My family and I just got back from five days in Florida. Disney World, manatees, dolphins, the whole trip. But the entire time we were down there, I kept seeing money everywhere. Every time I pulled out my phone to search for something to do, I noticed how thin the competition was. Channels with 41 subscribers getting hundreds of views. Simple videos. No special gear. No fancy production. Just honest, helpful local content that people actually needed in that moment.
That one observation is the foundation of a real online business you can start today without a big audience, without expensive equipment, and without being an expert in anything. In this post I am going to walk you through exactly what I saw, how the monetization works, and how you can start from wherever you are right now.
What You’ll Walk Out With
- Why the “things to do” content niche is wide open and underserved on YouTube and TikTok
- How to find low-competition keywords using both free and paid tools
- The exact type of content that gets views in this niche (listicles, not essays)
- Three specific ways to turn views into real money, including affiliate commissions and digital products
- A simple sales funnel structure you can set up even if you have never done this before
- How to start with your own city today without travel or special equipment
- Why this works year-round, not just in summer or holiday seasons
- How to find your best starting point with the Platform Proof Finder
What a Family Vacation Taught Me About Online Business
We have twin 8-year-olds and a 6-year-old. That means every vacation is a planning marathon. Before we even left for Florida, I was on Google constantly: “things to do in Brandon Florida,” “restaurants to eat in Brandon,” “barbecue restaurants in Brandon Florida,” “things to do near Orlando.” When you have three young kids, you cannot afford to wing it. You need real answers, fast, and preferably ones that explain what the experience is actually like for a family.
While I was doing all of that searching, I kept noticing something. The content ranking for these searches was not coming from massive media companies or travel magazines. It was coming from small YouTube channels and TikTok creators with almost no following at all. One of the top results for a search I ran had 687 views and the channel had 41 subscribers. That is when the business opportunity clicked for me.
If a channel with 41 subscribers can rank at the top of YouTube for a search that thousands of people are making, the barrier to entry here is almost nothing. The opportunity is not hidden. It is sitting right in front of anyone who is paying attention. The fact that most people are not paying attention is exactly what makes this a good time to get started.
The Search Results That Proved the Opportunity Is Real
Let me give you the specific examples so you can see this for yourself. When I typed “things to do in Brandon Florida” into YouTube, the top result came from a channel called Pet Friendly Tampa with Caitlyn. She has carved out a specific niche around pet-friendly activities in the Tampa area. She is not a massive creator. She is not a professional filmmaker. She is one person making useful content for a specific audience, and she had 687 views on her top video with 41 subscribers total. That video ranked first.
Another channel in that same search had around 1,300 views and 2,000 subscribers. Another creator was focused on the pros and cons of living in Brandon and getting traction on that angle. Each of these creators is serving a slightly different version of the same core need: people want to know what is worth doing in a place they are about to visit or move to.
The demand is real and the supply is thin. That gap is the business opportunity. You do not need to build something revolutionary. You just need to show up with useful content in a space where almost nobody else is showing up consistently.
How to Find Keywords That Are Easy to Win
You do not have to guess which cities to target. There are free and paid keyword research tools that show you exactly how many people are searching for a given phrase and how competitive that phrase is.
The free route is Ahrefs’ free keyword research tool. Go to Ahrefs, type in “things to do” and you immediately see suggestions like “things to do in Chicago,” “things to do in San Diego,” “things to do in Boston,” “things to do in Las Vegas,” and “things to do in NYC.” These are real searches happening hundreds of thousands of times every month. You can also narrow down to sub-niches: “kid-friendly things to do near me,” “pet-friendly things to do in Atlanta,” and so on. The free tool gives you a solid list of opportunities to explore and enough volume data to know which cities have strong demand.
The paid keyword research tool gives you something more valuable: difficulty scores. With a paid tool, you can see which keywords are genuinely beatable for a small channel. For example, a paid tool shows that “things to do in Tulsa” is a relatively easy keyword to rank for. When I checked YouTube for that search, the top result had 8,000 views and was only 7 months old, from a channel with just 7,000 subscribers. The second result had 3,000 views and about 8,000 subscribers. These are not intimidating numbers. This is a realistic playing field for someone building from scratch.
The practical approach: start with the free Ahrefs tool to build a list of 20 to 30 target cities and topics. Then use manual YouTube searches to check what is already ranking and how strong those results look. Once you are generating income and want to move faster, invest in a paid keyword tool to prioritize your list more efficiently.
What Type of Content Actually Performs in This Niche
The best performing content format in this niche is the listicle. That means videos or posts with titles like “7 Best Things to Do in Tulsa” or “11 Things to Do in Dallas This Weekend.” Odd numbers tend to perform well in video titles, and you want to aim for lists of 5, 7, 9, or 11 items. People searching for things to do want a concrete list they can scan quickly and use to make decisions. Give them that.
You do not have to be an expert on the location you are covering. You do not have to have visited the city. What you need to do is aggregate information from credible sources and give those sources credit. If you are making a video about things to do in Tulsa, say “according to TripAdvisor, the number one activity is the Tulsa Zoo” or “Visit Tulsa dot com recommends this specific trail for families.” You are curating and presenting information, not fabricating it. Attribute your sources clearly. Do not copy and paste content word for word. Summarize, frame it for your specific audience, and give credit where it is due.
If you actually live in or near the city you are covering, use that advantage. First-person footage and local knowledge will set your content apart from anyone working purely from research. Start with your own city and then zoom out from there as you gain confidence and build your content library.
TikTok Is a Serious Channel for This and It Ranks on Google
TikTok is not just for entertainment. For local content, it can be a real traffic source, and the results in this niche are striking. When I searched “things to do in Dallas” on TikTok, one video titled “10 Things to Do in Downtown Dallas” had 824,000 views. The creator was not even showing their face. They had gathered photos and b-roll from the city, cut it together into a short video, and it blew up.
Here is the part most people overlook: TikTok videos can rank on Google search results. When you post a TikTok about things to do in Omaha, you might start showing up in Google for people searching that exact phrase. One piece of content can pull traffic from multiple platforms at the same time. That is unusually efficient for a solo creator just starting out.
YouTube is still the stronger long-term platform for this niche because older videos keep accumulating views for months and years after they are posted. But TikTok can generate early traction fast and bring in traffic while your YouTube channel is still in its early stages. Use both if you can manage it. If you have to choose one, start with whichever platform you feel more comfortable creating for and add the second once you have a rhythm.
Three Ways to Make Real Money From This Content
Views alone do not pay the bills. The question is how you turn those views into income. Here are three specific approaches that work for this niche.
1. Travel Affiliate Programs
Booking.com has an affiliate program that pays a commission on hotel and travel bookings made through your links. Expedia and Travel Aity have affiliate programs as well. The commission rate varies by country and booking type, but consider this: if a family books a trip to Brandon, Florida that costs $6,000 to $7,000, and the commission is around 3%, you are looking at roughly $180 to $210 from one booking. That is from one click. Millions of people book travel every year, and travel is not seasonal the way you might assume. People book trips in every month of the year. The income potential here is ongoing, not just a summer spike.
The mechanics are simple. You mention the hotel or travel booking in your video or post, you drop your affiliate link in the description or on your website, and when someone clicks and completes a booking, you earn a commission. You do not handle the transaction. You do not deal with customer service. You send the right people to the booking platform at the right moment, and the platform does the rest.
2. Digital Products on Etsy
The second income stream is selling digital travel products on Etsy. When you search for “travel” on Etsy, you find digital planners, travel checklists, packing lists, itineraries, and budget calculators selling for anywhere from a few dollars to $27 or more. These are digital files. You create them once and sell them forever with no inventory, no shipping, and no fulfillment headaches.
Think about what your audience actually needs. Someone planning a family trip to Dallas needs a packing list. Someone moving to Tampa wants a neighborhood comparison sheet. Someone going on a pet-friendly road trip wants a checklist of what to bring for their dog. Each of these is a simple document you can build in Canva or Google Docs and sell as a PDF. Sell travel planners for $7 to $27 depending on how comprehensive they are. You can also build location-specific itineraries for popular cities like Las Vegas, Dallas, or Chicago and sell those individually. You can even create a travel budget calculator in Google Sheets and sell that as a standalone product or an upsell.
3. A Simple Sales Funnel That Works While You Sleep
The third approach takes the affiliate and digital product income and combines them into a system that runs on its own. Here is how the funnel works step by step.
First, you give away a free travel checklist in exchange for a name and email address. This is your lead magnet. Something simple: a one-page list of what to pack for a family trip, or a first-aid checklist for traveling with kids. People will happily trade their email address for something that saves them time and stress before a vacation. This is how you build an audience you own, not just an audience that follows you on a platform you do not control.
Second, after they opt in, you offer them a travel planner bundle for $7. This bundle includes the full travel planner, a trip itinerary template, and maybe a mobile-friendly version. Seven dollars is a small enough ask that many new subscribers will say yes quickly. You are giving them real value at a price that feels like an obvious yes.
Third, after that purchase, you present an upsell: a Google Sheets travel budget calculator, priced a bit higher. This tool helps them plan the financial side of their trip. People who just bought the planner are already in a buying mindset, so your conversion rate on the upsell will typically be solid.
Inside all of those products, you include your booking.com affiliate links. So the same customer who buys your $7 planner might also book their hotel through your affiliate link. That is multiple income streams from one person who found you through a single YouTube or TikTok video.
To build all of this out, GoHighLevel handles your landing pages, email sequences, and checkout pages in one place. You do not need a developer. You do not need five different tools stitched together. One platform manages the whole system once it is set up.
Not sure which online business model fits your skills and situation right now?
Find your starting point in under two minutes at finder.platformproof.com.
How to Start From Your Own City
You do not need to book a flight to a new city to get started. The simplest version of this business starts right where you live. Search your own city, your own county, your own suburb. If you live in Schaumburg, Illinois, start with “things to do in Schaumburg Illinois.” If you live in Antioch, people are already searching “things to do near Antioch Illinois” and the results are thin videos from five years ago. That is your opening.
Once you have created a handful of videos for your local area, you zoom out. Go from Antioch to Zion. From Zion to Waukegan. From Waukegan to the greater Chicago area. At each step, you already have credibility, some content in the bank, and an understanding of what your audience responds to. Then you can expand to cities you visit on your own trips, exactly like I did in Florida. The more content you create, the larger your library grows, and the more pieces of content are pulling in views and affiliate clicks at the same time.
You can also Niche down within your city. Instead of covering everything, you could focus entirely on kid-friendly activities, or restaurant recommendations, or free things to do on a budget. Sub-niches are even less competitive than the city-level search, and they tend to attract a more specific audience that is very easy to serve with products and affiliate recommendations.
Honest Drawbacks
This is not a fast path. Going from zero to $100,000 a year overnight with this model is not realistic. You build slowly. Each video adds to a library that compounds over time. The more content you have, the more searches you show up in, and the more consistent your income becomes. But the early weeks can feel quiet. That is normal. Push through it and keep creating.
The free keyword research tool does not give you difficulty scores. You can find ideas with it, but you will not always know which keywords are worth your time versus which ones are harder to rank for. You will need to do manual YouTube searches to check competition yourself, or eventually invest in a paid tool to speed up that process.
You also need to commit to a consistent publishing schedule. Three to five videos per week is the recommendation, especially in the early months. That is a real time commitment. The good news is the content itself is not complicated to produce. You do not need professional gear. A decent phone camera and a basic editing app will get you started. The time investment is in research and planning, not in high-end production.
Finally, some cities are more competitive than others. New York City and Los Angeles have plenty of content already. Tulsa and Antioch have almost none. Targeting smaller or mid-size cities first is the smarter play when you are building from the ground up. Start where the competition is lowest and build confidence before moving to the bigger markets.
Step-by-Step Action Plan
Here is a simple starting sequence if you want to act on this today:
- Search your own city plus “things to do” on YouTube and TikTok. Look at what is ranking and how strong the existing channels are.
- Use Ahrefs’ free keyword research tool to build a list of 20 to 30 “things to do in [city]” keyword targets, including nearby cities and sub-niches.
- Create your first listicle video: 7 or 9 things to do in your city. Research using TripAdvisor and the city’s official tourism site. Give clear credit in your video for where your information comes from.
- Sign up for the booking.com affiliate program and place your affiliate link in your video description or website.
- Create a simple one-page travel checklist in Canva or Google Docs. This becomes your free lead magnet to start building an email list.
- Set up a basic landing page to collect emails in exchange for the free checklist. GoHighLevel makes this straightforward without needing technical skills.
- Publish consistently, aim for three to five videos per week, and track which topics get the most traction. Double down on what is working.
Find Your X
The “things to do” content model is one path to building income online. It works well for people who enjoy local discovery, are comfortable with video, and can commit to building a content library over time. But it is not the only path, and it may not be the best fit for where you are right now or what skills you already have.
If you want help figuring out which online business model actually fits your skills, your schedule, and your goals, the Platform Proof Finder is built for that. It takes about two minutes and points you toward the approach that makes the most sense for your specific situation. Check it out at finder.platformproof.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to live in the city I am making content about?
No. You can research cities you have never visited using sources like TripAdvisor and official tourism websites. The key is to attribute your sources clearly in your videos and posts. If you say “according to TripAdvisor, the top attraction is X,” you are being transparent about where the information came from. That is honest and it protects you. That said, if you do live in or have visited the city, first-person experience is a genuine advantage that will make your content more specific and more trustworthy.
Do I have to show my face on camera?
You do not have to. There are TikTok videos in this niche with hundreds of thousands of views where the creator never appears on screen. They use photos and b-roll from the locations they are covering. That said, showing your face tends to build a stronger connection with your audience over time, which makes it easier to sell products and retain loyal subscribers. Both approaches work. Start with whatever makes it easiest for you to actually hit publish.
How long does it take to start making money with this?
There is no fixed timeline that applies to everyone. Some creators see their first affiliate commissions within the first month. Others take three to six months to build enough content for consistent traffic. The more videos you publish and the more targeted your keyword choices, the faster results tend to come. Publishing three to five videos per week will accelerate the timeline significantly compared to posting once a week. The volume of content is one of the most important variables in how quickly this model generates income.
How much does booking.com pay in affiliate commissions?
The commission rate varies by country and booking type. A rough estimate is around 3% to 4% of the booking value. On a $6,000 to $7,000 family trip, that could be $180 to $280 per booking. The commission rate may seem small, but the average trip booking is a large dollar amount and people book travel repeatedly throughout the year. The combination of high average order value and year-round demand makes this a worthwhile affiliate program to build into your content from the beginning.
What if someone is already making “things to do” videos for my city?
Competition in this niche is light even in mid-size cities, but if someone is already covering your exact city well, narrow your angle. Focus on kid-friendly activities, pet-friendly spots, free things to do, or date-night ideas specifically. Sub-niches within a city have even less competition than the general city search, and they attract a more specific audience that is easier to serve with digital products and targeted affiliate recommendations. A channel called “Pet Friendly Tampa” is a perfect example of this narrowing done right.
Do I need a website, or can I just use YouTube and TikTok?
You can start with just YouTube or TikTok. A website becomes valuable once you want to build an email list and sell digital products, because it gives you a landing page where people can opt in or purchase. But it is not required on day one. Start with content, build some audience, then add the website and email list as a next step when you are ready to expand your monetization beyond just affiliate links in video descriptions.
How many videos do I need before I see results?
There is no magic number, but creators in this niche tend to gain real traction once they have 20 to 30 pieces of content covering a range of keywords. At that point, the content library starts working together. One video might rank for a search, that viewer watches another video on your channel, and your watch time and subscriber count start growing together. Do not judge this model after five videos. The library effect takes a bit of time to kick in, but once it does, the momentum tends to build on its own.
What if I live in a small town with not much to do?
Small towns are actually ideal for this model because the competition is even lower. People in small towns still search for things to do, especially visitors and people considering a move. You can also cover the nearest larger city and work outward from there. Start with “things to do near [your small town]” and then expand to “things to do in [nearest larger city].” Building content in a radius around your location gives you a natural, growing library without having to start from scratch each time you target a new area.
Read Next
If the Etsy digital product angle caught your attention in this post, I put together a breakdown of three specific digital products you can sell on Etsy right now, with real proof that there is demand for each one.
Read it here: 3 Digital Products To Sell On Etsy (With Proof)
Sources
- YouTube search: “things to do in Brandon Florida” (Pet Friendly Tampa with Caitlyn, 687 views, 41 subscribers)
- YouTube search: “Have to do in Tampa Bay” (1,300 views, 2,000 subscribers)
- YouTube search: “things to do in Tulsa” (top result 8,000 views, 7,000 subscribers, 7 months old)
- TikTok search: “things to do in Dallas” (10 things to do in downtown Dallas, 824,000 views)
- Ahrefs free keyword research tool
- Booking.com affiliate program
- Expedia affiliate program
- TripAdvisor and Visit Tulsa (example research sources)
- Etsy.com (digital travel planner market examples)
- GoHighLevel (sales funnel and email marketing platform)
Helping 1 million working adults make their first $3,000 online with the skills they already have. Alston Godbolt, Platform Proof.