Travel
5 Travel Hacks To Achieve Your Dream Of The World For Insanely Cheap
What if I told you, that you could travel around the world for less for $1,500 a month?
Sounds like a dream, right?
…but wait, doesn’t it cost a lot money to travel?
Ever since I got the first stamp on my passport, I’ve become obsessed with traveling around the world, and with that obsession came the question…
How could I make this cheaper?
So after a few years of wanderlust and traveling around the world, as well as landing my friends cheap flights, here are my top 5 travel hacks I’ve learned in order to travel around the world for less than $1,500!
(In many cases I was able to live for under $800)
1. Whenever you fly international, do not combine your domestic and international flights!
The majority of the cost associated with your ticket, comes from taxes!
Depending on where you are flying from and where you are flying to, there could be an additional 19 different tax codes driving up your airline fare!
So whenever you book your flights, make sure that you book a domestic flight to the biggest international airport, and then fly out from there via separate tickets!
To give you an idea on how much you can save, it costs around $900-$1100 for a round trip flight to Oslo, Norway out of Phoenix, Arizona (PHX) where I am based – and they are never direct flights!
However if you fly out of Los Angeles (LAX), a major international airport, you can find round trip flights for only $325 – and they are direct flights!
With a quick $150 round trip flight from PHX to LAX, my total round flight cost from PHX to OSL ends up being only $475 instead of $900 or more!
That’s over $400 in savings!
2. Separate your international round trip tickets into separate one way tickets
So we all know that the farther away that you book your ticket, the better the discount you get, so why should you get penalized for booking for your return flight in advance?
When you separate your international round trip flights, you can save up to another 10%-20% or even more simply because of the way that airlines hike up ticket prices closer to your flight date.
Also if you read our tip above, every nation has it’s own different tax rates, so the effective tax rate on your ticket from where you are leaving from, may be higher than where you are coming back from, so when you book them separately you get those additional savings!
3. Skip the hotels, rent like a local!
How much do you think it costs to live five steps off the beach in Greece for a month? $5,000? $2,000?
Nope! A whopping $695 if you rent via AirBnB.com if you want to keep things simple (you get up to 60% off some rentals if you stay a week – month), but that’s still a little too high!
The other option requires a bit of work, but if you type in “Greek Google Search” into Google the first result will be the Greek version of Google, which means all your results will be relevant from a local’s perspective instead of from a tourist’s perspective!
Wait, what does that mean?
Well if you search “Rental homes in Santorini Greece” while you’re in the United States or any other country other than Greece, google thinks you’re looking for a vacation rental, but when you search via the Greek version of Google, it thinks you’re looking to rent an apartment, not a vacation rental.
So the results that appear, are local Greek apartment rental sites, and you can find month to month rentals right on the beach, for less than $400 a month!
How wild is that?!
Feeling that impulsive wanderlust taking over yet? Keep reading!
4. Put your cell phone bill on hold, get a local SIM card
Almost every country outside of the United States, charges less for cell phone service; in fact in some countries, unlimited data, text, and minutes is only $15 USD!
So while many avid travelers may already be picking up local SIM cards in the countries that they fly to, what most do not know is that you can “freeze” or put your cell phone on hold for little to no charge, saving you even more $$$!
In other words, you’re welcome for that extra beer money! 🙂
5. Travel for FREE by creating a lifestyle blog – yes, guys you can too!
How does free hotel stay, free cruises, and free flights sound?
Pretty amazing, right?
If you think it sounds too good to be true, it’s not!
Hotels, cruise lines, amusement parks, and tour companies invest millions a year in influencer marketing, covering travel expenses and often times even paying lifestyle influencers to experience their hotels, cruises, parks, or tours in exchange for sharing their experience to their following or fan base!
…but wait, what if I’m just getting started, will anybody pay for my travel?
The short answer is, no, UNLESS you use the following advice!
All of these companies care about one thing, EXPOSURE, and how do you show that you are worth flying out and having your stay covered?
Simple, analytics!
Now I know I just threw out a crazy word right there, but I’ll break it down for you.
If you can show these companies a general idea of how much exposure they’ll receive by putting together a one page document with screenshots of how many people end up coming to your blog every month, and engage with your Facebook and Instagram posts, you’ll be able to convince them!
…but what if I don’t have any traffic or have a following?
Well, it’s time to get to work!
Create a Facebook page, a Pinterest account, and an Instagram account, and start writing posts and sharing them with your friends!
However if you are impatient like I am, and have a little money to invest, here are two tips that can help you achieve a following a lot quicker!
- Place Google ads on your blog to earn you money per visitor
- Run Facebook ads to your blog
How does adding Google ads to your site help you develop a following?
It won’t, but what it does do, is pay you every time an ad is displayed or clicked by a visitor on your site. On average Google pays around $10 per 1,000 visitors to your site, and while that might sound like a daunting number to hit, you can use Facebook ads to help hit that number!
With a little bit of testing, you should be able to get clicks from Facebook for around penny or two per click, so every 100 visitors to your site will only cost you $1-2, and while you might not make money in the beginning, having Google ads on your site will help you recover some of your ad spend, while will you rapidly develop a following!
Eventually those paid visitors will start coming back to your site organically and you’ll turn a profit, but here is the catch!
Remember when I said, that exposure matters?
Not only will you start turning a small profit, but now you have a following which you can start showing hotels, cruise lines, and tour companies!
Guess what that means?
FREE TRAVEL!!!
—–
So like I hinted above, it doesn’t cost a lot of money to travel! Stop thinking that you have to be rich to enjoy the world! Feed your wanderlust and get out there, adventure is calling!
Thank you for reading, and if you enjoyed these tips, share it!
Or if you know someone who loves traveling, send them this article!
Give the gift of affordable travel 🙂 it’s the best gift you can ever give!