It looks like I’ve fallen victim to the difficulties of keeping my blog updated. It’s not because I don’t have time to do it but that I’ve sort of lost touch with the blogging world for now. It’s difficult to write about blogging and earning online when I don’t have much time to check out other blogs, message boards and tinker with methods of earning online.

I’ve got lots to report on the travel side of things though and am still amazed at how easy and cheap it is to get online here in Bangladesh! Work as a volunteer is really great and rewarding and the people here are really cool. It rained today and I managed to get some little things done on my Wanderstruck site which is encouraging but I’ve still got loads to do. Luckily we’ve got two more days off and I’m planning to hit the site building thing really hard tomorrow.

I’m hoping to finally get this sponsers/fundraising page done so I can put the word out. I’m hoping that other bloggers will be interested in writing a post about what I’m attempting so it will be interesting from a marketing aspect to see if I can generate a bit of interest from around the web. I think I’ll make it my aim to get included in those weekly round-up type posts that bloggers tend to do.

On Friday a bunch of us are planning to head to the Sundarbans National Park which is a UNESCO World Heritage site and apparently home to Bengal tigers. We’ll be attempting to bribe our way in in order to avoid having to hire an official boat and armed guard. I think we’ll be taking our interpreter with us who knows which strings to pull and we’ll see what happens. Should be pretty funny if nothing else!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I’m in a pretty remote part of Bangladesh and online without any problems. Very cool. There are actually a whole load of people in the room clicking and tapping away at their computers as well.

I’ll keep this short because I’ve got to go work on my donations page over at my new site but I just wanted to say thanks to Ki from Oslo for Beginners and Samuel from Group Accommodation for $50 each. I thought I’d add your links here in case I don’t finish the new page for a bit.

If anyone else would like to snag a link on my soon to be established fund raising site then check out HODR’s sponser’s page, contribute at least $25 on behalf of me (Kirsty Henderson) and then forward the confirmation email my way. I’ve got tomorrow off so will work on the page tomorrow and have something up and running tomorrow night I hope. These guys really are doing some amazing work here but I think fundraising is always an issue so get involved if you can!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I’ve arrived in Dhaka, Bangladesh and things aren’t nearly as scary as I’d expected! I’m staying at a great B&B where the owner has practically become my PA for the day and has me all set up with a new phone and I’m even online with it! I can pay monthly for unlimited web browsing for something like $15 and no contract. Bangladesh might be the surprise country for online workers.

I’m heading down to the volunteering place tomorrow morning early. I just wanted to do a bit of begging before I go. I’ll be working with Hands On Disaster Response and on their website they say that they can build a family a house for $425. I thought it’d be a good idea to try and raise enough for a house so I’m hoping some of you might want to help out.

Donations can be made on their secure donations page. If you’re a web nerd like me and have a site to promote I will add a link to Wanderstruck on a permanent sponsers page (that I have yet to create) for anyone who donates $25. Help a family, get that warm, fuzzy feeling and get a cheap permanent link to boot! It’s win win win.

This will be a bit of a test to see if I can use my websites to raise money for volunteering projects I participate in. The sponsers page will be linked straight from the homepage so I think in the long run it will turn into a valuable link. The idea is to keep adding links as more people donate… sort of like a wall of fame, I guess.

The only issue is that the donations go straight to the organisation so you will have to email me to let me know that you’ve sent them money and how much. Just stick my name (Kirsty Henderson) in the ‘on behalf of’ box so I can verify and then email me with your link and anchor text. No dodgy sites please!

That’s it for now. I was planning on being offline for the next five weeks but it looks like I’ll be sticking around after all thanks to Bangladesh’s surprise internet infrastructure. I’ll post a spending update for The Philippines shortly.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Hello from the road! I’ve managed to have my best month ever but not by much and definitely not because I’ve been working harder. I had a freakishly good month with Adsense and overall my earnings came in at just over $1900 for January. I’ll write a post shortly once I total up all of my spending for January but it doesn’t bode well. I’ve been on a bit of a spending spree since I arrived in The Philippines but I think I should break even.

Earnings breakdown:

• Google Adsense - $424.55 - Yay! Not only did I finally break that elusive $300 a month mark but I also somehow managed to hit $400. I have absolutely no idea why, either. I haven’t done anything differently so I guess I’ll just chalk it up to January being a good month for travel sites? The same thing happened last year. I had a huge jump from December 2006 to January 2007 and really had no clues as to what caused it. Here’s hoping it’s a trend that continues.
• Affiliate Sales - $1090.35 - I had good months with some affiliate programs that haven’t really done much in the past. Again, I haven’t done anything differently so I can’t really offer an explanation. I migh try to push these a bit more in the coming months to see if I can milk them a bit more.
• Linkworth & Text Link Ads - $135.48 - TLA is still hugely outperforming Linkworth but both are slowly climbing upwards in their earnings. I seem to sell a couple more TLA ads per month while Linkworth seems to be forever stuck at two ads. I’ll be adding TLA to this site shortly as an experiment to see how make money online type blogs do when compared to travel blogs.
• Private Link Sales - $255 - These were all through renewals and then one guy who renewed also wanted an extra couple of links totaling $100. I didn’t pursue any new links but was contacted towards the end but people interested in buying links. These will go onto next month’s earnings though.

So all up I’m really happy. I’ve hit the road and realised that working won’t be as easy as I’d thought and that I tend not to like to work unless I’ve got a wifi connection. I don’t feel like I’ve done much since I left London in mid December but I’ve got a wifi connection for the next week in Manila and will be doing my best to put in a lot of hours and get everything caught up.

I’m due to head to Bangladesh on February 11th and won’t have a net connection for my entire time there, probably five weeks. It’ll be interesting to see what happens but I want to get as much done befor going AWOL. I’ll need to reign in my spending too and being in the boonies in Bangladesh will help with that. Keeping in mind that I’ll be away for most of February I’ll be happy if I can hit the $1800 mark again.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I’ve just finished swimming with whale sharks so I’m in a good mood but I’m sure writing this post and thinking of the hassle I’ll have to endure will kill the buzz. The whale shark thing was pretty damn cool, by the way.

Ok, on to the buzz kill. I think my power cord has shat itself. It might be my UK/Philippines adaptor but I can’t check it because I left my big bag with all of my other electronics back in Manila. I’ll be able to test that tomorrow so fingers crossed, that’s all it is. Although, that said, I’m not sure how I’ll get a UK to anywhere adaptor outside of the UK so it could be just as annoying a problem.

If it is my power cord then I’m not really sure what to do. I’ve seen some on eBay but I’m due to leave Manila in less than 10 days and I don’t think I’ll be able to get it here in time. I’ll be cruising the local computer shops tomorrow but I have my doubts. Plus I don’t even know if I can use a Philippines/US cord on a UK computer. Anyone know?

The main reason this is immensely annoying besides the obvious hassle is because I had decided to spend the next week before I leave in Manila with my sweet, precious, free wifi to work on my sites before heading to Bangladesh. That would have given me lots of time to get things sorted out and my new site finished.

I think I have enough juice left in my other battery to transfer everything over to my hard drive but I’m not totally sure of that. If I don’t then I’m in trouble.

Anyone have any suggestions?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!