Guest Post: How to Choose High-Earning Travel Affiliate Program

This is a guest post by Claudia Tavani, blogger at My Adventures Across The World.

Affiliate programs can be a reliable revenue stream for travel bloggers but only if you pick the right ones. While some travel bloggers persistently rely on marketing campaigns and partnerships as a source of revenue, most bloggers prefer focusing on other sources of income, and affiliate marketing is easily my favorite one.

However, many bloggers sign up for random programs without checking if they fit their audience. Don’t do this! It may cause more harm than good.

In this post, you’ll learn how to research, compare, and choose the affiliate programs that bring real results.

Why Researching the Best Affiliate Programs Matters

The internet is full of affiliate networks promising high payouts, but not all of them make sense for your travel blog. Partnering with the right affiliate programs means finding a natural fit for your audience. Promote the right service on your site, and you’ll get click-throughs, bookings, and affiliate income.

With the right affiliate, it’s simple:

Links feel like a natural part of your advice.
Readers click and book because the recommendations are relevant.
Income grows steadily and predictably.

On the other hand, partnering with a company that’s not the right fit for your travel blog can be a waste of time.

Here’s a typical scenario:

You spend time and energy looking for the best posts to place the links.
You promote a product your audience doesn’t trust or need → few clicks and conversions.
You sign up for a network with poor tracking or slow payouts → wasted effort.
You clutter your posts with irrelevant links → readers lose trust.
You spend time and energy removing the links.

A little upfront research saves you a lot of frustration later.

I must admit I’ve been guilty of signing up for too many affiliate programs in the past, when I was just starting. Whichever company would contact me to join their affiliate program, I’d join - almost no questions asked.

Some turned out to be incredible partnerships that continue to this date, others were nothing more than a waste of time (and brought me peanuts, in terms of money).

I remember spending endless hours looking for the best posts - well-performing posts targeting the right audience - to place affiliate links to a tour company that sold climbing and hiking experiences. Another was a company that sold food tours in South East Asia. I then waited for a few months to see the results, wanting to give these affiliates every chance to prove they were working.

When I realized I had only made $200 in 6 months, I understood the partnership was not meant to be. I then wasted more time removing the under-performing links.

So, how do you find the best affiliate programs for your travel blog? Here’s a step-by-step guide.

How to Choose a Travel Affiliate Program

Step 1: Define Your Audience

Before looking at affiliate programs, you need to be clear about who you’re writing for. Your readers’ travel style determines what they book and how they book.

There are a few questions you must ask yourself to help identify the best affiliate programs:

Are your readers budget backpackers hunting for hostels, who prefer to visit attractions independently?
Are they mid-range holidaymakers booking hotels and guided tours?
Are they luxury travellers who expect premium stays and curated experiences?
Are they families, a group of friends, or solo travelers?

How do you find the answer to these questions? It’s actually easier than you think:

Look at your Google Analytics: which posts bring the most traffic? Is it a post about budget travel to a specific destination? Or a luxury guide, or a post on family travel?c
If you have an engaged newsletter or social media channels, ask your readers directly! You can run a survey or a poll.
Read comments to your posts and emails from your readers: what do readers ask you about most?

The more you know about your readers’ habits, the easier it is to pick affiliates that serve them (and which convert).

Step 2: Map Out Monetization Opportunities

Once you know your audience, list the categories of services they’re most likely to book.

Typical categories for travel blogs:

Accommodation: hotels, vacation rentals, boutique stays.
Tours and activities: city or boat tours, guided hikes, food tours, day trips.
Transport: ferries, trains, and car rental.
Travel insurance and visas.
Gear and travel accessories.

Now check your existing content:

Do you have detailed guides or itineraries for popular destinations? → These are a strong fit for hotel/tour affiliates.

Do you write practical posts about road trips or island hopping? → These posts are a great fit for car rental or ferry booking affiliates.

Do you write about hiking? → These posts are best for affiliate outdoor gear retailers.

In general, I recommend prioritizing categories that align with your current or planned content – that’s where affiliate links will feel natural.

Step 3: Research Affiliate Networks and Tools

Typically, you’ll have two types of partners to choose from. There are pros and cons to signing up with either of them.

1) Direct programs (e.g., Booking.com, GetYourGuide, Viator, Safety Wings, Discover Cars)

You sign up directly with the provider.
Usually, direct programs offer more detailed reporting and brand familiarity.

2) Aggregators or monetization tools (e.g., Stay22, Travelpayouts, Awin, CJ)

They aggregate multiple providers in one platform.
They are often easier to manage at scale and help capture missed bookings.
As they aggregate several programs, they make it easier to reach the minimum threshold for payment.

One important thing I have to say is that not all aggregators are the same! Some can be a nightmare to work with. Think lost commissions, lack of proper reporting, complete lack of support, and delayed payments. There’s a specific one I now refuse to work with, as at some point, it took them 18 months to pay me.

How do you pick what’s best for you? At this point, you need to compare direct programs with aggregators. These are things you need to consider:

Inventory: Some companies don’t have a good inventory, and you may struggle to find hotels or tours that you can promote on your site. Look for those that have a good inventory.
Commission rates and cookie duration: But remember, higher rates don’t always mean higher income if conversions are low.
Ease of integration: Do they provide an easy way to create affiliate links, widgets, maps, or simple scripts?
Reliability of payouts: How often do they pay, and what’s the threshold? Is there any rumor going around in the travel blogging community about delayed payments by a specific company? There are several travel blogger groups on Facebook where participants share these insights.
Dashboard and reporting: Good reporting helps you optimize.
Support: Responsive support can save you time and headaches. It is a well-known fact that it’s factually impossible to talk to a human in some companies. On the other hand, some affiliates (aggregators like Stay22, but not only) will offer you an affiliate manager that you can talk to for support, and even to discuss your performance and monetization strategies.

My recommendation is to use a hybrid approach – for example, I use an aggregator (Stay22) for accommodation links, but I am with GetYourGuide’s direct program for tours.

Another recommendation I have is to stay away from affiliate partnerships with companies you haven’t heard of before. Chances are that if you, a more than experienced traveler, haven’t heard of a tour provider or of an accommodation booking site, your readers haven’t either, and they won’t be prone to using it (even via your affiliate links).

My motto for affiliates is typically “less is more”: focus on those that really have a chance of making you good money, and leave everything else aside.

Step 4: Analyze Competitors

One of the easiest ways to discover high-performing affiliates is to look at what similar blogs are promoting.

Here’s how:

Browse blogger Facebook groups or forums — many openly discuss which partners convert, and just as openly will express their grievances about under-performing affiliates, or partnerships they aren’t happy with.
Search for the kind of posts you write (e.g., “where to stay in New York” or “California itinerary”), and open the blog posts: hover over their links — you can often see which platform they use.
Use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to find popular outbound domains from their sites.

If you see several established blogs in your niche using the same affiliate, it’s often a good sign that it converts.

Another tip I have, if you are unsure about an affiliate partnership, is to simply ask other bloggers in your niche in Facebook groups and forums.

Step 5: Check the Data (Where Possible)

Not all affiliate programs publish data on their performance, but you can often find benchmarks:

Some bloggers still share income reports - it’s not a common practice among continental Europe bloggers, but North American and British bloggers often do.
Case studies or testimonials on affiliate network websites - several affiliate networks publish testimonials on a regular basis. Stay22 is one of them.
Blogging communities on Facebook - again, you will see some bloggers openly saying how much they are making from one affiliate vs the other, or share stats about their growth.

I must stress that you should always take these as rough guidance. Your own audience’s habits and your traffic - both in terms of sources as well as overall traffic to your blog - will affect results.

Step 6: Evaluate the Fit with Your Blog

This goes back to what I was saying before, about not wasting your time with obscure affiliate networks and small companies. A good program is more than just a high payout — it needs to fit seamlessly into your site.

Here are some things you need to consider:

Reader experience and relevance: is the brand trustworthy and familiar to your audience? Have you actually used it before, and liked the experience? Do you think your readers will use it? (For example, I am always reluctant to promote brands I have not used myself).
Technical integration: what kind of integration does the affiliate company or network offer? Do they offer embeddable maps or links that don’t slow down your site, or widgets?

Once again, let me stress that you should avoid promoting tools or services you wouldn’t personally recommend or use. Authenticity always pays off in the long run.

I often use Stay22 Maps to my blogs to add an additional layer to my affiliate strategy:

stay22 maps

Step 7: Test Before Committing

In the end, there’s only one way to fully appreciate how an affiliate performs on your blog is to implement it and test it yourself. The real proof will be in the data you can collect through your own site.

Here’s how you can test:

Pick 1–2 partners per category (e.g., two hotel affiliates, or two third-party booking sites for guided tours).
Add their links to a few high-traffic posts. Try to add the same number of links for both companies.
Track click-throughs, conversions, and earnings for at least a month.
Compare conversion rates, not just the headline commission.

You’ll often find that a partner with a lower payout or even a lower commission has a higher trust among your readers and ends up earning you more.

Honestly, though, sometimes there’s not even a need to pick one of the two: you can use both affiliates side by side, picking each time which one you wish to promote.

My affiliate earnings from Stay22 are often on the rise:

stay22 dashboard

Step 8: Keep Updating

Affiliate marketing isn’t set-and-forget. There is no such thing as “passive income” in blogging, and whoever suggested that blatantly lied (well, except for the NOVA of Stay22, I must say).

You constantly have to be on top of the game and find a routine that allows you to secure an income via affiliate marketing:

Review your affiliate dashboards regularly - some suggest quarterly, but I must say there are some dashboards that I review almost every day.
Replace under-performing partners. Once you are done testing an affiliate, if you notice that it doesn’t work, remove the links or, wherever possible, replace them with another affiliate.
Keep your eyes open for new affiliate networks that may perform better than the ones you are in.
Experiment with link placement (inline text, buttons, call-out boxes, maps). Some bloggers swear by buttons, others prefer links. Not all blogs are the same.

Useful Tools for Affiliate Research

Here are a few tools that you may find useful and that may save you time in affiliate marketing:

Link management: Pretty Links, ThirstyAffiliates, Lasso.
Analytics: Google Analytics 4.
Competitor research: Ahrefs, Semrush.
Affiliate networks: Stay22, Travelpayouts, Partnerize, Impact, ShareASale, etc.
Testing & tracking: built-in dashboards, UTM parameters for campaigns.

Key Takeaways

I have been blogging long enough to know that finding the right affiliate partners isn’t a one-time task. It’s a constant work by which you have to try to:

Understand your audience.
Identify the right opportunities.
Compare affiliate networks.
Test and adjust.

Start with one category. For most travel blogs, that’s accommodation. Run a few tests, learn what works, and expand from there.

With the right research habits, you’ll spend less time guessing what the best affiliates are and more time creating content that earns.

If you are looking for an affiliate tool that makes testing easier, I recommend implementing Stay22 – it lets you work with several hotel partners through one script, so you know you won’t miss any conversions.