s also very useful for making sure our wording is concise. They have great suggestions for improving our writing style, and we’re happy to pay for this.
Other: 38.58€
We only have two expenses in this category. The first one is a banking fee of almost 80 cents, so it’s barely worth mentioning. The real expense here is a deal we found on AppSumo, where we bought 100 stock photos from DepositPhotos. We usually use our own photos when we publish blog posts, but sometimes, it’s useful to have access to stock images.
Total expenses for Q4 2022: 181.07€
Our revenue in Q4 2022
It’s time to do the maths and add everything up. Even though our traffic and bookings went down in October and November, Q4 turned out great for us. All those hotel bookings in December really made up for it!
If you subtract our expenses from our income, you’ll see that we earned 1,998.51€ in Q4 2022. That’s almost 2,000€! That is absolutely insane and our best quarter so far. It also means that we have earned around 666€ per month.
What’s coming next?
By the time we publish that blog post, the first quarter of 2023 is almost over.
Well, we can already tell you that not much went on during that time. After visiting some Christmas markets in Q4 2022 (take a look at the gorgeous Ravenna Gorge market if you want inspiration for this year’s Christmas), we were at home for most of the beginning of 2023.
We managed to sneak in a quick trip to Switzerland, where we spent a long weekend in Lucerne. Our next trip is at Easter, and then we have lots of public holidays coming up in May, which means more opportunities to travel.
We hope you found this income report useful. If you have any questions or comments, please leave us a comment below!
And while you’re here, make sure to check out our previous income reports:
Until your next adventure!
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