I run a Lisbon travel blog called Lisbon Listicles. After years of creating content about Lisbon and several months of experimenting with travel affiliate programmes, I decided to try Travelpayouts Drive for myself. Here’s exactly what happened.
A Quick Introduction From Me
If you’ve spent any time on Lisbon Listicles, you’ll probably have noticed that I have a bit of an obsession with lists.
That’s deliberate.
I started this website because I wanted to create the sort of Lisbon resource that I would have wanted when I was first getting to know the city.
I’ve lived in Lisbon, I’ve spent a huge amount of time exploring the city, and I’ve also worked as a tour guide. I’ve walked the streets, ridden the trams, eaten my way through neighbourhoods, visited the attractions and, perhaps most importantly, spent a lot of time talking to people who are actually visiting Lisbon.
Over time, I realised that there was an enormous amount of information about Lisbon online, but finding the useful stuff wasn’t always particularly easy.
So I started Lisbon Listicles.
The name is pretty straightforward.
Lisbon Listicles.
No mystery. No clever branding that leaves you wondering what the website is about.
It’s a blog about Lisbon, and ALL of my articles are listicles.
Top Things to Do in Lisbon (2026 Guide).
10 Best Non-Touristy Restaurants in Lisbon for Authentic Portuguese Food.
Lisbon Neighbourhoods Ranked: Best to Worst for Tourists.
The Best Boutique Hotels in Lisbon.
15 Reasons Lisbon Is More Than Just a Tourist Destination
You get the idea.
My aim has always been to make the information useful, practical and easy to navigate.
And over the years, the site has grown considerably. I now have hundreds of articles covering everything from Lisbon hotels, restaurants and food to neighbourhoods, attractions, nightlife, day trips, history, practical travel advice and all the little things visitors want to know before and during a trip to Lisbon.
Of course, running a website like this costs time and money.
And that’s where affiliate marketing comes in.
I’ve gradually experimented with different travel affiliate programmes, including Viator, GetYourGuide, Booking.com and Agoda, as well as Travelpayouts.
So when Travelpayouts contacted me about trying Drive, I was interested.
But I wasn’t immediately convinced.
I had questions.
I had existing affiliate relationships.
And I certainly didn’t want an automated system changing links throughout my site without me understanding exactly what it was doing.
So I decided to do what I normally do with things I’m unsure about:
Try it for myself.
I ran Travelpayouts Drive on Lisbon Listicles for a full month.
Here’s what happened.
I Tried Travelpayouts Drive for 30 Days: My Honest Review
1. Why I Decided to Try Travelpayouts Drive
The main reason was actually quite simple:
I wanted to see if I could make more money from the traffic I was already getting.
At the time I activated Drive, Lisbon Listicles was getting roughly a few thousand visitors/page views per month. That’s not enormous traffic by any stretch of the imagination, but it was growing.
And that’s an important stage for a small travel publisher.
When you have 10,000 or 100,000 visitors a month, there are plenty of opportunities to optimise monetisation.
When you have a much smaller audience, however, every visitor matters.
I’d already spent years creating the content.
I’d already written hundreds of articles.
I’d already added affiliate links where they made sense.
So the question became:
Could I squeeze a little more value out of the visitors I was already attracting without covering my website in adverts or making the articles unpleasant to read?
That was what interested me about Drive.
Travelpayouts describes Drive as an AI-powered monetisation system designed to analyse travel content and automatically apply monetisation strategies to help publishers earn more from their existing traffic.
In other words, rather than me manually trying to figure out exactly which offer might be useful to every reader, Drive would do some of that work automatically.
That sounded interesting.
But there was an obvious catch.
I already had affiliate relationships that I was happy with.
So before I switched anything on, I had some reservations.
2. What Made Me Hesitant About Drive?
This was probably the biggest question I had.
I didn’t want to turn on an automated affiliate system and suddenly discover that it had replaced all the links I’d carefully put into my articles.
For example, I’d spent months working with Viator and GetYourGuide.
I’d also recently managed to get accepted for Booking.com through Travelpayouts, after having previously struggled to get accepted through another affiliate platform.
That Booking.com relationship was particularly important to me because I’d already started getting bookings from it.
So I didn’t want Drive interfering with those partnerships.
I also didn’t want to lose control over my website.
One of the things I really value about Lisbon Listicles is that I can decide what I recommend.
If I’ve written an article about the best walking tours in Lisbon, I want to be able to recommend the companies and products that I genuinely think are appropriate.
The last thing I wanted was for an automated tool to start replacing links simply because an algorithm decided another offer might generate more revenue.
So I initially decided to leave the Switch Links feature turned off.
I activated other Drive features first and watched what happened.
That gave me a chance to get comfortable with the system before allowing it to make changes to existing affiliate links.
And, frankly, I think that’s a sensible approach for any blogger considering something similar.
You don’t have to switch everything on immediately just because the option is there.
Test it.
Understand it.
Then decide.
3. How I Protected My Existing Affiliate Partnerships
This ended up being one of the most useful things I learned during the whole process.
I contacted Travelpayouts and explained my concern.
I was told that I didn’t need to abandon my existing direct relationships.
Instead, I could use brand exclusions.
That meant I could tell Drive not to interfere with specific brands.
In my case, I excluded:
- Viator
- GetYourGuide
- Booking.com
That was a big deal for me.
It meant I could essentially have both systems working alongside each other.
My existing affiliate links could continue doing what they were already doing, while Drive could operate elsewhere on the site.
Once I understood that, I felt much more comfortable enabling Switch Links.
And this is probably the biggest practical lesson I’d give another blogger considering Drive:
Don’t assume you have to choose between Drive and your existing affiliate relationships.
Check the brand exclusion settings first.
If there are particular companies you already work with directly, you may be able to exclude them.
In my case, that was exactly what I did.
And Travelpayouts was extremely helpful throughout the process.
They even offered to have the Travelpayouts support team help configure the exclusions.
That was reassuring because I wasn’t left trying to figure everything out alone.
4. What Happened After I Activated Drive?
This is where things got interesting.
I initially activated Drive fairly cautiously.
I switched on features including Insert Recommendations and Smart Previews, and noticed that some related settings became available as well.
I then monitored the site.
I wasn’t expecting miracles.
And I think that’s an important point.
If you’re a small travel blogger and someone tells you that an AI monetisation system is going to transform your income overnight, I’d be sceptical.
Traffic is still traffic.
If you have 3,000 visitors, an automated system can’t magically turn that into 300,000.
What it can potentially do is make better use of the visitors you already have.
And that’s what I was interested in.
I began seeing activity appear inside my Travelpayouts dashboard.
At first it was only a handful of clicks.
There were some interesting surprises, too.
I noticed activity associated with GetYourGuide, despite the fact that I was managing my GetYourGuide relationship separately.
Later, Viator also started appearing in my Travelpayouts dashboard.
That was one of the things that made the experiment particularly interesting.
I wasn’t just sitting there looking at a theoretical feature.
I could actually see activity happening.
5. Did I Actually Generate Bookings?
Yes.
And this is where my opinion of Drive became considerably more positive.
I got a few bookings during the test period.
Now, I want to put that into perspective.
I’m not running a massive travel website with hundreds of thousands of visitors every month.
I’m a relatively small independent Lisbon travel blog.
So I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Drive generated some ridiculous five-figure income for me.
It didn’t.
But that’s not what I expected.
What mattered to me was that the system actually produced bookings from my existing traffic.
That was proof of concept.
I’d spent the previous few months getting the occasional booking through my affiliate links, so I already knew that some of my readers were willing to buy tours, activities and travel products.
Drive gave me another way of monetising that audience.
And for me, that’s valuable.
The most encouraging part is that I didn’t have to completely redesign my website to make it happen.
I didn’t suddenly cover my articles with huge booking widgets.
I didn’t have to create dozens of new pages.
I simply enabled the system and let it do its thing.
6. What About the $150 Drive Bonus?
This was probably the easiest part of the whole experiment.
When Travelpayouts first contacted me about Drive, they offered a guaranteed $150 bonus if I activated Drive and kept it running for at least a month.
Naturally, I thought:
Why not?
There was an additional promotional competition happening at the same time, including a potential $1,000 prize, but the guaranteed $150 was what really caught my attention.
I’d already been considering testing Drive anyway.
So the bonus effectively removed much of the risk.
I activated Drive.
I kept it running for the required month.
And, exactly as promised, Travelpayouts credited $150 to my balance.
That’s worth mentioning because I’ve tried enough online services over the years to know that promotional offers can sometimes come with complicated conditions.
In this case, I completed the requirements and received the bonus.
So from a purely financial perspective, the first month was already a positive experience.
I received the $150 and generated some bookings.
7. What Did I Like About Drive — and What Didn’t I Like?
After actually using Drive for a month, I think there are some genuine advantages.
What I liked
It required very little work
This is probably the biggest benefit.
As a blogger, I’m already spending an enormous amount of time writing, editing, researching, adding images, updating old content and working on SEO.
I don’t particularly want another full-time job managing affiliate links.
Drive takes some of that work away.
It can monetise existing traffic
This is the really interesting part.
You don’t necessarily need to publish more articles to benefit.
If you already have readers visiting your website, there may be opportunities to monetise some of that traffic more effectively.
For a growing blog like mine, that’s useful.
I could protect my existing partnerships
This was essential for me.
The ability to exclude brands meant I didn’t have to sacrifice the affiliate relationships I’d already built.
That made the decision to enable Switch Links much easier.
I could actually see results
The bookings were important.
Even though the numbers were modest, they proved to me that Drive wasn’t simply another dashboard feature sitting there doing nothing.
Something was happening.
Travelpayouts support was responsive
This was another positive.
Travelpayouts was proactive throughout the process.
When I had concerns about Switch Links and my existing Viator and GetYourGuide partnerships, they explained how brand exclusions worked and offered to get the support team involved.
That made the whole process much less intimidating.
What I Didn’t Like
I think it’s important to be honest here.
Drive isn’t magic.
If you have very little traffic, you’re still going to have relatively little revenue.
Traffic is the foundation of travel blogging income.
Drive can potentially improve monetisation, but it can’t substitute for building an audience.
That’s something I think bloggers need to understand before activating any monetisation tool.
I also think it’s important to understand the settings before turning everything on.
If you’re someone who already has lots of direct affiliate relationships, I wouldn’t recommend blindly activating every feature.
Take your time.
Look at the settings.
Understand things like brand exclusions.
And decide what you’re comfortable allowing the system to do.
That’s exactly what I did.
8. Would I Recommend Drive to Other Travel Bloggers?
After a month of using it, yes—but with some qualifications.
If you’re running a travel website that already receives meaningful traffic and you’re looking for ways to improve monetisation, I think it’s worth testing.
Especially because there’s no need to make a permanent commitment just to find out whether it works for your particular audience.
My advice would be:
Start cautiously.
Understand the features.
Check what they do.
Identify the affiliate relationships you want to protect.
Use brand exclusions where appropriate.
Then monitor your results.
I’d also recommend giving it enough time to collect meaningful data.
A couple of days isn’t enough.
A couple of clicks isn’t enough.
A month gives you a much better idea of whether the system is actually contributing anything.
And that’s exactly why I wanted to test it for myself rather than simply reading somebody else’s review.
My audience isn’t the same as theirs.
My website is about Lisbon.
My readers are interested in Lisbon hotels, tours, attractions, restaurants and activities.
The results another blogger gets from Drive may therefore be completely different from mine.
9. How Does the Travelpayouts Referral Programme Work?
This is the part Travelpayouts specifically asked me to mention, so let’s talk about it.
If you’re a travel blogger or publisher and you’re interested in Travelpayouts, they also have a referral programme.
The basic idea is straightforward.
You refer other people to Travelpayouts using your referral link.
If those referrals become successful partners, there is an opportunity to earn commissions from those referrals.
According to the information Travelpayouts provided to me, referred partners can receive a bonus of up to $100, while the person making successful referrals can earn up to $600 per referral.
Obviously, the exact amount depends on the programme’s current terms and conditions, so I’d recommend checking the official Travelpayouts referral information before relying on any particular bonus amount.
For me, this is a nice additional feature because Travelpayouts is something I’ve actually used myself.
I’m not recommending a platform simply because someone paid me to mention it.
I’ve been using Travelpayouts as part of my monetisation strategy, I’ve tested Drive, I’ve received bookings, I’ve received the promised Drive bonus, and I’ve now got a month of first-hand experience to base my opinion on.
That’s a much better position to be in when recommending something.
Disclosure: Travelpayouts offered me compensation for sharing my experience with Drive and asked me to mention its referral programme. The opinions and experiences in this article are my own.
10. My Verdict After One Month
So, would I turn Drive off?
No.
That’s probably the simplest answer.
If Drive had generated nothing, interfered with my existing partnerships or made my website noticeably worse for readers, I’d have no problem switching it off.
But that isn’t what happened.
Instead:
I received the $150 bonus.
I generated bookings.
My existing affiliate partnerships remained protected through brand exclusions.
I didn’t have to completely redesign my website.
And most importantly, I now have a better understanding of how an automated travel monetisation system can fit into my website.
I’m going to keep testing it.
That’s really the only sensible conclusion after one month.
One month is enough to tell me that Drive can produce results on my website.
It’s not enough to tell me exactly what the long-term revenue potential is.
And that’s something I want to discover.
A Few Things I Learned From the Experiment
Looking back, there are a few lessons I’d pass on to other independent travel bloggers.
Don’t be afraid to experiment
When you’re building a small website, it’s easy to become overly protective of everything you’ve already done.
I was initially hesitant about Drive because I didn’t want to mess up my existing affiliate relationships.
That was a legitimate concern.
But I also realised that if I never experimented with anything new, the website would never evolve.
Understand what you’re switching on
Don’t just click every button because a platform recommends it.
Read the settings.
Understand what each feature does.
And if you’re unsure, ask.
That’s exactly what I did.
Protect the things that already work
I already had direct relationships with Viator and GetYourGuide.
I didn’t want Drive replacing those links.
The brand exclusion functionality gave me a way to keep them.
That was a big part of why I became comfortable enabling Switch Links.
Don’t confuse monetisation with traffic growth
This is probably the most important lesson of all.
Drive doesn’t solve the biggest problem every small travel blogger has:
getting more people to visit the website.
I’m still working extremely hard on that myself.
I’ve spent a huge amount of time reorganising Lisbon Listicles into topic clusters and building pillar pages because my ultimate goal isn’t to make a few extra dollars from a few hundred visitors.
I want to build a genuinely authoritative Lisbon travel resource.
My long-term goal is to reach 10,000, 20,000 and eventually even more visitors, and that’s going to require much more than affiliate optimisation.
It requires great content, SEO, topical authority, internal linking, first-hand experience and—perhaps most importantly—patience.
Drive is one part of that puzzle.
It isn’t the entire puzzle.
Final Thoughts: Would I Do It Again?
About the author
I’m Duncan, a Lisbon-based guide and writer who’s lived here for 11 years and taken hundreds of visitors around the city. I created Lisbon Listicles to share everything you need to know about Lisbon in clear, practical lists — from iconic sights to hidden gems — so you can plan your trip easily and make the most of your time here.
All recommendations are based on personal experience and the questions I hear most often from visitors.
Disclosure: Some links in this article are affiliate links. If you book through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend places and experiences I genuinely think are worth it.
Leave a Reply