The US dollar seems to be going a bit haywire of late. First it was down for several months and now the thing is rebounding like crazy, at least when compared to the British pound and Canadian dollar. Lots of people make lots of money by dabbling with foreign exchange (forex) trading but I am not one of them.

I do business in four currencies and from time to time need to transfer my money from Paypal to my bank account or pay creditcard bills in other currencies. Unfortunately for me, I know nothing about fluctuations in foreign exchange and don’t really pay much attention to exchange rates so it’s always a crap shoot. I really have no interest in forex beyond attempting to not get ripped off too much when I exchange money.

My mum works in a bank and keeps coming home with updates of how well or how poorly the Canadian dollar is doing against the US dollar. Things have been up and down over the past few weeks and I’m not sure if I should swap my US money over to Canadian while the going is good or what. Because the US dollar has been so crap for so long I had been reluctant to change it. Now that it’s on the rebound I’m wondering if I should swap it over now or wait longer in case it gets even stronger against the Canadian dollar.

I really hate this part of being in this business. I guess operating in several currencies is a good thing but it’s also annoying to see small chunks of money being lost and gained based only on exchange rates. For me, it’s just an extra thing I need to pay attention to that I have zero actual interest in and it’s frustrating.

Do any of you pay much attention to exchange rates? If you’re planning a trip to you try to buy foreign money when the rate is good for you or do you just do like me, pay no attention to it and hope for the best when the exchange has to be made? I really should become more knowledgeable about this whol area but the whole idea of keeping on top of exchange rates just annoys me.

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I’ve been working hard at getting another city guide up to add to my current London and Beijing (which isn’t actually even finished yet) sites. This one is aimed mainly at backpacker types who are thinking about heading to Sydney to live, work and play for awhile. Keeping with the ‘Stuck In’ theme, this one is called Stuck in Sydney and is similar to the others in layout and content. It’s still a work in progress but I’m hoping to hammer out a few articles over the next few days, create a header logo and get the thing out there into internet land.

I’ve registered a load of ‘Stuck In’ domain names and plan to create lots of city sites similar to these. I find they’re good earners with Adsense and I think there is a lot of potential for direct link sales with local businesses once the sites gain PR and a bit of traffic. Plus they’re the type of sites that can be built and forgotten about and that suits me just fine.

I had been a bit cautious about posting my intentions to my blog in case people try to snap up ‘Stuck In’ domains for other cities but I think I’m happy with the places I’ve nabbed and they’ll keep me busy for a long time to come. I like the idea of having a bunch of these sites all connected together as a network but that will be a lot of work for one person to accomplish.

As I started to feel overwhelmed at the thought of building copious amounts of city guide websites without much knowledge of most places, I started to wonder whether there might be other ways to go about it and came up with a few ideas…

• Form partnerships with people who know the city well - With such a mammoth task ahead I thought about bringing other people on board in one way or another. I toyed with the idea of having other people run the sites and splitting revenue somehow. Or even letting them keep all the revenue while paying me some sort of flat monthly fee for hosting, the domain name and links might work. Both of these options would probably be complicated to set up and being in a partnership of sorts might be more of a headache that it’s worth.
• Sell the sites and domains outright - I thought of building a site for each city with a Google area guide map and a price guide ready to go and then selling the whole thing, domain included. The buyer would have a working site and would onlly have to plug in some content. I see this option as a fast way to create a network of quality sites with each site owner being an expert on their chosen city so that the whole network grows and strengthens together. Having people on board who know their cities well and want to grow their sites and make some money would, I think, be much better than me having to pay for content and cobble together articles based on internet research. Plus it would be fast cash in my pocket but at the expense of potential future earnings.
• Keep control of the sites and pay writers to produce content - This is what I’ve done so far with my sites and it seems to be working. I write as much as I can based on my own knowledge and experience and then find other people to fill in the gaps. For my London site I was able to produce most of the content myself but for the Sydney site I will have to pay for most of it. Finding writers hasn’t been a problem but it is expensive and probably isn’t realistic with 50 sites to do. Contacting expats or bloggers who run city sites to write for me in exchange for permanent links on their articles might also be an option.

I really think I’ve got my plate full with this idea and am open to suggestions on what to do. I had been inclined to build all of the sites on my own but it is very slow going and I’m not sure it will be possible. I have what I think is a good site layout, target market and concept but I’m not sure I can realistically build all of these sites without seriously compromising the quality.

Would anyone have any suggestions on how to even go about a pertnership type system? Do you think buying this type of completed site would appeal to anyone? Or what about trying to find people to write for me in exchange for permanent links on their articles… do you think people would go for that?

What would you do if you were in this situation? Any ideas or suggestions would be great!

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I’ve been using Twitter a lot lately to follow what’s been happening in Haiti with Hands On, the volunteer organisation I’ll be joining in a week and a bit. They’ve embraced Twitter in a big way and following their updates has been a great way to keep on top of what’s happening over there and what I can expect. I think I like it.

Before this litter revelation I had been a bit confused by Twitter in a similar way I had been baffled by blogs before I started one. With blogs, I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to read about the mundane, day to day exploits of other people. With Twitter I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to read about the mundane, hour to hour exploits of other people.

I now see both as great tools for communicating and connecting with other people. Twitter is much newer to me so I’m still not sure how to use it to my advantage. It seems like it’s possible to connect with people on Twitter that you probably would never have been able to get in touch with in other ways. Plus you never know who’s reading and opportunities might drop into your lap as a result of your Twitter use.

So I’m jumping on the bandwagon and will updating my Twitter feed thing as much as I can. With a trip to Haiti in the near future, I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to keep the updates at least a little bit interesting so feel free to follow along on Twitter.

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I wasn’t going to bother writing one of these summaries for Myanmar because, to be honest, you wont find many places to get online and this doesn’t bode well for the mobile worker. I left my computer and my big backpack behind in Mandalay and spent most of my time exploring with only a small bag which was great. I didn’t get a thing done online but I managed todo a few things offline away from the distractions of the internet.

Pros

• Nicest people ever - I’ve never met people as nice as the ones I met in Myanmar. Except for the gross man that kept falling asleep on my shoulder on the bus and then wanted my phone number, I didn’t meet a single person I didn’t like.
• Lots of quiet time - There weren’t a lot of other travellers around when I was there and it’s not exactly a place known for crazy nightlife so if there is work you can get done offline then you will certainly have the time to do it.
• Very cheap to live - Myanmar is one of the cheapest places I’ve been to. You can survive on $10 per day if you don’t need to take long (and expensive) train and boat rides. I didn’t manage to pull that off but a friend of mine did, so I know it’s possible.

Cons

• Need to watch what you say - Government spies really are everywhere, according to the people I managed to sneak in conversations with. People are willing and eager to talk to you about all sorts of things but you have to be careful, mainly for their sake, about who might be listening. It sounds paranoid but it seems to be the reality in Myanmar.
• Very few decent internet cafes - There are a few internet cafes scattered around Yangon and Mandalay but I only managed to find one that wasn’t painfully slow that was able to sneak past the tight government controls and even this one was closed every few days because of server issues.
• Internet is monitored - Apparently the government here has ways of reading individual emails, and they do. It’s very creepy. I couldn’t even get proxy servers to work here (not that I know a lot about it though) so it seems like the government have more control than in China.
• No wifi anywhere - I didn’t come across a single wifi connection which wasn’t surprising given the lack of decent internet cafes. I wasn’t really expecting to find any though.
• Terrible food - I really didn’t like the food in Myanmar and was sustaining myself on a diet of apples. Oily curries, fish dishes and a cold soupy type dish were common and I didn’t like any of them. But I’m super picky so it could have just been me.
• People littering - I don’t know if students in Myanmar don’t get a lesson on the environment or what but everyone, young and old, chucks garbage around like crazy. Out of train windows, off the side of boats… plastic bottles, plastic bags… everything. It’s kind of sad to see.
• Difficult to get around - You have to fly into and out of Myanmar which is annoying to start with. Once you get there, travel on the ground is very slow and delays of multiple hours (I sat on a train for 10 extra hours!) are common. There are common tourist routes and buying tickets is easy but getting from place to place is slow going so give youself lots of time.

I ended up cutting my month long trip to Myanmar short by a couple of weeks and managed to miss out on all of the major sights so I will be back for sure at some point. You probably won’t get any work done online but, hey, we all need a vacation from it now and then and Myanmar is a great place to come to escape the net.

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Yikes! For some bizarre reason I didn’t write a country summary for China, the place I ended up spending most of my time. It probably has something to do with being caught up in the Olympic frenzy and spending the last weeks of my time there and first week away from there in a drunken stupor. I really enjoyed China though and think it’s worth a stop for mobile workers, so here’s my wee review.

Pros

• Cheap to live there - Sure, Beijing, Shanghai and other major cities are probably more expensive than they used to be and they’ll certainly be more expensive than small towns, but it’s still possible to live very cheaply in the big cities. The small towns are even better value for money and if you stick to villages you can live ridiculously cheaply.
• Friendly people - I have heard people say mixed things about their experiences with Chinese people but in my case I had nothing but a great time with them both at the Olympics and in my travels.
• Free wifi is common - Wifi is free in Starbucks and many cafes and restaurants in Beijing and I would assume other large cities as well. I was amazed at how common it was for places to have wifi and I don’t think I came across a single place that charged for it. Plus, guesthouses and hostels that don’t have wifi will often let you use their connected computer for free.
• Tasty food - I loved the food in China despite the occasional mystery meat or serving of 99% fat and bone. There’s a lot to sample and in Beijing there are lots of options if you want Western food. The street food in China that I sampled was always cheap, usually delicious and rarely resulted in emergency trips to the loo.
• Interesting business opportunities - I got the impression that China is a few years behind most of the rest of the world when it comes to the internet. People are still scared to use their creditcards online so, according to a local friend of mine, there aren’t many Chinese language ecommerce sites. I see this as an opportunity to be able to get in early with Chinese language sites if you have the necessery skills because I think its only a matter of time before online shopping becomes as huge in China as it is in the rest of the world.

Cons

• Slow internet connections - Internet use in China is monitored and this means that connections are slow. They’re pretty reliable and I never had problems with them disconnecting but they certainly weren’t fast.
• Blocked websites - The Great Firewall of China made sure that certain sites were off limits. While I was there I had problems viewing Blogger, You Tube and even Feedburner for some bizarre reason. I got around it when I needed to with proxy sites but it’s annoying and even slower than normal when you have to do this.
• Pollution - I didn’t notice it as much when I was travelling in Southern China but in Beijing it’s impossible not to be affected by the pollution. If I spent the day walking around Beijing I would always wake up the next morning with a sore throat. On the worst days, apartment buildings next to my own would be shrouded in smog and seeing a blue sky was a very rare thing.
• Difficult to get around the country - The transportation in China is good with cheap airlines and extensive train and bus networks but DAMN… its just so big. So getting anywhere can be costly and time consuming. I felt a bit stranded in Beijing and it didn’t help having to make visa runs all the way to Hong Kong.
• Visa issues - Speaking of visas… things seem to be business as usual these days now that the Olympics are over but things went haywire during the months leading up to the Games. Its sort of disconcerting knowing that the government can decide one day to make visa changes that could make your life miserable or even force you out of the country completely.
• Language barrier - Chinese is a hard language to learn and, in most cases, I got by just fine with a bit or miming and arm flailing. But because of the language barrier, accomplishing simple tasks can become very time consuming and frustrating. More people spoke English than I expected though and, if all else fails, there are always language students who would be happy to help you out in exchange for some conversation time.

There seem to be a lot of cons on this list but don’t let that scare you off because I loved my time in China. I would head back to Yangshuo to work in a second, although when I was there in July it was a bit too humid for me. I still havel lots of other places to explore and I have no doubt that I’ll be back there again at some point for several months or longer.

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I think Text Link Ads are bringing me down. My living in London site is, I think, a damn good site and it’s never creeped off of PR0. My backpacking site has been in steady decline dropping from a PR4 to a PR2 over the past several months and now my working holiday site has been knocked from PR4 down to PR0. Text Link Ads have been on both of those sites for a long time and I’m guessing the PR drop has something to do with TLA.

TLA aren’t really even contributing much to my monthly earnings these days anyways. They started at about $140 and each month that’s dropped a little at a time. Well this month has seen a huge drop and I’m only likely to earn $60 if I’m lucky. It’s not really the number of links that is dropping, it’s the price paid per link. This probably has a lot to do with my spiraling PR.

So I’ve started to question whether $60 a month is worth having to accept the possible negative things associated with Text Link Ads. We know Google isn’t a fan of link sales and TLA make it pretty easy for the big G to see that you’re selling links. I haven’t been effected in the search engine results at all. My London site and working holiday sites both rank at number one for their search terms which makes things even more confusing.

My London site gets a lot of traffic, it ranks well in the SERPS, ithas loads of original content and I know that it deserves a PR of above zero so I’m going to take Text Links Ads off of that site starting in November and see if there’s any jump in the site’s PR. If there is you can bet I’ll be giving Text Link Ads the heave-ho on all my sites.

I’ll let you know what happens. Come on PR!

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I was writing a new post and wanted to link to an older post from it and stumbled onto something very mysterious. The old post I was looking at is about living cheaply in Beijing. If you take a look and scroll down a wee bit you’ll notice two links in the body of the post, one for cleaning supplies and one for phone cards.

I certainly didn’t put those links there. Does anyone have any idea how this could have happened? The only thing I can think of is that I’ve been hacked somehow or that Text Links Ads are doing it. I was given the option ages ago to allow TLA to put links into my old blog posts but I turned them down. I think it’s sneaky and misleads my readers into thinking I’m recommending something I’m not so I told them to stuff that idea.

Ok I’ve just checked… yep. It’s Text Link Ads. Despite me for sure telling them I didn’t want to be a part of this program (I even wrote a post about it) they seem to have added me to it without letting me know. It seems to be easy money and I have $33 lined up as payment which is tempting because the rest of my TLA sites are struggling at the moment. But come on! What’s up with them adding me and not telling me? It’s kind of creepy too that they have the power to go into my blog and change my links. I don’t even think I’ve added any code to my Nerdy Nomad site. How are they pulling this off?

Is anyone else a part of this program? What do you think about letting them pimp out keywords to various sites you probably wouldn’t normally have anything to do with? I’m about to write them a strongly worded email and will let you know what happens.

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Thailand is the kind of place that many people dream of when they attempt to create an online business. The idea of working from a hammock on the beach fits well with what Thailand has to offer. I only really spent time in Bangkok, Chang Mai and Pai with a couple of treks in between and never found my paradise but that doesn’t mean it’s not out there somewhere. Working in Thailand wasn’t as easy as I thought but I would be up for a second attempt for sure.

Pros

• Cheap - If you make an effort you can stay in Thailand for very cheap. Of course if you party all the time (which is tempting in some places) or do a lot of travelling then costs will add up but overall, Thailand is great value for money.
• Easy access to other parts of Asia - Thailand is as central as a place can be when you look at a map of Asia and it’s well connected. You can bus or train it to Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia and budget airlines like Air Asia make going a bit further really cheap and easy.
• Friendly people - In my experience I wouldn’t put Thais in the same category as Filipinos or people from Myanmar for friendliness but they come pretty close. It’s not known as ‘the land of smiles’ for nothing.
• Awesome food - I can’t resist Thai food. I love it. In Thailand, funnily enough, there’s loads of cheap and delicious Thai food to be had.
• Lots to see and do - Thailand seems to have something for everyone from diving to beaches to jungles to elephants to hill tribes etc etc. There always seems to be something fun to distract you if working gets to be too much.
• Cheap internet cafes - There are plenty of internet cafes with great connections that only charge 20 to 30 baht per hour. That’s about 60 to 90 cents and that’s super cheap. So if you like to work in internet cafes then you’ll be able to do it cheaply.

Cons

• Wifi rarely free - I expected Thailand to be well hooked up for wifi and was amazed to find that it was more common in China! When I did find it in hostels or cafes, there was almost always a charge to use it. A hotel I stayed at charged 600 (that’s about $17!) baht per day, Starbucks was 150 per hour, and most cafes were at least 50 baht per hour and often more… even if you bought food and drinks.
• Unreliable wifi - Thailand was the only country I consistently had problems with my wifi connections. If it wasn’t cutting out all the time it wasn’t connecting at all, despite the computer saying that the signal was strong. None of the staff ever seemed to know what was going on and it meant having to move from cafe to cafe in search of a working signal. A couple times in Chang Mai the entire block was having connections issues.
• Very touristy - I’m not a tourist hater type person so I don’t care much if a place I’m in is crowded with expats and travellers but if this bothers you then you might want to think twice about coming to Thailand. The tourist industry here is super developed and main destinations are crawling with backpackers so if you want to escape the crowds you’ll have to do some hunting to find the off the beaten path type places.

I was surprised at how crap wifi in Thailand was both from the having to pay for it angle and the unreliability aspect. Maybe I just never found the good places? I don’t know. If I could get a list of guesthouses and cafes with fast and free net connections then I would be back to check them out because I really did enjoy my time in Thailand.

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Being able to work from anywhere (cheap) in the world means that I’m always on the lookout for potential places to live for longer periods of time. That paradise island with free fast wifi, great bars with live music, a lively expat scene, easy access to other interesting areas etc etc etc. Everyone has their own set of ‘must haves’ and I would always compare this list in my head with the places I was in to see if it coule be somewhere I’d like to unpack my back for awhile.

Besides Beijing and Bangaldesh, I didn’t spend longer than a week in any one place which is kind of surprising given my love of lazing around and taking things slow. I came across a couple of places I could have seen myself staying a long time in but it just never worked out that way. So here is my shockingly small list of places in Asia I could definitely live in for much longer than a week.

Yangshuo, China

This place is a total tourist town but it’s beautiful and has a lot going for it including a large population of expats, lots of bars and restaurants, plenty of countryside to expore, and good internet connections (for China). It’s also relatively (again, for China) close to hong Kong for making any visa runs. Plus if the internet earnings start to take a dive or if I wanted to save a bit more money, there are lots of opportunities here for English teaching. You can even volunteer to chat with students for a couple hours four nights and week in exchange for food and accommodation if you want to cut your costs.

Pai, Thailand

This is aother touristy place but I loved it. Like Yangshuo, there is a lot to keep you busy in the areas around town and some really good live music at the bars. There are loads of restaurants and bars around town and a few expats around too. Lots of the Thai people in Pai seemed to be from somewhere else and they’re pretty friendly so if you make an effort it would robaby be possible to end u with a nice group of Thai friends. Especially if you play an instrument or like reggae. Most of the restaurants and hotels have wifi (sometimes free, sometimes not) that is pretty fast and there seemed to be a few signs offering up houses for rent but Im not sure of the prices. Chang Mai is about 3 hours by bus and Myanmar and Laos are nearby too for any visa runs. I got loads of work down here sitting on the balcony of my bamboo hut watching the river flow by.

Manila, Philippines

This one is probably a bit of a shock for most people but I had a great time in Manila. But it was less about the city and more about the people I met there and where I was staying. I made friends with the guy who runs Friendly’s Guesthouse and had a group of people to hang out with at night (and play poker). Manila is a great example of how the place you are might not matter as much as the people who are there with you. I could have stayed there for a lot longer than I did. Fast net connection, great working area on the hostel’s roof top, nice people to keep me company and have a beer with and, though the city isnt really known for being that nice a place, I started to warm to it in the end.

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I had lunch a while ago with a net buddy who was picking my brain about the whole making money online deal. I can spout on for hours on this topic (and I did) and I made a couple points that I thought were sort of obvious but took the guy by surprise a bit. So I figured I’d keep the tips ball rolling and share a couple other little things that you might not have considered before.

Google Adsense Placement

As I wander around the web I always come across Google Adsense blocks crammed right at the top of a webpage and I’ll never understand it. Most of the time they’re barely blended but even if they are, I still don’t see why this placement would result in a click. I’m always spouting on about how traffic arriving through Google searches is more likely to click on Adsense. So if a visitor arrives from Google, you have to assume that they’re searching for some sort of information.

If they’ve found your site compelling enough to click on the link in Google, why would they click away from your site at the top of the page on the Adsense ad before reading the information you have on offer? I wouldn’t. I’d read the information on the site to see if I could find what I was looking for and then, if I was going to click away from the site, I’d probably do it at the end of the article rather than scroll back up to the top.

So while I’ll put Adsense above the fold in many cases, I’ll never cram it way up at the top and I always try to put an ad at the end of the article to make clicking on for more information easy for the reader and good for my monthly Adsense income. It’s just a hunch of course but I have pretty good Adsense click through rates without having ever stuck Adsense blocks at the top of my pages.

Outbound Links

I want people to like my sites and and enjoy what they’re reading and all that, but I also want them to leave at some point. But when they do leave, I want them to leave either through an Adsense link or a link to an affiliate program. I don’t want to be sticking up all sorts of other means of escape for them that don’t have the potential to make me money. So, as much as adding links to Wikipedia and other sites with more information may benefit your reader, it won’t really do much for your efforts to make money so I’d suggest leaving them out.

Plus, adding loads of outbound links will ooze link juice, possibly lowering your site’s PR in the process. My Working Holiday Insurance site had a PR of 5 as of a couple of months ago. I had no idea how I pulled this off and then I remembered that I made it my goal to have zero outbound links that weren’t either Adsense or affiliate links. I started selling links to capitalise on the PR5 and my PR has dropped like a stone. I’m going to try the zero outbound links thing again with some new sites of mine and will keep you posted on the results.

Just another couple of probably lame, really obvious tips to add to the collection. Next time I post I’ll probably be doing it from my parent’s kitchen having eaten a home cooked Thanksgiving turkey dinner. Can’t wait!

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