Ideas on how to monetize my niche travel blog

[thewayway]

What's going on Builder Society!

Newb here

I started a blog late December 2014 and tried to sell an ebook way too early, before having any real readership, email subscribers or enough quality content to convince a reader to buy my book even if it's only $2.99.

I wanted to target black men, aged between 21-40 who are interested in traveling to Brazil, whether its for the women, culture or language. I've leaned the content heavily towards the dating aspect based on what I've seen online from the demographic.

The ebook flopped, only selling a few copies, so I've made it a free download once a reader subscribes to my email list.

Now, I thought of starting a subscription box site to connect to the blog. There's a Brazilian store close to my residence that sells everything Brazilian; possibly I could make a deal with them to sell a few of their products ranging from Brazilian foods, snacks, souvenirs, etc and bundling it into a monthly box.

My only concern is whether this would really sell with my demographic. Maybe I should broaden my niche and include all men. Would it even matter and other races would subscribe anyways if the products interested them?

You can view the site at www.rioinaweek.com and the FB like page www.facebook.com/rioinaweek

Thanks in advance

Rashad

 

[Prentzz]

Travelling affiliate programs come to mind. If people are travelling then they'll need to book hotels, book planes and trains. Presuming you're targeting people travelling from the USA, I assume their will be a few primary providers of travel to Brazil and websites where you book hotels. This will also allow you to broaden your demographic to all people looking to travel to Brazil.

 

[Postmortis]

Hi Rashad,

First of all, cheeky traffic leak to your site there.

I wanted to target black men, aged between 21-40 who are interested in traveling to Brazil, whether its for the women

That's pretty damn funny.

Anyhow, onto the matter of monetization.
A guy I used to work with has a few travel blogs that makes him some decent coin.
The large majority of his earning is by having booking widgets throughout his website, such as the following:

You can find/add these for hotels, flights and hotel bookings. Should be easy to implement and the affiliate % can be quite nice.

Also, make sure to capture those emails so you can send out travel/accommodation deals frequently.

 

[thewayway]

Nice suggestions, I'll implement travel deals once my email subscription list grows. I've written an eBook, so for now I'll try to sell that and send traffic to my site for Adsense. Thanks guys.