Help on developing a travel site

Travel Website Help

[amanile]

I am planning to develop a travel related website for the United Kingdom. It will be somewhat like a travel guide to the UK with some articles and all. This is my first project. I want to know if travel related sites generate revenue with google Adsense? After launching the site how soon can I expect some revenue. Say that I have 10,000 unique visitors per month, will this be enough to generate revenue with a travel related site. If so how much can I expect from ad sense. All your inputs and advice will be highly appreciated.
Also I just want to know the future of this business. If I get 50,000 unique visitors on a travel website with content. Will that generate good money with google?

[pescatore]

If you get high rankings you will make quite good money.Travel is one of the biggest industries.

[lammert]

The problem with travel is that there is a large amount of money going around causing a lot of competition. You have to have unique content that people like and work your way up in the SERPs which causes some time.

AdSense is a good way to get money from travel sites, but affiliate links for hotel bookings etc. will probably bring in more money.

[mzanzig]

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the money. 10,000 uniques per month in travel will be a good start (may pay for hosting) IF you have unique fresh content. But I think you need much more visitors in order to earn a decent amount. Good luck!

[rj87uk]

If you get around 100 000 Unique Hits a month you will do well, Its only around 3333.33 Unique hits a day or so.

I would guess it would take someone a few years to build up a good enough non spam website with this traffic.

[jetteroheller]

I have no luck with travel related pages.

A single 20 pages article about some inovative technology can make more money, than all my around 200 travel related pages.

Only 3% of my earnings are travel related.

[bts111]

Use affiliate programs as well as Adsense.

Good Luck!

[miguelito]

I am planning to develop a travel related website for the United Kingdom. It will be somewhat like a travel guide to the UK with some articles and all

i imagine it will be difficult to make money on something that has been "done to death" by over a thousand well-established web sites already.

[bts111]

It may be difficult but it's definately not impossible.

How do you know that he doesn't have a team of 20 professional writers, developers, designers etc.

He may even have a couple of hundred grand to promote the site.

Dream, believe, create, SUCCEED ;)

[Lipik]

Think about this also :
Travel is also season related. The UK is not the most 'sunny' travel destination, but still people go mostly on holidays in summer and on school-holidays.
For a 'sun' related destination, you can say that the visitors start to come around Xmas/NewYear and it stops in August. September, October, November and part of December is a dead period.

I would say : go for it!

[Visit Thailand]

If I were you I would try and find a niche within what you are thinking of. One which is perhaps not overly populated and try offer something useul to that niche.

There are plenty of niches available.

[7_Driver]

Hi Amanile,

I might be able to advise you here - I run one of the biggest UK Travel sites (though I'm not going to say which one) - but if you've done any research at all, you'll know our site pretty well.

You've already had some good advice on this thread - there is money in travel, and in UK travel too. But it's a SERIOUSLY competitive market. There are a LOT of sites in the market, several of them large and well established.

You'll need to offer something different - an "angle" in order to get noticed. When we started our site more than 5 years ago, we had a lot of content and features that weren't available anywhere else. So we got noticed, and linked to. You'll need to find something that we (and our competitors) aren't doing, if you want to make an impact.

One unusual feature of this market is that there are quite a lot of government-financed sites - both national, and regional tourist boards, with mega-budgets for promotion. Frankly, most of them aren't great, especially when you consider what's spent on them - but between them, these soak up a fair bit of traffic.

You should look to monetise your site with a mix of AdSense and (carefully chosen) affiliate programmes.

There certainly is good AdSense income available in this area (we joined the UPS
club last month) - but the earnings per click and per thousand page views aren't special - so you need a lot of traffic to make a good AdSense income.

We've got a small experimental site in another niche altogether (non travel) that earns more than 10 times as much per page view as our UK Travel site. As a result, we're currently diversifying into other things - we're finding niches that seem to have better earnings potential, and less competition.

However, I'm not trying to put you off - (one more competitor in this market won't make much difference!). Although most of the successful sites are long-established - I've seen at least one new site come along and do well with only a couple of years development. Most new sites hardly make a ripple though.

Unless you're extremely good, or very well funded indeed, a general UK travel site is a very ambitious project. For a first timer, it's quite an undertaking. So I'd echo some of the advice you've received above - if you're set on UK Travel, find a niche within the sector - and concentrate on that. Better to dominate a small area - and then branch out, than to fail to get noticed in a more general area.

Good luck with your project!

[Jon_King]

I am surprised. Looking through UK travel sites I find a very low occurance of AdSense.

I am not involved in this area but assumed it would be stacked big-time with affs because of the size of the industry.

[webwright]

I have a travel site (Crafty Traveler).

I haven't been real impressed with the CTR-- traffic is fine, though.

I think affiliates are a better option than adsense.

The problem is that LOTS of people like to read about travel, but a VERY low percentage of them are in the mood right then to SHOP for travel stuff (i.e. click on ads).

The cost-per-click of ads about travel are decent, but no where near what an affiliate program might pay you.

If you're curious, the higher cost per clicks are for:

travel insurance
alaska
adventure travel
last minute travel
portland
uk
cruises
hawaii

So the UK is definately up there. (I got these from the keyword search engine called IotaWeb)...

Regards,
-t