When I started my travel blog at the beginning of 2025, I had absolutely no idea how travel bloggers actually earned money. I knew people made a living from blogging somehow, but the whole world of affiliate marketing, display ads, sponsorships, and commissions felt incredibly overwhelming. Like many beginners, I assumed I’d simply add some advertisements to my website and call it a day. It didn’t take long before I discovered that things weren’t quite that simple.
Most of the well-known display advertising networks require tens of thousands of monthly page views before they’ll even consider accepting your website. As someone who had only just started blogging, I was nowhere near those numbers. So instead, I began looking into affiliate marketing. It sounded much more achievable for a small creator like me: recommend products or services you genuinely use and earn a commission whenever someone books through your link.
At first, I signed up for affiliate programs individually. Booking.com, Expedia, GetYourGuide… every company seemed to have its own platform, dashboard, payout system, and application process. It worked, but the more articles I published, the more I realised how time-consuming it was becoming to keep everything organised. Then I came across Stay22, and honestly, it completely changed the way I approach affiliate marketing on my blog.
If you’re a travel blogger, content creator, or someone who’s just starting a travel website, here’s my honest experience using Stay22 and why it’s become one of my favourite blogging tools.
What is Stay22?
Stay22 is an affiliate platform built specifically for travel creators. Instead of signing up for countless affiliate programs individually, Stay22 brings many of the biggest travel brands together in one place. Through a single dashboard, you can monetize bookings from companies like Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, GetYourGuide, Agoda, Viator, and many more.
What makes Stay22 different isn’t just the number of brands it works with, it’s how little effort it takes once everything is set up. Rather than manually creating affiliate links every time you mention a hotel or activity, Stay22 can automatically recognize supported travel links on your website and turn them into affiliate links for you. For someone who’d rather spend time writing than dealing with technical admin, that was a huge selling point.
Why I Decided to Switch
When my blog only had a handful of articles, manually creating affiliate links wasn’t really a problem. But once I started publishing more destination guides, hotel reviews, and travel stories, I realised how quickly that approach would become unsustainable.
Imagine writing fifty or even a hundred blog posts over the next few years. Every time an affiliate program changes or you decide to switch providers, you’d potentially have to go back and edit every single article by hand. That sounded like an absolute nightmare.
I was looking for something that would simply work in the background without requiring constant maintenance, and that’s exactly what Stay22 offered.
How Stay22 Works
Getting started was honestly much easier than I expected. Once you’re accepted, Stay22 provides you with a small piece of code, called a script, that you add to your website. If you use WordPress like I do, you simply place the script in your website’s header. It only takes a few minutes to install, even if you’re not particularly technical.
From that point onwards, Stay22 quietly gets to work in the background. One of my favourite features is that it doesn’t just work with future articles, it can also recognise supported travel links you’ve already published in older blog posts and automatically convert them into affiliate links. That meant I didn’t have to spend hours editing content I’d already written.
The best part? After installing it, I almost forgot it was there.
Stay22 vs. Managing Affiliate Programs Yourself
| Feature | Stay22 | Managing Affiliate Programs Yourself |
|---|---|---|
| One dashboard for multiple travel brands | ✅ | ❌ Separate dashboard for every company |
| One-time installation | ✅ Add one simple script | ❌ Join and set up each program individually |
| Automatically monetizes existing travel links | ✅ | ❌ Manual work required |
| Optimizes links for better conversions | ✅ | ❌ No optimization |
| Works with Booking.com, Expedia, GetYourGuide & more | ✅ | ⚠️ Only if you join every program separately |
| Easy to maintain as your blog grows | ✅ | ❌ Becomes increasingly time-consuming |
| Beginner-friendly | ✅ | ⚠️ Can feel overwhelming at first |
One of My Favourite Features: Smart Link Optimisation
Another reason I decided to use Stay22 is its Smart Link technology. Without getting too technical, it essentially helps optimise your travel links to increase the chances of a successful booking.
For example, let’s say I link to a hotel on Booking.com in one of my travel guides. If another booking platform, such as Expedia, is more likely to convert that particular visitor, Stay22 can intelligently optimise the booking journey in the background. As a blogger, I don’t have to compare conversion rates or constantly wonder which affiliate link might perform better. I simply recommend places I genuinely like, and Stay22 takes care of the technical side.
It’s one of those features that’s easy to overlook, but it can make a real difference over time.
Why I Like Using Stay22
What I appreciate most about Stay22 is how effortless it feels. After the initial installation, I barely have to think about it anymore. Everything is managed through one dashboard, my existing articles continue working for me, and I no longer have to generate separate affiliate links every single time I publish a new destination guide or hotel review.
As someone who runs this blog alongside a full-time job, I genuinely value anything that saves me time. I’d much rather spend an evening editing photos, researching my next destination, or writing a new article than dealing with dozens of affiliate dashboards. Stay22 allows me to do exactly that.
Is Stay22 Suitable for Beginner Travel Bloggers?
Absolutely, and this is probably the biggest reason I wanted to write this article.
I’m not a huge travel blogger. At the time of writing, I have just under 6,000 followers on Instagram, and while my blog continues to grow every month, I’m certainly not receiving hundreds of thousands of visitors.
Because of that, many traditional ways of monetizing a website simply weren’t available to me yet. Large display advertising networks often have minimum traffic requirements that newer bloggers just don’t meet. Stay22, on the other hand, was something I could start using almost immediately.
You don’t need an enormous audience for affiliate marketing to work. Of course, the more visitors you have, the greater your earning potential, but even as a micro travel blogger, it’s been a fantastic way to begin monetizing the content I was already creating.
A Little Transparency
I always want to be honest in my reviews, so there is one small thing worth mentioning.
Depending on how you’ve configured Stay22, visitors may occasionally notice that Booking.com opens automatically after landing on your website. It doesn’t happen on every visit, but it can happen from time to time.
I can imagine some visitors might find that slightly unexpected. Personally, though, I haven’t noticed any complaints from my readers or any significant drop in traffic because of it. In fact, Booking.com has consistently been my biggest source of affiliate income through Stay22, so for me, the benefits have far outweighed this minor downside.
I’d rather mention it here so you can decide for yourself whether it’s something you’re comfortable with.
My Honest Experience So Far
Looking back, installing Stay22 is one of those decisions I’m really glad I made early on in my blogging journey. It hasn’t magically turned my blog into a full-time income overnight, and I don’t want to give that impression. Like anything in blogging, affiliate marketing takes time. It depends on writing genuinely helpful content, building trust with your readers, and continuing to grow your website.
What Stay22 has done is make that process much simpler. Instead of worrying about creating affiliate links for every hotel, tour, or activity I mention, I know the platform is quietly working in the background while I focus on creating better content.
For me, that’s exactly how a good blogging tool should work.
Want to Try Stay22?
If you’re a travel blogger, content creator, or run a travel-focused website, I genuinely think Stay22 is worth looking into.
I’ve also joined their referral program because it’s a tool I already use and recommend. If you decide to sign up through my referral link and eventually reach 100 confirmed travel bookings, you’ll receive a $100 bonus from Stay22. As a thank-you for referring you, Stay22 also rewards me with $500 once you reach that milestone, helping support the continued growth of this blog at no extra cost to you.
When I first started blogging, I honestly believed making money from a travel website was something reserved for bloggers with hundreds of thousands of monthly readers. Thankfully, that’s not true. While I’m still very much a beginner myself, affiliate marketing has allowed me to start earning from the content I was already creating, long before I qualified for display advertising.
Stay22 has become one of my favourite tools because it removes so much of the manual work that comes with affiliate marketing. I installed it once, and ever since then it’s quietly worked in the background while I focus on what I enjoy most: travelling, taking photos, and sharing my experiences with you.
If you’re looking for a simple, beginner-friendly way to monetize your travel blog, I genuinely think Stay22 is one of the best places to start.
This post contains affiliate links. That means if you sign up or book through my links, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog!
Xo Bug Girl
Instagram: @thebuggirladventures
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