Earnings: worth the effort?

Promoting and Selling VoiceMap Tours
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Hi there,
I am very happy to have this forum!
I wanted to ask you if you as a publisher have really earned something from an audio tour.
I am new to the audio world and it is taking a lot of time to review and plan and I am wondering if a tour of London (in Italian) could be an interesting thing.

Thanks for sharing your experiences.

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Hi there,

Great question! Yes, I’ve been publishing audio tours with VoiceMap for a while now and I can confirm that they do generate income. The earnings aren’t instant or huge at the beginning, but they build over time, especially if your tour is in a popular destination.

From my experience, the key factors for a project like yours are:

  • Location – Well-known cities like London have a strong potential audience.
  • Language – Offering a tour in Italian for London is a great niche because you’ll be targeting Italian speakers visiting one of the most visited cities in the world.
  • Quality and uniqueness – Make your tour engaging and personal. Share stories, insights, and perspectives that people won’t get from a guidebook.
  • Promotion – Don’t just rely on the platform. Share the tour on your website, social media, and travel forums. Over time, word of mouth also helps.

I’ve created several tours in Andalucia (Ronda, Cádiz, Jerez de la Frontera, and Grazalema), and while it takes time to script and record them, they continue to sell and provide a steady income stream.

So yes, it’s worth the effort—especially for a city like London and in a language that isn’t oversaturated yet.

Good luck with your first tour, and enjoy the process!

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Hi,

Yes, I agree with Clive. I have been producing tours for VoiceMap for eight years, and now have close to 30 tours in northern Europe, and as Clive says, it takes time - but, in the long run, the income will come. However, it is important that you work well with the manuscript and after publication you have to work with the market. In my part of the world, TripAdvisor is the most important sales tool, in addition to direct downloads from VoiceMap’s app.

In addition to this, I have produced printed materials for the larger tourist destinations that are sent to hotels and tourist information offices.

In my experience, it takes 2 - 3 years for a tour to sell well, but it depends a lot on the competitive situation and how well you market the tour. It can go faster and it can go slower, but I think London should be a safe destination to sell tours in.
I have produced most of the tours in English, but I also have some tours that are offered in German and Chinese. I recommend that you contact the local tourist organization to check which languages ​​should be prioritized in the area in question - the tourist organizations usually know the nationality of the tourists.

Wishing you lots of luck!!

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You mention years for some tours to gain traction @lahelgen. That’s interesting as My Ronda tour, (the first one I did) started selling from day one after being published. Same with Jerez and Cádiz. Grazalema is very slow though and is yet to sell in a useful way. Sales growth is steady but my off season lack of sales (here its July and August) still makes me a bit nervous. I’m glad when September comes around! :slight_smile:

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Thank you to those who replied earlier. I also have a question: how has the free tour voucher for friends affected your overall earnings? And how might it play out for someone who only has a single tour published?

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Hi @frieda.usa Thanks for posting your question here, and welcome to then VoiceMap forum! If we haven’t crossed paths yet through one of our newsletters or other updates, I’m Helene, the community manager here. I work with our publishers to provide support and share helpful resources.

Are you asking about the 10 free voucher credits you get when you create and publish a tour? Or are you’re asking about the Share With Friend code that listeners can use to invite their friends to join VoiceMap?

  • In the case of voucher credits, these are especially helpful when the tour is first published to help get feedback on your tour, generate some initial buzz, and get those ever-important first couple of reviews. When potential listeners see that others have enjoyed the experience, it helps overcome any hesitations they might have about purchasing your tour. Once you’ve published your tour, the recommended first step is to generate a voucher code and share it with friends and family who can provide a good reviews. You can read more on our documentation about how to use voucher credits to get ratings and reviews.

  • If you’re asking about Share With Friend codes, these make up a small percentage of tour downloads but are a great way to use word-of-mouth to get more VoiceMap listeners. Each time one of your tours is redeemed using a SWF code, you get a royalty of $0.35.

You’ll see these reflected on your Download report on your Sales dashboard. Tour downloads from vouchers show up under “Publisher vouchers” and from SWF codes under “Free of Promotional copies”.

If you want to understand a bit more about the different sales and how they reflect, have a look at our documentation on dashboard details.

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Just to add one more personal experience: we’ve found that our tours in Granada, Cordoba and Seville have sold fairly well right from the start, whereas other locations have been much slower to get going. Our tours in Ubeda and Baeza, which were published around a year ago, are beginning to sell much better than they did initially, but they’re still not big sellers. It definitely helps once you build up a few good reviews and ratings.

As Helene says, free tours are a very small proportion of total downloads, so I wouldn’t worry about that. They’re a way of bringing more people to the app, and the more people who have VoiceMap on their phone, the more tours we all sell.

Finally, I’d add that it’s very rewarding creating a tour, as well as hard work. Even if you thought you knew a lot about the place, you’ll learn a lot more.

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