Disclaimer: This article has been sponsored by Stay 22, one of my favorite affiliate programs that helped me to more than double my affiliate revenue.
If you are a travel blogger, you probably heard about Stay 22, a travel tech company that offers an affiliate program for travel bloggers and allows you to make commissions when someone books a hotel, car rental, or airline ticket through your website.
I’ve been using Stay 22 on my website since March 2023, and have seen much better results compared to Booking.com. Unlike some affiliate programs that hide their resources and stats under a complex structure, Stay 22 has a very straightforward interface that allows you to track your sales and see stats.
What is Stay 22?
Stay 22 is an affiliate program for websites in the travel niche that allows you to monetize your content by recommending hotels and other accommodations to your audience. Stay 22 offers a generous 30 percent commission, and has several features that make it easier to maximize your earnings with relatively little work.
What makes Stay 22 different?
To make money with an affiliate program, you usually need to sign up for it and start strategically embedding their links in your content. Stay 22 automatically turns links to hotels and services into affiliates, eliminating the process of applying for each affiliate program that you want to use.
Stay 22 works with several affiliate programs like Hotels.com, Expedia, VRBO, Booking.com, and TripAdvisor, and you don’t have to be their direct affiliate to make money. All you need to do is copy and paste links to whatever it is that you want to promote after you install the Stay 22 script on your website.
How does Stay22 work?
Stay 22 allows you to replace affiliate links from affiliate programs like VRBO, Booking, and Expedia, and create your affiliate links through a special script called Let Me Allez.
To understand how the program functions, let’s take a look at some of its key features.
Let Me Allez
Let Me Allez is a fantastic feature that allows you to manage all your affiliate links in one place, by creating deep links to listings on major platforms like VRBO, Booking, and Expedia. By comparison, some affiliate programs often obscure key metrics making it difficult to understand what your performance is and how you can maximize your earrings.
Thanks to Let Me Allez, Stay 22 offers a transparent structure, where you can see your performance month over month and identify areas for improvement. Another key difference between Stay 22 and other affiliate networks is that with Stay 22, you can request a payment as soon as you reach the minimum threshold, which is $100.
How does the Let Me Allez script work?
Let Me Allez is a signature Stay 22 code that replaces branded affiliate links with its structure, without changing the landing page. For example, if you copy a link from Booking, Stay 22 will eliminate the mention of booking from the affiliate link, so it will look like stay22.com/name of the property.
Let Me Allez also eliminates broken links and 404 errors, which can negatively affect your performance in search engines.
ListView
ListView is an intuitive feature that allows you to embed a list of properties in your content showcasing their photos, prices, and other key characteristics that often help readers decide on booking right on the spot.
It’s one of the best Stay 22 tools for creating a great interactive experience because your readers can see everything without clicking away from your content.
Incorporating ListView in your affiliate strategy can help you boost click-through rates and conversions.
Interactive maps
High-converting interactive maps are another key feature of the Stay 22 affiliate program that allows you to showcase dozens of properties in a single location.
You can integrate Stay 22 maps anywhere on your website, but they work best for posts about a specific location because readers can choose from many types of properties in the same area. The map displays current prices, photos, reviews, and prices, so readers don’t have to leave your blog.
Stay 22 Interactive Maps also allows you to change the fonts, colors, and interface of your map without affecting the landing time of your page.
Affiliate links
Let Me Allez also allows you to create affiliate links for your website, emails, and social media. One little-known feature of Let Me Allez is affiliate QR codes that you can incorporate in videos, including YouTube and social media.
Allez affiliate links can be used to link from text, banners, emails, bios, and more. These are short links that look cleaner. You can also generate affiliate QR codes and use them in videos, reels, etc.
Nova
Nova is an AI booking agent that identifies users who are about to leave your website based on their behavior and offers them a place to stay before they can do that. I haven’t used Nova yet, but it’s been said to boost your bookings by as much as 50 percent.
What about my existing affiliate links?
If you have been using Booking and other affiliate programs on your website, and are not yet sure whether you want to switch to Stay 22, I have good news for you. Stay 22 doesn’t require you to change the existing links that are already on your blog, and instead converts all your existing affiliate links into Stay 22 links.
All you need to do is embed the Stay 22 script on your website and start earning money with the affiliate program. The affiliate dashboard will display your earnings in real-time, and you can track your performance and key metrics. If you want to discontinue the program later, you can remove the Stay 22 code from your website at any time.
Stay 22 vs Booking
Before I became a Stay 22 affiliate, I got most of my hotel commissions through Booking. As with other affiliate programs, Stay 22 pays you only when the booking is finished, so even if someone has made a reservation through your affiliate link, you don’t get your affiliate commission before they complete their stay.
I signed up for Stay 22 in early 2023, and my affiliate sales quickly started to go up. It only took me over a month to reach the required threshold of $100 to get my first payment. By comparison, my average wait with Booking was usually about 2 months, because my commissions were much lower with them.
Here is a screenshot of my affiliate commissions with Stay 22.
Stay 22 vs Travelpayouts
Travelpayouts is not a Stay 22 partner, which means you can’t generate income from any programs listed on Travelpayouts via Stay 22. Travelpayouts is a traditional affiliate network which aggregates dozens of programs like Viator, DiscoverCars and RVshare.
How to become a Stay 22 affiliate?
If you are not a Stay 22 affiliate yet, it’s time to become one. To do that you can fill out an application on the Stay 22 affiliate page and wait for the response, which usually takes only a few days.
Step 1:
Click here to sign up for the affiliate program. You request your first payment as soon as you generate $100 in commissions, which can take as little as a month, depending on how much traffic your website brings.
Step 2:
As soon as you get approved, you will receive an email from your account manager, who will help you set up your account, and answer any questions you might have. Each affiliate partner at Stay 22 has a dedicated account manager, whose job is to help you to grow revenue and eliminate any roadblocks.
Step 3:
Identify what features of Stay 22 you would like to implement on your website and start placing them strategically throughout your content.
Step 4:
As you keep growing your affiliate income and tweaking your strategies, it’s a good idea to check Stay 22 resources which include articles and webinars, where trusted experts in affiliate marketing advise on best practices in affiliate marketing and SEO.
My take on Stay 22:
Stay 22 is one of my favorite affiliate programs. It allowed me to significantly increase my affiliate income thanks to its diverse features and excellent support from its team.
The program has a user-friendly interface and a huge inventory of over 1 million accommodations in countries all over the world. What’s more, is that your income will increase as your blog grows.
As a travel blogger, you have nothing to lose by trying Stay 22, and you can discontinue the program at any time.