How to Get Paid for Your Travel Videos
Most people would imagine selling their videos to The Travel Channel or to The Discovery Channel, that is not the method you’re going to take. Those are sometimes well-paid jobs, but they don’t meet our criteria of getting paid quickly and allowing us to travel wherever we desire.So how do you use travel videos to get paid? The answer is simple: By using your videos to drive traffic to third party websites who give you money for doing so.
Here is how it’s done:
Unless you’ve lived in a cave, you have probably heard of YouTube (actually, even people in caves have heard of it). It is not uncommon for basic, elementary videos to get 10’s and 100’s of thousands of views. Even videos with millions of views are becoming more common by the day. So how do you drive traffic to a third party site with these videos?
When you post a video to YouTube, you are allowed to make a description of your video. To drive traffic, put a hyperlink in the description to your affiliate link of your third party site. Simply format the address you want to send people to with ‘http://YourAffiliateLink.com’ and it will become a live link within YouTube’s description.
So where do you send people to? There are thousands of affiliate programs out there, but the easiest way to get started is to search Clickbank for products that are related to your video. For example, if you recently went to an Italian Vineyard, you could direct people to a product that teaches “wine tasting” or “how to create your own wine.”
You will make a commission on each sale that is made. So, if 10,000 people watch your video over the next year, and 10% of them click your link, you send 1,000 visitors to the site. If 10% of those visitors buy, you make 100 sales. Oftentimes that’s at $20-$50 dollars per sale, so based on this model, you can make $2000 to $5000 dollars for that video!
You are probably getting excited now. That’s for only ONE video! If you have 10 videos out there, you’re now making $20,000 to $50,000 dollars per year just for having some silly videos on the web.
To be entirely realistic, it can be difficult to get that many views for that many videos... but it’s NOT impossible. Many people are doing it, so there’s no reason you can’t do it as well. You just need to know what you’re doing!
Here are some last minute keys: First, make videos people are going to share with their friends. They should be instructional, funny, or amazing. Second, consider putting your link ON the video itself. That way, people type the address into their browser if they like your video, and if people embed your video, you’ll still drive traffic. Third, find GOOD affiliate programs that ‘convert’ well… meaning they sell a lot of their stuff.
Using this model, and with a little more training, you’ll be off to the races, traveling the world while you make money for filming your adventures!