Community

UGC Travel Content Creation Program

By
Matt Wilson
on
June 28, 2024

Calling all travel content creators! Do you want to earn credits towards trips with Under30Experiences, our group travel company? 

We’re making a call for user-generated content (UGC) and want you to get involved! Our community has so many talented travel content creators, and here’s your chance to earn rewards for traveling with Under30Experiences.

Are you a photographer, travel blogger, or travel content creator? (Sorry, we try not to use the word “travel influencer” to avoid the cringe factor!) You can earn credits to travel with U30X in exchange for your travel content creation!

How to become a travel content creator

Do you have travel content or unique knowledge about the destinations Under30Experiences travels to? Here are four types of travel content you can produce to earn credit towards travel with U30X: 

  1. Travel photo albums
  2. Travel blog posts for the Under30Experiences blog
  3. Travel blog posts on a travel blog you write for
  4. Vertical videos for Travel TikToks, Reels, and YouTube Shorts

Please read through our travel creator program and at the end you will see a link to apply.

Our UGC travel creator program

How do we compensate you for being a travel content creator?

Our simple UGC travel content program will help you earn travel credit toward any Under30Experiences, Over30Experiences, or Digital Nomad Trips itinerary

We pay you in credits in the following amounts: 

  • Album of 20 edited travel photos ($100 USD)
  • Folder of 30 vertical travel clips up to 30 seconds in length ($100 USD)
  • Article for the Under30Experiences blog 1,200-2,500 words ($100 USD)
  • Article with a backlink on a travel blog you write for or other travel publication ($100 USD)
  • Minimum Domain Authority or Domain Score should be 40+

Send us your best travel photos

We accept UGC (that’s user-generated content, in case you weren’t paying attention before!) photos shot vertically or horizontally. Vertical shots will be used mainly for Instagram stories, while horizontal shots will be used for Instagram gallery posts, our website, or ads.

The best travel photos have people in them enjoying themselves, without tourists in the background, crowding the attractions.

You probably already know that vertical images are best for taking up-close, full-body photos of people, while horizontal photos are best for landscape photos. Remember, we want the people viewing these photos to imagine themselves on one of our trips!

Landscape (Horizontal) Image of Reykjavík Iceland
Vertical Image of the Sacred Valley, Peru

More instructions on how to upload your travel photos will be given after acceptance to the program.

Send us your best travel videos

Your UGC travel videos should be shot vertically so that they can be used in Reels, TikToks, YouTube Shorts, etc.

These should be short clips of up to 30 seconds. These can be videos of groups of people having fun, local cuisine, tourist attractions, animals, cultural exhibits, etc. We will use these clips to create engaging content for our Instagram and TikTok. Remember, we’ll probably only use a couple of seconds of each video.

Please note that we do not accept Reels or TikToks you’ve already produced; we only look for the raw videos. Your shots should not have text overlaying them. This makes your job even easier!

If you have TikToks or Reels from Under30Experiences trips, while they won’t count towards the program, be sure to tag us @under30experiences #under30experiences and #u30x so that we can share them and get your post more exposure.

Send us your best travel blog posts

If you enjoy exploring the world as a solo traveler, we’d love for you to write for our Under30Experiences blog. Last year alone, our website received over 800,000 visitors! As a contributor, you’ll have your very own travel writer bio and byline with one outbound link to the website of your choice, as well as links to your social media handles.

Your blog posts should be photo-rich and between 1,200 and 2,500 words about the destinations you’ve been with Under30Experiences or places you have solo travel expertise.

Here are a few examples of fantastic user-generated travel content:

Our team will professionally optimize your post for search engines, bringing it residual traffic and having it professionally proofread. 

If accepted to the program, we will send you specific details on our blog post requirements. Feel free to attach writing samples to your application, but do not send us draft blog posts without us approving the topic.

We can’t wait for you to share your travel tips with the world!

Are you a travel blogger? Write about your group trip with Under30Experiences!

Whether you write for your own solo travel blog or a larger publication, we’d love you to publish a blog post about your trip with us. Here are some examples: 

We can even provide search engine optimization coaching for your blog post to optimize it and increase your blog's traffic.

You may also interview our Co-founder and CEO, Matt Wilson, about Under30Experiences for a media publication you write for. Please note that we only accept interview requests for podcasts that either provide a dofollow link back to under30experiences.com with a Domain Score or Domain Authority of 40+ or have over 10,000 monthly podcast listeners.

What destinations are we looking for?

We accept travel content from Under30Experiences’ top destinations, including:

  • Argentina
    • Buenos Aires 
    • Patagonia
      • El Calafate
      • El Chalten
  • Italy
    • Rome
    • Umbria
    • Tuscany 
    • Florence
  • Spain
    • Catalonia
    • Barcelona
    • Girona
    • Costa Brave
    • The Pyrenees
  • Jordan 
    • Amman
    • Wadi Rum
    • Petra
  • Turkey
    • Istanbul
    • Cappadocia
    • Bodrum
  • South Africa
    • Johannesburg
    • Capetown
    • Mashishimale
    • Kruger National Park

Please note that we are only looking for specific content for locations on our existing itineraries. For example, if you have photos from Venice, Italy, this content would not be accepted, as we do not visit Venice on our Under30Experiences Italy trip.

However, we do accept general travel content from these destinations, i.e., relevant photos and videos of food, music, architecture, animals, and other cultural shots that travelers experience while traveling on our itineraries. If you took photos of your pasta in Venice, for example, that type of content would be generic and would be accepted.

Under30Experiences Travel Content Creators FAQ

Is there a cap on how much content I can contribute?

While there is no hard cap on content you can submit, in general, we’ll ask that you one of each type of content per trip you attend. For example, if you travel with Under30Experiences to Thailand, you can submit 20 photos, 30 videos, write one article for our blog, and write one article for an external blog, for a total of $400 credits.

If you are an all-star alumni who’s been on 5+ Under30Experiences trips, it could be a great opportunity for you to earn free trips by submitting content from all your trips. However, please keep in mind that we are just getting our program off the ground and have no idea how much content will be submitted and from which countries.

Soon, we’ll have more content than we know what to do with from our most popular trips like Costa Rica, Iceland, Peru, and Thailand, so we’ll only be able to accept content from places where we have less content from like South Africa, Egypt, Jordan, and Argentina. Please list the countries you plan to submit content from on your application.

Do you have an affiliate program? 

If you write about Under30Experiences on an external blog, you are welcome to use your referral code to give your readers $100 off their first trip with us. You’ll earn $100 in return. It’ll be a great way to earn even more credits.

You can sign up for our referral program here and begin sharing your unique link with your friends immediately.

Ready to become a travel content creator?

Are you a travel content creator, photographer, or blogger who has traveled with U30X or has booked an upcoming trip with us? 

Please apply here for our UGC travel content creator program.

Matt Wilson
Matt Wilson is Co-founder of Under30Experiences and Author of The Millennial Travel Guidebook: Escape More, Spend Less, & Make Travel a Priority in Your Life. He is host of the Live Different Podcast, Millennial Travel Podcast, and formerly Co-founder of Under30CEO.com. He is committed to helping people live more adventurous lives.

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