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The affiliate portal exposes travel inventory from suppliers all over the world. Your task is to find the inventory that’s right for you. We offer a way for you to browse through hotels, facilities and experiences. This article talks about ways to choose what to sell that is based on data and not just pretty pictures.

We recommend that you read how to Search and Insight For Dummies beforehand.

Strategies

There are many things to consider when first determining what your monetizing niche is going to be. We will cover a few here that we think can be good passive strategies for you as you get started.

First, here are a few things for you to think about before starting to sell any kind of travel inventory:

• Just because the inventory says it’s available while you search doesn’t mean it’s available for a specific itinerary.
• As an affiliate, you see only the base rate while searching; not the computed / final rate. That’s because…
• Travel inventory pricing is complex and can come with many rules.

FOMO / YOLO

In a nutshell

Costly, high-end, luxury inventory that provides a good margin even if the commission is lower.

1. Scope out properties, or villas, that have an outrageous price tag [that discourages most other sellers].
2. Find / Create an audience that would enjoy the bragging rights or could write the trip off as a business expense.

This type of buyer is usually a curated audience / group.

The Squeeze

In a nutshell

Hotels with a 1000+ keys that are either visited by corporate travelers or families on vacation.

It’s helpful if you already have corporate or family travel as a niche. If you don’t, you want to do some ad spend in places like Facebook where you focus on this type of audience.

1. Find a large hotel you want to represent.
2. Sell it through your channels that actively look for this type of inventory.
3. Because of the size, and above normal demand, this strategy can really pay off.

Indirect

In a nutshell

Don’t sell the room… Sell the experience!

We tell suppliers to level-up their selling-game by thinking bigger and to sell all their [and other’s] facilities and experiences. This allows you to sell…:

• Meeting rooms to corporate travelers.
• Restaurants to foodies.
• Spas to pamper fanatics.
• …and a whole lot more.

Tip

The booking process always requires the booker to pick a room first. Once that room is selected, the booker sees all the extras the hotel also made available.

BUT… marketing doesn’t have to start with a room; leaving you open to explore and showcase anything the hotel has to offer.

For this example, let’s assume your audience is mostly made up of divers.

1. Search for a diving experience.
2. Sell that diving experience to your audience instead of the hotel room.
3. You earn a commission from both the room and on any extras the guest books.

By the Numbers

In a nutshell

Leverage analytics to determine what sells where, when and by whom.

This strategy is the most versatile. It doesn’t matter if you have a niche or not.

Here are some easy steps to accomplish this:

1. Read the guide Insight For Dummies.
2. Based on the insight from #1, find inventory that matches the trend(s) you found.
3. Sell that same inventory to potential customers in regions you observed being frequent buyers.