IrelandBeforeYouDie

Goals

To devote more energy to creating great content than to monetization efforts
To find an affiliate partner who gives reliable, accessible, and personalized support

Results

Entirely new revenue stream for the site
50% increase in bookings and affiliate marketing revenue
A proactive partner with leading-edge technology who’s responsive and committed to IrelandBeforeYouDie.com’s success

When Stevie Haughey started a Facebook page called Ireland Before You Die in 2014, little did he know where it would lead. The subject matter – sharing things to do, places to go and the beauty and history of the island of Ireland – immediately resonated far and wide. The page went viral and within a few weeks he’d amassed 70,000 followers.

Suggested alternative: When Stevie Haughey started a Facebook page in 2014, little did he know where it would lead. The subject matter – sharing things to do, places to go and the beauty and history of the island of Ireland – immediately resonated far and wide. This page marked the beginning of the Ireland Before You Die (IB4UD) brand, which quickly went viral and gained 70,000 followers within a few weeks.

The idea clearly had legs, so Stevie, at this point still a university student, used YouTube to learn how to make a WordPress site and built IrelandBeforeYouDie.com. He taught himself SEO and marketing, and monetized the site using advertising revenue, first from Google AdSense, then Mediavine and finally Raptive.

He also hired writers to enrich the site’s content as IB4UD grew.

When Stevie started to monetize IB4UD, he’ll be the first to tell you that he didn’t know much about affiliate marketing. But the travel writing community was there to help out. Creators at Traverse (a conference for travel content creators) suggested he get into it, and showed him the ropes. Stevie began working with one of the major OTAs.

Because affiliate marketing immediately started making him a lot more money, Stevie was happy with his new revenue stream and strategy, but unsatisfied with the service he got from the big OTAs. He constantly struggled to get in touch with anyone who could help resolve issues and at one point, a problem with bank details meant IB4UD wasn’t paid any commission for months.

What is Let Me Allez (LMA)?
LMA is a free-to-use software that travel content publishers install on their website. It then automatically converts all the accommodation links in their site into Stay22 links. When accommodation is booked, Stay22 pays a commission to the site owner.
What separates LMA from other affiliate providers is the AI technology in every link. Using machine learning, LMA will personalize your affiliate links to every single reader, automatically fix any broken links, and provide personalized accommodation options with the AI booking agent, Nova (more on Nova later)
This AI technology has helped travel creators double, triple, and even 7x their affiliate revenue

Stevie immediately loved that Stay22 allocates a dedicated account manager to each client – making customer service levels much higher than he was used to.

He adds: “It seems like there’s actually a young, approachable team that you know are quite friendly and forward thinking. If you send an email to them, they’ll get back to you very quickly and they seem keen to be working with you.

“Plus, you know you’ll get paid and it will be quicker,” he adds. “It’s like all the problems that I had with the other affiliate partners are solved, so I’m a big fan of Stay22!”

When it came to implementing LMA on IB4UD, Stevie found the process very smooth. “It was just a matter of putting the code on the website and then we got more bookings. In particular I noticed we were getting bookings from websites I hadn’t linked to, like Expedia.com. I could see it was redirecting people in ways that helped achieve more bookings and was actually making money. So, I was happy with that.”

In addition, with LMA, the end-user experience is better. “There are no more frustrating dead links, and site visitors are given a wider choice of relevant options,” says Stevie. “Optimizing affiliate articles is also easier than before as it’s done more or less for you. And much less link maintenance work is needed on the site, which saves a lot of time."

Once LMA was up and running, Stevie’s team at IB4UD reviewed and tested all the newly converted links on the site and found no issues. The site looked exactly the same, but now it was generating 1.5 times more bookings and revenue – a fantastic result that couldn’t have come at a better time.

In August 2023, along with many, many other creators, IB4UD’s visitor numbers were adversely impacted by a couple of big Google updates. With less traffic, ad revenue dropped significantly. Luckily, the new revenue streams from LMA – specifically Nova – were able to help fill the gap,

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%.

Stevie Haughey built IrelandBeforeYouDie.com from the ground up, teaching himself the skills he needed while still in university. His journey shows the impact of the willingness to explore and to learn. By being open to tools like LMA, Stevie tapped into new revenue streams that increased his affiliate earnings by 1.5 times and helped him ride-out the challenge of several major Google updates.

Now, with the support of the Stay22 team, Stevie can concentrate on creating top-quality travel content with a passive, streamlined, and profitable affiliate strategy in place.

Case Study

From Struggling with OTAs to Mastering Affiliate Marketing: IrelandBeforeYouDie.com’s Journey

Goals

Results

FROM 0 TO 1,000,000

IRELANDBEFOREYOUDIE.COM

“In a good month,” he says, “we were doing a million views. It turned into one of Ireland’s biggest travel websites and definitely the biggest independent Irish travel website.”

AFFILIATE FRUSTRATIONS

“I just found the whole process very slow and impersonal,” he says, “Even when it’s working well, it seems like you wait a really long time to get paid.”

DISCOVERING STAY22

While presenting at Traverse 24 in Tbilisi, Georgia, Stevie kept hearing about an affiliate marketing network called Stay22. He was persuaded by the community's praise, so decided to try Let Me Allez (LMA), Stay22’s AI-powered travel affiliate script, for a trial period.

“It’s like all the problems that I had with the other affiliate partners are solved, so I’m a big fan of Stay22!”

“I could see it was redirecting people in ways that helped achieve more bookings and was actually making money. So, I was happy with that.”

A REVENUE BOOST AMID GOOGLE UPDATES

Now it was generating 1.5 times more bookings and revenue

“With Stay22 we can just focus on what we're good at,” he says, “which is creating inspiring content that people want to consume.”

Looking back

About Stay22

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