In November of last year, we launched the Prince of Travel membership program on Patreon, and I’ve been very encouraged by the uptake among our members and the thriving membership community we’ve been able to build.
Truth be told, I had always envisioned Patreon as the “soft launch” of our membership program here at Prince of Travel, with the intention of testing the demand for such a membership offering before fully integrating it into the brand.
Well, given the success of the membership program so far, it’s now time to take the next step.
We’re officially moving off Patreon and launching Prince of Travel memberships right here on princeoftravel.com.
Welcome to Prince of Travel Membership
By offering memberships directly through the website rather than on a third-party platform, we’ll have much greater flexibility to offer many more useful benefits for our members, both now and into the future.
While the content on Prince of Travel will always be free, the memberships will be a core component of all the projects we take on in the future beyond our content, and we’re very excited to share it all with you here on our very own platform.
You’ll find everything you need to know about Prince of Travel memberships over at princeoftravel.com/membership. You can also access this page via the “Become a Member” banner on our homepage.
Toggle to select between monthly and annual memberships. Choose the membership tier that you’d like to sign up for, fill in your account details, and then complete payment through the secure checkout process.
(If you were an early adopter of our Patreon membership from 2020, I’ll be reaching out to you via email to pass along your unique coupon code, which you can use to continue receiving your early adopter discount.)
Once you’ve set up your account, you can log in by clicking the Membership button in the top-right corner of the screen.
And once you’ve logged in, clicking on the Membership button in the same top-right corner will lead you to the members’ area, where you can access all of your membership features.
All of the membership benefits are explained on the signup page, but let’s take a moment now to introduce you to all of the benefits for each membership tier.
Prince of Travel Gold: $10 USD / Month
The Gold membership tier is priced at $10 USD per month. If you pay annually, you’ll enjoy a 20% discount and pay only $8 USD per month.
The following benefits are available to Gold members.
Exclusive Content
You’ll get access to a Member Feed on your account dashboard, where we’ll be posting additional snippets of content for members only. Expect to see behind-the-scenes stuff, mini-reviews, quick tips, and some niche opportunities here and there.
In addition, we’ll host regular giveaways for our members for stuff like amenity kits and pajamas from First Class and business class, lounge passes, status passes, points prizes, and more!
Ad-Free Browsing
This one’s pretty straightforward: browse the website uninterrupted by advertisements, be they on the sidebar, in the content, or along the bottom of your screen.
Preferred Pricing
Get discounts and early access to Prince of Travel’s event tickets, products, etc. as we roll them out over the coming months. Our past events have often sold out within hours, so early access will give you time to secure your spot before everyone else!
Higher membership tiers get the biggest discounts and earliest access.
Priority Access
Read select new blog articles or watch select YouTube videos before everyone else. Whenever possible in our production flow, we’ll strive to get some pieces of content prepared early for members’ eyes only.
Content Vault
Get access to a master spreadsheet of every Prince of Travel article and video for easy reference, for you to go back to our previous content whenever you wish.
Bag Tags
Receive some Prince of Travel luggage tags to show off your membership when you fly!
Prince of Travel Platinum: $25 USD / Month
The Platinum membership tier is priced at $25 USD per month. If you pay annually, you’ll enjoy a 20% discount and pay only $20 USD per month.
As a Platinum member, you get everything that’s included in Gold membership, along with much, much more.
Club Lounge
First, we have the Prince of Travel Club Lounge, the only official chat group for Prince of Travel where you’ll get to chat with myself, the Prince of Travel team, and the rest of the membership community. The chat server is hosted on Discord, with dedicated private channels to chat about anything and everything.
In the nine months since its inception, the Club Lounge has turned out to be a vibrant chat community, and I’ve very much enjoyed hanging out and sharing our success stories, learning moments, data points, and creative ideas among members and furthering our progress collectively, all in a relaxed and casual atmosphere.
Happy Hour
Next, the Happy Hour benefit takes the form of member-exclusive live audio chats. Sometimes we’ll do general Q&A livestreams; other times, we’ll take a deep-dive into a certain award program, points-earning strategy, or some other body of knowledge.
It’s all up to the Platinum membership base, since you’ll have a say on exactly which topics you’d like me to cover. Since the Happy Hour is hosted on Discord’s voice chat channel, members are able to participate directly in the discussion, too!
Consulting Discount
As a Platinum member, you’ll get 25% off a one-hour Points Consulting session (valued at $200 CAD), once every six months.
Close Friends
You’ll get access to the Close Friends circle for the @princeoftravel Instagram page, where you can expect additional behind-the-scenes content in the form of 24-hour vanishing stories.
Recognition
Your name will be included at the end of our YouTube videos as a thank you.
Prince of Travel Royal Platinum: $100 USD / Month
The Royal Platinum membership tier is priced at $100 USD per month. If you pay annually, you’ll enjoy a 20% discount and pay only $80 USD per month.
As a Royal Platinum member, you get everything that’s included in Gold and Platinum membership, along with many more benefits that are designed to give you a highly personalized experience here at Prince of Travel.
Private Lounge
Like the Private Room by Singapore Airlines, the Private Lounge will be a lounge-within-a-lounge on the Discord chat server, for the eyes of myself and fellow Royal Platinum members only. What’s discussed in the Private Lounge stays in the Private Lounge. 😉
Concierge Consulting
Royal Platinum members get a one-hour consulting session with myself or a member of the team once every three months.
As part of a recent change to our Points Consulting service, I’ve entrusted our team members with our consulting bookings so that I can focus my energy on other projects and initiatives for Prince of Travel as its founder. However, as part of the Concierge Consulting benefit, Royal Platinum members will continue to receive free personal consulting sessions with myself as the founder.
Exclusive Events
We host regular online and in-person events for Royal Platinum members, with the goal of facilitating a closer degree of interaction and rapport among the top-tier membership circle.
Founder’s Update
The next two benefits are intended to give Royal Platinum members direct insight into, and interaction with, my personal journey as the founder of Prince of Travel.
After all, the reason I believe so strongly in our work here at Prince of Travel is that it’s perfectly aligned with who I am as a person: an avid traveller at heart who will stop at nothing to see the world, all while relentlessly hunting for value to take me even farther along the way.
If you choose to become a Royal Platinum member, you most likely share these same beliefs, and so I’d like to give you a direct line of sight into this journey.
First, you’ll receive the Founder’s Update, a private newsletter delivered at the end of each month to summarize how Prince of Travel has performed and what I’ve been focusing on this month, as well as any life lessons I’ve learned as a traveller, business owner, and global citizen.
I’ve found these personal reflections very valuable as of late, especially during these challenging times, and I’d like to share them with our most dedicated members in the hopes of sparking meaningful conversations and further insights that can help all of us grow as travellers and as humans.
Sneak Preview
Then, as part of the Sneak Preview benefit, you’ll get a first look at all new projects and features that I plan for the website, with an opportunity to have your say and provide feedback.
Indeed, existing Royal Platinum members have already been given access to Prince of Travel memberships before everyone else.
Postcards
Finally, the Postcards benefit! As a gesture of appreciation for your support, I’d like to send you handwritten postcards from wherever my travels take me all around the world.
I look forward to having a bit of fun with this one, although I suppose I do run the risk of having to spend all my trips writing postcards. 😉
Additional Benefits
Beyond the published benefits, we’re always looking for creative ways to build community and give more value back to our top-tier members.
Free Membership
If you’re not ready to start with a paid membership just yet, you can also create a free account to instantly enhance your Prince of Travel experience.
The following benefits are included with a free account. You can upgrade to a paid account at any time.
Display Name & Flair
Maintain a consistent identity in the comments and show off your home airport.
Comment History
See all of your comments and replies to your comments in one place, under the “Comments” tab of the members’ area.
Reading List
Bookmark your favourite articles to easily re-read the content that you care about the most, under the “Reading List” tab of the members’ area.
You can add your favourite content to your Reading List by clicking the “Add to reading list” button in the lower-right corner of every page.
Event Tickets
Purchase tickets to Prince of Travel events. Look out for our first event announcement of the new era, coming soon!
Become a Member Now!
If you enjoy what we do here at Prince of Travel and would like to get even more out of your experience here, sign up as a Prince of Travel member today.
There are no long-term commitments, so if you’ve given Prince of Travel membership a try and decide it isn’t right for you, then you can always change your mind.
However, our objective is to put your monthly membership fee back in your pocket month after month, ideally multiple times over, so I definitely think you’ll want to stick around. 🙂
And even if you aren’t ready to take up membership just yet, go ahead and sign up for a free account to start sprucing up your presence in the comments section, bookmark your favourite posts for later, and purchase event tickets when they go on sale.
If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to ask in the comments below or get in touch via the contact form.
As always, thank you for your continued support. I hope you enjoy your Prince of Travel membership, and I’ll see you all in the Club Lounge!
My understanding is the content is still free like at other Canadian travel and credit card blogs. You may decide to pay $120, $300 or $1200 US annually for additional niche content, quick tips, chats, new project previews, pajamas and airline amenity kits. Also you will get some discount when buy additional services from Prince of Travel.
That’s exactly right.
So, are the memberships on the site separate from the membership on Patreon?
Patreon is being phased out, and is being replaced by our official memberships.
Or do I just create a new account?
So, I have the Patreon membership. How can I transfer my account here?
You’ll find instructions for migrating your account in your email.
Thank you,
Not sure about the Gold/Platinum/Royal Platinum designations.. would have been easier to have Silver/Gold/Platinum (or Diamond).
I respect your blog and desire to monetize content, but even discounted US$8 so $120/year CAD yearly is quite steep for the base. Would have preferred a trial period or $5/$10/$25 monthly tiers. But that’s just me! Good luck 🙂
The Royals seem to love it. Plus, isn’t every program doing Silver/Gold/Platinum these days? 🙂
We certainly appreciate the feedback. While monetization is of course important, we’ll always have the regular flow of free content available for everyone, too.
Hi Ricky, thanks for the update! Excited to join the community.
I’m not seeing the “add to Reading List” icon next to the article.
You should see an “Add to Reading List” button in the lower-right corner of every page. I’ve also added a screenshot to the article to depict this.
Just get adblock
Lol yup amen to that! As if Ricky doesn’t already make enough from his Air Canada kickbacks.
What’s that?
Why do you keep charging in USD ? The only reason you did it in the first place was because patreon was only setup as USD, now it seems you just wanna milk that extra 20-30%…
Couple reasons:
1) Continuity; as you’ve touched upon, we began on Patreon in USD
2) Tax considerations; the amount would be higher for members if we billed in CAD
3) 30% of our audience is outside of Canada and that figure is rising, and travel is a global pursuit after all.
Looking forward to spotting PoT luggage tags in the Canadian airports. Will make for a great conversation piece.
I think Ricky has good content. He has been straight forward and doesn’t censure comments that are unfavourable. I see no problems with monetizing his site and it’s probably more lucrative than you think 🙂 I always thought of Ricky as the Canadian version of TPG.
That being said, TPG runs a free site. Most of the contents here could be gleaned from other US free sites. I may be wrong, but don’t see anything unique that I couldn’t find from other bloggers. I can see supporting Ricky by signing up for $10 membership, but it’s not for the value, never mind the higher level membership.
Thanks for your input, Bob. Absolutely, it’s important to pick the membership level that’s right for you, and that’s why there’s three paid tiers and a free membership to go around.
Bob, thanks for engaging with the community and adding member insight! I read your reply fully and I have to say I think you are perhaps confused about monetization aspects of blogs. They are incredibly difficult to make a go at. I tried my self, many others have done the same, the amount of work, luck, connections, dedication and ambition as I said 90-95% of blogs never make more than $1000 bucks a month. Surely you cant make a living off that? I highly doubt anyone in the travel industry can make money on blogs outside of maybe 2-3 already established content creators.
Think about how hard it is to run a blog, why beat your head against the wall trying to beat the odds of making a living on a blog when you can do what the normal word does and advance in 9-5 like normal human beings. I went to school, I got a degree, I listened to society and I have a secure long term job with good prospects. As far as I am concerned I am winning in the race of life, I dont understand people who live outside social norms and try to start blogs or try to create content online. Its foreign to me, and I am sure many others agree, I dont see how someone can make a living on this and I dont understand the revenue streams so I will continue to question them until I have more answers.
I dont believe for a second someone can make money blogging, if it was so easy why isnt everyone doing it?
Lol, Max. With the naive take.
HI Max: I haven’t done blogging myself so am not in a position to say what you did right or wrong. Here is a post from FS on blogging potential. I know that TPG earns over a million a year and that’s widely published. Other established sites such as OMAAT would be close as well.
https://www.financialsamurai.com/how-much-do-bloggers-make-a-lot-more-than-you-think/
Again I don’t believe TPG makes 1 mill, there is no way people make that much blogging. I work my ass off at my work sometimes pulling 12 hour shifts and I am a product of basically your ideal kid: sacrificed social life for grades in high school to get into a great college, graduated with honors and landed a job i been at for 9 years and finally about to hit 90k this year. I followed exactly what my parents and society expected of me, there is no where else I could have gotten I did the best and took the best route. So for me to believe that everyone around me is wrong and that some blogger is making more than me after all my struggles to get where I am is mind-boggling and its completely unfair. I just don’t believe it and I don’t think most people would either, don’t buy into the hype.
What if I were to tell you I had good grades, went into a top school and a competitive field, but make 7-8x more than you? What if I were to say I met people with less education but make way more than I? What if I were to tell you don’t know what you don’t know?
You won’t believe me and that’s fine. Ignorance is bliss.
Ricky, can you help me understand why should I or anyone else pay for “FREE” content and essentially pay for your rent? You are doing this blog because you truly love travel hacking, because this is your passion and your calling – this was never about money man. We all know 90% of blogs never make meaningful dollars, if you truly are hungry for money honest answer is to rise within a 9-5 pm job and climb the corporate ladder. You will be easily making 70-100k by this time, instead you chose to write this blog and forgo a decent living in exchange for helping all of us out.
But to try to monetize on us all is a little bit of a hick up I feel, again there is not much you can do with the blog to make any meaningful income from it so trying to squeeze a few people out of $/month is only going to upset the community without adding much more to your wallet. So why risk it? Honest thoughts.
@Max, Why would he settle for 70-100k when he can make more by doing what he loves?
Jay there is no way Ricky makes close to 100k off a blog, the most elite of the top bloggers in the world who have an excess of 1 mill in rev who after paying off their editors, photographers, partners, writers, lawyers, graphic designers etc end up with a solid 6 figure income as top 10 bloggers on the internet from health and fitness to beauty. But if the international cap for a blogger across any industry is 6 figures how in the world would you expect POT to clear 6 figures?
Being Canadian focused the dude is a traveler not a business genius. He doesn’t understand just how complex it is to take an army of followers and make money on them. Think about ad strategy, promotional content, paid consulting, now membership etc add it all up no way comes close to 100k.
You know how I know this? Because I work a real job in the real world and what keeps me sleeping well is knowing that all these kids trying to launch YouTube channels and blogs will never make as much as me working a real secure 9 to 5 job as I know your parents would have hoped you would have. Anyone who think they are smarter than the system is in for a rude Awakening, I would be extremely upset and question life if I found out a travel blogger can make 100k writing about his travels. It makes 0 sense to go to college then for anyone or do anything else if blogging was a path to riches everyone would be doing it. Hows that for a take.
Actually I think you’ll find Ricky makes well over 200k..
You know what? He’s earned it. Respect the hustle. He has helped so many of us in our journeys.
Nobody forcing you to become a member or even to be happy for him but if you’re not you should have a look in the mirror and ask yourself why…
He makes well over 200k…
Respect Ricky’s hustle, he’s earned his success and he’s helping countless people benefit as well. Your choice to become a member, nobody forcing you to do so.
You under estimate the income from credit card affiliation.
What income from credit card affiliation? The credit cards aren’t stupid they will low ball anyone with a blog because the owner will accept any offer as any money is better than 0. You give bloggers too much credit, these people only know 1 thing, TRAVEL they have 0 business sense and 0 business experience.
Oh my goodness Max, obviously you have good observations, yet clearly you know nothing of how much money goes through the online community. Working 9-5’s isn’t the end all be all solution for the world economic problems. Sheesh. Affiliate links offer more money than you could ever imagine. Blogging actually earns a lot of people a living, we live in 2021. 9-5’s just don’t cut it anymore sir.
I would seriously start questionning life then, 6 figures total income for the main canadian credit card / luxury travel blogger is totally reasonnable.
Exactly, much more realistic when you have a monopoly on the Canadian market oppose to the amount of competition that there is in the states. I can imagine there to be further fresh traffic coming in the fall once more Americans become acquainted with Aeroplan.
How is this a monopoly? You have Canadian Kilometers and more recently Travel and Live Free by Kendrick Uy. What have you got to say about those 2 blogs?
It boggles my mind other Canadian travellers aren’t jumping on this market, if blogging is so lucrative why isn’t everyone doing it?
Both blogs you mentioned are on hiatus, so irrelevant comparison. Try maybe Milesopedia? They have a good thing going on there as well.
As for why isn’t everyone doing it? Blogging isn’t for everyone. For some people, it ruins the “fun” out of travel and it becomes “work”.
You could look at GreedyRates as they cover credit card points under travel.
RateHub turned their mortgage / credit card review company into a multi million dollar entity.
Given the uptake from members so far, I think the value proposition is fairly clear cut. But if you’re on the fence, take up a membership and you’ll see why. 😉
Something something a fool and his money…
Finish your sentence.
Just here for the ‘oh snap’.