Part of my plan to push my earnings up to the next level and to start treating this gig more like a business is to build links to my already exisitng sites. For my newest sites I have researched my keywords, created some quality content and put a lot of effort into my on-site SEO but so far that isn’t cutting it and I need to get a lot of inbound links in order to make these sites pay off the way I am hoping they will.

Article writing is something I had signed up for ages ago and gave up on without even really giving it a chance. The idea is simple: write an article, submit it to an article submission site and put a couple of links back to your own site in the ‘author bio’ section. I don’t even remember which website I was registered with a few years ago but I decided that if I were putting in the effort to write an article, I would prefer to have it on my own website rather than an article site. I failed to realise the potential of those inbound links.

One of the reasons I didn’t have a lot of faith in article sites was because there are so many out there and I didn’t know which, if any, would really help me out. Nomadic Matt’s ebook suggested a couple of article sites including Ezine Articles and I decided to check them out. Knowing that other people have had success using them goes a long way towards motivating me to write submissions. I also know that Lissie is making money with HubPages after a lot of perseverance and my friend Mike has recently started to submit to articles sites including InfoBarrel and has seen an increase in Adsense earnings already (InfoBarrel allows the you to keep 70% of any Adsense revenue generated).

Seeing other people doing well is something that motivates me and knowing that these guys feel like making contributions to each of these sites is worthwhile makes me feel a lot more confident about spending time on posting articles. I have even joined Mike in an article writing challenge. He is aiming to have 50 InfoBarrel (of at least 450 words each), 80 articles on HubPages (he already has 50) and 10 articles published on Ezine Articles by the end of September. I love a good challenge and am going to attempt to produce 50 InfoBarrel articles of my own, 30 Hubs and I need one more article to get to 10 on Ezine Articles. With just over a month to do it in, it will be hard but this is the sort of stuff that gets me motivated and I’m curious to see how I do.

I’m even more curious to see what sort of impact writing these articles will have. I have a rough strategy in place for what type of articles I will write and where I will link them to and I will go through that in another post. But I am very new to all of this so if any of you are experienced in this sort of thing, I would love to hear your advice!

Ok… back to work. Three articles down, 78 to go. Yikes.

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I just got home from what was supposed to be a relaxing week cruising up and down the waterways north of Toronto with my parents and their two visiting friends from Scotland. The reality wasn’t quite as laid back as the brochure, but it was an experience I won’t forget anytime soon… and right here in my backyard in Canada, no less!

I am one of those people who figures that travelling in my home country (and the US as well) can wait until I’m older. It’s in my backyard, I can do it anytime, it’s not that culturally exciting blah blah blah. The usual excuses. But when my parents arranged to rent a houseboat with a couple of visiting friends from Scotland and it was looking like I would be home for the trip, I weasled my way on board and was pretty excited to see what this Canada place has to offer.

We started our trip near a town called Bobcageon a couple hours north-ish of Toronto and planned to work our way down the Trent-Severn Waterway through a series of locks to Peterborough where there is a contraption I didn’t even know existed: a giant lift lock. We are not a boating kind of family so our knowledge of this stuff is pretty limited. I didn’t even know this place existed and it’s less than a four hour drive away.

The general cruising around on the houseboat is pretty relaxing when you’re not either attempting to get gas, trying not to crash into fancy boats, drifting and getting stuck on rocks, being towed by a man in a motorboat off of his private property, mildly damaging a prop, waiting for a new prop to be delivered, crashing full-speed into rocks, waiting to be rescued from a swamp, completely trashing a different prop, getting fisihing lines stuck in trees, or having to approach locks to traverse the waterway… 11 times. Houseboats are huge hunks of boat and I don’t think many of the people who rent these things know what they’re doing, my dad and his friend included. I was relegated to being the rope-girl and at first that was stressful enough. Other than all that stuff, the trip was relaxing, especially once on dry land with a rye and ginger in hand.

I still don’t think I’m ready to give up international travels in pursuit of more local trips, not yet at least. But my interest in Canada has risen a bit, especially the stuff that appeals to the outdoorsy side of me. The part we visited is beautiful and it’s not even that far out into the wilderness. It’s amazing to think of the vastness of even Ontario alone and how much it has to offer, especially to camper and canoer types. One thing I can say about Canada is that the rumours are true, we are a friendly bunch. The staff at these locks must deal with unruly houseboat drivers all the time but they still manage to be super patient, inceredibly helpful, and just generally smiley which goes a long way towards soothing those tattered nerves after a day on the water.

Despite our minor run-ins with lock walls and rocks it was a great trip, mostly because I got to spend a lot of time with my parents. I’m starting to appreciate my time at home a lot more than I used to. Maybe it’s the whole getting older thing, who knows. My parents are funny and getting them together with their Scottish friends led to some pretty entertaining evenings, especially when the booze kicked in and the reminiscing began. I’ve been home for nearly two weeks and, as always, it feels like a lot longer. The difference this time is that I’m not itching to get away. Not yet, at least.

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So far during my internet exploits I really haven’t known what I’ve been doing most of the time. I just go with my gut, produce sites I enjoy making and hope for the best. Things like link building and keyword research have always sucked the life out of me a bit too much for me to actually spend much time doing them.

Link Build Like a Mo-Fo

I have five completed websites that are doing absolutely nothing for me. They range from about 20 to 60 pages each, they are stacked with keywords, the on-site SEO is pretty good, the topics are potentially lucrative and once I get these babies into Google and ranking well for my terms I think I will see a big jump in my earnings. Unfortunately for me, I will need to build a lot of links to do this. The old days of sticking a link to my new site from my oldest site and seeing instant results are gone and I will need to put a lot more effort into this area. Darn.

Write an Absolute Crapload of Boring Stuff

I have managed to come up with a few keywords by accident that I think will turn into good Google Adsense earners but I need to actually write some articles or websites if I hope to capitalise on this. This part makes my brain hurt.

Stop Talking About It and Do It: Affiliates Marketing

I always say that I need to work at finding affiliates that fit with my sites. I have added a few programs here and there but sort of half-heartedly. Affiliate marketing is where the money is folks and I need to get this in gear. I will need to spend a lot of time not only on finding programs but also on finding ways to make the sales. I also have a travel insurance site that ranks really well and sees some very targeted traffic but it doesn’t do much in the way of affiliate sales. I think with a bit of tweaking I will be able to improve its performance.

Find a Way to Franchise My ‘Stuck In’ Sites

I wrote a post ages ago about starting a network of city guides aimed at backpackers and expat types who are planning to move to a new city for a few months or longer. So far I have four sites on the go (London, Sydney, Beijing, New York) in various levels of completion and with varying levels of traffic and income. I think the sites are useful, but only if there is someone writing for them who really knows their stuff. So far I have been paying writers to pull together content but this isn’t something I can afford to do for much longer. I prefer the idea of a profit-sharing model or even a monthly rental/franchise type fee. I will be working on comin gup with some sort of master plan to move forward with more guides. I have a couple who are interested in writing for my Rio site and will throw a few ideas at them to see what they think.

Position Myself as an Expert on Working Holidays

I know a lot about working holiday visas and have worked abroad in a few countries. I also run the site Working Holiday Info so I think I’m well equipped to take control of the niche and market myself as an expert on the subject. Part of this will involve a massive update of the site as visa rules are changing all the time. The other part will involve a lot of writing, guest posts, research, staying on top of things, making contact with others in this industry and generally pimping myself on social media sites. I’m not sure what will come out of it but the gap year/working holiday sector is huge so it can’t hurt. This will be a huge undertaking but the site needs to be updated anyways so I will start making blog posts as I update and see how things go.

I’m sort of veering away a bit from the ‘do what you love’ mentality I have had for years. I think I have had my eyes opened a lot by Lissie. Seeing how much she is earning now and how she has gone about it has really made me rethink my approach. I’m not going to stop writing about the things I love, but I will add a few profitable but painful-to-write sites into the mix and see how things go.

All of this is going to take a lot of time. I have put a lot of effort into building sites over the past month or so and now I need to do the behind-the-scenes type stuff. I plan on being home in Canada for close to two months (although this week I am off the grid and floating around on a houseboat) and I expect to make some pretty significant strides forward in that time. I’ve put off the hard work long enough and it’s time to get down to business.

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I was feeding my relatively new addiction to Twitter a few weeks ago, browsing through the Tweets (is that what they’re called?) and came across one with a link to what they described as a course for travellers. A course for travellers, you ask? I was asking myself the same thing and went to check it out.

In their ‘about’ section, Travel Trainers say “Travel Trainers focuses on running seminars and courses for those wanting to travel” and that the company’s vision is “to use the company’s in-depth travel experience from both sides of the fence to help people to travel.” What is on offer are a variety of seminars for travellers. Everything from ‘First Time Travellers - What the Guide Book Doesn’t Tell You’ to ‘Travel Safely - Tips and Ideas to Keep You Safe’.

There are countless travel guide websites, blogs from people who are there now, guidebooks approaching travel from every possible angle and budget, word of mouth via Twitter, online reviews on everything from backpacks to hostels to tours, video blogs, Google Earth for a bird’s eye view in advance, and now you can even take your planning into the classroom. Just when I thought it was impossible to plan more for a trip, now there’s this.

I guess my question is whether or not you think this is over the top? Are ‘how to travel’ courses something that you think will catch on? Will young first-time travellers start to feel like they won’t be able to go abroad without paying $150 for a course that will tell them how to travel safely or what they should see? Will nervous parents start making their kids go on these courses before they let them go overseas? How much planning is too much planning?

I am trying to think back to my very first solo backpacking trip and I think I remember being so excited about it that I was eating up every possible bit of information I could possibly get in order to prepare myself. Would I have paid for a seminar? Probably not but I definitely would have wondered what I was missing.

I really hate seeing people spend money out of fear of the unknown. I know it’s easy to get carried away with the excitement of your trip but I believe it’s possible to prepare too much and I think these seminars are taking things a bit too far. Good on the guy if he can make a business out of it, but my advice would be to save the money because Europe is seriously expensive.

I would love to hear comments about this. What do you guys think?

Ps: To anyone who wants to drop NZ$149 on this course please read my living in London site first to answer many of the questions the seminar addresses and then shoot me an email with any other questions you might have. Cost: free.

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Ive been back at home for a week now after a great couple of weeks in New York and a really fun couple of days in Boston. It’s been great hanging out with my parents and catching up with my brother and the few friends I still have here in town. I plan to head to Toronto for a couple of nights soon and hopefully down to Windsor to stay with another friend from highschool. But first things first… tomorrow I’m off to cottage country up north for a bit of houseboating around the lakes.

Growing up my family weren’t big campers or outdoorsy people and the one time we stayed in a cottage my mum pretty much packed everything possible, including the kitchen sink. This time around I don’t think we will be too overloaded with modern conveniences but we definitely won’t be roughing it, either. My parents have a couple of friends over from Scotland too so it should be pretty fun hanging with the oldies and their friends, doing a bit of fishing, drawing a bit, reading, writing, editing some photos and hopefully finally doing my taxes too. I love boats and the outdoors and I’m pumped to get to spend some time with my parents so I’m looking forward to it.

It does however mean that for the next week I won’t be getting much online stuff done. I will be missing in action until next Monday but I am hoping to have enough researchy type things saved to be able to do a lot of article writing while I’m offline. Since I have been home my parent’s router has been busted and the weather has been beautiful which has meant I haven’t been able to do nearly as much as I had wanted. I’m not sure how life on the boat will be but if things are as laid back and relaxed as I hope they are, I should be able to come home with a good amount of work to upload. That’s the idea, at least.

I came home this time without having any plans set in stone for when I will leave and where I will go. That’s probably the first time it’s ever happened; usually I know my next move months in advance of landing in Canada. It feels good though… I love the flexibility and the unknown. It means that I have been doing a lot of thinking about my next move and I still haven’t decided.

One thing is certain, I will not be spending the winter here, I can’t handle it anymore. I have a flight back to Managua for mid October and the front-runner plan is heading to New York a week before the flight to finish up on some work and meet up with a few more friends, fly to Managua, and travel back up through Mexico maybe working on farms as I go. Home for Xmas and then off to Africa via the UK in January. I will have to get over my winter phobia but if I keep my time in the Northern Hemisphere short, I think I will be ok. Of course all of this depends on what is happening in the world and if my favourite disaster response organisation are operating anywhere. They have a way of changing my plans over night.

I’ve got a couple of blog posts lined up for this week but other than that I will probably be out of touch until next week. I plan on being in St. Catharines in the Niagara Region for just under two months so if you are in the neighbourhood and want to meet up, let me know!

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Hello from Boston! I’m in town visiting a friend before heading home to Canada. I like it here so far… the bars all seem to have about a zillion beers on tap which is always a good thing. Heading out tonight to see the Redsox play at Fenway which has always been a dream of mine so I’m pretty excited. Yes, I am a baseball nerd. (go Blue Jays!)

John over on Jet Set Citizen did an interview with me and I wanted to share the link with everyone.

Next time I check in I will be back at home in Canada. Yay!

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I have spent a good amount of my time in New York City so far cruising around the city’s cafes. I’ve done this partly because I wanted to write a post about free wifi places in New York, but mostly because sitting in my friend’s apartment doing work for too long causes me to go a little loopy. I love working in cafes so my quest to find the best free wifi enabled work spots in the city has been pretty fun.

In total I’ve visited about 20 cafes and will write a bigger post later as I plan to add more once I come back here in September. But, for the moment, here are my top 10 cafes in New York with free wifi, starting with my favourites.

Phoebe’s Cafe - Williamsburg, Brooklyn

This was a place I just stumbled onto and it’s probably the best I’ve been to in the whole city. It is spacious, there’s a lot of table and bar stool seating, and there’s even a patio in the back. They have pretty big menu for a cafe (I ordered the hummus dish and it was gigantic and good), they sell beer (and cider!), they have lemonade, and it’s got a nice, relaxed feel about it. The staff are friendly, there are other laptop people around so I don’t feel like a huge geek, the wifi signal is fast and reliable and there are plenty of power sockets. I would come back here again for sure.

Cafescape - Woodside, Queens

Located accross from the 61st and Woodside subway station, this place is close to my friends house and was a great place to escape to if I wanted to work in a cafe but didn’t feel like going all the way into Manhattan. The air-conditioning is pumping so take a light jumper if you don’t want to freeze. There are lots of tables and some are tucked in between two big posts which gives a bit of an illusion of privacy. Small round tables make it hard to work with food on there at the same time but otherwise a great setup. It wasn’t too busy at 11am on a weekday and there were plenty of tables to choose from. It seems to get very busy at night though. I sat in various places in the cafe and always had a power point right beside my table.

88 Orchard - Lower East Side, Manhattan

This place was crowded when I was there are about 4pm on a Friday afternoon. The round tables are super close together and I didn’t like the idea of practically sitting on someone’s lap while attempting to get some work done. But I ordered anyways and then noticed a sign that they had seating downstairs. The staircase isn’t visible from the front area but it leads down into a cozy room with a few tables, bench seating and some pillows to pad your ass or your back. It’s like a little unfinished basement. I really like it down there as it was quiet. The only distraction was the stream of people headng down to use the toilets and people coming in and out of the kitchen but that was no more distracting than the usual hustle bustle of a cafe. So if you get there and it looks busy, pop downstairs and see if there is room to stretch out a bit. There were plenty of power sockets too.

South 4th Bar and Cafe - Williamsburg, Brooklyn

South 4th is more of a bar than a cafe and the back room felt like a completely separate work area. It was a strange place but I liked it. The bartender/cafe chick was nice, the music was good and not too loud, the temperature was fine and the back room I was in almost seemed to be there specifically for people who wanted to work on their laptops. Each table is big, they all have individual power outlets beside them, it’s set apart from the main bar so is nice and quiet, and the only people in there were me and three other solo laptop-toters. The wifi was fast and didn’t disconnect and the cider I had was tasty but at $7, expensive. Beers and other drinks are cheaper but I felt like a cider and that was the only option. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of choice for food which is a bit of a downside if you want to plan a marathon session. They advertise that they have pastries but they only have a couple of things. So it’s great for atmosphere and if you would rather have a beer than a coffee, but if you want to eat as well, it’s probably not the place for you. I only spent about an hour there but I loved how the back room was set aside and, despite the lack of food, this place makes a great spot to come for a few hours, or until you get hungry.

Grizzi’s Coffee - Greenwich Village, Manhattan

(Sorry about the crappy photo) This place is located just north of Washington Park right near NYU and there were a bunch of young student types hard at work. I was here on a Saturday afternoon and there were plenty of seats available, including a bunch with plugs right beside them. The work spaces are good with wooden tables and chairs but there is also a couch if you prefer. The food is good and the iced mocha drink was pretty good. It’s a relaxed atmosphere with good lighting, lots of choice for food, a great wifi connection and I really enjoyed working here.

Housing Works Bookstore Cafe - SoHo, Manhattan

This is more of a bookstore than a cafe but it’s a fantastic place to go, if only because it’s a charity in aid of the homeless and is staffed entirely by friendly volunteers. The books are the main draw but there’s also a small cafe in the back with a small selection of bakery type things, coffee, tea and cold drinks. They didn’t have my usual frozen mocha drink (too fancy) but they served a nice lemonaide. It’s a bit of a distracting place to work unless you like a lot of people bustling around. The music was great… all nineties stuff (that’s pretty much where my musical tastes are stuck) and not too loud. I couldn’t find any plugs but I didn’t look too hard. Many of the tables were in the middle of the room though. It would be a great place to come if you need to do research at the same time since you’re surrounded by books. It has a great vibe and the fact that it’s for a good cause is just an added bonus.

Cafe Mocha - East Village, Manhattan

This is a great little place with a nice choice of pretty tempting looking, chocolate-covered desserts. I had an iced mocha and it was good and under $4 which, for Manhattan, seems about average. There are loads of tables crammed into a pretty small space but when I was there on a Thursday night it was pretty empty. The wifi is fast and reliable too. The only downside is the lack of powerpoints. I had a quick look around and didn’t find any. Overall I enjoyed working here although if it were full it would feel like people we sitting in my lap so maybe it’s best to avoid it when its packed.

Second Stop Cafe - Williamsburg, Brooklyn

I got to this place at 11am to find it packed. There are about ten tables of various sizes (some large enough to share) and people were at all of them, most with laptops and a couple with books spread out. Sharing tables seems to the be way to go though and five people were crammed onto one of the corner tables, all with laptops open. There are lots of power outlets and they’ve added power bars so that even more people can plug in. The wifi is fast and reliable, the iced mocha was tasty, the lemon cake I had was great, and the music is good and at a reasonable level. They didn’t have any air conditionig cranked and even though it was hot outside, inside it was a nice temperature. I get motivated for some reason when I’m surrounded by other people on laptops so I liked working here.

Supercore - Williamsburg, Brooklyn

It was a bit warm in here although that could have been due to the fact that I had been walking around in the hot sun for about 45 minutes before getting there. The lemonade is really good and hit the spot. There didn’t seem to be any plugs, at least none that I could see without having to get on all fours. They have a patio, a good selection of food and serve beer. A cool spot, I had a great table by the window and there was a plug near me but I would have had to climb inide the window display in order to use it and I wasn’t feeling particularely acrobatic at that moment.

Gotham Cafe - Upper East Side, Manhattan

I was in this place at 3:30pm on a Friday and it was pretty busy but there were plenty of tables so that was no problem. The music was barely audible over the chatting but I work well with a nice drone of conversation in the background. There was a powerpoint for every two tables that were against the wall. By this point I was incapable of having any more coffee or tea-related drinks so I opted for a water and a slice of key lime pie which was really great and cost $3.50. There seems to be a huge choice of the usual cafe type fare and lots of baked goods too including pretty decadent-looking cupcakes. There’s a toilet in the back and it is the sort of place I don’t mind leaving my laptop out at unattended. There were plenty of people around anyways if I wanted someone to watch my stuff. The circular tables were a bit small and it seemed like a place popular with moms and kids but overall I liked it.

I would love some recommendations for your favourite New York City cafes with free wifi so I can check them out next time I’m here.

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I decided last week to throw down $500 bucks on a custom Wordpress theme for a site that will live on my Wanderstruck.com domain. The main reasons were to get a site that looks good, does exactly what I want behind the scenes, and to get this without having to waste a zillion hours of my time trying to figure out the complexities of Wordpress.

Another reason was to see what the process of hiring someone to do work for me actually invloves and to share my experiences with everyone, and that’s where this post comes in.

• Step 1 - I chatted with Mike, my designer guy and gave him a pretty specific rundown of what I needed the site to do. The design aspect of things wasn’t important at this stage because my main focus is being able to get the site working as I need it to on the back end. He said he could pull it all off and we agreed to go ahead.
• Step 2 - I transferred $250, half of the agreed price, into his Paypal account.
• Step 3 - I asked him to hold off on starting until I could put together a Word file with fairly specific details of how I wanted everything to work. It turns out that his first step was to come up with a design and layout, so I should have focused more on this at the beginning and worried about the other stuff later. I did include a few screenshots of sites I liked the design of, including images of fonts, headers, footers, image borders and stuff like that.
• Step 4 - Mike uploaded his first draft of the design to an area on his website for me to take a look and, well, it wasn’t what I had in mind. It’s unrealistic to expect someone to read my mind, so I visited a bunch of sites I love the look of, took screenshots, opened Photoshop and cut and pasted my way to a site that was more along the lines of what I was after. Given how important getting the look right is to me, I should have been more specific about this part, especially since I already have avision of what I want in my head. Talk about a hard to please customer, eh? Fortunately I am capable of doing a lot of the design myself. Unfortunately I am paying someone else to do it because I want to spend my time on other things but if I’m going to be picky, I guess that’s the price i have to pay.
• Step 5 - Mike took my comments on board and didn’t seem too put out by the fact that I essentially asked him to start over. He told me he is more clear now on what I am after and I am curious to see what he comes up with for draft two.

For me the design is less important than the behind-the-scene mechanics of the site. I can design, I can’t hack Wordpress so that’s where he comes in. It must be difficult designing for me when I have a clear idea of the site in my head. I am open for new ideas of course but the first draft didn’t really do it for me.

It’s been a very interesting process so far and I’m happy to share it with you. I would be interested in hearing about other people’s experiences hiring designers or coders and whether it turned out the way you had hoped and how you went about conveying a clear vision for your site to your designer.

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July was a bit better coming in at $1400 which is encouraging except that the only difference between last month and this month is due to a flurry of link renewals. I’m happy about earning a bit more but I don’t really see this month as a step forward at all.

Earnings Breakdown:

• Google Adsense - $372 - Yay Adsense jumped up by nearly $100, primariy due to a serious increase in earnings per click on some sites. The number of clicks is almost exactly the same but the amount per click for some sites has been huge compared to previous months. This isn’t really something I can control or predict but I hope the trend continues.
• Affiliate Sales - $625 - Affiliate sales saw a little bit more balance between them, but is still dominated by one. I sold four of Matt’s ebooks despite not giving it a glowing, sales pitchy review which was good to see.
• Linkworth - $10 - I thought my only remaining link had cancelled and I removed it but still got paid. Maybe it means that next month I won’t get paid. For $10… it doesn’t really matter either way.
• Private Link Sales - $377 - Due mostly to renewals, this was good this month and is what pushed me above the $1000 mark of last month. It seems like $1000 is my steady amount and that going above this depends on how many links I sell. I don’t like that, it makes me nervous especially since I only had one new link sale and next month I don’t have many potential renewals.

I have been spending a lot of time since arriving in New York on working on a site about the city similar to my London site and I’m hoping to have that more or less finished by the time I leave here on August 9th.

That will mean that when I get back to Canada the real work will start on trying to get some of these new sites of mine ranking with Google. It’s frustrating having four newish sites doing absolutely nothing for me. If and when these things ever kick in, that will be when I think I will see a jump up to the next level of base earnings. Maybe. Hopefully. We’ll see.

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