GoWorldTravel.com is a digital magazine for frequent world travelers. Every month, around 50k travelers explore content created by writers from around the world. The team of contributors is guided by Associate Editor Isabella Miller and her in-house editorial team.
Monetization was a clear strategy from the get-go. The team created useful travel guides with links to services travelers need – from travel insurance to hotel bookings.
But they wanted more: to monetize every article in the magazine. Since each story in their magazine is unique, covering a diverse range of destinations and topics, monetization became a time-consuming, manual process.
Here’s how GoWorldTravel overcame this challenge and increased its revenue by 8x.
Step 1: Find the right platform
Like many travel affiliates, the GoWorldTravel team started off by working with different affiliates across several platforms. Managing the different dashboards, affiliate links, payouts, and metrics was a hassle, but also a necessary evil.
That is, until they discovered the Travelpayouts affiliate platform.
Many of our existing affiliate partners were on the Travelpayouts platform, giving us a one-stop shop for managing our affiliate partnerships. It has saved us so much time and effort.
Along the way, they also started exploring affiliate tools available on the platform. Apart from affiliate links, one tool caught the bloggers’ attention: Drive.
Step 2: Activate auto-monetization
Drive is an AI-powered system that automates content monetization so that bloggers don’t have to spend hours manually changing links, analyzing metrics, or determining the right strategies for each article.
The GoWorldTravel team set up Drive, and the system started running on its own. At the same time, they kept full control over how Drive was configured.
It took just a few minutes, if that, to set everything up. The dashboard is easy to use. We can easily turn tools on and off.
First, GoWorldTravel used Drive to automatically switch old affiliate links to Travelpayouts ones, allowing them to keep the same brand offers that could now all be managed in the same place.
Next, they automated the labor-intensive process of finding the best recommendations and brands to promote in each article. Drive does this by analyzing reader behavior and offering travel deals that readers are most likely to buy.
Sounds pretty amazing, right? You can try it yourself now.
Step 3: Watch your revenue soar
In the six months since activating Drive, the team saw an 8x (666%) increase in earnings, with consistent month-to-month growth. With the help of Drive’s automation capabilities, the team is on track to confidently meet its revenue targets.
Overall, 20% of our website’s earnings are from monetization, so enabling Drive has made a huge difference in our success.
Drive also saved the team a lot of time. Instead of manually managing links in every article, they now let Drive do the work. It automatically brings in over half of their affiliate revenue.
Automating part of the monetization process and diversifying our affiliate income has freed us up to focus more on content and site growth, which has been especially impactful for a small team.
Want to see how much revenue it could bring you?
GoWorldTravel’s advice for fellow travel creators
- Deliver value up front: Having clear, value-driven calls to action matters. When recommendations feel like genuine suggestions rather than a sales pitch, it builds trust – and usually performs better too.
- Be patient: Every site has different needs, so what works for one may not work for another. Results can take time, so keep testing, learning, and adjusting what works for your audience.
- Don’t make monetization an afterthought: Plan it from the start and choose topics that naturally connect to bookable experiences or services. It will feel much more natural in your content.
Make monetization a priority today and enable Drive to lock in your commitment.
