One of the things on my life list is to raise $10,000 for a good cause and I have been thinking a lot about this goal recently. I’m in Indonesia at the moment working with a fantastic organisation and I would love to be able to throw some funds their way. I could do some crazy bike ride and look for sponsors, or canvas friends and family, or something along those lines but I’m not sure that’s the way. It seems like ebooks go over well and I think I have a few things to write about so maybe writing a short ebook is a good plan.

My idea bis to sell the book for $10 each. Well, not really sell it but give it away to people who make a minimum donation to a charity. I would set up an account through Just Giving or another similar online donation site and when I receive a donation above the specified amount, I will send out the book. My hope would be that if people are impressed either by the book or the cause they might give a bit more than the minimum, but that’s not something I would count on. So at $10 a book I would have to get 1,000 people to give the minimum donation to reach my goal. It seems like a huge number but not an impossible one, especially since I don’t really have a time limit in mind.
I think there are a lot of ebooks out there for sale and there are some for free so I’m not sure where mine would fit into the equation. I’m sort of in the early planning stages right now and I’m wondering if you guys think this is a good idea. People seem really interested in the type of lifestyle I’m living by earning money online so, while I don’t claim to be an expert, I do think that some people would be interested in knowing how I’ve managed to get where I am. Maybe a book that’s partly a guide on how I make money and part a motivational type book would go over well? Or something else?

Do you think this would be something people would be interested in enough to give $10 or more to charity? What sort of things would you like to see me write about? What would compel you to donate $10 to a good cause in exchange for an ebook?Would this be something you think the blogging community would pick up on and help me promote? Would you?

Any ideas and suggestions would be welcome!

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Hands On have been in Sumatra, Indonesia for a month and it seems like the presence of 40+ foreigners has finally gotten to this small community. I guess it’s difficult to lay low with so many people zipping around town on pickups full of tools and walking to and from town to get online and eat yummy things. We’ve been noticed in a big way and it’s not all a good thing, unfortunately.

We’ve had a few baffling semi-harassing encounters with the ‘Muslim Police’ who, we’re told, are completely separate from the regular police and are more like thugs than like law-enforcement. I don’t know the full story behind them but they’ve visited our house a few times with questions about how many Americans are in the place, accusations that we have been handing out Christian materials (ridiculous considering most people on the project are not religious at all), requests for money towards their vague aid projects and asking for the phone number of one volunteer saying that it is in ‘our culture’ to give out phone numbers willy nilly. They’re also paranoid that a bunch of donated goods we will be distributing contain covert Christian documents and short skirts. Actually, some of the clothes are unsuitable and have Jesus slogans but we’re ditching them before they hit the streets.

In short, these guys seem like a band of roving dickheads and the community seems to agree. The regular police assure us they have no problems with Hands On and seem to be  distrustful of the ‘Muslim Police’. We’ve also been asked to not drink beer on town, even though it’s openly sold there. I think this has more to do with women drinking beer than the guys, but we’ve all been banned regardless. It’s not a huge deal and I understand that locals probably feel uneasy about us womenfolk setting a bad example, but it’s still annoying.

Now the latest in the recent wave of religion-related requests, the community has banded together after a month to ask that we not have men and women sleeping under the same roof. Given that we only have one house, this would have seemed to be a bit of a problem. The comprimise has been to chuck all the guys outside to sleep under a big army tent in bunkbeds. Not ideal (although it’s actually a pretty good deal for the girls!) but it’s just another thing that needs to be done to appease the local community.

All of this has been really interesting for me. I would have thought Bangladesh was a bit more religiously hard core but, as far as I know, there were no issues there like we’ve had here. One rural community thought were were there to give them injections to become Christians but, besides that, it seemed like the community was on board with what we were there to do and if there was any suspicion, I didn’t hear about it.

But it’s been an amazing experience thus far despite the hiccups and I’m always curious to see what the next day will hold. Internet has been set up thanks to the installation of our very own tower to pick up a signal. So I should be in touch a bit more and will attempt to do a little bit of work while I’m here.

If you want an idea of what we’ve been up to so far check out this Day in the Life of a Volunteer video. So far so good!

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I’ve finally scored one of the four computers at an internet cafe in some tiny town I don’t know the name of after several failed attempts spanning four days. The kids here like to play shooter games which means that 30+ foreigners trying to get online have some serious problems doing so. But I’ve finally landed a computer and am sitting on the floor in some strange pink and light blue booth type thing, typing away while being surrounded by curious kids. Not exactly the best working environment but I figured a blog post was in order so I’m powering through.

So I’ve been on Project SG in Indonesia for a week and in that time I’ve done a lot of salvage work and a bit of demolition work. Unsafe buildings in the area have been marked with pink tags and they need to come down and that’s where we come in. We’ve been working in teams to safely bring down large concrete houses with even larger tin roofs sitting on top. It’s easier said that done and there’s a lot more planning involved in destroying things than I ever would have imagined. After the demo is done, salvage teams come in and attempt to save as many building materials as possible, right down to the individual bricks. This means removing tin carefully from the wooden roof frames, saving as much wood as possible, taking out windows and doors and chinking mortar off of individual bricks to create a stack ready to use whenever they get money from the government to help them rebuild.

At the moment many people have build rudimentary structures out of salvaged pieces of their concrete homes. Some are living in these and some are staying with friends or family but everyone is waiting for some money to rebuild their houses. Nobody seems to know when it’ll come but t’s early days still and people are confident they’ll be helped by their government. So right now, we’re concentrating on clearing their foundations and salvaging materials in preparation for a rebuild sometime soon, hopefully. The more materials we can salvage, the less people will need to spend on new materials when they are able to rebuild.

It’s the usual Hands On setup with a house crammed with eager and interesting people from all over the world. I’ve been able to catch up with friends from Haiti and meet plenty of new people and I’m loving it, as usual. It’s a different atmosphere than Haiti so far but people are still getting to know each other and this is the earliest I’ve ever been on a project. The lack of booze could also have something to do with it but Haiti was a bit crazy and I’m looking forward to a more low key deployment. The work here is also not quite as exciting and it’s hard to get pumped up about flattening someone’s home. Haiti was great because we were removing mud to allow people to move back in. Here we’re removing everything to allow people to rebuild but, in the meantime, they’re just left with an empty foundation and it’s quite sad to think about. But people are amazingly upbeat, at least on the surface, and they’re excited to have us there helping them. There’s more of a sense of community here than in Haiti which is uplifting.

The weather takes a bit of getting used to with one torrential downpour a day and no hope of drying clothes in the humid weather. It’s not fun getting soaked in the morning and getting to put wet socks and shoes on for the afternoon stint but I’m getting used to it. There’s also been a breakout of pink eye! About 12 of 30 people have come down with it and are walking around with red eyes. Everyone has developed a hand sanitising obsession so hopefully we’ll kick this soon. It’s sort of funny but I haven’t had it yet so I might not be laughing in a few days! Overall though I’m loving the experience here. The other volunteers are great, people in the community are wonderful, everything is super cheap, the food is delicious (so far), the area is beautiful, a lady next door makes delicious fresh fruit shakes and life is good!

I’m not expecting to be able to work at all for my first month here because I can’t bear coming back to this internet cafe more than once a week. When I go to Kuala Lumpur on December 5th though I plan to go into geek mode and work for a week straight. I will probably but an internet-enabled phone as well to bring back here.

So that’s the update! Until next time… whenever that might be.

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I’ve had a few comments over the past several months asking about how many sites I have so I figured now is as good a time as any to give a list of my websites. I’ve included little blurbs about each site, a bit about earnings and some hopes I have for the websites. This is type of information is something I always wonder about when I read other web developer’s blogs so hopefully reading this will give you some inspiration and a bit more insight into how I earn money online.

For some of the sites I haven’t listed the URLs beucase they’re simple ideas that would be pretty easy to copy. Most of my simple sites don’t really make any money but I am living in hope.

Travoholic.com - This is my first ever site that I started back in 2001 and it’s about budget travel. When I started it there were only a handful of sites about budget travel and backpacking and I felt I could offer something that was better. I always start out ambitious! I have always felt that where you stay has a big impact on your experience, especially if you’re a solo traveller, so I wanted to build a site with a focus on hostel reviews. The idea was a good one and I’m pretty sure it was the first site to use several different criteria to rate hostels. Unfortunately I was busy wasting my time in university and the site was neglected until 2005 when I started taking things a bit more seriously. By that point I had missed the boat and there were plenty of sites that filled the hostel reviewing gap. But this is when I discovered Adsense and after that first click for $0.03 I was inspired to improve my site and start others. Travoholic.com earns about $50 to $100 per month with Adsense, a pitiful $2 to $10 a month with Hostelworld.com and a small amount through advertising. I haven’t done a thing with this site in years but I have a few ideas for how to overhaul things. Because its an old, trusted domain and does well with Google, I think it has a lot of potential.

Working Holiday Info - This was my second website and it’s my favourite because of the little cartoon characters I’ve added. I totally went over the top with the artistic flair I added to the site, but it was fun. This site was penalised ages ago by Google and dropped down to PR0 so I haven’t had much success with advertising, although I haven’t really tried. I don’t have any affiliate programs on the site either so there’s nothing doing there. Adsense does well with around $80 to $100 monthly. This site could use an update and I could also see myself selling info packages specific to each working holiday country.

Nerdy Nomad - You’re on it! This is my only blog and it isn’t my aim to make money from this site. For me, blogs aren’t the way I want to earn online (I prefer to build a site and forget about it). I have this blog because I love connecting with people who are into travelling and web development. Plus it gives me a place to keep a few of my travel tales and it helps to have a place to ask questions and get feedback from you guys. I earn a bit through advertising deals but I don’t go out and look for them.

Stuck in London - This is my most popular site with over 350 unique visits a day. The site is focused on a specific niche that I know a lot about in a city I know a lot about so it is a great fit. Adsense has been the main income source with around $200 coming in per month and I am also starting to have high quality advertisers contact me about partnering up. I’m in the process of adding a few affiliate programs that seem like a good fit but time will tell if that works. The information on this site is of a high quality and I think that’s important for being able to keep attracting advertisers.

Travel Insurance Sites - I have three old travel insurance sites that focus on a specific niche and account for almost 100% of my affiliate earnings. I have recently finished another four websites that are targeted at a different niche in the travel insurance market. I know they are good ideas that will work but I need to get them ranking with Google before I see any earnings and that will take a lot of work that I don’t have time for just now. I’m considering an Adwords program but I probably won’t get to that until next year because I don’t know a thing about them and will need to do some research before I get started and a lot of tweaking once I get things going.

Adsense Sites - I have two websites that were created solely to put Adsense on them. I don’t like these sites but having seen a few net friends do well with them, I thought I would give it a try. I need to do loads more SEO for these sites to start performing and I won’t have time for this until after Indonesia next year. They’re on the back burner for now and don’t earn me anything.

Stuck in Beijing, Sydney and New York - These sites have been my attempt to get a little network of city sites going similar to my London site. The Beijing site is the oldest and ranks well with Google but doesn’t get as much traffic as I would like. The Sydney site’s content isn’t as good as I would like it to be but after a recent barrage of SEO it’s starting to rank. The New York site is brand new with good content but I haven’t done any SEO yet. For each of these sites I expect to earn a bit with Adsense but I’m hoping the main revenue source will be through city-specific advertising. These sites are all a work in progress and so far none of them are doing much.

London 2012 Olympics - I love the Olympics, I love London and I love making websites. This one sprung from a conversation with my friend Mike who ran a site for the Beijing Olympics. It seemed like an interesting idea and I didn’t think I would ever get a match more suited to me than the London Olympics. I’ve had a couple of lucrative advertising deals but, other than that, I haven’t earned much. I expect to earn a lot through Adsense in the months running up to the Olympics but I will need to get cracking on the SEO for this site. I think there are other ways to squeeze a few bucks out of this site but will have to brainstorm and get to work soon.

Wanderstruck - I started this site last year as a pure travel blog. The plan was to have a place to write about my travels, post photos and keep friends and family informed. My aim wasn’t to make money off of the site. I have since realised that I don’t really like writing blog posts about my travels. I find them difficult to write and they were taking up far too much of my time and I always felt guilty for going weeks without a post. At the moment this site is empty but I’m working at building a site about travelling in Africa. This is a massive work in progress and it’s the site I’m most excited about.

Backpacker Niche Site - I have a website about a very specific type of trip that Aussies, Kiwis and Saffas take around Europe. I actually forgot to register the domain at the beginning of the year and had to buy it back which screwed me over for this year’s earnings. Normally this site earns well during the summer with Adsense and insurance sales. I also have a partnership with a company who is a perfect fit in the niche and they pay me a pretty high yearly fee to advertise. I have lots of ideas for how to improve this site but it’s one of my lowest priorities right now.

If you haven’t been counting along, here’s a summary of my sites:

1. Travoholic
2. Working Holiday Info
3. Nerdy Nomad
4. Stuck in London
5. Stuck in Beijing
6. Stuck in Sydney
7. Stuck in New York
8. Insurance Site A
9. Insurance Site B
10. Insurance Site C
11. Insurance Site D
12. Insurance Site E
13. Insurance Site F
14. Insurance Site G
15. Crappy Adsense Site A
16. Crappy Adsense Site B
17. London 2012 Olympics
18. Wanderstruck
19. Backpacker Niche Site

Wow, I didn’t realise I had so many websites until just now. Like I said before, many of these are either brand new and doing nothing for me or they’re old and neglected and doing nothing for me. I’m an eternal optimist though and think that all of my sites have potential. I think one of my main issues is always wanting to move onto new site ideas before finishing the SEO and promotion work on the others. I love the building stage of web development so this will be a hard habit to kick.

I do think that having a network of sites is key in this business, at least in my experiences. Often one of my best sites will randomly start sucking for a month and another will come through with a great month to save my ass a bit. It’s strange how that works. Diversification is important with revenue streams (Adsense, affliates advertising, your own products etc.) and I think it’s equally important to diversify your sites by having a few different topics even if they are still a part of a broad niche like what I’m doing with budget travel.

I hope this has been helpful to people. Don’t feel overwhelmed because I have almost 20 sites. I admit that I have gone a bit crazy over the past few months. I think as few as four or five quality websites is fine. More sites doesn’t always mean more money, especially when you lose your focus and fleet from project to project without doing the SEO work.

Either way I hope this post helps. I would be interested in hearing about other people’s website portfolios. Do you dabble in the crappy Adsense sites or stick with one or two high quality ones? Blogs or static sites? What works for you and what is your ideal number of sites?

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October was an awesome month coming in at $2230, and just at the right time! My time in Canada should have been pretty cheap, given that I have been living rent-free. The reality is that I had to renew my Canadian passport and driver’s license, get a bunch of jabs for my Africa travels, pay off my creditcard that was loaded with World Cup tickets, buy another round of travel insurance, buy a flight to Asia, pick up a bunch of supplies for my volunteering stint, drink beer with friends and lots of little things. So, in short, I arrived back home with creditcard debt and still needing to pay for a lot of things. Now that October has been so good, I’m back to saving money again instead of spending it. It feels great!

Earnings Breakdown:

• Google Adsense - $400 - After a dip in earnings in September I’m back up above the $400 mark and I’m hoping to stay here. Once again my good month was more due to them paying out more per click than with me getting more site traffic and clicks. The encouraging thing is that the site that’s doing well this month is different from the one that did so well in August. If I can get paid well for both sites at once I should have a huge month. I’ve also just launched my living in New York website and I expect it to eventually do as well as my London site that earns about $200 on a good month. It’ll take awhile to get to that point but I’m actively working at it.
• Affiliate Sales - $610 - I discovered early this month that I had been earning quite well for about six months with affiliate programs I had on Tradedoubler without knowing it. I was looking forward to another good month with these programs but I only had a single sale with them in October. Go figure. My other two affiliates are still pumping along though and had another decent month. If I can get the Tradedoubler and Clixgalore programs working for me I will be in good shape. I’ve launched four new super niche, affiliate websites with that goal in mind.
• Advertising - $1220 - This is where things really picked up for me. I had a big yearly ad sale for almost $600 which was a huge boost. The thing I’m most excited about though is that I now have $370 worth of monthly Paypal subscription payments coming in which takes a bit of the guesswork out of how much I will earn in advertising each month and takes some of the pressure off. I’m just hoping nobody cancels anytime soon so I can bump this up to $500 per month.

I’m excited about this month’s earnings, mostly because my three main revenue streams all seem to be earning around a steady $400 a month. I want to be able to count on $1500 per month and I want it to come from $500 in Adsense, $500 in affiliate sales and $500 in advertising. I’m not quite there yet but I feel like I’ve put in enough work since I’ve been home to point me in the right direction.

The problem now is that I could be offline for awhile so I won’t be able to do the SEO stuff I need to do for awhile. Either way I’m happy with where my earnings are and I’m really happy with the stuff I got done while I’ve been home and I’m curios to see whether taking a break from the net will cause everything to crash and burn or not.

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