Guest post by Helena Bradburry, travel blogger at HelenaBradburry.com
“Regret” is too strong of a word, but I do think I could have done things very differently when I first started blogging. And one of my biggest mistakes was not niching down.
My website, helenabradbury.com, covers international travel destinations from Korea to Cuba, Australia to Bosnia and Herzegovina. While it has always reflected my love of travel, it has made targeting my diverse traffic sources through affiliate marketing a lot more difficult than it perhaps needed to be!
As my blog finally started to see strong growth in 2022-2023, I began to believe that when your blog grows, your workload grows and that’s just how it was. More traffic = more platforms = more links = more maintenance.
My affiliate income started to plateau because I was finding it harder to manage at scale. Or at least that was the case until I joined Stay22.
In 2023 I was making £462 per month from hotel affiliates without Stay22, this month I made £2,774 per month from hotel affiliates.
Stay22 made me realise that I needed a tool to scale with me, rather than creating more work.
Less work, more conversions with Stay22 Nova AI Booking Agent
I was trying to do “all the things” to stay on top of my affiliate links and capture every booking, but it wasn’t until I had a conversation with my American husband about the most popular booking platforms in the USA, that I realised why I was struggling to convert a chunk of my audience.
I realised that while I know and use Booking.com myself, like much of the UK and Europe, that isn’t the most popular booking platform in Asia or North America.
I was getting in my own way by sticking with what I knew.
After the initial conversation with the Stay22 team, they were so helpful in editing the script for my website to exclude Booking.com links (which I wanted to keep with the native affiliate platform) and helping me to see that there was a way to capture those users who are about to leave your site by offering them the platform which they’re most likely to use.
Installing Stay22’s LMA allowed me to let go of micromanaging every booking link and instead trust the tech to match users with what worked for them.
Stay22 results after 2 years of script installation
Since joining Stay22 I’ve generated over $20,000 in affiliate revenue. And that’s JUST from the Let Me Allez script.
I still maintain my deep links with the native platform for both Booking .com and GetYourGuide.
- In the last 12 months I’ve averaged $1,448 per month from Stay22
- My first Stay22 payout was $301, now I make $2,000+ every month
- The average booking commission I earn from Stay22 is $9.97
- I average 8.8 bookings per day which works out at 264 bookings per month
While people are often concerned about Nova opening up a new browser page, this doesn’t really obstruct the reader, but rather opens in a new tab or window and only triggers once every 30 days for each user.
For those concerned about UX on their site, in the same two years, my website has grown from 32,000 sessions per month to 110,000 sessions per month. In the same time frame, I have qualified for Mediavine and overall seen an increase of 352% across all affiliate revenue.
The data tells me that Stay22 is not impacting my reader experience at all.
Simplifying while scaling with Stay22
I saw these big increases in monthly sessions and affiliate income all while my affiliate setup became simpler, thanks to the seamless LMA script integration.
I didn't have to overhaul or manually change any deep links, I didn’t have to leave the affiliate platforms that I like.
But where I had seen a gap in my earnings due to not targeting users who preferred other booking platforms like Expedia or Hotels .com, Stay22 allowed me to plug that gap and capture those customers who would otherwise have slipped through the gaps.
Stay22 acted like another layer on top of my affiliate strategy, rather than a replacement. The effort-to-earnings ratio is unmatched by any other affiliate platform that I use.
Global content but hyper-localised monetisation
My website is still relatively “un-niched”, I still have content from all over the world and a global readership to match. But previously I only had an affiliate strategy that catered towards users who booked using the same platforms that I use - and that’s not a great strategy.
Stay22’s LMA script handles the localisation and personalisation of each link, without me having to spend more time across multiple affiliate platforms.
Not only do I have more time back to spend on other blogging tasks, but I’m also confident that I can take time off and my Stay22 script will keep doing the hard work for me.
Key Takeaways after 2 years with Stay22
- Growing your blog’s affiliate income isn’t about working harder. It’s about using smarter systems like Stay22, especially in the face of uncertainty with Google’s changes
- Dig into your data. Are you missing out on affiliate income because your current platforms are not optimised to the user’s location? Installing Stay22 will take care of that without you having to work any harder
- The old saying “you never know unless you try” is true. Had I not decided to trial Stay22 on my site, I would never have been about to add $20,000 to my affiliate revenue on my own over the last two years
- The customer support are amazing, whether it’s helping with script customisation, requesting additional reporting or queries about one of the products, I always hear from a heal human promptly
- I know some people have issues with payment timeliness on other platforms, I’m happy to say I’ve never had a payment issue with Stay22
- The flexibility of the products, especially the custom scripts to fit you and your blog’s needs, is everything that affiliate marketing should be.
If you’re not already with Stay22, I’d recommend giving them a try. It’s a simple case of installing the script on your site.
If you know that your affiliate revenue is plateauing or you’re struggling to keep up with the workload, this is an easy way to add more money to your monthly income.
