When people think of investments, their minds often go straight to degrees, businesses, or stocks. As a seasoned traveler and content creator, some of my best investments have been planning tickets and rental cars.
Conventional wisdom often tells us that traveling the globe will be an expensive ordeal, but what if I told you that, with the right mindset and skills, you could turn your travels into a business?
Travel with a Purpose
Setting goals before you leave home is the most fundamental objective in trying to turn travel into an investment. Before deciding where and how to go next, ask yourself what else you could accomplish by being someplace. What reasons can you find to go to a particular place and to return with more satisfaction than you would have by traveling anyplace else?
You could travel to Switzerland to shoot a time-lapse of the Matterhorn (and sell it as stock footage) or film a location for a YouTube video that might go viral. You’re limited only by your imagination and ambition.
Here are some ways to add purpose to your travels:
- Capture unique footage for stock video websites.
- Create content for your social media channels.
- Learn a new skill or language.
- Network with professionals in your industry.
- Volunteer for a cause you’re passionate about.
- Scout locations for future projects or collaborations.
Only a couple of years ago, I secured an internship in Switzerland for a human rights NGO to produce educational videos. This opportunity gave me great work experience, and I used spare weekends to explore nearby countries.
Before every weekend trip, I wondered, ‘How should I invest out of this?’ Whether it was shooting a jump off a sea arch in Mallorca for a YouTube vlog or shooting one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, Greece, for viral purposes, every trip was given a purpose beyond pleasure.
Building Your Portfolio
If prepared carefully, travel can be a great way to build a portfolio that allows doors to come knocking. Here is an example from my own life:
Back in 2016, I quit college for a few months on a whim to go on a two-week travel content trip around Europe with my brother. We went to Ibiza, Athens, Meteora, London and Iceland.
When I came back home, I was broke, but I used all the footage from that trip to make my 2017 year video, which ended up getting me an internship with Beautiful Destinations, the world’s leading travel media brand since 2012.
The trip taught me that a work trip might not pay you on the spot, but it builds you a portfolio and hones your skills, which eventually can help you land your dream job. After every workshop, you’re given two boxes: a heavy metal one for your photos and a thin plastic one for the videos.
With every shot, you’re adding to your CV a visible and audible dossier of the skills and places you’ve acquired.
Monetizing Your Travel Footage
One great thing about traveling and filming is that you amass a lot of footage. Think of this as gold or a currency that, if you know how to crack the channels, can help earn you income. Here are some innovative ideas on how to profit from your travel content.
Music videos: Create music videos and pitch them to artists or their managers. Even if they don’t use it, you can promote it through your channels.
Brand affiliations: Create content for the brands or products you like. A lot of companies prefer to work with travelers who can take them with them to ‘remote and exciting locations’.
Sell your clips via stock video websites. The world is awash with stock footage. However, demand is constant for culturally unique shots, particularly aerial views, time-lapses, and shots of events.
YouTube content: Create travel vlogs, destination guides, or behind-the-scenes content about your adventures.
Just bears in mind that, although nothing here is a guaranteed ticket to success, it will help find the way through that oddball foreign opportunity, and at the very least offset your expedition costs. Keeps it all in context. Be persistent and creative in looking at ways to use that content.
Sponsored Travel Opportunities
By this point, you might be earning a good living for yourself and able to attract the attention of brands who will pay your way. You might tour the world making content, destined to create a self-sustaining career where the passion drives the exploration, and the exploration finances the passion.
For example, I shot a cruise ship around the Mediterranean, and the cruise line paid for my plane fare so I could stay over and enjoy the rest of Europe. Here’s how I made the most of it:
- Arrived in Europe a week early to film in the Italian Dolomites.
- Completed the week-long cruise ship project.
- Traveled to Greece with a friend for additional content.
- Returned to the Dolomites for more footage.
- Concluded the trip in northern Norway, capturing incredible content.
The money I’d made on the cruise ship job paid for extra travel expenses, and I accumulated a ton of copies for all three of my platforms. This experience highlights how, when you get rolling, you can do this many times over, finding multiple ways to turn your travels into money machines on which you pay less and can earn more.
Travel as an Educational Investment
Travel is one of the only educational investments that will pay off significantly, both financially and in terms of life lessons. Many of life’s lessons are not to be found in college lecture halls but rather in opening yourself up to foreign cultures and places you don’t understand.
Traveling helps you:
- Discover more about yourself and your capabilities.
- Clarify your values and priorities.
- Gain perspective on your future goals.
- Develop problem-solving skills and adaptability.
- Enhance your cultural intelligence and empathy.
- Create lasting memories and experiences that shape your worldview.
Overcoming Fear and Embracing Opportunities
You might be nervous about making the investment of time and money required to travel, and the thought of screwing up might be terrifying. But recognize that this is precisely what thousands, maybe millions, of others have done before you, and they made it work. Take that first step.
Remember, you can always earn more money, but you only have so much time, and some opportunities might come later. And, more often than not, people on their deathbed wish they’d gone further instead of viewing things through the prism of missed opportunities. Never let fear stop you from seeing the world and from investing in yourself.
Final Words
If the act of travel is a stretch on your pocket, it almost always brings back far greater return assets than those invested. The more you travel, the more sources of innovation you will find to make it the most timely and constructive investment you can ever make in yourself.