I earned $2145 in June with a big advertising deal at the last minute leading the charge. I did start doing some work this month albeit at a ridiculously slow pace. I’ve been in Durban for about 12 days now and I’m only really kicking things into gear with less than a week to go before I head off once again.

My focus is on promoting my ebook and building links to some sites I’ve had built for awhile but haven’t done SEO for. It’s not the creative stuff I love, but it needs to be done. I doubt there will be any results from the link building for awhile, but bit by bit I hope it’ll help in the long run. At the very least it’s nice, for once, to say that I’m actually doing some work!

Earnings Breakdown:

• Google Adsense - $392 - Another consistent month for Adsense which is all I can ask when I’m not doing much to push the earnings forward. At least they’re not going backwards! If things go to plan, the work I do now will eventually lead to a rise in Adsesne earnings, especially with my living in New York and London 2012 Olympics sites which are finally showing signs of life with Google.
• Affiliate Sales - $477 - For the first time, my main affiliate World Nomads was beaten out by a combination of other travel insurance affiliate programs from the Trade Doubler network. My Clixgalore affiliates also did well and it looks like my old staple, World Nomads, is on the out. There are things I could do to improve sales, I think, but it’ll take a lot of work.
• Advertising - $1157 - I had a bunch of renewals and one huge, last-minute deal that really turned June into a good month instead of the usual average month of around $1500.
• Ebook Sales - $119 - My ebook had another terrible month but it was expected after doing fairly badly the previous month. The key in making sales is promotion and I haven’t been able to do any for awhile. I’m working on guest posts and spreading the word but I will need to find some new avenues. I would like to someone get the message out to college and university students but I’m not totally sure how to tap that market.

The first half of June was spent watching football and hanging out with my friends. The second half has been spent doing bits of work and bits of time wasting. With more travels in my future, I really need to get a lot done over the next week from filing my tax return for last year to making some annoying phone calls to doing a lot of guest post and article writing to finishing up the final touches on some of my websites. I’m really happy with June and I have a couple of pending payments which should start me off really well going into July.

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The verdict is in. South Africa sucks for free wifi. Wifi is available but you almost always have to pay for it, at least in the hostels and coffee shops I’ve been in so far (Big Blue Backpackers in Cape town is one exception… and it’s fast). Even when you’re told you get free wifi, you’re often presented with a voucher for 10mb or 10 minutes of it, instead of the unlimited wifi that I’m used to in the rest of the world.

I spent a good chunk of my day yesterday in a cafe at a shopping mall in Durban working. I got chatting to a guy on his own computer who is a software engineer and was doing some work while his wife shopped. He gave me a bit of a rundown about the state of internet in South Africa and it’s not promising for digital nomads. Basically, there are only a couple of providers so everything is expensive. He also started talking about technical stuff and I sort of tuned out but the gist of it is that unlimited internet in South Africa isn’t readily available and probably won’t be for awhile. You can get it but it’s super expensive, especially when compared to the great deals you can get in the UK and North America, not to mention the fact that it seems readily available everywhere else in the world I’ve been.

So to combat the expensive and sporadic internet issue, I’ve bought one of those USB dongle modem things. The brand is Vodaphone and I was told that it’ll work in other African countries as long as I buy a local SIM card. I’m a bit dubious about that part but if I can get a good amount of use out of it here in South Africa, I will sort the rest out later. The modem itself cost me almost R700 and I had the option of buying a faster one for R1800. I’m not sure of the difference in speeds but the cheaper one is a lot faster than I would have expected. I haven’t tried to download anything but I have made Skype calls with no problems and there’s virtually no wait time as webpages load.

I buy airtime on my pay-as-you go phone, convert it to data using my phone, take my SIM card out of my phone and put it into the USB modem, plug it in, hit ‘connect’ and there ya go - online! The only problem is that I haven’t worked out how long the data lasts for exactly and I don’t seem to have any way of tracking it. Data gets cheaper the more you buy. So I can get the minimum of 9MB of data for R9 and I can buy the maximum of 1.2GB for R289 with a bunch of other options in between. I initially bought 30MB and it lasted longer than expected. I’ve since bought 600MB for R189 and it’s been going strong for days. Although for almost £20, I would hope it’d last me at least a couple of weeks.

Paying for data rather than time means that I can write emails and blog posts without spending anything until I actually post them. If I were planning on making some calls on Skype, doing some downloading or watching videos then I would probably use the hostel’s hourly wifi here instead, but for general internet use, it seems ideal.

This is all new to me but it’s great to know that I can get online anywhere there’s a phone signal. If I decide to rent a place somewhere, suddenly needing wifi isn’t an issue and it opens my options up a lot. Same goes for not having to always look for accommodation with wifi. Plus it means I can hang out in whatever cafe I want to and still get online. I always hate it when I find a great cafe only to discover they don’t have internet and this gets rid of that little problem.

I’ll keep you posted on what I think of this miraculous little device. Here’s hoping it’ll work in Tanzania!

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Let me preface this post by saying that, if you are a rabid football supporter, there’s no way you will agree with anything I’m saying and I realise that. This post is for sports fans who would like to go to a big event like the Olympic Summer Games or the World Cup but aren’t sure which to choose.

I’m at the World Cup in South Africa right now, and the atmosphere is amazing. On game day in the city centre or at one of the many fan fests set up around the country, the buzz is electric. People are kitted out in all sorts of fun costumes, blowing their vuvuzelas, singing their songs and generally going nuts. It’s a great thing to be a part of but the Summer Olympics are better, and here’s why.

Two weeks of solid action – After the opening ceremony launches the festivities, there are sporting events on solidly for the next two weeks. You can always find something to watch from 8:30am each day to 10pm each night. The World Cup packs in the games, but there’s still a lot of down time between them.

Truly international – The World Cup only has 32 countries represented. The Summer Olympics has over 200. Not only does this give fans from all over the world something to cheer for, it also gives you a chance to meet and mingle with spectators from from all over the world. Sharing a group hug with Khazakstanian wrestling fans or partying with Ethiopians at a bar is probably not something you’ll get to do at a World Cup.

Tickets are affordable and plentiful – At the Olympics in Beijing there were tickets as cheap as US$5. In Athens there were loads of tickets valued at under 10 euro. London might be another story but, in my experience at the Olympics, there are plenty of affordable tickets available. True, they might not be to the marquee events, but they’re there and allow more people to get involved. Plus, with so many events on, some in huge stadiums, the number of tickets available is a lot more than at the World Cup so getting them is easier.

Festivities are confined to one city – With some exceptions, Olympics events are set in a single city which makes the logistics of planning a trip a lot easier and it means that the entire city is buzzing all of the time, not just certain cities on certain game days. Plus you don’t end up having to travel to the Rustenburgs and Polokwanes of the world (no offence to those cities but they hardly compare to Beijing, Sydney, London etc etc.) It also means that when you meet new friends, they won’t have to head off to some other city a few days later.

Get to mingle with the athletes – Many of the footballers playing at the World Cup will be famous already and raking in huge salaries. They’ll be staying in some fancy hotel and the likelihood of bumping into them in the streets is pretty slim. At the Olympics there are superstars but, for the most part, athletes aren’t household names and, once their event is over, they’re just as likely to be at the bar celebrating as you are. Plus their friends and families are there in support and you will probably find yourself in a one-way conversation as their relative beams at you with pride about them.

Better banter in the stands – World Cup stadiums are huge and loud and while the game is on, fans tend to be focused on it for 45 minutes at a time. At the Olympics, the stadiums are usually smaller and more intimate and the breaks in the action mean that there’s a lot of time to chat with the people around you. Many events have multiple countries competing on the same day which makes for a really exciting atmosphere and you will make friends easily by supporting the same athlete as the people sitting near you.

You can still watch football – If you love football then you can still get tickets to see it at the Olympics. Teams aren’t made up of the superstars you know and the tournament doesn’t hold a candle to the World Cup but, if you love watching the sport, you can still get your fix at the Olympics.

Get to experience new sports – I love the Olympics because it brings obscure sports to the forefront and gives those athletes their moment in the sun. There are so many sports on offer that you are bound to become a fan of at least a few new sports you’d never even heard of. I’m now a fan of handball, weightlifting and field hockey having seen them at the Olympics.

Lots of winners – There were 302 gold medals given out at the Beijing Olympics which means the possibility for 302 super happy experiences across a variety of countries, not just one.

Your team is never eliminated – Unless you’re from one of those nations with only a handful of athletes, you will have someone to cheer for from your country from the start of the games until the finish.

So if you’re a casual sports fan looking to head to a major event at some point in your life but aren’t sure which, take my advice and make it the Olympics!

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I went on my first ever safari last week and it was pretty amazing. I really didn’t have a clue what to expect, to be honest. I’m probably one of the few people who don’t count seeing the animals as one of my tops things to do in Africa, so I hadn’t really looked into it much. When my friends suggested we spend a day at Hluhluwe game reserve north of Durban, it seemed like a good enough way to fill the day and I was in.

At R950, it was one of the more expensive things I will do in South Africa but I think safaris are known for being pricey and if I plan on doing any more, I should get used to it. We could have driven ourselves in our rental car for a fraction of the cost but we would have missed out on our guide’s crack driving and spotting skills and I’m not sure how we would have fared had we found ourselves face to face with an angry elephant.

We left sharpish at 5:30am. An ungodly hour, yes, but I’m told animal spotting is best done in the early morning and as the sun goes down so an early start and a long day are the best way to see what you want to see. Normally, not a problem. The problem is that nobody told me it would be this cold in South Africa. Winter… yes. But I didn’t expect it to be this cold. Maybe I should have looked at a single weather report and things would have been cleared up but, of course, I didn’t. So there I was at 5:30am freezing my tits off after a feeble attempt at layering warm weather clothes. This was before the open-air safari vehicle got moving so you can imagine how cold it was once the wind started attacking us. It was 30 minutes of near hypothermia. I was super happy that I bought that Bafana Bafana scarf a week before but wishing I had thought to bring my sleeping bag to snuggle up into.

Once we were in the game park I wa happy to be alive and more interested in getting warm than spotting animals. When a zebra crossed our path really close to the vehicle, though, I started to get more into things. I went into this safari thing not knowing or expecting much and I was amazed at how many animals and birds we ended up seeing. We were in the truck with three avid bird-watchers which, at first, was a bit annoying because we were there to see the big five, after all, and didn’t want to stop for every little bird. But it turned out to be a good way to pass the time between the big animals and it was nice to slow down and try to spot the small things as well.

We saw what we wanted to see: lions, elephants, buffalo, rhinos, a bunch of different things with antlers, a baby crocodile, giraffes, zebras and probably a lot more that I’m forgetting. We were lucky with the lion because, at first, we had a very limited view of it feeding on something behind a bush. Then, as we were leaving, my friend noticed a lioness cross the road right behind our vehicle and jump up into a tree, giving us a perfect view.

The 12 hours went by a lot quicker than I thought it would and I came away having seen a lot more than I thought I would. I didn’t know what to expect and I was pretty impressed. The animals really don’t seem to be bothered by the safari vehicles and you can get a really close look at them in their natural environment which is pretty cool.

But next time, I think I’ll go in the summer.

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It’s about 10 days into the World Cup here in South Africa and, I’m going to be honest people, I’m all footballed out. I’ve been to two games so far in the freezing cold and I think that’s enough for me. The atmosphere is amazing and I’m grateful to be here soaking up the excitement but moving around the country following games and trying to cram some sightseeing in between is hard work.

This might be sacrilegious but I prefer watching the games on TV. I said it. Sad, but true. Getting to and from the stadiums here isn’t easy, the weather has been freezing, the games I’ve seen have been super dull, beer is expensive and the lines are long, toilets are few and far between, they don’t show any replays at the stadium, and I’m a bit sick of having horns blown directly into my ears from behind. If I were a super huge football fan or if Canada or Scotland made it into the World Cup then I might be singing a different tune but, for the most part, I’m happy having gone to a couple of games and think I will sit the rest out in favour of a seat with a view in the pub.

But with all that said, I’ve had a great time so far. I was at the Cape Town Fan Fest (outdoor areas all over the country with big screens for people to watch the games) when South Africa played Mexico in the first game and that was an amazing display of patriotism and support. The street party the night before also sent chills down my spine. The whole country is caught up in the hype and it’s easy to get pumped up when everyone around you is so excited.

One of the best parts of the World Cup, for me, is meeting fans from all over the world and seeing their crazy getups. There have been some great outfits, from the Aussie guys in skin-tight green and gold jumpsuits (in freezing cold weather) to the Dutchies in orange lion costumes. People have been heading to the games with brass instruments, all sorts of drums and of course the vuvuzelas that seem to have become a hot topic of conversation worldwide.

I’m really impressed with the show South Africa has put on here at the World Cup. I find the country to be a really interesting place and I’m hoping to do some volunteering on farms and a bit of couchsurfing while I’m here… after a trip up north for awhile to the warmer weather (nobody told me South Africa was so cold!)

In the meantime, I’ve got my own room in Durban for the next week so will explore the city a bit, take in some football matches, hopefully meet some cool people and, as always, try to do some work but probably get nothing done.

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I’ve been in South Africa for a week and so far I’m impressed! Every hostel I’ve stayed at has been fantastic, the locals have been super friendly, and it’s a really beautiful place with lots to explore.

I arrived with pretty much zero knowledge on what there is to do here besides traipse around the country to watch World Cup matches. I had been volunteering in Haiti and before that in Indonesia with dubious internet connections and not a lot of time to myself so I left all of the planning up to my friends who I met up with the day after I arrived. The first thing on our agenda was to fly to Port Elizabeth, rent a car and drive back down to Cape Town on the Garden Route in time for our first game on June 11th.

It was a good plan and even better because I didn’t have to organize a thing. My friends sorted everything right down to the hostel bookings and car hire. Hiring a car is the way to go and we made a few stops along the way along the Garden Route. Some were dubious like an underwhelming stop in Nature’s Valley for a dodgy pub meal, and some were surprising like the drive to Oudtshorn where I wanted to ride an ostrich. Video coming soon!

My friends are short on time and long on things they want to do so I’m travelling a lot faster than I normally would but it’s actually turned out to be fine. I’m happy to have three nights in Cape Town though, even though our days will be filled to the brim. I’m not sure I would want to keep at this pace for much longer but so far, so good.

I met up with these same two friends for the Beijing Olympics and that trip was a boozefest with almost no sleep. I was worried this one would be the same but so far we’re acting all respectable and stuff. I almost don’t recognise us! I’m sure things will kick off a bit when the World Cup gets going but I’m liking this new us while it lasts.

That’s it from me for now. Tomorrow, weather permitting, we’re hiking up Table Mountain so I’m off to bed early. The excitement is building here and I can’t wait for the football!

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I earned $1660 in May which wasn’t nearly as good as my crazy April, but considering my computer broke and I really did nothing this time, I am not going to complain. Have I mentioned how much I love passive income?

Earnings Breakdown:

• Google Adsense - $430 - Adsense started off amazingly and tailed off a bit towards the end of the month. I had my first ever $30+ day which was pretty good and I’m seeing great earnings per click for a couple of new sites… now I just need to get more traffic to them.
• Affiliate Sales - $349 - The earnings for my main (and dwindling) affiliate were matched this month by my three other affiliate networks combined. The other affiliates are creeping up in earnings which I’m happy to see. I think I can bring my main affiliate back from the brink but it’ll take a bit of work.
• Advertising - $758 - This month was all renewals and I had no surprise emails wanting to buy advertising off of me. Renewals are encouraging and I rarely see people cancel links they’ve bought unless they’re for small amounts. I’m hoping things stay that way!
• Ebook Sales - $133 - My ebook did amazingly shite this month but I’m not surprised given I did almost zero promotion. Actually, that’s not true… I did that TV interview (having trouble getting the video but I will try) on local TV that seemed to result in a couple of sales but, other than that, I’ve been quiet in this area. When my computer died it made doing this really tricky. It is interesting to see how important constant promotion is. I have lots of ideas but they will probably have to wait another month before I execute.

June will be another write off month for me. I’m meeting up with some friends and travelling around to World Cup games. I’ve met up with these two friends before during the Olympics with high hopes of sneaking away to do some work and it didn’t work then, so I’m not expecting it to work now. I think I will enjoy myself and I might even leave my computer behind in Cape Town and plan on working hard in July instead of kidding myself.

I’m pretty excited about the World Cup, seeing my friends and checking out Africa a bit. I’m going one-way with few plans so if anyone will be in the area and wants to meet up, let me know. Or if anyone has any suggestions on things to do, please get in touch!

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