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If you landed on this page, it’s probably because you follow my photography adventures on social media, you are a dedicated reader, a lover of Norway (or Iceland, and especially the northern lights), or you used one of my free PDF guides to plan your next trip. First of all, a huge thank you for being here and for your curiosity.
Lately, as the holidays are approaching, I’ve received a lot of paid requests to help design itineraries or validate travel steps. It’s always an absolute pleasure to give you a hand, and I want to make it clear: I do this 100% on a voluntary basis, in my free time. I’m not a travel planner, and I can’t really imagine charging to help out fellow travel lovers (well, okay, that’s why it might take me a little time to reply sometimes).
It’s your vacation; it already takes up enough of your time and costs enough money without adding a “Vincent’s advice” line to the bill.
However, managing the blog, hosting the free PDF guides (like the ones for Iceland or Norway), and keeping the community alive does come with recurring technical costs. Since the blog (and even less so photography) is not my main job, I had to rethink how it funds itself.
I’ll explain everything below, but if you’d like to support the blog, feel free to use the links below for your holiday bookings—it won’t cost you anything extra, and it’s completely transparent for you 🙂
Current Challenges (AI, Printing Costs)
SELLING PHOTOS
Usually, to generate a little bit of income, I always put up fine art photos or small prints for sale… but the costs at my photo lab have skyrocketed, and I feel it’s just not worth it right now. The cost of living has exploded for everyone, so I’m not going to ask you to spend your hard-earned money on rates that I currently find way too high. Therefore, the shop is temporarily on pause until I find a new partner or prices come down.
THE RISE OF AI
On top of that, you’ve probably noticed that search engine results pages, like Google, have changed quite a bit.
Before, it was simple: you did a search, and boom, the most relevant sites appeared at the top of the list. But those days are over! You don’t really get answers straight from the websites anymore; AI generates the response directly for you (whether it’s accurate or not, by the way). This means that specialized, independent sites like mine are showing up less and less. Which translates to less traffic and fewer revenues. My site is used to feed these AIs, including Google’s, but without getting any of the benefits.
Honestly, I hope you don’t just settle for Google’s automatic AI responses, but that you keep looking for websites “written by people who actually know.” Because even though AI is super useful on a daily basis, the “A” stands for “Artificial”—it just grabs whatever it sees. So it takes the good and the bad to build its answers, which means they are rarely optimal.
Does a Travel Blog Actually Make Money?
Well, I’m not going to lie to you (anyway, my wife says I’m terrible at lying and people can tell right away), the blog is not my job, I can’t live off it (and I don’t want to, I love my “real” job too much).
Generally, a travel blog is funded by:
- Selling products like PDF guides or maps –> as for me, I made them all free
- Partnerships with destinations and travel agencies –> I don’t do that
- Advertising –> I refuse ad banners because they completely ruin the reading experience
- Affiliate marketing
So, out of all the ways to fund a travel blog, I chose to keep only the one that costs absolutely nothing to my readers, stays honest, and won’t spoil your experience.
How Affiliate Marketing Works
It’s super easy. A lot of people use websites like Booking.com for accommodations, Getyourguide or Viator for activities, and Tiqets for ticket bookings.
These super convenient platforms pay a small commission to whoever “sends” the customer to them. This simply means that if you book an activity through some of my links, I will receive a small percentage of the transaction.
The huge advantage is that it costs the customer absolutely nothing extra whether you go through my links or generic booking links.
How You Can Help Support the Blog
If, when making your bookings, you want to do a good deed at the same time, feel free to use these links. Instead of a generic ID, they contain my tracking codes, allowing me to collect that small commission (paid by the platforms, so it stays totally transparent and free for you).
And I can assure you that these are all world-renowned, highly reliable platforms.
Feel free to bookmark these links! That way, you can find them much more easily.
And there you go, thank you so much for reading this far! If you don’t want to or can’t support this way, there is absolutely no problem! It’s not going to bring an end to the blog 🙂 Just keep reading, liking, and following along on social media—that is already a huge help!
