See the World For Fun…and Profit—Create Your Own Niche Tours
By Cynthia Morris
One of the greatest joys in life is making money doing something you’d willingly do for free. Like taking a wine tour of Argentina, stopping at all the vineyards in Mendoza…or traveling through Greece with a paintbrush in hand to learn the art of watercolor…or maybe staying in a lavish villa in Tuscany with friends and a chef who comes to teach you how to cook local specialties and pair the dishes with wines.
The good news is: You can quickly and easily turn travel dreams like that into paid-for trips. That’s what I do. You can easily get paid to enjoy your favorite destinations, too. And as often as you’d like. In fact, the more you travel…the more money you can make.
I love French culture and discovering new things. When I was young—with a “useless” French degree in hand—I vowed to spend as much time in France as possible. But life quickly got in the way, and that resolution faded.
Then, four years ago, I came up with an idea that reignited my dream. An idea that today lets me visit France in new and exciting ways every year…cover my travel expenses nicely…and make a profit every time I go.
I do it by creating and leading niche tours. I led my first one back in 2005. Over the intervening years, I’ve learned what works (and what doesn’t). So each tour I take I have more and more fun—and I make a lot more money too!
When I first came up with the idea of creating niche tours, all I really wanted was someone to pay me to go back to France every year. I figured: I love France. I know all these cool places most tourists don’t get to see. And I bet there are a lot of other people out there who want to travel like I do—see the country in a way typical tourists can’t.
I imagined I’d create my own tour. Design the schedule. And advertise it online. If all it ever did for me was bring in enough money to pay for my trip, I’d be a happy camper.
Addicted to Easy Money
But as it turns out, my first tour not only paid for my trip to France that year, but I had enough money left over to extend my stay for two weeks and buy myself a brand new Macintosh laptop.
Since then, I’ve been addicted to the easy money. I profit between $3,000 and $10,000 on every tour—depending on where I want to go and what I want to do there. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing. Or of an easier way to fund what are really fun travel experiences.
Plus you can get started right away. Because you don’t need any fancy degrees. And you don’t need to spend months mastering a specific skill before you can become super successful at this.
Is it golf, cooking, hiking, spirituality, bird-watching, gardening, writing, art, yoga, wines? Whatever it is that lights you up, you can design your travel experiences around it.
If you love horseback riding, for instance, and would love to design a trip around it…chances are there are other people out there who would be interested in that too. If New Mexico is on your personal travel radar, you can design a wilderness horseback riding adventure in Santa Fe.
Love history? Map out a tour of sacred and historic sites in St. Augustine. Visit ancient temples and museums that are off-the-beaten-path in Athens. Go wherever your favorite destination happens to be. Or take your interest and create tours around it in places all over the world.
The beauty of creating tours is that you can create any experience you want. Just visualize something that really excites you.
It’s easier than you may think to design a tour that will pay you well. You decide what kind of tour you’d like to create and where you want to go. Then you simply map out a straightforward plan. Not only will your personal travel expenses be covered but you’ll also make a healthy profit.
And you don’t have to do it full-time if you don’t want to. You can do what I do and plan your tours around your day job. That’s because the bulk of what you need to do to prepare for a tour you can do over the Internet.
That means you can do it anytime and basically anywhere you want to. Of course, you have to schedule time off to take the actual tour itself. But if you’re like me, you probably already take a couple weeks vacation each year. And it’s easy to fit your tour into your annual time off.
And, by the way, if you think you have to be an extrovert to do well at leading a tour, think again. The truth is: I’m downright shy. But it’s never been a problem when it comes to tours. Because I design them to attract people whose interests are similar to mine…people with whom I share common passions and hobbies. And so when you follow my lead to design tours like this, you’ll be surrounding yourself with the kind of people you’re comfortable with.
One thing you can count on when you create and lead your own niche tours is that you’ll never get bored. Even if you go to the same place over and over again, it’s never ever the same. No matter how many tours you’ve organized there’s always something new and different about each location you visit and the group you’re traveling with.
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