Choose your destination by your budget!
If you plan to travel medium- or long-term on a small budget, choose a cheap destination, even if it has a higher one-time cost to get there (long-distance flights).
For example in Southeast Asia you can comfortably travel for less than 15$ a day - including accommodation (hostel/hotel), eating out for every meal, transport, entrance fees and even a few beers. For the same budget, you couldn't even find a hostel or a decent dinner in most western countries!
The next tip goes hand in hand with the one before: Travel long-term to significantly reduce your average daily expenses! Apart from the cost of flights to get to your destination, which are a one-time expense no matter if you travel for a weekend or for a year, if you travel for a short time, you will likely spend quite some money on transport since you want to see as much as possible. If you travel for a longer time in the same place, you will take more time for each place and therefore spread your travel expenses over a longer time. I can really recommend traveling slowly, even if you are traveling short-term! The instagrammable shots that you will miss are more than made up by the experiences you will have when taking your time and meeting locals!
Here are some more tips:
-Eat like a local and ditch TripAdvisor to get authentic and cheap local food!
-Compare accommodation prices on different platforms and check if there is cashback available! Which platform is the best varies from place to place or sometimes country to country - for hostels, it's mostly either Agoda (Asia) or booking.com, but in some countries places are only listed in Hostelworld. I get 4% cashback on every booking I make on booking.com and it saves a lot over time! Mostly, online prices are cheaper than walk-in prices. I often don't book ahead, but if you I the walk-in price to steep and they refuse to lower it, I can still book online.
-In some countries, you can get significantly cheaper prices when booking transport online instead of at the counter (e.g. Flixbus in Germany/Europe!)
-Avoid obvious tourist traps and always ask for the price first!
For more travel advice, check out the travel advice compilations published by @travelfeed on Steemit every Saturday! (full disclose: I am the co-founder of @travelfeed)