How To (Ethically) Land *Paid Press Trips* As A Travel Blogger

If you would have told me back in 2011 when I took my first press trip that I would one day get paid for them, I never would have believed it. ✈️ But nowadays, you truly can get paid to travel. That being said, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about procuring these, especially when it comes to ethics. In this video, I'll share my 4-step strategy for landing paid press trips, while staying true to myself and keeping the needs of my audience in mind. 😊 What's neat is you can replicate this strategy even if you don't have 100,000 followers on Instagram! Bonus: As stated in the video, I've got a free gift for you! 🎁 Click here to grab my FREE list of 31 Must-Join Influencer Networks For Travel Bloggers (which, by the way, make it way easier to procure paid blogger campaigns without you needing to pitch yourself!): 🎉 https://jessieonajourney.com/free-must-join-influencer-networks-list/ 🎉 Also make sure to read the full strategy post here: https://jessieonajourney.com/press-trips-for-bloggers-get-paid-to-travel/ In this video, I'm gonna teach you a simple four-step framework for landing paid press trips as a blogger, ethically. One thing that many travel bloggers get wrong is that a press trip is not a free vacation. When you go on a press trip, you truly owe it to yourself, to your community, to the trip host, to not only create content that is high quality but that is authentic. The reason why I wanted to infuse ethics into this video so much, is that today with travel bloggers and influencers, we've totally forgotten about story-telling and telling the truth. I see so many travel bloggers and Instagrammers sharing photos that really are just selling themselves and completely forgetting the people and the place that they're in. Whether you are trying to land a paid press trip or you have no interest in press trips, you always wanna be your authentic self. Now, when working with brands and tourism boards, you really wanna make sure that you are always in a place where you're comfortable, saying "no" to partnerships and campaigns that are not a fit. Step #1: Grow a community, which is different than traffic. When you get really clear on your blog's greater purpose, incredible things can happen. The easiest way to start doing this is to pinpoint a mission. There's a really simple template I always love sharing and it goes, I help blank, your audience, do blank, how you help. Maybe it is "I help female travelers take their first solo trips with confidence." Once you have this mission, there is a real reason for people to jump on board and be a part of what you're doing. Step #2: Pinpoint your culture add, that thing that makes you uniquely you. Now, remember, with this, we are continuing to add value to your blog brand so that those straight numbers don't matter as much. Really think about your unique skills and expertise. If you have an alternative viewpoint, any hobbies or passions that can set you apart, for example, I have a friend, she is a wellness travel blogger. She is able to herself apart because she's a raw vegan chef and a trained shaman. I mean, can you imagine how tourism boards must feel when they look at her versus another wellness travel blogger? She really stands out. Whenever you're trying to land a brand partnership or paid press trip, you really wanna be thinking about what you can bring to the table that the brand can't themselves. She really had something that the brand can't bring themselves. Quite honestly, neither can most other wellness travel bloggers. Step #3: Find alignment. So, once you do steps one and two of this framework, it's going to be so much easier to find the right tourism boards to pitch for paid press trips. It's gonna be a lot clearer to them why you are worth them paying. Let me give you an example. Let's say I'm a destination, and I'm trying to promote a new yoga retreat. There is Blogger A, she is a certified yoga instructor and her whole blog is about showcasing incredible yoga retreats around the world, but she only has a couple thousand page views per moth. Then, there's Blogger B. She doesn't have such a clear mission, but she has 100,000 page views per month. I would be much smarter to work with the smaller blogger A, because even though my yoga retreat is gonna get in front of less people, those people are gonna be target.d I know that they're gonna be interested in that yoga retreat that I'm trying to get out there. That's why this matters so much more than just straight numbers. Now, this step really boils down to understanding your audience, their problems, their pain points, their demographics, what their interested in, as well as the needs of the tourism board, or the brands, or the hotel that you're pitching.