"I see that it is by no means useless to travel, if a man wants to see something new", said Jules Verne in Around the World in Eighty Days. But what if you can see something new without the travel? Of course, almost everyone wants to travel the world, I do, but not everybody can travel. I did have plans to leave everything behind in my twenties and especially go to Africa, but as I've grown older and planted roots in our beloved home town, that desire has diminished.

How about getting paid to travel the world and be your own boss? How to travel the world for a living! It seems like an unattainable dream to travel the world for a living. Dozens of travel bloggers have written about this subject, but I hope to bring a different perspective.

Unfortunately, there are so many places to see and not always enough time or money to see them. What if your travel budget doesn’t allow you to see all of the places in person that you might like to visit? What if you could indulge your curiosity and experience more of the world without actually leaving your home?

Fortunately, the Internet makes it more possible than ever before for people to read about, see and hear about more international destinations and foreign cultures than ever before. There are ways to travel virtually using your laptop or tablet PC that put you in an immersive online environment where you can vicariously experience the sights, sounds, history and culture of other places all over the world. YouTube offers so much more than videos of people getting hit in the crotch and/or opening boxes. In fact, YouTube is basically the world's most robust digital travelogue library.

Getting started on your path to self-employment can be daunting. I spent years studying everything I could get my hands on. I've had to work extremely hard and sacrifice other things in my life in order to get to where I am today.

How about exploring the world from your living room? Would you like to make better use of your internet to be able to "virtually travel" and make money?

Although getting paid to physically travel the world is high up there for dream jobs, how does getting paid by creating virtually travel contents while cozied up in bed sound? That's right, there's a lot of platforms willing to pay you $$$$ to take virtual tours of any destinations you want.

Travelpayouts is an affiliate network for monetizing travel traffic. It currently offers over 80 affiliate programs, which allow you to monetize your travel blog, Facebook group, or other source of travel traffic. In 2020, more than 270,000 webmasters from around the world have been registered in the Travelpayouts network. Travelpayouts is the largest travel affiliate network in terms of both the number of webmasters and the number of programs available. At the moment, you can join over 80 affiliate programs through Travelpayouts. All of them are available in the Programs section on the Dashboard.

Travelpayouts is a place where advertisers and webmasters meet. To earn money, you need travel traffic, which you can drive to advertisers' websites from:

• Blogs.
• Facebook groups.
• YouTube channels.
• And other sources that include paid ads.

Please note that each affiliate program within Travelpayouts has its own traffic requirements, which are indicated in the description of each specific program.

Brainstorm Your Blog Niche and Name

Before you learn to monetize your blog, though, you have to have a blog. Before you have a blog, you'll have to know what you want to blog about and how to distinguish yourself from the many other amazing travel blogs out there. Luckily, none of those other bloggers are you, so even if you are writing about the same thing — travel — the way you approach your travels will be different.

Take some time to think about what makes you and your perspective on travel unique. Are you a backpacker or a jetsetter? Young or old? An experienced expatriate or just ready to take your first airplane flight?

Choose Your Blogging Platform

Majority of the affiliate marketers will tell you to go self-hosting and start a WordPress blog right away. I am not saying they are wrong. But majority of beginners had failed, and that's a fact. They advocate this with ardent dedication because they want you to click on his/her referral link to host your blog.

The moment you pay for your hosting, the clock starts ticking nonstop for the next billing. When I started blogging, I hoped that I would get a ton of traffic through search engines because all of the other popular blogs got a lot of Google love. The reality is you won't get too much traffic from Google because your blog is new. It takes years before your search engine traffic kicks in. In the beginning, the only person visiting your blog may be you. So when the time comes for the next hosting bills, you have to decline because you made no money from your blog. And so you finally quit like others.

It takes months or even years to grow loyal audience. If building a successful website or blog, one that generates substantial income, is going to take months or even years, why go for paid hosting now?

Now, if you are a new blogger with little budget, the biggest danger for you is going self-hosting. If you don't want to fail and you want to be successful, you should take a step back before investing now and ponder on this important question.

SEO has changed and we must change. We all know SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a long-term strategy. It may take days, weeks or months for Google to crawl your website or blog. But it will take years to be on the top Search Engine Result Page (SERP), provided you followed the best SEO practices.

Ask this yourself. Do you think you can simply beat your competitors on the search result page who are ahead of you by 10-20 years by following some SEO techniques? Don't you think they are most probably following the best SEO practices to beat their own competitors? I think it's about time to stop listening to those SEO experts who want your business and start focusing on your business.

To get started, you don't need a self-hosted website or blog. You can build a branded site with a custom domain name on a reliable free hosting site like Blogger or Github Page. You can buy a custom domain name from NameCheap for as low as $8.88. And that's it!

After getting the recognition you need - with your custom domain name + free hosting, you have all the freedom to switch for the self-hosting plan(WordPress)- anytime. You can make this happen in 3-5 years. So don't quit on the way. You must love the process if you love success.

Travel blogging is a fun way to keep logs of your adventures, make friends, and trade tips with the larger internet voyager community. But let's get one misconception out of the way: if you're expecting to immediately become internet famous, have a huge following, and get paid to travel the world solely through blogging, there is a long, tough road ahead of you.