It’s that time again! I’m off for another open-ended travel stint with only two things on the schedule: volunteering in Indonesia straight off the bat and running amok at the World Cup in South Africa in June, 2010. Other than that, plans are very loose. I have no must-sees, no onward plane tickets, no accommodation booked and no plans to make plans.

I’m not sure what the internet situation is in the village I’m heading to in Indonesia but early reports point to bad. That means I could be taking a break from the internet for awhile. In my volunteering experiences i Bangladesh and Haiti I realised that, even though I had decent net connections, being exhausted after each day meant that I didn’t spend much time working. Plus there are always lots of interesting people around and the last thing I will want to do is spend my time staring at my computer.

I’m really happy with the amount of work I’ve put in over the past 10 weeks I’ve been home. I think I’ve done more work in this two and a half months than I have in the past two years! No kidding. I know that things don’t fall apart when I’m away from the internet for a couple of weeks at a time… now it’s time to see what happens when I’m away for a month. I have neglected my sites before without disastrous results so I’m hoping this time around things are no different.

Indonesian visas are good for 30 days and then I need to leave and return to get another one. The idea is to leave the country and spend this time somewhere nice in Malaysia glued to my computer to catch up on things. Sort of a 30 days off, 5 days on kind of arrangement. I really like short, focused work stints and I think this could work well for me. I won’t be spending much money in Indonesia so that takes a bit of the pressure off as well.

I can’t wait to get to Indo. This is the type of travelling that really gets me excited and I’m looking forward to seeing old friends and getting my hands dirty again. I’m not so looking forward to bucket showers, squat toilets, mysterious food and a lack of ice cream but the good by far outweighs the bad. Replies to emails will be a bit slow and posts on this blog might be few and far between because, for the next 30 days, I’m on vacation!

Have any of you ever spent long stints away from the internet? Has it effected your earnings or do things just keep rolling along as normal?

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I spend a lot of time looking at maps, daydreaming and plotting my next move. Each time I find myself hanging out with a map, my eyes are always drawn to a handful of curious countries that seem mysterious to me and these are the places I want to go to the most.

I know nothing about this huge African nation and I want to. Anytime I look at a map of Africa, the name Chad draws me in. I don’t really know why but the place sparks my curiosity. Throw the Central African Republic and Niger into the mix as well for an Africa triple-threat of mystery. I have nothing else to say. Like I said, I really don’t know a thing about this place.

Greenland takes up a huge hunk of space on the world map but is somewhere you never hear about. The only thing I know about Greenland is that it’s big and cold. I love the idea of being whisked across the barren tundra on a dog sled, an activity that probably loses its appeal once you’re actually in the barren tundra, freezing your ass off. But, for now, the idea appeals and doing it in a place like Greenland makes it just a little bit more alluring.

Ok I guess I’m cheating because I’ve chosen three countries instead of one but they’re so geographically close that I figured I would lump them in together. South America is a popular destination but I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone include any of these three small nations on their big South America trips. Are people missing out on something by skipping these tiny, tucked-away countries?

From everything I’ve heard from anyone who’s ever been, Iran is home to some of the friendliest, most hospitable people on earth. I also feel like it’s difficult to get an opinion of the place through Western media sources and I want to break through the crap and see for myself what life is like in the country. I want to learn what Iranians think of their government and whether the anti-American sentiment is restricted to their leader or if it’s something that is felt in all levels of Iranian society. Plus there’s ski hills in Iran and I think snowboarding in a burka would make a great photo op.

The mysterious thing about Israel for me is its people. I am probably going to get lambasted for saying this but during my travels I have met very few Israelis that I’ve liked, and I’ve met a bunch. I don’t like that I think this so I want to go to Israel to see what Israelis are like on their own turf and to see if I can erase the bad impression I have of them brought on by various unsavory encounters around the world.

This has nothing to do with Borat, I promise. My fascination with Kazakhstan goes back to 2000 when I was living in a backpacker’s hostel in Ireland. There was a huge world map hanging on the wall across from the couch and I always found myself staring at it and daydreaming. The one country my eye’s couldn’t stop veering towards was Kazakhstan due to it being close to the center of the map, gigantic, and coloured bright green. I knew nothing about the place but decided then that I had to go there.

With a flag as boring as Libya’s (all green), you would hope their country has a lot to offer to compensate. On first glance, it seems like they do: ancient rock art, crumbling abandoned cities, culture galore and a crazy leader thrown in to boot. For me, though, the appeal is that 90% Libya is covered by the Sahara Desert. Heading way out into the sand dunes would be an awesome experience… or maybe a boring one. But either way I want to try it out.

Possibly the most politically isolated country in the world, North Korea fascinates me. The idea of an entire nation of people being all but closed off to the outside world in this day and age is mind-boggling. I would love to get a chance to see what North Koreans think about their own country and the outside world. Given the guarded nature of visits to the country, having candid conversations with locals probably isn’t something that will happen but you never know.

Rwanda’s 1994 genocide left over 800,000 people dead in around 100 days. That regular people could be manipulated into turning on their neighbors, students, patients, and friends to commit murder blows my mind. It’s scary to think what sorts of atrocities people are capable of committing when exposed to propaganda and lies from a genocidal government in a climate of fear. I have no idea what I would hope to learn or accomplish through a visit to Rwanda, I just feel like I need to go there.

I can think of few places on earth that are more culturally interesting to me than Saudi Arabia. I have loved my experiences thus far in Muslim countries and they don’t come much more Muslim than here. The whole place seems all forbidden and secret and creepy and I want in! Visas are hard to get and there are crazy restrictions on women but it all just sounds too bizarre to resist.

Have you been to any of these places? I would love to hear about them! What tops the list as your most mysterious country?

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Young SoCal business dude Jun Loayza wrote a post on his blog a few weeks ago called Why I Can’t Do What I’m Passionate About. He also recently wrote a comment over on Thrilling Heroics (both are excellent blogs you should check out). His original post got me thinking and his recent comment got me thinking some more.

Jun seems to find the whole ‘follow your passion’ type lifestyle appealing, but he worries about the future and wonders how he will be able to afford a house and a wedding, how he will be able to look after his family financially and how he will put his kids through school if he spends his life chasing his passion. He wonders whether quitting a lucrative job to chase a dream is the responsible thing to do or if by doing this he’s turning his back on his responsibilities.

Reading about Jun’s struggles with these issues got me thinking about them myself, probably for the first time. I like to plan and to be prepared but, to be honest, looking forward to anywhere beyond a few years is a stretch for me. Does the fact that I’m not thinking about the future and concentrating on me make me a selfish person? I’m not sure.

I don’t feel like my parents will have a terrible life if they don’t have my financial support when they’re old and grey. If my kids have to pay for their own tuition, it’s not really that bad… so did I and it’s not the end of the world. In fact, I think it builds character not to have your life handed to you by your parents and even if I were loaded I would still make the kiddies slog it out for a few years at McDonald’s. Wedding? I’m not too concerned about impressing people with a lavish wedding and would much prefer something small, simple, and non-traditional surrounded by people who don’t care about the type of flowers I put on the dinner tables. House? I’m not sure I want a house in one place just yet but, even if I did, there’s no reason to assume that I would be able to save more money working a ’steady’ job that I would working on my own business, especially if I’m able to keep my living costs down by living in cheap countries.

Having thought about these potential problems that will arise 10, 20 or 30 years from now for the first time, none of them really seem that bad to me. Making it through any of the above mentioned scenarios on a modest or even a low income is certainly possible, especially if I don’t have any debt and live my life simply as I expect to.

Having worked 20 years in a great job and having $200,000 in the bank by the time the kid is ready for college might work for some people but for me, I would much rather see where my life takes me and cross those bridges when I come to them. Saving money for a child I don’t have seems crazy to me. If and when I ever have one, my tune might change but I will worry about it then, not now.

I think it’s wonderful to think about the future of your family and I admire people who are able to give so much of themselves. For me though, I prefer to live in the moment and get through life’s big hurdles as they present themselves. Besides, right now is the best time to be selfish and irresponsible: healthy parents, no kids, no wedding plans, no mortgage. From here on in things will just get more complicated. If I can’t enjoy myself now, I guess I’ll need to wait until my parents are dead and gone, the kids have moved out and the house is paid off and suddenly I’m 55. No thanks.

What about you guys? Whether you’re just taking a year or two off to travel or if you’re trying to start a business and follow your dreams, do you feel you’re being selfish? Do any of you stress about the future and try to do everything in your power now to make life easier later or do you just take things as they come? Let me know what you think.

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After spending a couple of weeks assessing the situation in Indonesia after a major earthquake hit on September 30th, Hands On have announced a relief effort. The earthquake struck in Sumatra killing at least 1,100 people and severely injuring over 1,200 and severely damaging around 135,000 houses. The earthquake affected an estimated 250,000 families (1,250,000 people) through either total or partial loss of their home or livelihood, or both.

The brunt of the devastation both in property and lives was felt in the areas around Padang and that is where Hands On are basing their project. They have done two previous projects after earthquakes, one in Jogjakarta, Indonesia in 2006 and one in Peru in 2007. The work during those projects focused mainly on knocking down unsafe structures with sledge hammers and removing the rubble with shovels and wheelbarrows. A few of my friends volunteered in Peru and say the work is even harder than it was in Haiti and, going by the numbers of damaged homes, there will be plenty of work to keep us all busy.

Anyone who reads my blog knows how much I love this organisation. They’re completely transparent, they have no religious agenda, they see their volunteers as their greatest asset and look to us for input and ideas, they choose meaningful work after speaking with the community and determining their needs, the staff are great people, they attract interesting volunteers who are passionate about helping and they even give you a free t-shirt! I am hooked and can’t wait to get there.

Having volunteered with Hands On in Haiti and Bangladesh, I know plenty of people that are planning to volunteer in Indonesia. As a solo traveller who is perpetually wandering around the world, having a family of sorts to meet up with once or twice a year is great. So I’m excited to see old friends and I’m even more excited to get involved with the small local community and to get my hands dirty again.

Adding to all of the excitement is that my next stop after Indonesia is Southern Africa. The semi-plan is to fly into Cape Town and then travel around for a few months in Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe doing a bit of Couchsurfing and maybe volunteering on a farm or two. In June it’s World Cup time and you will find me in the stands with my Australian buddies who tore up Beijing with me during the Olympics. Then more travels around Africa, possibly working my way up the east coast before heading into the Middle East. Maybe.

It’s shaping up to be an amazing year and for the first time for awhile I’m excited to hit the road. As always, if anyone thinks they’ll cross paths with me, get in touch and lets meet up! Or better yet, come lend a hand in Indonesia. We’ll be there until at least February and I guarantee you a life-changing experience.

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There’s a reasonable chance I could be heading off to Indonesia in a few weeks so I’m working hard at tying up a lot of loose ends before I hit the travel trail again. I’ve put in a lot of work these past two months while I’ve been at home: I’ve done some link swapping, written a load of articles in an effort to get links, finished four new affiliate websites, updated another affiliate site, added articles to my moving to Sydney website, filed my tax return, set up three people to help me with new city sites, converted old HTML sites into CSS, and updated parts of my working holidays website. For the amount of time I’ve actually been sitting behind this computer I would have expected to have more done, but overall I’m pretty satisfied with my effort.

One loose end that I really want to get tied up is my living in New York website. It’s similar to Stuck in London and the first goal for the NY site is to attract search engine traffic and convert it into Adsense revenue. My London site went from earning $1 a month for several months in a row when it was first launched at the end of 2006 to earning over $120 per month six months later. I’m hoping to replicate this result with my New York site as quickly as possible.

The site has a good number of New York area guides and I have a few authors working on some how-to type articles and basic information pieces for my articles page. I’ve had some success using Textbroker.com and would recommend them. One author in particular has a ton of great article ideas and she’s a way better writer than I am. For less than two cents a word I am pretty happy to have found her and I’ll be loading up the site gradually with her articles. I will be heading back to New York in a couple of weeks to visit a friend, snap some photos for the site and to gather prices for my New York prices guide which I have yet to start.

I’ve already been working at link building and have outsourced some of the article submission stuff to a friend of mine so I’m hoping this site starts paying off sooner than the London site which I did zero link building or promotion for. Plus, based on a bit of keyword research, New York has more searches and pays more per click than the same London keywords. Overall, I really think this site is the key to bumping me up above $500 per month with Adsense and I’m putting everything I have into it right now.

So I just wanted to give people an idea of what I’m focused on at the moment. I’m really excited about the quality of the articles and area guides I’ve already had submitted and I’m looking forward to seeing how quickly I’m able to get this baby earning for me.

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I am starting to really love monthly advertising deals. Sure, it’s temping to make a grab for the cash on 6-monthly or yearly deals, but I am starting to see the benefits of having a few monthly deals going at the same time behind the scenes.

I’ve had a couple of advertisers paying me a measly $10 each a month since August 2007 on a Paypal subscription payment. I haven’t had any contact with the advertisers since they set them up over two years ago and, unless I decide to increase the price or they decide to cancel, I have no reason to. The $20 has been coming in each month like clockwork and I don’t even remember which sites their ads are on.

Setting up automated payments with Paypal makes life easy because, once it’s arranged, you can forget all about it and just keep collecting the money each month without you having to do a thing. There’s no need to chase payments and the income truly is automated which is exactly why I love it so much. Plus I usually give discounts for 6-monthly or yearly purchases so people paying monthly end up paying more over the course of the year, it’s just that I have to wait for it.

So for ages I only had $20 worth of these things coming in a month and suddenly things have gone crazy and now I have over $370 worth of monthly subscription payments coming in across seven separate deals plus another $140 every two months in an eight deal. This is great news because one of the things that has always made me nervous about advertising revenue has been that it’s pretty unpredictable. You never really know if or when you will be contacted by someone interested in buying advertising I was always uneasy about relying on this income source. Being able to sort of count on the monthly payments (of course they can still be canceled at any time) takes a bit of the unpredictability away and it’s nice to have a minimum amount of advertising earnings to build on each month.

I would be very happy if each of my main revenue streams (Adsense, affiliates and advertising) are reliably earning me $500 each per month. At the moment I’m at about $350 for each of those so I have a bit of work ahead of me. A steady $1500 per month with those unpredictable advertising deals on top would make me a very happy camper. It would ne nice to see the earnings diversified evenly across the three revenue streams and, more importantly, bumping up my minimum earnings level to $1500 would take the edge of my fast-depleting savings account.

With these monthly payments coming in I’m starting to feel a lot more confident that I will get to the $2000 a month mark sooner rather than later. It’s been a long time coming, so I hope so!

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A few weeks agoI wrote that I was hoping to head to Iowa to do some volunteering in Cedar Rapids with Hands On Disaster Response (HODR). I love volunteering with this group and I was hoping to get a chance to work with them again sooner, rather than later. I think their plan was to pull a bunch of professional builders (volunteers) together with a bunch of wannabees like me to help out with rebuilding in the flood-damaged community.

Well that project has been postponed until the Spring so it looks like Iowa is out. But with all the disasters in the Pacific and southeast Asia, it looks like there could be another opportunity for me to get into some more disaster relief work. HODR have sent a team to American Samoa to see if they can hel pout at all after the tsunami there. They’ve also already assessed The Philippines but given that much of the damaged ares are still under water, there’s not a lot they can do just yet.

So the assessment team has moved on from The Philippines to Indonesia and they arrived in earthquake-damaged Padang today. Myself and other HODR alumni are anxiously waiting for the word that a project is being launched. It’s ridiculous, there are about 15 people that I know of that will be there in an instant and I’m one of them.

So Iowa is out but I’m hoping HODR will launch a project in Indonesia because, even though it’s nowhere near on the way to Africa (my next stop), I love working with those guys. So for the moment I’m checking the site daily, following them on Twitter and hoping the $515 flight from New York to Jakarta (via Alaska!) stays that price for another few weeks.

Check out their site if you’re interested in knowing more about their South Pacific Emergency Appeal and possibly helping out.

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I got an email yesterday from pointing out a new site that was set up specifically to sell ebooks on a certain topic. The site is two pages: the main page listing four ebooks with brief descriptions of each and links out to their affiliate programs and an ‘about’ page. The person who emailed me pointed out that he thought the site is a great idea and was wondering if copying it would be ethical.

This is a question I’ve struggled with a bit. My main affiliate earner is actually an idea I got from another internet marketer who focuses on travel sites. He didn’t tell me what he was doing, but I noticed his site, thought it was a great idea and set one up for myself with great results and thousands of dollars in earnings. Since then, dozens of people have jumped on the idea with copycat sites so I’m happy I got in there early before the masses. He wasn’t bitter at me for using his idea and I certainly can’t blame anyone else for wanting a piece of the action. It’s the nature of business.

There are few barriers to entry in the internet marketing game, especially for simple concepts and sites without any fancy programming involved. A one-page website with a list of related affiliate programs is super easy to copy. The difficult part about affiliate marketing isn’t creating the site or finding the affiliates, it’s coming up with the idea for which keywords to target so that people who come to the site are ready to buy. When someone has already done this and goes into detail about how much they’re earning, it is tempting to want to grab a piece of the pie for yourself. Once you have everything set up it really just comes down to who is doing a better job at SEO.

I am happy to talk about most of my websites on this blog but you will notice from time to time that I mention a site without giving the URL or too many details away about the exact topic or revenue stream. The reason I keep them quiet is because they are simple sites and would be very easy to copy. In creating them I did a bit of keyword research, stuck up some simple sites and now I’m hoping for the best. Because anyone could spend an afternoon and replicate one of these sites, I prefer to keep them quiet, at least until they’re at number one in Google with a zillion backlinks.

So far these small, simple websites are based on ideas I have thought of myself and I have no idea if or when they’ll pay off. It would make a lot more sense for me to work on an idea that is already proven so if I stumble onto a website that I know earns money, I will study it, check out the competition and consider launching a copycat site. This isn’t something that’s happened yet, but my eyes are always peeled. If I don’t do it, someone else will.

What do you think? Is it ethical to copy an idea for a website (I’m not talking about copying at site word for word, just about the idea) and launching your own version? If you see a simple site and you know it earns and doesn’t have much competition… is it stupid to ignore it just because someone else got there first?

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Last week I was sent an ebook (I will do a review of it next week) that had the same sort of make money online, live from anywhere sort of theme as many books that are floating around out there. After reading through it though I actually came away with a lot of new knowledge and I was really impressed. Sure, I would have scoured the internet to find most of the information but, in some cases, I wouldn’t have even been sure what to search for. In short, I was impressed.

This got me thinking about the review I left for Nomadic Matt’s ebook last month. I still don’t think it’s a bad review but it wasn’t as glowing as perhaps it should have been. After reading through the other ebook and being impressed by all the new things I was learning about keyword research, link farming and other possibly shady SEO tactics, I thought more about Matt’s book. I feel like I was a bit too hard on it because a lot of what he had written wasn’t new to me. I wasn’t as impressed as someone who would have been getting this knowledge for the first time and I forgot about what it was like back when I was first learning all this stuff.

So with that in mind I am going to put a little push on to sell some of Matt’s books. He is running a contest that offers a free ipod Touch (or a flight or camera of equal value) to the affiliate who sells the most ebooks in October (which is an excellent marketing move on Matt’s part - take note!) In an effort not to come across as a total sleeze who is suddenly recommending his book now that there’s a prize involved, I have decided that if I sell the most books in October and win his contest, I will have Matt send the prize to someone who bought the ebook from my website, drawn at random.

So if I’m giving away his prize, what’s in it for me, you ask? Well I will still get 50% of the ebook price as my affiliate commission. Plus if someone buys the 400th ebook through my website, that person gets $100 and I get $75. It seems like a pretty sweet deal all around. So to be clear, this prize will only be awarded to someone who buys Matt’s ebook from my website if I also sell the most ebooks in October. For this to work, enough people have to buy the ebook through this link.

Among other things, Matt’s ebook outlines setting up a blog, details different types of revenue streams and, the part that I think is its strength, goes into a good amount of detail about search engine optimisation (SEO). It is aimed mainly at beginners who have a travel blog and might want to earn a bit of cash out of it but I think even people who have been at the web game for awhile will find it useful. As someone who’s been doing this for awhile I found the information on article marketing especially helpful.

So there you have it. Good luck to you, good luck to me and lets see if Matt can give one of you an excellent prize! To buy the book click here.

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I got a call a few weeks ago from a friendly rep at GoDaddy who, according to him, was just checking up on whether or not I was happy with GoDaddy’s services. Since I don’t use them for anything but domain registrations, it’s difficult to find much to complain about so I told him I had no complaints.

He had my account open on his end and ‘noticed’ that I had over 50 domains registered with them. I am pretty sure this is what the call was actually about and he proceeded to attempt to sell me a membership to their ‘Discount Domain Club’ for $89.99 a year. I went immediately on the defensive because I’m not really too keen on random calls from people trying to sell me things, but as he explained the offer, it started to make complete sense.

For an $89.99 yearly membership fee I get to register and renew all of my .com domains for $7.29 per year rather than the usual price of $10.69. At the moment I have 59 domain names so to renew them per year it would have cost me  $630.71 at the regular price and $430.11 at the discount club price. Taking the $89.99 fee into consideration I will have saved $110.61.

Not to sound like a sales rep for the program, but it also gives discounts on other types of domains. New .info domains can be had for $0.89 (for the first year only), .net are 53% off at $5.99 a year and country-specific domains even have small discounts of 10-15%. But wait, there’s more! If you join the program for three years or longer you will save 20%, bringing the yearly fee down to $71.99 and you will get a second set of knives for free!

If you are someone who either already has a lot of domains or plans to at some point soon, do the calculations and see if GoDaddy’s Discount Domain Club will help save you some cash. As a domain hoarder, I wish I would have known about it sooner so I’m just spreading the word to any folks out there who want in on some cheaper domain name action.

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