A Couple Travelers By The Numbers: August’13 Income – $13,343

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Vicky and I are home now in Ashland MA. No, that does not mean that our trip is over – only that part 1 is over. Part 2 is set to begin on September 23rd when Vicky and I will fly back to the UK and spend a month there exploring England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Then, we will hop on a plane to Nepal for some trekking and eventually make our way to India to finish up the year. It’s amazing how quickly we’re going to be back to Asia and how much has changed for us since we were last there. It’s exciting to think about, but for now we are just going to enjoy our month off with family and friends by doing as little as possible.

Normally these income reports run rather lengthy but August was a bit of an anomaly whereby I don’t feel that I have THAT much to talk about. Though there are a few things so we might as well cover them.

I’m going to start by NOT talking about traffic and social media. It’s been a few months now since Vicky and I have adopted our laisse-faire approach and as we are not actively trying to grow them I really don’t feel we have much to talk about. Ironically, traffic this month saw a significant uptick and it was one of our best ever!

Blogging Course:

Perhaps the most exciting thing for us is that we are starting a blogging course. Vicky and I have had this idea for awhile but there were a few reasons why it never materialized until now.

The first is that we didn’t have a topic. I wanted to run a course, but a course about what? The obvious answer was about making money on your travel blog, because that’s the one thing I think I know how to do. Traffic, social media, and branding are simply not our forte and I wouldn’t feel comfortable running a course about something, which, frankly I wasn’t that good at myself.

On the other hand, even though I knew the obvious answer was to do a course about making money on your travel blog, I kept asking myself, is this a course I actually want to run? Will it be exciting enough? Is there enough information? Will people want to take a course like this? Is it a good time to run a course like this or has the time passed? We had all these questions but it finally came down to a few key points.

1. Firstly, I felt that I was in a position to call myself an “expert”, at least in so much as I know a lot about this one little area, which is how we monetize. At the very least, I knew that I could provide sound information to whoever signed up for the course.
2. Secondly, I believed that there were people who were not only interested in the material but could benefit as well. We get emails and comments from time to time basically asking “how do you do it?”. It’s true, there is a lot spelled out in the income reports but believe it or not there is a lot more to what goes on behind the scenes than just what we talk about here. In my opinion, if all of this was packaged into a course that was well structured and presented then it could benefit people beyond these income reports, hopefully justifying the price of the course and beyond. One way for me to think about it, is would me 12 months ago want to sign up for a course like this, and would it have benefited me? Once I realized that the answer was yes, it became obvious that there was value.
3. Lastly, I didn’t feel we had much to lose. Of course, it does take time to run this course, a lot in fact, but although time is valuable there is a definite learning opportunity here, which I think justifies it. Moreover, I’m offering such a solid money back guarantee that in my opinion I don’t have to worry about people not getting their moneys worth – if they don’t like it, they can just ask for a refund. Therefore, my conscious is clear.

When you boil it down to this, it seems like a no-lose situation. Apparently, others thought so as well. So far we have had 11 sign ups, which beats my minimum requirement of 5 to run the course and my stretch goal of 10. Of course, there is still room for more as it is ongoing and I think/hope will only be getting better as time goes on.

If you are interested in signing up – or learning more about it check out our article

https://acoupletravelers.com/make-money-on-your-travel-blog/

Buying Blogs:

The last few months has resulted in another epiphany and that is that buying blogs can be a great way to add additional revenue streams to your business. This is a theme I have been discussing in the last two income reports. It’s relatively easy to find blogs and not THAT much harder to find ones that are undervalued since not that many people know about this method of monetization. As a result, Vicky and I have been scooping up blogs left and right – maybe even a little too much. We now have around 8 websites, having bought 5 in the last 2 months.

Overall we spent: $950 + $700 + $130 + $100 + $200 = $2080

We have earned: $5500

and of course we own the blogs themselves, which are worth something, perhaps more than what we have paid for them now that they have earnings attached to them. Granted, all of this stems from the fact that we have contacts, as there is nothing inherent in the blogs themselves that allows us to earn money on them. Still it definitely is showing itself to be a worthwhile investment and is something bloggers should consider. If you are interested in purchasing websites, we might have some spares ones and or can connect you with some buyers. Likewise, if you are interested in selling websites, let us know.

Blogging Partnership:

Coming off a most recent high in July we noticed a steep slow down in August. There is a lot at play here but suffice to say that advertisers simply weren’t as interested as they were in the past. Offers were on average lower, the number of deals were less, and having worked with several bloggers for several months now, there were simply less people to promote them too. We had a few new sign ups but not enough to pick up the slack. All and all, while we did do well for the month and many people made decent money, we definitely took a hit and I don’t necessarily expect it to recover in the following months. It just might have peaked.

In fact, I’d say I’m more keen on buying our own blogs and promoting them than expanding the number of people we work with as it has already grown quite large and the marginal benefit is getting less and less. We’re diluting the market by sharing so much and everyone with a basic understanding of economics knows what happens when supply goes up and demand goes down. Our commissions are at an all time low as average price per sale has fallen. Moreover, the newest people who started in August did not do as well as I would have expected, and I don’t think it was as much a function of their blogs as much as it is just the general environment.

But I guess that’s life.

You have to grow and adapt and diversify the best you can. Vicky and I are trying new things all the time, though I’ll admit we’re pretty heavy in a few areas. If we have to see a pull back in our earnings then I guess we’ll have to figure something else out. I am not optimistic on our current business model but I am optimistic on our ability to evolve with a changing environment, which is partly what we are trying to teach with this course. We’ve experiences a lot of success in most recent months and we have a long way to fall until I really start to worry about our month to month earnings. Lastly, the “beautiful” thing about a decline in earnings is it creates more time, which is something we definitely could use.

Goals for 2014

The last bit I have is about goals for next year. This is the first month of year 2 of our earnings, since we started in August 2012. We’re off to a great start but we’re really far from a sustainable business model and there are a few things I’m looking to focus on in the next year.

1. Diversification – This is really the overarching key to a sustainable, online business model. A brief story I once heard goes like this. Trump’s accountant pulled him aside one evening and said “Donald, are you aware that two of your businesses are in danger of failing” to which Trump replied, “So what, I have 48 others that are doing just fine”. Diversification is something I’ve been harping on for months now and since then we’ve expanded the number of websites we own, work with, and how we make money such as offering courses and utilizing third party services like Vadovia. We’ve gotten to a point where if any one of our websites was to be hit by Google, while it would be a sizable blow, it would not be the end of our earnings. Still, we’re very vulnerable to the market conditions for the one area that we operate in and as I’ve seen from the last month of the blogging partnership it’s necessary to move on/expand in order to keep up.
2. Other Niches – Similar to diversification – I really want to get into other niches aside from travel. How are people in finance, health, technology, etc earning money? And I don’t want to stop there – I want to get out of blogging altogether and own/operate websites that actually earn money by providing services and selling products/affiliates/adsense, etc. Any suggestions?
3. Partnering – Last but not least, I want to partner with someone on a business. Vicky and I have been going it alone for the last year and I think it’s about time that we actually worked with someone(s) on an idea/business that we can all take part in and try to progress. Sure it’s great being able to have 100% say in what goes on and that’s how I want to continue to live/work but I’d like to partner up with someone so it isn’t always us doing things 100% of the time. If you have ideas, feel free to reach out to us – we potentially have some capital and know-how that we’d be happy to apply.

Traffic and Sources

Google Page Rank: 3/10

Domain Authority: 41/100

Advertising: 

Overall we had a pretty good month. I had to change last months’ figures as some outstanding money which I had erroneously counted in July earnings actually got paid in August and therefore it is showing up now. Moreover, I have to count some money this month that will likely get paid later in September (this is all on account of the lag in payments from the blogging partnership program). So I will make that adjustment in a week or so when I know the final amount that comes in, but I didn’t want to delay the income report because of it.

• Direct Advertising: $2750
• Vadovia: $768
• Blogging Partnership: $6,581
• Other Websites: $2,690
• Course Sign – Ups: $1,900

AvocadoPesto – $1,377

• Direct Advertising: $1,295
• Google Adsense: $29
• BlogHer: $53

• Virtual Assistants: $974
• Website Purchase: $1,586
• Other: $163

Total Value Received: $0

Donations:

This month we donated $90 to Daughters of Cambodia, which is a project intent on fighting forced prostitution in Cambodia through awareness. If you would like to donate, you can do so here.

“Daughters of Cambodia is a project addressing the enslavement and forced prostitution of women and children in Cambodia. Currently there are over 100,000 prostitutes in Cambodia and more than 70% are prostitutes against their will. Forced prostitution. Many of them are children. They find themselves in this situation by being misled into believing they have a legitimate job offer, or through kidnapping, being drugged, or for fear of violence against them or their families. In some cases they are sold by their own family or by someone else in their community.  Daughters of Cambodia is a music project to tell their stories.”

In addition to that we donated another $50 to Kallari Chocolate’s kickstarter campaign, which met it’s $20k goal!

“We are Kallari, a coalition of 850 indigenous farming families located in the Upper Napo River region, surrounding Tena, Ecuador. Hundreds of ethical retailers across the USA have carried our bean to bar chocolate since 2006. All the wholesale profits stay in our Kichwa cooperative villages in Ecuador, so we can provide for our family needs and maintain our rainforests.”