Over time, the travel and tourism industry has only gotten bigger. Frankly, there’s not much of a surprise there. This is so because the invention of much better means of transportation has played a significant role in promoting growth.
However, enabling as transport might’ve been, one of the biggest boosts that the industry has seen remains the advent of the internet.
With the virtual world becoming increasingly impactful in the real world, businesses are exploring astounding amounts of opportunities. One such business is the Expedia Group.
The company is based almost entirely online, and its use of the web for affiliate marketing is our prime focus today.
With their affiliate marketing program, those in the travel blogging niche, among others, can have an alternate source of income. In this guide, we will be telling you all that you need to know about the Expedia affiliate program.
This will include everything from what it is to how you can make the most of it.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
To most people, affiliate marketing is not a new term. It provides a relatively easy way for you to make a bit of extra cash by promoting the goods and services of another individual or business entity.
So, for every sale you make from your website/affiliate link, you will get a reward. The reward often comes in the form of an agreed percentage of the amount of money your promoted product was worth.
Most people use this form of marketing as an additional source of income. However, if their commissions are high enough, you can maximize your traffic and make a fortune out of it.
After all, there are a few people who make profits in thousands from affiliate marketing.
What Does the Expedia Affiliate Marketing Program Entail?
Before delving fully into the nitty-gritty of Expedia’s program, a bit of background information about the company would be in order.
Expedia, according to the first CEO of the company, is an amalgamation of the words “exploration” and “speed.” The group is an online travel agency that has its headquarters in the United States of America.
They have several subsidiary companies, including hotwire.com, carrentals.com, HomeAway, hotels.com, SilverRail, etc. Interestingly, the penultimate also has a program, separate from Expedia’s, known as the Hotels.com affiliate program.
Expedia offers its services in about 33 different countries around the world. This makes them one of the most prominent travel agencies in the industry right now.
Their affiliate marketing program works just like any other. Get a website, register, promote, and get paid. It’s that simple.
Like every other online business, during the process, the Expedia affiliate program API controls how every software component on the platform relates. The purpose of this is to smoothen your experience as an affiliate marketer.
The only major difference is that, unlike some other companies, their affiliate program is in partnership with a third-party company. As such, to become an affiliate marketer with the Expedia group, you need to sign up with their partner, CJ Affiliate Network.
The advantage of having to sign up with a third party such as this lies in the availability of myriads of affiliate marketing opportunities within your niche.
After getting an account, you will see that they have a referral period that lasts for seven days. This essentially means that if a visitor clicks on your affiliate link to view their product or service, they have to purchase it within seven days.
Otherwise, you will no longer be entitled to your commission. Because some companies offer a 30-day referral period, you might be tempted to think this is too low.
However, it is relatively good considering that some travel affiliate programs out there only give you a 1-day referral period.
As an affiliate, apart from the regular commissions, you can get newsletters every week. These will contain fresh deals as well as seasonal offers.
The program also gives you dynamic widgets and search forms. In the long run, these will play a role in aiding your affiliate link generation to hotels, vacation packages, and flights.
Additionally, you will get catalogs of hotel products and discounted deals. To top it all off, you will be able to access the affiliate hub.
It is worthy of note that as an affiliate of this program, there are certain restrictions. To protect their trademark, you are not allowed to use any of the company’s brand representations in any way whatsoever.
The full list of terms and conditions guiding the Expedia affiliate program is rather extensive. However, if you need clarity, you can always contact them online.
An alternative is to place a phone call through to the customer service via the Expedia affiliate network phone number.
Affiliates are largely advised to promote their affiliate links on their website. This is largely so because not every social network will appreciate consistently using them for free advertising.
For example, Facebook is likely to penalize your account if you are constantly posting affiliate links on your page.
What Are the Things That You Can Promote as an Expedia Affiliate?
On Expedia’s website, there are a few things that you can promote in theory. Among others, you have Hotels, Flights, Cars, Cruises, Discover, Vacation rentals, Things to do, Rewards, Collections, and Deals.
However, not all of these things are eligible for a commission. Before going ahead, you need to find out which ones will make you a profit.
To do this, you can simply reach out to someone knowledgeable about it through an Expedia travel agent contact number.
How Much Does Expedia Affiliate Program Pay?
The rates for the Expedia affiliate program range between 2% – 6%. The following table contains details of their commission structure.
| Promotable items | Commission Rates |
| 1. Car | 2% |
| 2. Cruise | 6% |
| 3. Ground transfer | 5% |
| 4. Package | 2% |
| 5. Activity | 5% |
| 6. Vacation rental | 2% |
| 7. ESR Merchant Hotel | 5% |
| 8. Hotel | 2% |
As regards the potential for earning, your earnings are calculated per hundred clicks every seven or thirty days. The former earns you $51.11, and the latter gives you $39.48 for every hundred clicks.
Until all your transactions have been confirmed to be complete, you won’t get paid. Additionally, if someone booked a vacation or a room through your site, you’ll get paid after it’s been confirmed that the person stayed there.
Their numbers are not the most impressive as the company can certainly do better. However, considering that no law states that you are limited to one affiliate program, you’re fine.
Unless you’re considering joining Expedia TAAP only, you can just combine different travel affiliate programs. That way, you’ll be able to make as much money from as many different commission structures as you want.
How Do You Make the Most Out of the Expedia Affiliate Program?
It’s already been established that their commission figures are not exactly the most encouraging. While they are relatively good in the industry, it leaves you working quite hard to earn a decent income.
Nevertheless, you can still make the most of this venture. Below are two ways you can sell better and make more money as an Expedia affiliate marketer:
1. Use Search Engine Optimization
The travel niche is very saturated. However, if you choose not to do good SEO for that reason, you’ll be causing more harm than good. As such, to make the most out of the Expedia affiliate marketing program, you have to pay attention to this too.
When creating content that you intend to use for promotion, always ensure that you do proper keyword research. Make it as targeted as possible, and don’t choose densely competitive keywords.
Additionally, write in-depth content.
Content that is no less than 1500 words long will most likely cover most topics to the fullest. Otherwise, Google, and other search engines, may not rank your content, and you will lose out on a huge marketplace of potential viewers.
Apart from these, don’t forget to use your metatags, meta descriptions, headers, and other such things on your website.
Using all of them appropriately will get you a step further in getting more viewers, and if you have more viewers, then you have more potential buyers.
2. Backlinking
Backlinks are essentially links to your website from other sites across the web. If you are not an authority site with plenty of viewers already, this part is very important. It is essential because Google uses this to rank your content.
They believe that the more people are linking back to you, the more useful your content actually is.
Keeping this in mind, it might be useful to try out a few backlinking strategies. One of the most common today is guest posting. You’ll approach a blog in a similar niche and make your intention to post on their site known.
You can do this by writing and pitching your content to them, or you can simply ask first via email. In your post, you’ll then include links back to your website. As long as you don’t abuse it and turn it into a marketing pitch for your site, you’ll be fine.
Other methods include social media marketing, email marketing, etc.
In conclusion
If you can find a way to strengthen your online marketing efforts, the Expedia affiliate program can be an excellent source of extra income. We’re sure that after reading this article, you now have just as much knowledge as you need to get started. Godspeed!
