Get Paid For Your Travel Videos (Or Just Watch A Few)

Have you ever tried to find travel videos using YouTube? It’s a complete mess. I just clicked on the most watched videos of the week found under the “Travel and Events” category and I found a sampling of videos ranging from footage of planes landing to highlights of the Emmys.

Not to worry, there’s a number of video travel sites that have sprung up recently devoted to mostly high-quality travel videos (unless you enjoy watching videos of people painting airplanes).

The first travel video site that I discovered a little while back was Travelistic which featured over 6,868 videos at last check. The site itself is very streamlined and is easy to navigate, and it includes a breakdown, by country, of all its videos.

The second site I found was Compulsive Traveler which, I found out as I was writing this, has just relaunched its site, going from a pretty clunky design to a more professional look. One of the nice aspects of Compulsive Traveler is their “Channel” section which lets you explore videos in such categories as “Eco Travel” and “Sexy Travel” (hello, just watch my videos for that, right?).

The most recent site that I discovered was TripFilms.com whose hook is that they’ll actually pay you — via airline miles or ITunes credit — depending on how many people watch your vids. Given this fact, this site seems to have the highest concentration of professional travel videos around. There’s also a cool running contest called TripVlogger where you can apply to have them pay you to go on vacation in return for doing a series of videos. (Click here for details.) They also recently featured my Copenhagen Video under their “Editor’s Picks” section, which was so nice, and I only had to buy the entire staff a few rounds of drinks to get it there. (Editor’s Note: I retract that last sentence. TripFilms.com does not and never has accepted compensation in return for selection as a featured video. The aforementioned drinks were bought entirely on a volunteer basis and only with the hope of trying to make new friends while out on an otherwise lonely night.)