Inspired by some really good travel magazine type sites, I’ve been eager to try my hand at something similar. So far, this blog is the only site of mine that has any sort of interactivity and I love that aspect of it and want to transfer it to a travel site.

I’m pretty new to Wordpress and other content management systems (Joomla, Drupal etc.) but I can see that they have the potential to make building what seems like a complicated site a lot easier. I’m going to have plenty of time on my hands so I might as well learn some stuff in between sipping cocktails and working on my tan (or burn in my Scottish skin’s case).

I finished up some major projects last week and was itching to get cracking on this new site but I couldn’t think of a domain name that wasn’t taken. I’m picky with domains and I always go for a dot com unless I’m targeting a specific country. This seriously limited my choices. I ended up decided that I was really keen on having the word wander or wandering in there somewhere since I think that’s what travel is all about… wandering around without any plans really set in stone.

I tried loads of short phrases with those words without much luck. I found a few available domains but they didn’t really capture my imagination or were too long or hard to spell or something. Just sitting at my desk now I starting thinking about how good I think my Travoholic.com domain would be for the site I have in mind. I’ve decided to leave it as is though because it’s already a nice little earner but it’s frustrating at the same time because I want the domain name. But then it came to me! Why not start a whole new site called Wanderholic.com?

I think I like it. It’s hard to say. It’s easier to spell than travoholic (word of mouth people always assume it’s travelholic), I think it’s brandable, it’s short-ish for a new domain name, and I think it sums up perfectly what the site will be about - addicted to wandering around the world.

What do you think? Big winner or big wiener?

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Since I’m totally dragging my feet on the whole direct link sales case study thing for my living in London site, I thought I’d give an little update with some good news. I’ve managed to sell my first link on the site without much effort at all.

Some guy from MoneySupermarket.com contacted me out of the blue about buying a link on my backpacking site’s links page. We made the sale and, knowing they’re a pretty huge company with what must be a seriously massive marketing budget, suggested that he might want a link on my London site.

The pitch went a little something like this:

As you’re buying links I thought I’d mention another site of mine, http://www.stuckinlondon.com. I’m just about to contact a bunch of companies about advertising and thought I’d see if you were interested. Links would be on the front page under the ‘Partner Sites’ bit and I’ll be starting out with a price of £10/month or £100 for the year. It’s a site targeted at a market who do a lot of travelling and the site gets a good amount of traffic and is on an old, trusted domain. Thought I’d see if you wanted to jump on board… it’s a bargain!

Actually, the pitch went exactly like that. I like to keep my correspondence pretty laid back and chatty rather than stuffy and formal and so far it works for me.

His reply? He agreed it was a bargain and I’ve got my first sale! I should have asked for more considering size of the company but my plan has always been to ask for £100 per year so thought I’d stick with it. If I find that I make more sales at this price without much hassle then I might consider raising it a bit.

I think the sale was easy because, once again, I was already in touch with the marketing guy. The price really is a good one and I think marketing people who deal with lots of other sites will recognise this. I’ve been contacted about links on Travoholic.com loads of times and I’m thinking that I should dig through those old emails and see if any of them are keen on my London site as well.

So one link down, lots to go!

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This month has been the first time since June where I didn’t set a record with my earnings. They came in at $1648.80 for November though which I’m still really pleased with. That’s still my second best month ever and considering I was only aiming for a consistent $500 a month by December, I’m really happy to continually exceed my expectations.

Earnings breakdown:

• Google Adsense - $276.21 - Once again I just missed the $300 mark which is frustrating but I can live with that. I’m just happy to continuously be coming close to $300.
• Affiliate Sales - $1188.37 - Another great month for affiliate sales but it’s still the same single program that’s coming through. Trade Doubler did well for me last month with around $80 in commission and that dropped off to $2 this month which is a let down. I need to find ways to get the other programs on board.
• Linkworth & Text Link Ads - $114.22 - This is creeping up slowly without much work on my part so that’s always nice. I had two Linkworth links but one has just been cancelled. I’ve never really had much consistency from them.
• Private Link Sales - $70 - This is where my earnings took the biggest hit. I usually seem to get link sales out of the blue and I didn’t this month. Well, I got two but one of them hasn’t paid yet so I’ll roll that over to next month. I have two recurring links for $10 each as well and it’s nice to be able to count on that. Setting up monthly Paypal payments for link sales is a great way to go.

Next month will be an interesting one because I have $700 worth of private link sales that are due for renewal. I can’t believe a year has gone by since I first discovered this revenue stream! I’m curious to see how many renew, especially since my PR is now 4 instead of 5. I think December could be the month where I break through the $2000 mark if some of the links renew.

December will also be the month when I get my freedom! I don’t start travelling properly until January but I’ll be home in Canada for three weeks starting December 14th and I’ll be able to work full time on my sites. I doubt that will have an impact on my earnings until down the road but it will be interesting to see if it does.

So all in all I’l extremely happy once again and looking forward to seeing what the future holds!

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