Best month ever! Yep, again! January has come through with $9785 for the month. I’m pretty amazed at this. I haven’t really done anything different, I guess the world is just in the market for online ads and I’m reaping the rewards for now. Had several folks come through with content for guest posts I would have cleared $10,000 easily, but I guess I’ll wait around and add them to February’s totals which is off to a much slower start.

Earnings Breakdown:

• Adsense – $582 - Adsense always jumps up for me in January. One of my sites that usually performs well only in the summer had a mysteriously good month. Plus I had a very strange $60+ day that I have no explanation for. Hopefully this continues!
• Affiliate sales – $562 - My Clickbank and Trade Doubler affiliates came back with a couple of sales but still only earned around $40 each. World Nomads is the same as always. I’m waiting to get numbers for another affiliate but not expecting much.
• Advertising – $8515 - So my earnings are well and truly one-sided. I had one major deal of over $2000 but most of my ad sales were smaller with a lot of renewals and several more monthly subscription payments added. I love the monthly payments. Set it, forget it and I can count on the money coming in each month for work I’ve already done. No need to chase to renew.
• Ebook Sales – $126 - I made 18 sales without doing anything different.

Spending Breakdown:

I didn’t  $918 spent on the usual things plus some outsourcing through Elance. I love that site!

• Domain Renewals – $177 - Go Daddy renewals – lots of them! I also registered three new domain names.
• Link Building Services – $206 - These are the monthly fees for two link building sites I’m using: Linkvana (14 day trial for $5 affiliate link/50 free outsourcing credits affiliate link) and Build My Rank.
• Article Outsourcing – $200 - Paid to have some articles outsourced with Linkvana.
• Elance – $330 – I’ve put $330 into Elance’s system for work that is being worked on now. I paid $130 to have some hacks removed and my WordPress security beefed up (and instructions on what to do for my other WordPress sites) and paid $200 or $600 for a custom plugin. Both of these jobs are awaiting my approval but I haven’t had the time to test things out. I think I need to do that tomorrow.
• Ebook – $5 - Monthly cost to sell my ebook.

January has been a really relaxed month for me with most of my time spent catching up on some things I didn’t do over Xmas and lounging by the pool. I’m in Manila now and heading down to Cagayan De Oro tomorrow afternoon to spend 5 weeks working with All Hands there. I’m looking really forward to getting dirty! Plus it’ll be great to see a bunch of friends I haven’t seen in awhile.

I never know what the situation will be, work-wise. There’s usually a lot of downtime but on some projects power and internet issues make working really annoying. Plus the people are really cool usually and it’s hard to get motivated to do work after a long, hard day of mud-slinging. We’ll see!

I’ll be in touch soon with an update from the typhoon zone.

So I’ve got my little Kigali website that is gaining in popularity with expats and locals alike. The monetising model for the site is a lot different from my other sites given the nature of business in Africa and how far along things with the internet are here. So many businesses don’t have websites yet, so even if they did want to advertise, I’d have nothing to link to. Few businesses know about Google Adwords so that makes earning through Adsense here impossible. I’ve never come across a business here with an affiliate program, so that’s out too. Plus businesses that do have websites aren’t really up on the whole SEO thing, so I’m not going to get emails from people who want to game Google.

So… things are done differently here and I’m getting a good look at it now as I’ve just completed my first two advertising deals for the site. The first deal was with two Sudanese guys who are young, but very established businessmen. They run a couple of gyms, have something to do with farming, and now they’re starting a web empire and going for it in a big way. They have 15 staff members and already get 10,000 people a day having only been in operation for three weeks. Their site, Kigali Konnect, is aiming to be a classifieds and business directory site aimed at everyone in Rwanda (it’s in Kinyarwanda, French and English) and they wanted to advertise on my site to help them reach the expats here.

It was a really interesting meeting and I was excited to see that they have a similar vision for what the future of websites in this part of the world could hold. They’re aiming to make similar sites for Cairo, Kampala and Khartoum and see this market as very new. They realise that getting in now is a big advantage and agree with me that people who overlook Africa for business opportunities are missing out. They’re interested in possibly partnering up in some way down the road and they’d be very interesting to work with.

My second meeting was this morning with a Rwandan woman who is in the early days of starting up a recruitment agency for nannies, housekeepers and guards. She does the training, security checks and all that fun stuff and people looking for these services get in touch with her to find staff. Given that my site is aimed at expats and that it will often be found by new arrivals, I think it’ll be a good place for her to advertise.

I had to educate her a bit on the standard banner ad sizes and I offered to, for a small fee, create a suitable ad for her. She was very impressed with my site and kept saying things like ‘You are doing a great thing!’ and was very happy to get my advice on what her ad should look like and even happier when I offered to help her redesign it. I also suggested she post to my forum for free and offered to send her some interview questions so that I can feature her, and her business, on my website in an article. I feel like she left the meeting very happy. Not bad considering she was very surprised to find out I was a woman! She was expecting to be meeting a man. I guess ‘Kirsty’ isn’t a common name in Rwanda…

I do all of my business by email however I don’t think this sort of thing will fly in Rwanda. But these face-to-face meetings have been really fun and I think creating relationships is very important here. I firmly believe that there is so much opportunity here and in East Africa in general (I have a friend out in West Africa who says the same thing) and I’m really excited to being getting into the website scene at an early state. I’ve got another exciting partnership blooming for my Kampala site idea, so my mini Africa web empire could be expanding.

I like the personal nature of business here (at least what I’ve found so far) and the importance of a handshake and a meeting. It’s nice and I’m really looking forward to seeing how things unfold over the next few months!

My beloved disaster volunteering organisation, All Hands Volunteers, has just announced a project in Cagayan de Oro after a typhoon struck in mid December causing flooding, 1,200 deaths (with lots of people still missing) and destroying or damaging over 50,000 homes.

I’d been watching their website closely since they sent an assessment team a few weeks ago. My inside source told me that there was a less than 50% chance of a project being announced so, while I was watching, I wasn’t giving too much thought to actually going. But a couple days ago a project was announced and I’ll be heading to The Philippines on February 4th for a month of muddy work. Amazingly, I found a flight all the way to Manila from Kigali for under $900 and another flight down to Cagayan de Oro for about GBP30. Bargain!

I spent a couple years following All Hands around the world but last year I only got to work with them for two weeks in Haiti. I had hoped to go to Japan but my parents were concerned about the nuke plant and radiation and strongly asked me not to go. For once, I listened to their concerns but I felt a bit sad missing that project. I’m looking really forward to seeing a bunch of old friends and it’ll be so great to get back into the disaster volunteering scene after too long of a break.

I’ve been to The Philippines before for five weeks about 4 years ago and it’s one of my favourite countries. It’ll be great to visit again and it’ll be really fun to get involved in the community in Cagayan de Oro rather than just passing through as a tourist. I’ll only be back in Rwanda for a month before leaving for The Philippines which seems a bit too short, but I guess that’s just the way things go! It’s nice to feel like Kigali is a base for me that I can leave and return to.

So I’ll arrive in Manila on February 5th and leave on March 11th. I really love this kind of work. Shovel and wheelbarrowing mud and rubble around has before some kind of sick obsession. It’s a damn fine fitness regime, that’s for sure!

If  you’re travelling in the area and want to help people, meet and work with Filipinos and volunteers from all over the world, get muddy and have an amazing experience, check out their project page and send your application.

I’ve been in touch with Jason for several years and have seen his site Unanchor.com go from an idea to a full fledged business. It’s an interesting idea and I thought you guys might like to know a bit more about it.

What is Unanchor and why did you decide to build it?

Unanchor puts a new spin on the traditional travel guide. We work with local experts around the world and essentially ask them — “if you had a close friend or family member coming to visit your town for the first time for only 3 days, what would you take them to see?”. They take this information and write an extremely detailed self-guided tour itinerary and we sell it for a few bucks on our site.

It was my own frustration with travel-planning that led me to start the site. I was in Beijing for a few days and started researching what to do and how to get around. It was overwhelming. I found literally over 1,000 things to do on TripAdvisor in Beijing. I just wanted someone who knew the city well to put together a logical itinerary with detailed directions. This was the beginning of Unanchor.

What made you initially start traveling? Why did you decide to build your site abroad?

My wife (girlfriend at the time) and I are both from the Silicon Valley. We both had cubicle jobs that we didn’t love (or hate either). So we started saving and eventually quit our jobs, sold all of our stuff and traveled for a year through Asia. While we were traveling I became interested in entrepreneurship and started thinking about what problems I was interested in trying to solve. I launched the first version of the site while traveling.

When our year trip was up I wanted to continue to work on building the site, but unfortunately it wasn’t making enough money yet to support me and my wife. My wife wanted to be a teacher, so we compromised by having her apply as an English teacher in South Korea. The job pays so well that we’re able to both live comfortably on just her salary. She teaches while I’ve been able to work on Unanchor full-time. It would be very difficult to make this situation work in the United States. The cost of living in South Korea is significantly lower and the pay she receives is great.

Did you have any experience with this sort of thing (HTML, site design, programming etc) or did you just work it all out as you went?

I primarily worked it all out as I went. I had built websites and dabbled with HTML and CSS when I was younger. I also took some Computer Science classes while in college, but I hadn’t touched it for almost 5 years. I downloaded a PHP, MySQL and Javascript book and taught myself. It was surprisingly easy.

Eventually, though, I realized that my programming skills weren’t going to cut it and it’s more fun to work on a business with a partner. I advertised on a few forums and websites about the fact that I was looking for a co-founder. A few people reached out to me, but there was one person who was clearly more passionate about the idea than the others. He’s now my equal co-founder. He takes care of the technical side of the business and has been an absolute pleasure to work with. I’m very lucky.

Did you have to use much of your own money to get this thing off the ground… or investors… or were the costs minimal?

The costs were pretty minimal and we’ve invested only our own money so far.

How has Unanchor been going?

Things are going well and are getting exciting. We just announced our public launch. We work with writers around the world now and have over 90 itineraries and cover 75+ cities.

Along with our public launch we’ve also released a new way to view our itineraries. You can check out an example for New York, San Francisco or Paris.

What’s coming next for Unanchor?

We’re always looking for new local experts to work with. We’ll continue to come out with new itineraries. Finally, we’re really excited about our new iPhone application. We’re putting the finishing touches on it and it should be out towards the end of January.

What are some challenges you faced building your website while living in Asia?

One of the hardest parts is the lack of an extensive entrepreneurial network. I’ve been able to connect with a few other entrepreneurs while living in Seoul, but on a recent trip to San Francisco it really hit me as to why the Silicon Valley has the reputation that it does. There are so many people building businesses and launching websites. It’s easy to network, get advice and meet others that are in a similar situation.

Other than that I have no complaints. The Internet in Korea is unbelievable. The lifestyle here is also great. It’s a wonderful place to live.

Earnings Breakdown:

• Adsense – $343 - Same old, same old.
• Affiliate sales – $644 - Something went a bit haywire this month… two of my affiliate networks (Clickbank and Trade Doubler) that have a bunch of travel insurance affiliates earning for me didn’t have a single sale. Not a one. I’ll usually earn between $200-300 with these guys combined, so it’s a bit of a shock and I’m not sure what’s happened. Fortunately I have a good month with Linkvana referrals at $200 to cover the loss a little. World Nomads sales seem to be on a slow but steady decline.
• Advertising – $3220 - After a crazy number of ad sales in November, things seem to have come back down to earth to a bit below my usual monthly amount. This was a good mix of renewals and some new deals, the best being a recurring monthly payment of $500 for ads across five of my sites on several pages per site.
• Ebook Sales – $63 - Nine sales.

Spending Breakdown:

I didn’t really seem to spend so much in December with $771 spent on the usual things.

• Web Hosting – $128 - Dreamhost fees.
• Domain Renewals – $32 - Go Daddy renewals.
• Link Building Services – $206 - These are the monthly fees for two link building sites I’m using: Linkvana (14 day trial for $5 affiliate link/50 free outsourcing credits affiliate link) and Build My Rank.
• Article Outsourcing – $400 - I outsourced a bunch of articles to Linkvana for the first time in awhile. If I’m paying $147 each month fof membership, it makes sense to use it!
• Ebook – $5 - Monthly cost to sell my ebook.

Sorry for the short update this month! I’m about to leave on the long trip back to Kigali but wanted to get my update up before I go… so it’s a wee bit rushed. I’m looking forward to getting back and working hard for a month or two to get all of the little jobs I’ve been avoiding finished.

I’m still on the lookout for at least one more website to buy so I’ll kick up those efforts in the New Year. Otherwise it’ll just be me working on existing projects, trying to find a partner to work on the Kampala city guide site with me, attempting to finish this crazy Kigali map idea of mine, and, of course, chipping away at my Africa backpacking site.

Happy 2012! Talk to you again soon from Rwanda!

Happy New Year! Following on from my 2009 and 2010 Yearly Wrap Up posts, here’s one for 2011! It feels like this year has been a bit quieter in the travel department than my previous years but, looking back, I think it’s actually been just as busy in reality. I guess having a home base in Rwanda and taking trips from there makes things seem a bit less hectic. But I still managed to cram a lot in and keep busy while taking plenty of time to relax and enjoy the simple life in Kigali. Compared to last year it was really quiet but I think I like that.

2011 Travels

• Kigali, Rwanda (lived here the whole year)
• London (April for a few days)
• Dublin (April for a few days)
• Scotland (April for a couple of weeks)
• New York (April for a few days)
• Leogane, Haiti (2 weeks in May)
• Lake Bunyoni, Uganda (visa run for 2 nights)
• Bangkok (2 nights in August)
• Bali (10 days in September)
• St. Catharines, Canada (3.5 weeks in December)

Highlights

• Enjoying staying put in Kigali, getting to know the city and working on my Kigali website.
• Starting a pretty big project to make a map of Kigali.
• Attempting to learn French and making a little bit of progress.
• Attempting to learn guitar and not making much progress.
• Spending a few days in Dublin from my friend’s 30th birthday.
• Surprising my dad in Glasgow for his 60th birthday.
• Heading back to Haiti a year and a bit after the earthquake to volunteer again.
• Spending some time at a street boy’s home in Kigali.
• Heading to Bali to surprise a friend for her 30th birthday.
• Buying my first website and paying it off in less than four months.
• Having a pretty amazing year with my websites and clearing $8000 for the first time.

Things I Learned in 2011

I learned in 2010 that my travelling days were behind me and I feel like that’s been confirmed this year. I’m not really excited anymore by travelling just for the the hell of it. I still love visiting friends and volunteering and travelling with some purpose in mind (sporting events, parties etc) but I’m not really so into backpacking around, checking out famous sites and all that stuff the way I used to be.

I figured out that there are people out there who can make some pretty cool WordPress plugins. If I can think it up, it seems like someone out there in elance world can make it happen. That’s been a pretty big revelation for me because, now that I have some money behind me to invest back into my business, it’s great to know that I can have custom plugins build that’ll do exactly what I want them to.

I also realised that buying established websites is a great way to push my business forward. I think I got lucky when I bought The Blighty Traveller but I’d love to find a few more of those gems. It’s a great way to invest back into my business and expand things at the same time. If I can find two or three sites (that don’t suck… that’s the hard part) a year to buy, I’d be pretty happy.

2012 Travel Plans

For once I really don’t know what the year holds for me. I know what sorts of things I want to do, but I’m also pretty content in Kigali and happy to see where life takes me and to just go with the flow. Actually, looking back at my plans for 2011, nothing really happened that I predicted. Here are a few ideas for 2012…

• Stick around Kigali until early June, soaking up the sun, spending more time working on my French and guitar and working on my Kigali website.
• All Hands are currently assessing in The Philippines to see if they’ll launch a project in Mindanao. If they do, I’d likely for for a month or two around February.
• Find a couple of causes to volunteer with in Kigali… one will be building a website for the Rwandan street boy’s home. Not sure what else.
• Pop up to Kampala for a couple of weeks and get started on my living in Kampala site. Hopefully find a writer to work with who knows the city because I certainly don’t!
• Spend the summer in North America learning about natural building and visiting interesting intentional communities.
• Hang out with some Australian friends who are coming to Canada on a working holiday visa.
• Visit a friend who lives in Bogota, Colombia.
• Go to my friend’s wedding in Toronto in September.
• Go back to Rwanda… ?

Goals for 2012

Last year’s goals are pretty much the same as this year’s. I didn’t accomplish much on my backpacking in Africa site but I did make a bit of progress with French and my Kigali site.

• Africa Site - I think this has been a project of mine for three years now! I know I keep saying I’ll work on it but never do. Who knows if I’ll ever get this project finished. I do have a few articles lined up for the New Year so I’ll keep plugging away at it. Even if it never develops into the one-stop travelling in Africa site that I hope, it’ll at least be a site with some good info and hopefully interesting to advertisers.
• Living in Kigali – I’m really happy with this site. I love the content, I think its really useful to new arrivals to Kigali, I like the layout, the maps and the ratings and the rest of it. I like how most expats in the city know about the site. My goal for 2012 is to figure out a way to turn the site’s popularity into some revenue.
• Learn French – Still working on this one! I tried taking some classes which helped a bit. I’ve been doing some work on my own and my friend speaks French so I’ll have to bug her more to help me. I think I’ll try to find someone to give me one on one lessons for a few hours a week.
• Learn Guitar - I’ve been making a wee bit of progress so I’ll keep plugging away and hopefully learn some more, bit by bit.
• Learn About Natural Building - I’ve always been pretty interested in alternative building methods, sustainable living and all that stuff. I’m looking forward to finally spending some time learning about it by taking workshops around the US and maybe Central and South America too. It’ll also give me an excuse to travel around the US which is something that’s been on my list for ages.

I’m not sure much has changed from how I felt at the end of last year. I was talking last year about wanting to find a place that felt like home and not wanting to move around so often. I really love Kigali and, while I want to spend the summer in the US and Canada, I can see myself leaving all my crap in Rwanda and heading back there afterward.

Earnings wise, I had a great year in 2011 and I’m excited to see what 2012 has in store. If things keep going well for me I think I’ll eventually start thinking about investing in some sort of offline business, maybe in Rwanda. This is something I haven’t thought too much about but I really think there are lots of business opportunities in Kigali and if one crosses my path, I’ll give it some serious thought.

I hope everyone had a fun 2011 and that 2012 has some great things in store! I’m really excited to spend the next 5 or 6 months in Kigali but also looking forward to seeing what the summer has in store. Hoping for another happy and healthy year for everyone. Happy New Year!

I really like Uganda and, while I haven’t spent much time exploring Kampala (yet), I really love the vibe there. It’s a lot more chaotic, dirty and crazy than Kigali (most places in the world are) but I really like a bit of chaos and I could see myself spending a lot of time in that city in the future.

I’m kind of at a strange crossroads where I’m fed up with travelling around and feel like I want to base myself somewhere – establish something a bit more permanent. I have a bunch of things I’d like to do this year that will involved travelling around the US for the summer plus I’d like to do some more disaster volunteering (could be sooner than I think… The Philippines?) but I think I’d still like to keep a base somewhere.

Kampala is a nine hour bus ride or a very short flight from Kampala and I could see myself bouncing between the cities as I get to know Uganda a bit better. I’ve loved working on the Kigali website and I know I could make one work for Kampala as well, a larger city with a lot more expats and more web-savvy businesses. While these sites might not make me much money to start, I see a lot of potential in these two countries and having the main websites for expats coming to town will be a lucrative thing in the future, I think. Regardless, I really love how making the Kigali site has made me get out there, visit new places, try to things and reach out to people and building a site for Kampala will give me the same excuse to get out there and experience the city.

So… I’m sitting down at my parent’s kitchen table here in Canada and have just started the living in Kampala site. Literally just started. So I’m not sure if anyone’s interested in following along as a site goes from a WordPress shell to a complete design to a site filled with a bit of content but, if you are, check out the site (living in Kampala) and follow along as I make the changes. My plan for this site is to get things built, add a bit of content and get it ranking (and with my Kigali site it started ranking on page one of Google without any content at all), then take a trip to Kampala around April to fill it with some more content and search for a writer to partner up with.

I’ve also registered livinginnairobi.com so maybe East Africa will become my base by default as I work to create a bunch of city guides! Who knows. I love working on these sorts of sites and I love this part of the world so I’m looking forward to getting started.

I earned $8044 in November which is completely crazy to me! Again, it was mostly through ad deals and paid articles but, unlike in October when I had a huge $2600 deal, November was one biggie for $1200 then a whole bunch of smaller deals.

Earnings Breakdown:

• Adsense – $370 - Same old stuff here. I’m going to finally add Adsense to my new Blighty Traveller site so which might up things a little bit.
• Affiliate sales – $790 - Affiliate sales are up a bit this month but I won’t really be happy until it’s hovering around $1000 consistently. I’m not really doing much to achieve that though. I guess I should also add affiliates to Blighty Traveller. Maybe I’ll make tweaking that site my project for the month.
• Advertising – $6821 - So ya… a pretty big month with advertising. I had about half of my ads that expired in November  renewed (including one that I’d forgotten to charge for several months) but a lot of smaller ($200-300) deals, as I mentioned. I like the smaller deals since it means I’m dealing with new SEO companies and individuals and the more contacts I have in the SEO world, the better. It’s probably a lot easier for them to contact existing partners when new advertisers come to them than it is to look for new sites and I think this is another reason I’ve done well here – I get links up fast with no hassle and I see a lot of repeat business from SEO people.
• Ebook Sales – $63 - Nine sales.

Spending Breakdown:

Wow I really didn’t spend much at all last month, only $517 which makes November a pretty profitable month for me! I did fork over about $550 in All Hands and Movember donations and also had to pay for my plane ticket back to Canada for Xmas, so funds were spent, just not on my business. I really dropped the ball on article marketing this month but will get back into it in December.

• Domain Renewals – $240 - Go Daddy renewals.
• Stock Photos – $66 - I bought a bunch of credits for stock photos. I use iStock Photo in case anyone was wondering. I like them.
• Link Building Services – $206 - These are the monthly fees for two link building sites I’m using: Linkvana (14 day trial for $5 affiliate link/50 free outsourcing credits affiliate link) and Build My Rank.
• Ebook – $5 - Monthly cost to sell my ebook.

Thinking back on November I don’t think I did a lot of work. The star ratings plugin I’m using on my Kigali site has finally been finished after a lot of back and forth with my programmer guy. But I’m really happy with it. I almost had a sale go through for a moving to Hawaii website but the guy realised at the last minute that he’d be crazy to sell for the price I was offering ($2300) and, to be honest, he’s probably right. I didn’t ask him to name a higher price but I might at some point soon.

December has started slow. I might have a deal in the works for $500/month but other than that I haven’t had any advertisers get in touch. I guess it was the weekend so we’ll see what the week holds. I find that most deals I do are during the first couple of weeks of the month and then things drop off considerably. But I do have about $3000 in renewals due this month so fingers crossed on those.I think this month I’ll work on adding Adsense and affiliates to The Blighty Traveller and trying to get my map to a point where I can have something to print before I leave. While I’d like to print the map in Rwanda, I’d also like to know what the quality/price difference would be. I’ll also be trolling the net in search of a website or two to spend my money on.

I’m heading home to Canada on December 9th and staying until January 2nd. I live about an hour from Toronto and love going up there so if there’s anyone nearby who feels like meeting up, let me know!

I earned $700 from the site in the second half of September then October was a lot slower with only about $350 in earnings. November is going a bit nuts and I’ve already earned almost $1300 (and am on track for a +$7000 month!) If things keep going this well, I should have this baby paid off before the end of the year. Four months… not too shabby, especially if the site keeps contributing to my earnings the way it has been.

Part of the reason I bought the site had nothing really to do with earnings potential. I honestly went into the sale without worrying too much about previous earnings and deals or traffic stats or any of that stuff. I just jumped in feet first and followed my instincts. This has been as much an exercise in risk-taking and I like it. I’m not averse to taking risks in life at all… selling all my stuff, moving to various countries, travelling to semi-dodgy places occasionally, doing dumb things etc. but I’ve never really been much of a risk-taker with money.

I spent all of my money on plane tickets and day-to-day travel and living expenses while stuffing a small amount of savings away in case this internet gig of mine implodes. Besides outsourcing a couple of programming things, buying The Blighty Traveller was my first major investment in expanding my business and, while parting with what is a pretty big sum of money for me was a bit scary, it’s a great feeling taking a (somewhat calculated) chance and seeing it pay off. I’m planning on taking a few more risks like this and so I’m looking for some more sites to buy.

But where the hell do I find them? The Blighty Traveller fell into my lap one day, out of the blue. I’ve been on Flippa and, from what I can see so far, the sites on there are mostly garbage. Is it just a matter of checking that site out all the time to try to find the rare gems? Are there other sites out there with good websites for sale? Should I be checking out website forums instead? Do you have a good site for sale?

I’m mostly interested in destination-specific sites. Preferably guides for large cities around the world. Or anything to do with backpacking, budget travel etc would be ok too. Or anything really… maybe I’ll branch out a bit from my comfort zone if the right site crosses my path.

I’m really new to this side of things and I haven’t really got a clue where to start looking for websites. If anyone out there is experienced in this, I’d love to hear from you! Or seriously… if anyone has a site they want to offload, send me an email and I’ll take a look.

Earnings Breakdown:

• Adsense – $399 - Nothing exciting happening here. I still need to add Adsense to my Blighty Traveller site so maybe that’ll give things a boost. I think I’ll try building links to a couple of sites with a heavy Adsense strategy to see how that works. I know the sites have good per click payouts… I just need to get people to the sites. Easy… right?
• Affiliate sales – $550 - A slightly concerning drop in affiliate sales but I’m not going to panic unless things stay the same for the next couple of months. I really do nothing to promote affiliate sales so I’m not really sure I should be surprised at the drop in earnings.
• Advertising – $5782 - I did my biggest deal ever this month (ads on 7 sites for almost $2700 for 12 months… it pays to have a lot of sites!) which was what led to me having my best month so far. It was a huge deal with very little work on my part and no bargaining. I really have no idea what I’m doing right. I think I’m reaping the rewards of great timing as more and more companies are seeing the benefits to advertising online. I’m getting a lot of repeat business from SEO companies who already have my sites on file as well as weekly emails from new people wanting ads… almost all of which convert into a sale.
• Ebook Sales – $70 - Ten sales.

Spending Breakdown:

Considering October turning out to be my best earnings month… maybe I should have spent a bit more on my business! It was actually a pretty stingy month for me, only spending $654 on the usual things. I guess it’s good though since I spent a ton of money going to Bali in September and just bought a plane ticket home for Christmas this year (my first Xmas home in five years). So a month like this is good for re-padding the bank account.

• Domain Renewals – $143 - Go Daddy renewals.
• Hosting Fees – $100 - Paid a bunch of months for Hostgator.
• Link Building Services – $206 - These are the monthly fees for two link building sites I’m using: Linkvana (14 day trial for $5 affiliate link/50 free outsourcing credits affiliate link) and Build My Rank.
• Article Outsourcing – $200 - For some article outsourcing through Linkvana.
• Ebook – $5 - Monthly cost to sell my ebook.

I’ve been working really hard on my Kigali site this month, as well as the Kigali map. I’m not sure I’ll stay here past June 2012 (I really want to learn French so am thinking of a move to somewhere I’ll be totally immersed… French Guiana anyone? Plus I want to do more disaster volunteering next year and travel with a friend around Canada a bit) so these are two projects I plan on putting a lot of work into until then. Plus I really want to get the map finished before I leave for Canada on December 8th which will mean neglecting pretty much everything else… as usual!

But I’ve got a few more renewals and a couple more deals already done for November so I’m off to a good start. I’m not expecting anything close to October’s results but I’ve been surprised before… so who knows!

I got an email last week from a reader called Adam who started a site called Monthly Income Report. It’s a… yep… site dedicated to listing bloggers who do income reports for their online businesses. It’s a list of 10 sites so far… I’m not sure if that’s due to grow or if it’s meant to be a ‘top 10′ type thing. Anyways… check it out if you’re into reading about what people are earning online.

But I’ve been allowing article submissions on all of my other sites for awhile. The reason I keep Nerdy Nomad clean of them is because this blog is pretty personal – just me – and I don’t want people to read it and feel like I’m recommending something I’m not. But with my other sites, there’s no obvious person behind it. No personal recommendation. So I don’t think adding links is as misleading. Well, ya, of course it still is… just less so, I think. So I’m ok with that.

As it turns out, I only accept articles that are actually interesting and useful to readers… they just have a few links peppered in them and a small pitch about whatever company is being promoted. I’ve been pretty impressed with the quality of the articles… many are a lot better than something I’d come up with myself, actually! I feel like they have the potential to add value to my sites since I don’t allow complete sales pitches and make sure the articles offer value to the reader. But I’m still not a huge fan of them and on the sites that my face and name is attached to in an obvious way (Nerdy Nomad and Living in Kigali), I intend on keeping all of the content free of ads.

It seems like companies are going down this road in a big way. I get as many requests for link advertisements these days as I do for articles. If I were to shut out the articles completely, I’d be losing a large part of my income and a large part of my new content. Actually, all of my new content these days for my static sites seems to come from paid articles. Kind of lazy on my part… but it seems to be working ok!

For my static sites I tend not to allow permanent ads of any kind so I treat the articles the same way I’d treat a text ad. Advertisers generally pay a monthly or yearly rate and then renew when they expire. I know a few other blogger types who charge one-off fees up to $500 and I wonder whether this might be a better way to go. You get the one-off fee, you don’t need to worry about renewals, the content is there for good, and you’re just stuck with a few links on your site for life.

I just bought the site Blighty Traveller and Ross, the old owner, has been allowing articles on his site for GBP50 for a permanent placement. That price is pretty crazy to me and I’ve bumped it up to GBP100 and GBP150 in two recent deals. I think I look at these articles more as advertising and less as free content. Sure, I’m getting the content so that the site keeps growing (since I don’t live in the UK I won’t be writing new content myself and I have other priorities at the moment than buying new content) but the business is getting a few links on my site forever. To me that’s worth a lot more than GBP50.

Normally I wouldn’t even consider permanent links but I’m going to use this new site as a bit of an experiment in the area. I’ll play the field a wee bit and see what works out to be a fair price for both sides. I’m going to attempt to creep up towards $500 a post but my feeling is that most of the people Ross and I have been in touch with want to have a longer term relationship which means more posts on a continuous basis which means a lower per-post price from me. Either way, I’m excited to have the new site to experiment a bit with.

What are you opinions on this type of advertising? Do you feel like paid articles are misleading? Do you look at them as free content or as advertisements, even when the content is good? Do you feel like you’re selling your soul when you add a new one to your site?

I’m not sure what it is with me and big projects that I never finish (my backpacking Africa site being a prime example) but I’m currently working on one more pretty ambitious idea. Kigali is a city without a decent road map… and this city is bloody confusing! There are very few straight roads and it takes a new arrival a long time to get orientated here. Add crazy neighbourhood names to the wiggly streets and you have a lot of very confused expats and tourists.

I’ve been through Thailand a bunch of times and I remember coming across a really amazing map when I was there back in 2008. The Nancy Chandler tourist-oriented maps of Chiang Mai, Bangkok and Khao San Road are packed with information and organised in a really fun and creative way. When the idea to come up with a map for Kigali popped into my head, I immediately thought of her maps. I picked up a couple when I was in Bangkok in December and I’m using them as inspiration for my Kigali project. I’ve emailed them too and they’ve provided me with a bit of advice… I just need to be careful that the maps don’t look too much alike so I can avoid having to pay royalties.

So the idea is simple… create a colourful, fun map packed with advice from people who know the city well. I have a good grasp on a few areas of town and have other friends keen to help who can fill me in on the rest. Plus I’m just going to hit the streets and look out for interesting things. The idea is to list hotels, restaurants, and places of interest along with things like where to pay your water bill, the embassies, the place my housemate bought his bike from, where to get decent passport photos taken, where to have furniture made etc. Everything an expat in Kigali would want to know.

Kigali’s not a city aimed at tourists and, besides a visit to the Genocide Memorial, there’s not much to do in the city. It’ll be helpful for tourists too (listing hotels and giving them an insight into expat life here and where to hang out) but the target market will be the expat community.

There will be two major parts to the project: creating the map and filling it with content. Creating the map will be tough since I have no idea how to use Illustrator. The Nancy Chandler maps are hand-drawn and I had considered doing this since my art skills are a lot better with pen and paper than they are on the computer. But then I’d have to worry about scanning it and I don’t know if there’s anywhere here to do that.

Instead, I’ve opted to use Illustrator and to trace each street using Google maps as the background. This alone took me ages as I had to figure out which tool to use and how to do it. Online tutorials have been a big help, as has just fiddling around. I’m not sure my computer is cut out to handle such large files so things have been a bit slow going. But I’m learning a lot as I stumble through this and figuring out Illustrator has been on my to-do list for awhile, so killing two birds with one stone, I guess.

As for adding the content, my friend and I have done a lot of research for the website so we have a bit of a stockpile of tips and info for the map already. Nothing is written specifically for the map, but we have some good information to start with and then we can fill in the gaps from there. Filling in the gaps will mean walking the streets of Kigali (which fortunately is fine since the city is so beautiful and the weather is great) and this will take a long time. Plus it’ll be tricky to know what sorts of things to add and what to leave off. I plan to filter everything through my friend who is a really entertaining writer to give the map that extra kick of awesomeness.

Asuming this map ever gets created, we’ll need to figure out how to get it printed and how to sell the thing. Two items that are a lot more difficult to deal with in Rwanda than at home. Everything here is expensive, including printing, and an initial quote to print on the size of paper I want the map on was $5. This was for one copy and for one side (the map will be double-sided). Obviously printing costs will go down the more maps we print, and I haven’t asked around at all but this initial quote is a bit concerning.

I think I might try to get the map done before I go home for Xmas on December 8th and then try to get a few printed at home and bring them back to get an idea of how interested people would be. Based on everyone I’ve spoken to, this sort of thing is needed so I think it’ll be well-received.

Another issue is that I’m in Rwanda on a tourist visa and I’m sure I’m slowly getting more an more on their radar with the Kigali website. If I want to sell this map here I’m not sure what the procedure is. I’ve had people telling me to register as a business in Rwanda (that’ll sort out my visa but if they turn me down I might get booted out) and others saying just to use my business in the UK and sell the maps to supermarkets and stores here. I’d also like to have it in cafes and things and even sell it to the guys in the streets who try to sell tourists useless crap (I’d like to give them something that people would actually want to buy) so I’m not sure what’s involved there.

So that’s what I’ve been working so hard on these past few weeks. It’s a handful! I feel like I’m making a bit of progress now with Illustrator and getting my ideas and map layout a bit more organised. I’ll worry first about making this thing and then deal with figuring out how to print and sell it later. Possibly not the best strategy, but oh well.

If I managed to pull this off it’ll give me another product (along with my ebook) that can generate passive income for me. A map is a lot different in that I have to actually print the things and then sell them, but I sort of like the idea of having an actual product that you can hold.

Wish me luck! Has anyone else ever made a physical product to sell? Anyone done it in another country? I’d be open to advice and suggestions from anyone!

Earnings Breakdown:

• Adsense – $455 - Pretty average month. My Kigali site has the lowest click-through rate in history! I think I’ll scrap Adsense on that site. I had a feeling it wouldn’t work. Come on African businesses! Start using Adwords!
• Affiliate sales – $842 - Pretty average month in this department. Nothing really to report… I’m not really trying anything new or changing things up. This includes $200 worth of Linkvana referrals… $100 of that is from this month and the other half is from June and August. I forgot to check!
• Advertising – $3869 - Another great month in this department! Blighty Traveller has given me a boost in this area and has also meant that, for the first time, I’m accepting permanent articles/guest posts from advertisers, as opposed to yearly deals. Plus a few renewals and a bunch more new deals out of thin air.
• Referrals $260 - I’ve benefited from a bunch of referrals from my small gang of contact-sharers but this is the first month where a couple of referrals I’ve sent have paid off. One payout was for $200 which means that they did a deal for $1000 which is pretty good stuff.
• Ebook Sales – $70 - Ten sales.

Spending Breakdown:

Ok I went a little nuts this month spending $3754. My big purchase this month was a new travelling in England website. Kind of scary, kind of exciting. Everything else is pretty usual. I did some link building outsourcing for my backpacking in Africa site. I’m not really that happy with the site and there’s still a lot of work to do, but I figured I’d get it site out there so it can start weaseling its way into Google and gaining PR.

• Domain Renewals – $78 - Go Daddy renewals.
• The Blighty Traveller Site Purchase – $3100 - So… spending around $3100 on a new website puts a bit of a dent in the bank account! But so far it’s looking like it was a great deal for me with about $750 in deals in the first two weeks. This is without approaching my current advertisers with the new site. Actually, it’s working the other way around where I’m getting a bunch of new inquiries and then I can pitch my other sites to them in addition. So the purchase is, so far, turning out to be even better than I expected.
  
• Link Building Services – $206 - These are the monthly fees for two link building sites I’m using Linkvana (14 day trial for $5 affiliate link/50 free outsourcing credits affiliate link) and Build My Rank.
• Article Outsourcing – $340 - For some article outsourcing through Linkvana and Niche Tracker.
• Website Content – $25 - I’m starting to pay $25 a pop for articles for Wanderstruck.
• Ebook – $5 - Monthly cost to sell my ebook.

I’ve been working a lot this month on a new idea for an offline business. Kigali is a city without a map! Seriously… you can’t buy a road map of this place and it’s a place with very few straight roads. In short, it’s confusing and there’s no way for a new arrival to know what’s what. So a friend and I are making it our mission to make a map aimed at expats. I’ll write a post about it soon. It’ll be a lot of work but fun and worthwhile, I think.

Last year October was my first plus $5000 month, sandwiched between two sub $3000 months. This year I’ve got a whole bunch of renewals lined up so I’m expecting big things. Although I probably shouldn’t since this business is so unpredictable! But I’m looking forward to seeing what the month has in store and also to seeing if The Blighty Traveller continues to produce so well.

About four months ago I got an email from Christine at Almost Fearless about being featured in their documentary, The Wireless Generation. I loved the sound of their project and, having read Christine’s blog for many years, I was flattered to be approached. I told her I was in!

Christine and her husband Drew have been wandering around the world filming people from their documentary for the past year. I was expecting a visit from them in July but after being on the road non-stop, with a baby in tow, no less, they changed their plans and headed to Chiang Mai to decompress for awhile.

So after a slight delay, Drew, the husband part of the operation, arrived in Kigali last week. After a few days of Yellow Fever Vaccination recovery (and after I recovered from a nasty cough) we met a couple of days ago finally in one of my favourite cafes in Kigali and got down to business.

I’ve been a bit nervous about this whole process, to be honest. I’m not a massive self-promoter type and felt a bit uneasy about being caught on film forever and ever. But I feel like I don’t really step outside my comfort zone too often these days so I was looking at it as a challenge.

The interview itself seemed to go pretty well. I don’t think I made myself sound too much like an idiot or an asshole. Drew asked lots of good questions and made the process pretty relaxing and easy. I’ll be curious to see how they edit down an hour of me talking about various topics into however long my spot in the film will be. It’s also pretty interesting to see the other types of shots he’s been taking and seeing them all patched together will be pretty interesting as well. I’m curious about how Kigali’s going to look on film and what sorts of shots he’s been getting around town. It’s pretty cool to get a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the documentary process. It looks like hard work!

So I guess stay tuned for the documentary to come out at some point next year. It seems like collecting the interviews is only half the battle and there’s a lot more to be done. But I’ll let you know when I make my cinematic debut! Unless I end up on the cutting room floor… then ignore all of this.

I got an email last week from Ross from The Blighty Traveller offering up his site for sale. He’s had put it up on an auction site and my guess is that he was also contacting folks he knows online to see if they were interested, and I was one of them.

At first I didn’t consider it at all and wished him well with the sale. But then, out of curiosity, I had a look around his site and was impressed with the content, the way it’s organised and the look of it and then I started thinking about it a bit more. He emailed me over some stats, talked to me a bit about existing deals, and suddenly I was interested.

I bought the site today for GBP1,950 which is just over US$3,100 and I think that’s a good deal based on what sort of earning I think I can get out of it. Ross already has a few ad deals already set up including monthly posts for GBP50 (a price I think is way too low but I don’t look at paid posts as free content, I look at them as advertising), plus a few other good advertisers.

The site is about travel in the UK and, as I already have three sites with UK-related content (Stuck in London, London Olympics, Airport to London), I think there will be a lot of crossover with my ads. I can approach people who currently advertise with my UK sites to see if they’re interested in ads on The Blighty Traveller as well. I feel like this alone could be good for quite a few easy deals. Having another site to show to potential advertisers is always good… especially a PR4 site like this one.

Plus Ross hasn’t been using Adsense on his site and I think, as 73% of his visitors come from Google searches, that it will do well. I’ll spend a half a day whacking it up on the site and hopefully I’ll see a bit of a jump up in my Adsense earnings finally. I’m not expecting anything crazy but $40-50 a month wouldn’t be out of reach.

I also want to attempt to grow my mini web empire by a one quality site per year. I know first hand the benefits to having a collection of sites and the more I have, the more potential there is for attracting ads. I’m not so into the ‘do keyword research, build a shitty site, build links, then hope for an affiliate or Adsense payout’ style of doing things so I feel that (since I’m lazy and haven’t been motivated to put much time into anything except my Kigali site) maybe acquiring sites could be one way forward. So this is a wee bit of an experiment.

Lastly, I have money sitting in my bank account not doing anything for me and I want to start taking some more risks with it. Eventually I’d like to maybe buy land, or invest in some offline business but I’ve never really taken many chances with my money. I’m not averse to taking risks… maybe I just haven’t had an opportunity pop up. So this is just a baby step towards getting a bit braver with my cash.

Ross had the site listed on an auction site for US$2,500 with no interest up to that point and I feel like, had I waited awhile, I could have gotten the site closer to that price. But I’m not really one of these ‘get the lowest price at all costs’ kind of people and I feel like what I paid is a fair price for the site. I’m happy, I think he’s happy and, well, happiness is in the air. Besides, I’m terrible t keeping track of my receipts and it’s looking like there could be a nasty tax bill next April so this purchase takes a bit of a bite out of that. Win win.

I’m going to keep close track of any any earnings that come from this site so I can see how good of an investment this has been and report back to you guys. I have no doubt that I’ll earn my money back, it’s just a matter of when. I’m going to aim to earn my money back in six months by using ad contacts and seeing how Adsense does. I might play around a bit with some affiliates, too.

For me, passive income is the thing I’m after and even if I don’t earn my money back for two years (ok… maybe I’d be annoyed if it took that long), it’s the extra monthly boost in earnings that I want, not the initial one-off payout.

This is the first time I’ve bought a website and the first time Ross has sold one, so there were a few kinks. I decided to finally branch out with my hosting and I’m hosting this site on Hostgator, which is the same host it was on before and I guess makes the transition easier. Plus I keep hearing it’s not smart to have all of your sites on the same host, so I’m finally paying attention to that advice.

I was lucky because Ross took care of the entire transfer for me. He knows a guy, the guy did some stuff, and the site is now mine. Yesterday was a hugely frustrating day though because I couldn’t log into the WordPress account and neither could any of my friends here… but Ross and the people at Hostgator could log in fine. As it turns out, when you transfer a WordPress site, something has to happen and that something happens a lot faster in the USA and UK than it does in Africa. We were stumped but all is well now.

So I have a new site at my disposal! This is all new to me so I’m excited to see how it works out!