This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hey, what's up? Thanks for tuning in to Side Hustle School. This is Chris Guillebeau. We are coming up on the 4th of July here, episode 2010. Still rolling along after 2000 episodes. You know,
I thought about retiring, but then I was like, "I make this show every day. What am I going to do?" Of course, I'm going to keep working on it because you're listening. So thank you for that. And also here is a project idea. Start a travel website to earn commissions. One of our listeners
is wondering more specifically about this. How does this model work? It's actually a pretty common model. You have probably visited lots of websites that are using this business model. It's been around a long time. What do the economics of it look like? And also if our listener decides to
proceed, how can they stand out? Because as I said, it's a common model. It's also a very crowded market, but there are a few things you can do to increase your odds of success. So that is today's topic, detailed question from our listener, and my answer coming up after this quick sponsor message. Hi, Chris. This is Cam from Toronto, and I've been following this show for a while. I'd like to start
a website that refers visitors to travel portals like Expedia. I'd earn affiliate commissions, of course, but it also provide a lot of helpful info before sending them to book. I know there are a lot of sites like this already, so I'm expecting it to take a while to get ranked well on Google. What advice do you have for me? Thanks, and we hope to see you in Canada again soon.
All right, let's dive in. Thanks so much for the question. Thanks for being out there. Actually, I was looking at a calendar. In about three weeks, we have an episode on someone who offers custom-built sites just for this purpose. So his whole business, if you go to travelsite.io,
that's essentially what he does. He offers these private label websites where you can earn affiliate commissions for referring traffic to Expedia and other travel agencies. So more on that in a couple of weeks. But for now, this is definitely a viable business model, the model of creating a content travel website that then refers traffic to actually booking airfare, hotels, and so on. There are a ton of sites out there like this, and most of them don't actually make much money, but some make a lot of money. There is very much an 80/20 rule,
Pareto principle with these kinds of sites, and that's because of traffic. The more qualified traffic you can refer, the more money you'll make. So there are some websites that are sending thousands of people a day to book airfare and hotels, and they are making a lot of money. There's also a lot of them that are not sending any traffic at all, so they're actually not making any money at all. My advice is to look at a lot of websites like the one you're thinking of, the one you're thinking of making, and consider how you'll stand out. And most likely, the best
way is to specialize. So for example, a travel site all about Bali. How do I get to Bali? Maybe even how do I do a yoga retreat in Bali? Maybe even, I don't know, maybe even more specific than that. Like the more specific, the better. And then you craft the content of the site
around that topic, answering these questions, different pages and such. And then you have a much better chance of getting ranked in search engines for people looking to take those kinds of trips, whatever topic you choose, which then works well when they click through to book. It'll be much more difficult to have a general travel site just because the big companies like Expedia, they already spend millions of dollars a month on advertising for basically the same search terms that you'd be targeting. So you're probably not going to win that battle. But those big companies probably aren't going to make that very specific site on yoga retreats in Bali or topic. So that's where you come in. There's more we could say, but that's the general model. I think
that's the direction to go in with this kind of project. All right. Good luck. Let us know what happens. And listeners, if you've got a question, you know what to do, side hustle, school.com/questions.
We'll continue to feature them throughout the year, along with updates from listeners as they launch and grow their projects. Thanks so much for being out there. I hope you'll subscribe, follow, come back tomorrow. I'm excited about all that's to come. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're
listening to Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.
