Making passive income with Stay22: What is it and how it works

In the blogger world, passive income is a hot topic and for those who manage to figure it out, it can become a steady stream of cashflow. One of the biggest sources of passive income is affiliate marketing. In the simplest terms, affiliate marketing is how bloggers earn commission on bookings and purchases made through their site (at no cost to the reader).

The … well, let’s call it classic affiliate marketing model requires you to create a custom link for each hotel property you are looking to earn commission on. Some affiliate networks make it easier to create custom links with browser plugins, others build WordPress widgets. Once linked, that post, or rather that property link can earn referral income hands-off, finally making that passive income actually passive. But sometimes those links break or vendors move between affiliate agencies making all of your links suddenly invalid. And suddenly, all of those tedious hands-on tasks boomerang back. Now you need to find all of the broken links before Google figures out you have them and punishes you with some weird … shadowban.

This blog post was sponsored by Stay22. Read the disclaimer about affiliate links & PR gifting here.

Already being a member of a few affiliate networks I was hesitant to try Stay22 but enough people I trust brought it up independently that one day I pulled the plug (or I suppose plugged in?) and set up my account in roughly 7 minutes before running out to dinner. When I came back to my desk the next morning I saw dollars on my dashboard. So here we are now, let’s get into it.

How is Stay22 different?

Stay22 is headquartered in Montréal but the platform is available globally and open to everyone, there is no minimum traffic requirement.

Getting started with Stay22 is easy. After registering your site you simply drop in a piece of code in your site header, make sure it’s connected and your work here is done. All hotel links for Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, VRBO, TripAdvisor, Trivago, and Kayak (aka suppliers) are automatically converted by the script and eligible for earnings.

The possibility of these earnings is then amplified with ‘Let Me Allez’ (LMA), Stay22’s AI solution to the future of affiliate marketing.

Note: Take advantage of my referral code, KATERYNATOPOL, to earn an extra $100 once you reach 100 confirmed bookings.

Key features of Let Me Allez:

Once the reader clicks on your LMA link they are not only shown the connected property but other personalized options which increases conversions by an average of 10.6%.
Let Me Allez’s AI booking agent, lovingly named Nova, offers those travellers who illustrate clear intent in a destination a collection of best-match properties before they leave. Stay22’s team saw an increase in bookings by up to 50% with this feature.
The platform automatically determines the reader’s geolocation and converts all of those .ca links to .com or .co.uk and so on so you don’t miss out on commissions (Optimized Redirect). Same goes for the language and currency the site visitor sees. This is a small but essential piece because with many travel affiliate networks, you have to create separate links per geography.
LMA also fixes the supplier’s broken links and 404 pages (more on that here). For example, if an Expedia link you originally added goes poof! LMA will automatically repair it. If the page no longer exists LMA will redirect the user to the search results page for similar accommodations in the same location.
You can also manually create LMA links or even QR codes and add them to your secondary channels, like newsletters and social posts.

Booking analytics & Why they matter

Your Stay22 dashboard offers a ton of data. From page loads to views, number of clicks and interactions to actual bookings data. This is a snapshot of your overall performance. You can see which site the booking was made on, what its status is (confirmed or pending), and even how many nights the booking was for.

The even more valuable piece of data is which blog post the booking was made on and in which location. You can customize what data you see, export it and filter it to gather specific booking information (ie. sort by date, or location) to spot trends. The Page Analytics tab learns over time making it easier to see what posts have the highest conversion rate. Now you can tailor your recommendations by location and booking platform to optimize your earnings.

Write about events? Use Maps

Maps is actually where it all started for Stay22. This feature learns from your visitors’ activities and offers them live accommodation recommendations based on specific dates. This feature is of course best suited for event-specific articles, like music festivals or carnivals. Stay22 interactive booking map offers live, visual price comparisons in 220+ countries.

On getting paid

The split commission rate is 30%, which is comparatively high. Your commission is ready for payout 7 days after the guest checks out from the property. Stay22 will load your payment in before they get paid from the supplier and you can request a monthly payout once the minimum threshold amount is met. The minimum payout for PayPal, ACH or e-check is US$100.00, higher for wire transfers. Thereafter it takes 30 days for your payment to come through, which believe it or not is actually not bad at all.

And a quick note on support

Stay22 support is handled through an Intercom chat bubble on the platform and is manned by real people, not bots. They might not get back to you right away, but they will, in my experience within a few hours.

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It is worth noting that Stay22’s team learned quickly that what they wanted to do was build tools to support the travel blogging community. And as such they make their presence known at travel conferences (ie. WITS, TBEX, TravelCon), local travel events, and educational webinars.