How to earn money as a guide on LightUp: audio guides and in-person tours

A gem is a short audio about a specific place: a street, a building, a story only a local knows. You record it in your own voice, on your phone. That’s your signature: nobody tells it like you do. Rather not record yourself? You can narrate it with an AI voice on your own and upload that audio. Just remember: if you want to sell in-person tours, your own voice is your best sample. Speak several languages? Record a version in each one and reach more people.

Every gem appears on the map, right in its spot. Anyone walking by with the app discovers it, and anyone planning their trip from home listens before they arrive. It’s like having a shop window open 24 hours a day, in your city and on the phones of thousands of travellers.

Creating a tour takes five minutes. In Settings → In-person tours you add a name, a photo, what people will see along the way, the price per person, how long it lasts, how many people fit, which languages you run it in, and on which days and at what times. You mark the meeting point on the map. Done: your tour now appears on your profile with the “Book” button.

When someone books, you get an email and a notification in the app, and you have 24 hours to reply. Accept? The booking is confirmed and the traveller sees your WhatsApp and the meeting point to sort out the details. Can’t make that day? Decline it and the traveller isn’t charged anything.

You’re in charge: your price, your days, your times. Going on holiday? Switch off “Accept bookings” and everything is paused until you’re back.

On the day of the tour, the app reminds you. When the tour is over, tap “We did the tour” and it’s recorded, with your location, that you were at the meeting point. Traveller didn’t turn up? Tap “The traveller didn’t come” and you still get paid.

When do you get paid? One hour after the tour ends, the payment lands in your account.

Why wait that hour? It gives the traveller time to tell us if something went wrong, for example if the guide didn’t show up. That’s what lets travellers book with confidence.

And what if a traveller says you didn’t come, but you did? When you tap “We did the tour”, where you were and at what time are recorded. So we never refund a traveller without checking first: your payment is protected.

Audio hooks people: it’s free or cheap to listen to, whenever and wherever they like. But the full experience comes from a person. A study at a historic site in Canada proved it: visitors who toured with an in-person guide ended up less mentally tired than those who only used audio.

And it’s not the only one. Studies with tourists in Istanbul (530 people), Cappadocia (420) and Egypt (200) reach the same conclusion: a good guide sends travellers home happier and keener to come back (Çetinkaya and Öter, 2016; International Hospitality Review, 2023; El-Sharkawy, 2015). That’s why the formula works: the audio introduces you, and the tour is what people hire you for.

Lots of people see technology as a threat to guides: automatic audio guides, artificial voices, apps that tell you everything. At LightUp we see it the other way round. We’re not afraid of technology: we use it in your favour. A machine can’t replace someone who knows a place; what it can do is help that person reach much further.

That’s why the deal is simple. We bring the technology: the map, the app, the bookings, the payments and the notifications. And we give you visibility: your gems show up on the map right where travellers pass by, and on the phones of people planning their trip from home.

You bring what no machine has: your knowledge, your voice and your way of telling things. You tell the stories; we make sure people find you.