Last updated on April 14th, 2021 at 04:55 pm
If you love hiking, and have found yourself wondering if its possible to make a living at it, you’ve come to the right place. While getting paid to do what you love takes dedication and time, it should be noted that many people do ACTUALLY get paid to hike trails. Some have even figured out how to make a full time living from their efforts. In this post, we explore the different ways hikers and backpackers make money, and where the best areas of opportunity exist for those looking to get paid for their outdoor adventures.
How to Make Money Hiking / Backpacking
Like anything worthwhile in this world, it takes commitment and focus to decide on a path to take in life. This is definitely true when looking to make money doing something as desirable as hiking. That said, there is more than one route you can take to earn on the trails.
While we provide more detail through the rest of this post, here are some of the main ways you can make money from hiking or backpacking:
- Get sponsored by a company (or multiple companies)
- Grow a large social media presence
- Become an affiliate for outdoor brands
- Become a Cabin Caretaker along Trails
- Sell Print-On-Demand Clothing
- Freelance writing and photography
- Be a park campground host
- Get contracted to take a trip
I know what you may be thinking, not all of the listed ways to make money are related to hiking. It may look that way when presented in a list, but when you read the rest of this post, you will realize that every point in the list above is directly related to hiking or camping.
Let’s go through them all in more detail one at a time.
1. Get Sponsored to Hike
Getting sponsored to hike is likely one of the first things you thought of when trying to figure out how to make a living doing what you love.
The good news is that many brands sponsor athletes or teams. The bad news is that it is extremely competitive to get funds from the various adventure based companies in the form of money. Before we go more into this, here is a list of some of the companies out there with some form of a sponsorship program. Keep in mind that this list is not extensive, and if you have some in mind that aren’t on the list, leave a comment.
To be a recipient of life-altering cash you will have to be an elite athlete. Furthermore, you will likely need to bring more to the table than just doing the activity you love. You can browse the prominent sponsorship programs we found in the list below.
List of Hiking Sponsorship Programs (and Links)
- The North Face: The Live your Dream Grant is The North Face’s way of funding adventurers (is that you!?) in efforts that push the boundaries of outdoor exploration. Keep in mind that this grant wouldn’t be able to replace an income; that said, it would be a great start in getting paid to do what you love.
- Black Diamond: The first step to get onto the radar of Black Diamond might be to apply for their “PRO” equipment access where you can get less costly gear. You can check out their PRO Requirements, or login to fill out their PRO Application.
- Columbia Sports Team: Columbia sponsors a variety of athletes and some deeply committed to a recreation. You can check out their sponsored athletes page and scroll to the bottom where there is a link to complete a sponsorship application.
- Suunto: The watch manufacturer has become a huge name in the GPS watch community for their watches’ epic battery life. As a part of their efforts they have increased their engagement in the outdoor community by providing routes to sponsorship. You can check out their route to sponsorship by visiting the Suunto Multi-sport Team Application.
- Garmin: This sponsorship path might require you to have a non-profit organization to receive funding. That said, we wanted to include it in our list because many of our readers do have non-profit organizations that include hiking and outdoor experience as a part of their efforts. Check out the Garmin Sponsorship Application to learn more about their requirements.
- Petzl: Focusing on light, and more specifically headlamps, Petzl has become a leader in its field. As such, they have a team of sponsored athletes. While we couldn’t locate an application for their company, but we wanted to provide a link to their team of athletes to show further that a variety of companies do support athletes monetarily in their efforts.
- Patagonia: If you plan to seek the support of Patagonia you better have your heart in the right spot. The company has seemed to stop sponsoring athletes only for their outdoor adventures, and has instead begun focusing on funding “activists who take radical and strategic steps to protect habitat, wilderness, and biodiversity”. If this describes you, check out the Patagonia Sponsorship Application.
While the list above is not extensive, it gives you a start for where you can look for support in your efforts.
You will notice, however, that many of the opportunities outlined above are vague about how much compensation is being offered. Either that or the listed compensation total is much less than you would need to survive off of. This doesn’t mean these companies don’t sponsor outdoor adventurers more fully, just that it will be extremely difficult to get onto their radar.
With the above in mind, it is important to explore a variety of other money-making options to enable your addiction to the outdoors.
2. Become a Social Media Hiker
Trail experiences are fun to take on, but it also turns out trail adventures make for excellent content. If you’ve been to any of the National Forests you’ve likely experienced amazing stretches of forest, wildlife, and mountainous terrain. You could leverage this beauty to build a social media following. And believe it or not, you can monetize social media followers.
How Hikers Make Money With Social Media
You don’t have to look far on social media platforms to discover users with large fanbases built off of images and videos from outdoor activities.
Many social media “influencers” have built loyal groups that trust their input. This is true for hiking, backpacking, and camping niche as well. Visit Instagram or YouTube to find a slew of accounts
Gaining an Audience is Central to Monetizing Social Media
Before you can make money on a social media platform you have to build an audience. It doesn’t matter if you are looking to use Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube. Building an audience is still one of the first steps.
How do you build an audience?
The main way is to bring unique, helpful, and consistent content to that social media platform. If you want to provide how-to videos that would be a good angle to add value. If you want to take the most breath-taking pictures possible you could go that route as well.
Regardless of your angle, you will need to speak to the world at large from a perspective that draws people in. These people will be your audience.
Keeping an Audience Engaged is Equally as Important
Once you begin building an audience you should keep your audience engaged.
How do you do this?
By providing new content on a consistent basis. Better yet, provide new content and make it great content every time. Simply put, just try to create better more consistent content than others out there.
Monetizing an Audience
If you already have built an audience of followers or subscribers…or whatever else you want to call them, you have done the hardest part. Now, you just have to figure out how to monetize your social media following.
Countless pages on Instagram and accounts on YouTube monetize their audience by product promotion, affiliate marketing (we cover that below), membership websites, selling educational material, promoting their other efforts such as books they’ve written, advertisements, or a combination of monetization efforts. There are countless ways to monetize an audience, and you could do this too if you find a way to build an audience.
3. Become an Affiliate Marketer for Outdoor Brands
Affiliate marketing is a way for you to get paid for directing consumers to specific websites. If you direct a person to a website that has an affiliate program, and they end up buying a product from that website you would get a small commission from the website for helping to drive their sales.
How to Become an Affiliate of Outdoor Brands
Some popular affiliate programs that would be useful for hiking and backpacking enthusiasts would be Amazon Associates, and AvantLink. You have to apply for either of these programs, and you will likely need to have at least started a growing social media account or website. Once you have done this, you can apply to the above programs, or other similar programs, and start the process.
The Amazon Associates program, and AvantLink each work with brands used by outdoor lovers. Once approved for their programs you can make videos or publish blog content showing how you use the equipment. When doing this you can mention/link to the gear you use which could result in a commission if a sale takes place.
Often times the affiliate marketer will do reviews of the equipment or compare popular items with the intent to link to each.
Ways to Improve Income Through Affiliate Marketing
Becoming an affiliate marketer isn’t hard, but making good money doing it can be. This is simply because successful affiliate marketing requires either a committed audience or a very large audience.
Since building a large or committed audience can be very difficult, it will take some work to build your income by marketing for outdoor lifestyle brands. That said, as your audience grows so will your income from the effort.
For this reason, many people often begin by building an audience. Audience building can take place on social media platforms, through a website you build, or in an email list you have developed.
If you are going to explore affiliate marketing further, and think a website or blog is the path you will take, it would be wise to familiarize yourself with SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO is the way you will win visitors when they do searches on search engines.
4. Become a Cabin Caretaker in a National Park
Not all National Parks require caretakers, but there are a variety of off-grid locations throughout the most beautiful parts of the country you could get paid to live in and care for.
Cabin Caretakers will need to be able to take on a set number of tasks while also communicating with those through hiking and stopping by the cabin for temporary shelter. Some of the tasks you would be responsible for range from:
- General structure maintenance
- Cleaning and organization
- Simple cooking with simple ingredients
- Fee collections (where required)
- Entertainment (in some cases)
If being a cabin caretaker sounds like something you would be interested in there are some places you might want to look.
Links to Cabin Caretaker Opportunities
Barr Camp in Pikes Peak, CO where one cabin needs caretakers throughout the year. Pikes Peak is home to
Randolph Mountain Club in New Hampshire where two cabins and two shelters require caretakers.
Green Mountain Club in Vermont where seasonal staff are needed on the Long Trail at overnight campsites where sensitive/vulnerable natural areas are located.
This is obviously not an extensive list of all the Cabin Caretaker options, but this does provide you with an idea of how you could get paid to spend a ton of time in a beautiful setting.
5. Sell Print-On-Demand Clothing
Have you ever had a great idea for a t-shirt? or had a great design for a hat?
Did you know you can sell shirts, hats, pants, socks, bags and other clothing items that incorporate those unique designs… but you don’t need to have ANY inventory? Companies like Printful would allow you to literally make money while hiking because they do all of the order fulfillment and screen printing (or embroidery) for you.
In a sense, Print-on-demand is a form of dropshipping, whereby you sell a product you never touch. Once you set things up, you don’t need to be on the computer monitoring the system; just let the orders roll in while trekking your favorite national park.
For those with a solid social media following or a website, you can easily connect them to Printful so orders are automatically fulfilled as they come in. If you think this might be a route you could use to make money, you can mess around with the process by seeing how you can design your own shirt.
6. Freelance Write for Outdoor Brands
The main thing you will need to spend more time on the trails is just that…time. So regardless of how you make money you will want to have ample free time to get out on the trails, to backpack, to hike, or anything else you want to do.
Being a freelancer is one of the best ways to build significant time into your life to take these efforts on. You can start your own blog to try and grow an audience, or you can provide your services to others as a true freelancer. Join services like UpWork, ProBlogger, and Fivver to see freelance writing opportunities and apply for them on a per-job basis.
In addition to working in a role that has flexible hours, you may actually be able to leverage your love for the outdoors and find writing gigs focused specifically on your passions. After all, plenty of websites would love to pay writers with experience with the outdoors or in using outdoor focused products.
7. Become a Campground Host
Being an official Campground Host for a National Park is technically a volunteer position, however, you will get long term access to a highly coveted campsite for no cost. The duration of the experience is listed as approximately 3 months.
While you may not get paid a wage for these specific campground hosting position, you do get a free place to sleep for up to three months which definitely translates to some form of monetary compensation.
In addition to the excitement of getting to use the wonders of the National Park System being a Campground Host could also be a great opportunity to gain experience you could otherwise use for the other money making opportunities listed in this post:
- Affiliate marketing
- Freelance writing or blogging
- Building a case to be a sponsor for outdoor brands
- Building a social media account through pictures or video
There are countless reasons why becoming a campground host would be an amazing experience, and there would be ways to make money or leverage the position to make money in the future.
8. Get Contracted to Take a Trip
Are you going on an amazing journey? If the answer is yes, you are already better positioned than most to work with outdoor brands and content creation companies. You could be a perfect candidate to get paid for your expedition.
We cover actual sponsorship programs earlier in this post, but there are other ways to make money on a through-hike. One such example is through a company called HipCamp; they have a program where they pay explorers to gather pictures and information for them to provide to their members. They essentially pay you to go on an awesome road trip.
Outside of the program linked to above, you could grow your social media accounts to a large audience and then reach out to brands to see if they want to partner with you on a trip. This actually happens more often than you may think.
Keep in mind that you could partner with various brands in order to make more money in total. For example, you could work with one shoe company, one GPS Watch brand, a nutrition bar brand, etc. You get the picture…diversify.
It is Possible to Make Money Hiking
While it may seem to good to be true, you can make money while hiking, backpacking and camping. As long as there are people purchasing outdoor gear, and taking on hiking trips there will be companies and groups willing to pay experts for information and content.
Regardless of your hiking goals, the best way to make money hiking or backpacking would be to become an expert in your passion. Becoming an expert in your passion will make your knowledge and insight valuable. This is true regardless of your passion, but this definitely applies to hiking and other outdoor activities.
Become an expert in your passion, build an audience, make partnerships where possible, and get paid to do something you love.
Image Credit: Brent |(https://www.flickr.com/photos/stupiddingo/) | Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) –reduced file size and image
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