6

March 2013 Earnings & Spending Report

By
Kirsty
– April 1, 2013Posted in: Earnings

Yay! Life in the earnings department is back to normal and panic mode has been delayed for now. I more than doubled last month’s total coming in this month at $6,458. The somewhat worrying thing is that I didn’t do anything different this month. It really does just seem to be a crapshoot these days. If lots of advertisers get in touch… good month. If not, I’m slightly screwed.

I’ve sold three ads on my Kigali life website with another on the way soon and I think I’ll be collecting payment in April or May. So that’s a step towards diversifying away from guest posts and I’m very happy about that. I wasn’t sure if my Kigali site would work for online advertising, but it seems like there are a lot of businesses who are keen to know more, and that’s without me even approaching anymore. So it looks like it could be a steady earner for me. It’ll increase my workload trying to keep these advertisers happy, but I’m looking forward to building some relationships in the Rwanda business community so it’ll be good, I think.

Earnings Breakdown:

  • Adsense — $225 - Another low month. I’m really not seeing any quality ads showing up with Adsense these days. I wonder if their days (and as a result, mine) are numbered!
  • Affiliate sales — $105 - A bit better, but still bad. My only affiliate program that’s doing anything these days is World Nomads. But that’s probably because I haven’t loked at any of my other affiliate networks in… years? So they’ve probably all expired and changed. I really should sit down one week and go over everything. Maybe this will be the month that happens!
  • Advertising — $6,058 - I had a pending payment of $1,200 from February which is one reason why that month sucked so bad and March was a bit better. But otherwise just the usual medium-sized deals and a few renewals streaming in.
  • Ebook Sales — $70 - Ten sales.

Spending Breakdown:

Another pretty low spending month in March at $390. April (or maybe May, depending when I get the work done) should be a higher spending month as I have a bunch of programming things I want to get done including a restaurant search and taking the site mobile in a more functional way than I have now.

  • Link Building Services — $147 - I’m still using Linkvana (14 day trial for $5 affiliate link/50 free outsourcing credits affiliate link) but I haven’t actually done any link building for the past coupe of months. I need to get on that!
  • Go Daddy – $90 - A bunch of domain name registrations and renewals. I’m now the proud owner of many Eastern Congo-related domain names. Haha… we’ll see how that goes!
  • Facebook Ads – $110 (£72) - This money bought me around another 2,000 ‘likes’ on Facebook. No idea whether this is worth the money but my feeling is that I have the money to spend and I have a good feeling that having a lot of Facebook page readers is a powerful thing, at least in this Kigali niche. I’ve had a lot of interaction and feedback from the Facebook people and it really is a great way to get the word out about a lot of things. I’m going to keep pushing this and will probably spend a similar amount this month, so it’ll be interesting to see the effect it has on how many likes I get as compared to February.
  • Content – $38 (£25) - I pay a writer for some content on a British Travel site and she wrote one article this month.
  • Ebook — $5 - Monthly cost to sell my ebook.
February was a definite kick in the pants. I’m not sure how long this model of earning will work for me and February was a bit of a scare. Plus I met with the guy who owns Eatout.co.ke and he wants to do something similar in Rwanda. He wanted me to do some work for them but I’m not interested in being employed again anytime soon so will keep doing my own thing. But it was great to meet the guy… he’s a very smart internet entrepreneur and I learned a lot from talking to him.
But what this has meant is that I’ve seen that some competition is coming my way and it’s motivated me to make the best website I can make for Kigali. Their focus is restaurant reservations which isn’t really something I can or want to compete with, but my goal is to have a strong site for restaurants etc… make sure that mine is the one everyone knows about and comes to so that when they finally get to Rwanda, they might want to consider a partnership or something. We’ll see! The main thing for me is that I’m really motivated to work on some things I’ve been putting off for a long time. Competition is good!
So my main focus right now is my Kigali website. I’m putting a bunch of effort into it, starting to do some ad deals and really enjoying managing the whole thing. Anyone who’s got a community site similar to mine should take a look… I’m really proud of what I’ve got going over there but I’d love to hear what other people are up to in this city guide type niche.
Ok… that’s all from me. Happy belated bunny day and I’ll speak to you all soon.
5

February 2013 Earnings & Spending Report

By
Kirsty
– March 2, 2013Posted in: Earnings

Uh oh… that month has come where my earnings start to slip and I start to fret and worry that everything will come crashing down around me. I earning $3,174 in February which is my lowest month in over two years! I was at around the same place in February 2011… scary. But, I had a crappy month this past August and then broke the $11,000 mark a couple of months later. So, one thing I know, is that this business is pretty unpredictable. I have a $1,200 payment pending for February and the British pound is very weak against the dollar at the moment which makes everything just a little bit worse.

Earnings Breakdown:

  • Adsense — $226 - Lowest month in awhile. Has anyone noticed the quality of Adsense ads has fallen drastically in the past few months? I feel like I’m seeing a lot of ‘look younger’ and ‘lose belly fat’ type ads on my pages. I wonder if people are moving their ad campaigns over to Facebook. I know I’m using Facebook ads… although I’ve never tried Adsense.
  • Affiliate sales — $45 - Blah again.
  • Advertising — $2,868 - Pretty quiet this month on the paid posts and links front. I turned down a few offers that I felt weren’t offering enough and I’ve still got a few payments to collect for link renewals, but they’ll all roll over into March.
  • Ebook Sales — $35 - Five sales.

Spending Breakdown:

If you have to spend money to make money then February is a fine example of this. I didn’t earn as much as usual but I also only spent $182.

  • Link Building Services — $147 - I’m still using Linkvana (14 day trial for $5 affiliate link/50 free outsourcing credits affiliate link) but I haven’t actually done any link building for the past coupe of months. I need to get on that!
  • Facebook Ads – $30 (£20) - My plan was to let my Living in Kigali Facebook page grow organically for February but that was taking too damn long so I chucked a bit more money at it. I’m up over 6,000 people and want to power on to 10,000 before I slow things down. I feel like, in the end, it’ll be money well spent. Not only will it allow me to drive more traffic to my posts (in theory) but it’s also an attractive thing to advertisers.
  • Ebook — $5 - Monthly cost to sell my ebook.

February was a step backwards for sure but I’ve got a few exciting things on the horizon. I’m taking some serious steps towards monetising my Kigali site and already have several people tentatively lined up to be partners. It’s not going to be a huge money-maker (even with all of my ad slots filled the maximum I’d be able to make with my current plan is $1,750 per month) but it’s enough to kick my overall earnings up and, most importantly, move my business model away from paid guests posts and more toward something that feels ‘real’ and sustainable.

I’ve also got a couple of meetings with people doing some very interesting web things in Kenya. There’s a guy who runs a restaurant listing website who says he earned $250,000 last year and $100,000 the year before. I think his model is having restaurants pay for listings on his busy site. Nairobi is a massive city that’s a lot more web savvy than Kigali so it seems feasible. He’s looking to expand to Kigali and wants to partner up with someone who’s here, so I guess that’s what we’re meeting about. There’s another guy with a Kenya-based hotels website too who wants to meet. I feel like this might be a good time to finally get rolling on my living in Nairobi site and see if these guys know of anyone in Nairobi who might want to partner with me on that.

I had a couple of meetings also with a guy who runs a hostel, guesthouse and tour company in Musanze, a city a couple of hours outside of Kigali where the gorillas are located. He’s also got a presence in Goma in Eastern Congo (where there are also gorillas, volcanoes and some seriously adventurous travel opportunities). We chatted a few days ago about the underdevelopment of anything to do with Eastern Congo online… and after a quick search, it’s true! While there aren’t masses of people heading to this area for travel, there are still some adventurous souls and they’re willing to pay big bucks. Anyway, he knows all about the area and I know about web stuff so we might team up to corner the Eastern Congo web online market… there’s something I never expected to say. Not sure where it’ll go, but I’ve got some good domains. Plus he tells me that there are more foreigners living in Goma than in Kigali and the city is certainly a lot more intimidating… so maybe a ‘Living in Goma’ site is on the cards!

I’m not too worried about my crappy February. I’ve already racked up about $1,600 in owed payments for March and have a few decent sized deals on the horizon. I am pretty excited to see what these Kenya guys are up to and to explore advertising on my Kigali site. I think East Africa is where I want my focus to be. So much opportunity and I’m very well-positioned… at least for Rwanda-related stuff.

1

Attempting to Woo Rwandan Advertisers

By
Kirsty
– February 19, 2013Posted in: Monetising

So far February is looking like it’ll be my crappiest month in a while. So it’s probably a good time for me to make an effort towards monetising my Kigali life website which is something I’ve been avoiding. Though I’ve had a few businesses approach me about placing ads on my site, I’ve shied away from it, saying that the site’s not quite ready yet for ads.

This is due partially to me wanting to increase the number of users to my Kigali forum which means slowly stealing them away from a popular (but very unruly) Yahoo group. This is a slow process and, while I’m getting there bit by bit, I’m nowhere near having my forum be as popular as I’d like and as I think it could be.

But the main reason is that I’m currently in Rwanda on a work visa and I’m not so sure about what’s involved in changing that over to a business visa so that my site can legally accept advertising payments and pay tax and all of that fun stuff. As I plan on being here for the long term, I don’t want to mess around with shady behaviour and want to make sure everything’s done right. Fortunately, Rwanda is an easy place to open a business and I should be able to sort things out with a visit to the Development Board.

I had a meeting over the weekend though which has started getting me more interested in getting the monetising thing going. I met with the owner of a tour company, guesthouse and hostel in Musanze (the city people stay in when they do gorilla trekking) and he’s a smart guy who really understands the potential of online advertising. He’s actually switched his focus from print ads to online ads which was interesting to talk about.

I feel like many businesses in Rwanda aren’t as on board with online ads as this guy and it’ll be a slow process to get there. But I do know of many businesses that are and these are the ones I’d like to partner with. My plan is to choose my favourite businesses (many of whom I’ve already been in touch with for one reason or another) and offer more than just advertising… I want to bring them on board as partners.

I guess basically this is still advertising but with more social media and even offline promotion to go with an image ad in my sidebar and possibly a page on my site dedicated to their business. I’ve built up a huge amount of trust with my readers and I feel like my recommendation is worth a lot here. So my idea is to find businesses I really like, offer them some ad space and also to act as a sport of ambassador for them as well where I’ll promote them whenever I can – both on- and offline. I’m not sure that these is really that measurable… but I feel like people who are a bit more internet savvy and can see the potential might be up for something like this.

So I guess my plan is to offer traditional online advertising with an extra kick of support from me. Treat my advertisers as more than just someone paying monthly for an image ad and more as a business that I’m proud to promote when I can. I’m not sure what sort of value this would have but I’m hoping to bring on 9 to 11 partners (one space in the header, and 8 or 10 square ads in the sidebar), starting small and slowly growing. I’d like to be charging $75-150 per partner per month which would depend on the extras like the dedicated page on my site, Facebook shout-outs etc.

This is all new territory for me. The ‘ads’ I sell now aren’t really businesses that I know and would recommend. My opinion on my other sites isn’t worth much. Maybe on this blog, but the rest of my sites don’t have a personality attached to them. My Kigali site is very much mine and my personality and opinions are all over the place. People know, trust and really like the site and I think this is something I might be able to capitalise on.

Does anyone have any experience monetising a site like this? Do you have any good examples of community sites that have been able to monetise? It’s all a bit intimidating, even without the whole business registering part… so I guess that’s why I’ve avoided it for so long!

I’m not sure how much money I’ll realistically be able to earn with the site, but I do see this as being a far more sustainable approach to my current strategies and I’m excited to get started and see what the interest is.

6

January 2013 Earnings & Spending Report

By
Kirsty
– February 8, 2013Posted in: Earnings

Eek! My update is late! By over a week! Sorry. My excuse is that my internet hasn’t been working at home and the demon dog next door to my house has been keeping me away at night which means I’ve been a zombie during the day, unable to do anything. That’s my story. I earned $4,998 in January which is a lot less than I earned this time last year ($9,000+) which I guess is a little worrying. But I think it’s the nature of this business… sometimes earnings will be crazy high and other times you’ll settle into more of an average month.

Earnings Breakdown:

  • Adsense — $318 - Adsense jumped up a bit this month but nothing too crazy.
  • Affiliate sales — $36 - Blah.
  • Advertising — $4,595 - Business as usual in this department. I’m seeing a few more organised guest posting businesses popping up. So instead of just dealing with a random person who contacts me, I have to register for a third party site, list my blogs and wait for them to contact me when a potential deal comes up. I like having a bit of both of these things working for me and am curious to see if these networks will end up offering good prices or not. So far it’s a mix.
  • Ebook Sales — $49 - Seven sales.

Spending Breakdown:

I spent $442 this month which is up a bit from last month. Besides dropping a bunch of money on Facebook ads, I didn’t do anything too interesting.

  • Link Building Services — $147 - I’m still using Linkvana (14 day trial for $5 affiliate link/50 free outsourcing credits affiliate link) but I haven’t actually done any link building for the past coupe of months. I need to get on that!
  • Articles – $120 (£75) - I had three articles written this month for Backpacker Herald.
  • Facebook Ads – $170 (£108) - I threw a bunch of money at Facebook ads to get my Kigali Facebook page ‘likes’ up. I think I’ll hold back on ads this month and let the page grow naturally, but I wanted to give it a little boost as I think this will eventually be a strong selling point for advertisers. My page is now one of the most popular in Kigali and it’s been a great way of communicating with people. I’m not sure I even know what all of the benefits of a popular Facebook page are yet… but I’m happy to have a strong reader base so that I can experiment with things in the future.
  • Ebook — $5 - Monthly cost to sell my ebook.

So 2013 is off to a pretty average month. I’ve had a really lazy January so it’s not like I deserved to earn more! I really need to get going on a lot of projects. There’s just always so many things I want to work on but then just don’t for one reason or another. I’ve been finding it hard to get motivated to do web work. This might be because I’ve been really motivated lately with my efforts in learning French and have also recently thrown Kinyarwanda (the local language here) into the mix. Kinyarwanda is notoriously difficult and I’m freaking out a bit after three classes but I’m also enjoying it. My point is that these things are taking up a bunch of my time and brain energy so I guess I’m feeling a bit less motivated to do other things and more motivated to sit by the pool or meet friends for drinks.

Anyway! Onwards and upwards, I hope.

6

2012 Yearly Wrap Up

By
Kirsty
– January 11, 2013Posted in: Random Ramblings

Happy belated new year everyone! My yearly wrap is just a bit late, but hopefully it’s still mildly entertaining and informative. It’s been fun to write… it’s a nice way for me to recap my year and reflect a bit on what I managed to get up to.

Though I spent a lot of time in 2012 away from Rwanda, it still feels like I’ve travelled less, once again, than in the previous year. Here’s a recap of where I wandered to in 2012:

2012 Travels

  • Kigali, Rwanda (lived here for the year minus the summer)
  • St. Catharines, Canada (left January 3rd after spending Xmas and New Years 2011 at home)
  • Bangkok, Thailand (a day on each end of my Philippines trip)
  • The Philippines (five weeks in February/March doing volunteer work)
  • Northern California (June/July for two weeks)
  • Oregon (July for two weeks-ish)
  • Montana (5 days in July)
  • Alberta (a week in July)
  • New York City (three weeks in August)
  • St. Catharines, Canada (home for thee weeks in August/September)

Highlights

  • Returning to Kigali in January to a place that feels really comfortable to me.
  • Volunteering with All Hands in Cagayan d’Oro, Philippines. I love the work, The Philippines is one of my favourite countries and I got to see a lot of good friends and make some new ones.
  • Working on a farm in Northern California with some good friends from my time volunteering in Haiti.
  • Finally taking a natural building course in Oregon and meeting some interesting characters.
  • Seeing my friend Kevin in Portland and going to the Pickathon Festival.
  • Visiting a friend from Rwanda at her house on the lake in Montana, meeting her mom and friends and living the good life.
  • Travelling around the US for the first time and really enjoying it.
  • Heading to the Banff, Alberta to see an Australian friend I know from living in London. Finally seeing the beautiful parts of Canada.
  • Spending a week with my family in New York.
  • Getting back to Kigali in September and really feeling like I want to be here. Managing to get a two year work visa to stick around for the time being and feel a bit less like a drifter.
  • Finally making some strides with learning French after taking on a private tutor and kind of starting to take it seriously.
  • Work-wise, earning over $11,000 for the first time was nice!
  • Buying another couple of websites and seeing good results so far.

Things I Learned in 2012

Volunteering in The PhilippinesFor me, 2012 was a confirmation of my desire to settle down in one place… at least for the moment. I left Kigali at the beginning of the summer with a very open mind about what I might want to do next, but only a week after leaving, I found that I really missed it and was counting the weeks until I could go back. I had an amazing time in the summer travelling around the US and Canada and enjoyed every moment of it, but I was also looking very forward to returning to Africa. It’s a nice feeling to be having an amazing time and then knowing that once your trip is over, you’re going to go back to a place you really love.

Work wise I bought a couple more websites and continued to test my theory that buying established websites is a great way to go. I picked up British Travel Blog and Backpacker Herald which were both smooth transitions with people I trust. I created another site called London Town Traveller and made my first guest post sale yesterday… so I guess we’ll see if that was a good investment or not.

I’ve seen that paid guest posting is going strong and it seems like it’s still a viable way to make an income – for now. I’ve had a few people contact me asking for links to be removed on some sites. I guess Google gives them a list of non-compliant links or something. Who knows… I don’t pay any attention to anything Google does. But that could be an indication that this type of income could be on its way out eventually.

Visiting Jody in Banff, AlbertaThe biggest thing for me this year was teaming up with a friend for a moving to Kampala website that aims to be similar to my very successful (popularity-wise… I still haven’t tried to monetize it) Kigali site. This has been a great partnership and we’re always on the same page, have the same goals in mind and work very well together. It’s nice to see that I can do this type of work in a partnership. We’re having some challenges with our content for this site (the part that my partner is in charge of) which is frustrating but I think we’ve got a good idea and if we can get content coming in more regularly, we’ll be fine.

This also marks a shift in my mind towards working more on community type sites. My Kampala and Kigali sites are very community-oriented and the aim is to eventually bring local businesses on board to advertise. This, to me, is a lot more like a ‘real’ business than selling guest posts. I’m hoping to build a little East African city guide empire and this is something that I feel really good about working towards.

I’ve also learned that if you want to get ‘likes’ on your Facebook page quickly, throw some money at it through their advertising platform. I’ve seen great results and I really believe that having a lot of ‘likes’ will mean good things down the road. I’m pretty new to using Facebook as a marketing tool but having all of these ‘likes’ certainly won’t hurt!

2012 Travel Plans

I’ve become one of those people who are perfectly happy hanging around my city, having dinner parties, watching movies, and going out occasionally. I’ve got a few Kigali projects on the go (buying land, building something, working more on the website and map idea) but, as far as travel plans, I’m pretty quiet on that front. Here are a couple of ideas floating around:

  • Hang out in Kigali as much as possible soaking up sun, working on some projects and just enjoying life.
  • Short break to Zanzibar because it’s awesome and also to try to learn a bit or Swahili.
  • Visiting my family in Glasgow for a week.
  • Cycling around the Bordeaux region in France. I’ve always wanted to do a cycle trip and this seems like as good a time as any! Might cycle to Biarritz to try surfing and I’ll definitely be trying to speak as much French, drink as much wine and eat as much cheese as possible.
  • Bring my bike back to Rwanda and do some cycle trips in the country.
  • Go to Reunion, an island off the east coast of Africa. I’d like to spend another few weeks in a French-speaking place and this island is on my radar for some unknown reason. Might try to take a trip there at some point during the year.
  • Visit interesting building or gardening projects in East Africa.

Goals for 2013

I did ok with my goals last year. I, once again, didn’t touch my Africa travel site… but I did continue to work on Living in Kigali, I’m doing well with my attempts at learning French, I took a natural building course in the States and I dragged my guitar around with me for three months in the summer so made some progress there, too. Here are some of my goals for 2013:

  • Living in Kigali – I’ve slacked off a bit lately with content writing, but the site is gaining in popularity. My goal is to transition everyone from using a horrible Yahoo Group to communicate to using my forum. I’ve recently run a contest to get people to register and I’ve got a few more tricks up my sleeve. I’d also like to bring on a Rwandan to write about culture and customs and stuff. I plan on registering the site as a business and either bringing someone on board to sell and manage advertising… or to do this horrible job myself.
  • Kigali Map and App - I’ve been working on a Kigali tourist type map for over a year and I really want to get it done this year! I’m held up because I don’t really have any print design experience and I’m not sure really where to start. I’ve done a few things in Illustrator but not I’m stuck. Fortunately I have a few friends who can help me out. Also, I’ve just bought a smart phone for the first time and I want to see what apps are all about. My goal is to create a city guide app for Kigali… but first I need to download other apps to learn about what an app can do and to steal their good ideas.
  • Living in Kampala - This site has only been live since August and it’s done very well. We’ve got over 5,000 Facebook ‘fans’ and the site is getting around 100 visits per day. It took my Kigali site well over a year to get to that point. We’ve got a good team in place but need to find a way to get more consistent writers. Our goals for 2013 will be to get some advertisers on board and make an income. This might not be until the second half of the year but I think we’re both keen on making some money so we can prove to ourselves that this model will work.
  • Other Africa City Sites - I’ve registered sites for Addis Ababa and Nairobi so I’m hoping to expand my little city guide empire to those places. Ideally I’d like to partner up with one person in each city who is willing to look after all of the content and eventually ad sales stuff and go 50/50 on eventual profits. Or I might also just pay people per article and keep the sites all to myself. I’m not sure… and finding good people to write is tricky. This is more in the back of my mind and won’t be something I think about until much later in the year.
  • Learn French – I’m taking a couple of hours of private French lessons a week and really enjoying it. I love reading and writing in French but have a very hard time listening and speaking is a struggle too. It’s tricky and hard work but I’m getting there slowly. I need to be speaking more than I am if I want to make progress so I’ll work on that. Luckily in Rwanda there are always French speakers around. My trip to France will hopefully help with this too.
  • Buy Land - I want to be a land owner! Rwanda is a realistic place for this to happen with affordable land and an openness to foreigners being able to own it. I’ve got a few people here who I trust to guide me through the process but I’m not totally sure exactly where to start. I guess looking at some land is a good start but it’s all a bit daunting. I’ve going to start the process soon and see where it takes me.

Halloween in RwandaSo all up, 2012 was another great year for me! I did a few things last year that I’ve been meaning to do for awhile, visiting a lot of friends all over the US and Canada, got to see my family twice, went to a good friend’s wedding, did some volunteering, finally took a natural building course and just generally had a great time! I’ve grown more and more fond of Kigali and am happy to be here with a great network of friends and I’m excited to see what the next few years here have in store for me.

Earnings wise, I had another great year in 2012 although I’m seeing signs that things might even off a bit. Sure I had that crazy $11,000+ month but the rest seem to have averaged out at around $6,000 per month which is still pretty amazing. I’d be very happy if that continues through 2013 and, of course, a freakishly huge month is always welcome!

I’m excited about the work and life projects I have in store for 2013 but also happy that the rainy season is coming to an end and I can start my year with a bit of relaxing by the pool to gear myself up for all of the exciting times ahead! Did I mention how much I love the weather here?

All the best to everyone in 2013!

7

December 2012 Earnings & Spending Report

By
Kirsty
– January 3, 2013Posted in: Earnings

I earned $5,030 in December which is just a bit higher than November’s total and around what I hope to be making each month. Nice and average… I’m happy with that although it is much nicer to see growth. I’m never sure where this internet business of mine is heading so being consistent is good!

Earnings Breakdown:

  • Adsense — $270 - Still floating around the $300 mark which is fine with me given that it takes no effort to stay there. I am a bit curious about how Facebook advertising might take a bit of a chunk out of Adwords advertising. Facebook seems more targeted and, to me, would make more sense for certain types of businesses.
  • Affiliate sales — $14 - Well my affiliate sales have finally completely crapped out. This is due to me paying zero attention to this part of the business because it sucks the life out of me. I’m sure that most of the affiliate programs I still have linked on my sites have expired or are inactive or something. At the bare minimum, I should spend a day or two going through and either updating all of my existing affiliate links or find new programs to slot it. Will this happen? Probably not.
  • Advertising — $4,697 - Around what I made last month in this area. I had about $1,200 in renewals and then a lot of $200-300 deals for guest posts. No huge deals to speak of although I had a bunch of inquiries which might turn into something in the new year, we’ll see!
  • Ebook Sales — $49 - Seven sales.

Spending Breakdown:

Another low spending month at $397. Just to clarify my spending reports, I don’t include things like the office space I’m renting or the money I spend on lunch when I review a new cafe in Kigali or the smartphone I just bought (going to be exploring the wonderful world of travel apps soon!) and stuff like that. The expenses listed below are the basics like marketing, hosting etc. There are other costs but I’m too lazy to keep track of them or don’t view them as super essential to the running of my sites.

  • Link Building Services — $147 - I’m still using Linkvana (14 day trial for $5 affiliate link/50 free outsourcing credits affiliate link) but I haven’t actually done any link building for the past coupe of months. So I guess I’m paying $147 for nothing, at this point. I see the value in Linkvana so should start up a couple of link building campaigns this coming month. I’ve got a new travelling to London site to promote so might start there.
  • Hosting – $80 - I paid for a bunch of months hosting with Dreamhost.
  • Articles – $120 (£75) - I had three articles written this month for a couple UK travel sites.
  • Facebook Ads – $45 (£28) - I’ve stuck with Facebook ads this month again and will continue with it into the future. It’s an amazing way to see the number of Facebook page likes grow quickly. I’m not sure having a huge number of ‘likes’ is good for all sorts of Facebook pages but, for a community site like Living in Kigali, I think it makes a lot of sense to be able to communicate with a lot of people through Facebook. It’s also a good selling point for when I start to approach potential advertisers. I see this as a great investment.
  • Ebook — $5 - Monthly cost to sell my ebook.

I was looking at my 2012 January ($9,700), February ($7,000) and March ($9,100) totals and they were all really big months so I feel like I have a lot to live up to in 2013. I’ve got a few new sites since last year and I’m off to a decent start this January but I still can’t help but feel that, except for the crazy $11,000+ month in November, the end of 2012 has been a bit flat. True, $5,000 a month is great and I’m happy with that, but seeing those totals from the beginning of 2012 makes me wonder if I can reach them again in 2013. I guess anything but year on year growth makes things feel a little stagnated and makes me wonder a bit which direction things are heading for me.

To combat my fears of the paid posts gravy train coming to an end, I intent on focusing this year on trying to crank some money out of my community-oriented moving to Kigali and moving to Kampala websites. I don’t think making a bit from these two sites will be too difficult, but it will be more hands on and time-consuming given the nature of the sites and where we are in the world. Advertising online is a lot newer here and, though I know there’s demand for it and plenty of businesses in both cities who want to reach out readers, making it work will involve a lot more work than just answering an email and adding a link or post. But I’m excited for the challenge and making this work is, I think, what will keep me being successful into the future.

Bring on 2013 and lets see what the internet world has in store for me. I hope 2013 is a great one for everyone!