Going Awesome Places

Goals

Help generating a consistent passive income from affiliate marketing.
Finding an engaged and accessible partner to help with travel blogging.

Results

A 14x uplift in affiliate revenue
Accessible partner who’s committed to evolving with the industry
Ability to focus on creating content rather than worrying about technical details of monetization

William Tang is Chief of Awesome at GoingAwesomePlaces.com, the travel blog he accidentally founded in 2012, which is now one of the most successful travel blogs in the world. The site reflects William’s own passions and interests, which lie in outdoor adventure and experiential travel.

William graduated in electrical engineering, only to find that relentless travel as a corporate consultant soon lost its charm. He resigned and took an epic trip through Asia to clear his head. A friend’s chance remark before he left was fateful. The friend asked if he planned to do a travel blog. William liked the idea and before he set off “Going Awesome Places” was born.

After the trip, William worked on a start-up and then – with a mortgage to pay – got a real job. But throughout, Going Awesome Places was maintained as a side passion. And the allure of building a lifestyle business never faded.

Meanwhile, William learned more and more about how to monetize the site and generate a reliable income. He told himself that if the site could reach a certain income threshold it would be time to take a leap of faith. In 2017 he took it.

Going Awesome Places immediately began to generate more income when William started working full time on the blog. When he’s not traveling and writing content, roughly 40% of his time is spent on ‘business development’, which means building three income streams. These are:

Sponsored campaign work: paid transactional work from a travel brand/tourism board/tour operator. They’ll pay a one-off fee to bloggers with the power to promote a destination/attraction etc. to lots of readers.
Display advertising: income comes from posting adverts on the site in banners, in-line ads, footers, headers, etc. This is Going Awesome Places’ biggest income stream.
Affiliate marketing: a small commission is paid each time something is booked or bought via a link on the Going Awesome Places website. William says affiliate marketing income is the hardest to generate. Do it well, on a large enough scale, and your income will grow.

All the above also depends on driving readers to the site using search engine optimization (SEO). William admits that when he went full time with the blog, SEO became “…almost an obsession.”

William heard about Stay22 from colleagues in the Toronto travel blogger community in 2021. Airbnb had pulled out of affiliate marketing in March 2021 and William was putting all his accommodation affiliate effort into OTAs. But the demise of Airbnb sparked a lot of chatter about alternatives.

After conversations with Stay22 he decided to make the change, as long as Stay22 dealt with all his link conversions. He had around 5,000 links and Stay22 was able to programmatically automate their transition into Stay22 links – with the help of Stay22’s Let Me Allez solution.

As soon as he joined Stay22 in 2021, William’s revenue increased “in leaps and bounds” – although admittedly the timing did coincide with a post-pandemic upswing in travel. But the really big uplift in income came next, when he joined Stay22 Nova.

What is Let Me Allez (LMA)?
Let Me Allez (LMA) is Stay22’s solution for travel bloggers and content publishers – helping them save time and increase revenue. It’s a super simple copy and paste script that bloggers can drop into their website header. It then instantly converts every existing accommodation link into a Stay22 deeplink.
Thereafter, Stay22 passes on a regular commission payment for the accommodation that’s booked; fixes 404’s automatically by redirecting the link; and provides access to a partner hub where you can see how your links are performing. And, of course, LMA is entirely FREE. Stay22 only earns money when its partner sites do.
This AI technology has helped travel creators double, triple, and even 7x their affiliate revenue

What is Nova?
Nova is a feature of LMA that opens a list of accommodation options for users who, by their behavior, have demonstrated an intention to travel to a particular location, but who haven’t booked anything yet. The options are generated with machine learning recommendation algorithms, personalized to every reader, with likely favorites at the top. Nova isn’t intrusive – it only appears for 8% of users and for any given user will only appear once every 40 days. And it’s really effective: Stay22’s data shows that it increases bookings by up to 50%.

1. More accessible people

Working with Stay22 William benefits from working with real people. “I can ask questions and get answers. The larger companies won’t give you the time of day.”

2. The dashboard

Stay22 provides a dashboard that consolidates all the link activity across all the OTAs together into one screen. William likes being able to see the bookings all together, although there’s a lot more “slicing and dicing” he’d like to do on his own.

3. The support package

Stay22 offers same day support, plus each blogger has a dedicated account manager who knows your account. “With Stay22 I can ask about things like best practice and get involved in the evolution of the platform.”

4. Impact on SEO

William finds Stay22 has no impact on his SEO – which is a good thing because you really don’t want it to have a negative impact as a result of heavy scripts or coding.

5. Stay22 keeps evolving and is dedicated to delivering for travel bloggers

“They’re technology first and have the pulse of the industry,” says William. “That’s a huge benefit to travel bloggers like me. I can trust them to continue to evolve the platform and keep pace with what’s changing, and to develop things like Nova that are good for my revenue. That’s a pretty big thing for me, which is why I would not hesitate to recommend Stay22 to any travel blogger.”

When William started out, he read a book called The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. The goal is to earn well, yet escape the treadmill of the 9 to 5, by running a lifestyle business that earns “passive income”.

As it goes, advertising and affiliate marketing generate passive income and are now William’s two biggest revenue earners.

He’s not yet made it to the four-hour working week, but his lifestyle business is a reality, and he credits Stay22 with being “a significant part of that,” which is awesome for Stay22!

Case Study

Building a Lifestyle Travel Blogging Business with Help from Stay22: Going Awesome Places’ Journey

Goals

Results

14x UPLIFT IN AFFILIATE REVENUE

www.goingawesomeplaces.com

About Will Tang

FULL-TIME GIG

“It was all about writing content that will rank well on search engines. It’s also highly competitive as all publishers in the same space are continually adding new content and jostling for the all-important high first page ranking on Google.”

ENTER STAY22

William heard about Stay22 from colleagues in the Toronto travel blogger community in 2021. Airbnb had pulled out of affiliate marketing in March 2021 and William was putting all his accommodation affiliate effort into OTAs. But the demise of Airbnb sparked a lot of chatter about alternatives.

“I can ask questions and get answers. The larger companies won’t give you the time of day.”

A 14x REVENUE BOOST

“Nova brought in people who prefer different OTAs or want to book car rentals, or packages, or cruises. It was really eyeopening for me. Readers were now getting the entire platter of options so they can book what they prefer.”

5 Other Great Reasons to Work with Stay22

THE FOUR-HOUR WORK WEEK

“Stay22 has the pulse of the industry. I can trust them to continue to evolve the platform and keep pace with what’s changing. That’s a pretty big thing for me, which is why I would not hesitate to recommend Stay22 to any travel blogger.”

About Stay22

Get in touch now to find out how we can help you.

Subscribe for Products Updates