March was another crazy month. Things just keep getting crazier and crazier around here! I earned $9118 which is my second best month so far. But the kicker is that I also did just under $3000 in deals that I’m either waiting for content or for payment for. Had some of them been quicker with their content I would have easily cleared $10,000 for the first time. Now that I’ve made over $9000 for two months, breaking that $10,000 mark doesn’t seem like such a crazy idea. Well… it still seems crazy to me, it just doesn’t seem so unrealistic.
I was in The Philippines for the first part of March and seem to have spent most of the month just treading water and trying to catch up with all the work I neglected while I was there. It meant a lot of time chasing payments, updating my earnings spreadsheet, and adding paid content. There hasn’t been much time for working on new things but I’m going to dedicate this month to new projects and site improvements. Oh and finding an accountant. Can anyone recommend a UK accountant who deals with mobile businesses?
Earnings Breakdown:
- Adsense — $429 - Adsense was having a pretty average month and then, magically, the last two days of February earning almost $60. Strange. but welcome!
- Affiliate sales — $669 - Same same. But I did realise that there’s an affiliate program that I haven’t heard from in while (since June) so I sent an email to see if I’ve earned anything since then. Pretty lazing accounting on my part but I did earn over $100 with them in May so the missing months could add up to a nice amount next month. If they ever get in touch with me!
- Advertising — $7922 - Another insane month. Things just seem to be getting crazier and crazier here. I expect it to die off at some point but so far there’s no sign of that. It seems like more and more people are finding me each month and new deals are combining with ongoing payments or renewals to push the total higher and higher each month. Crazy. Besides one deal for $1400, most were in the $100-500 range and just added up to awesomeness. If I’m feeling ambitious I might divide this category up next month to include permanent guest posts/articles and paid links/ads. I’d guess things are about 50/50 now.
- Ebook Sales — $98 - Fourteen sales.
Spending Breakdown:
I only spent $335 in March on web stuff (I do have other expenses like travel, equipment, etc but don’t list them here… I save that annoyingness for tax time). I actually want to be spending more. In the coming months I might get back into building some new city guide sites which will mean some content outsourcing.
- Link Building Services — $176 - These are the monthly fees for two link building sites I’m using: Linkvana (14 day trial for $5 affiliate link/50 free outsourcing credits affiliate link) and Build My Rank. Build My Rank was deindexed by Google and they’ve closed their operations which meant I got about $30 refunded from their monthly fee. I’ve been told that Linkvana have also been deindexed so I guess I should stop using them? I don’t really know what it all means, to tell you the truth! Either way… if Linkvana is no more, that will make my link building much more of a pain in the ass. Something I’ll need to look into this month.
- Stock Photos – $136 - I buy stock photos for guest posts on Blighty Traveller from iStockPhoto.com.
- Programming — $18 — Paid to have my Kigali forum tweaked to stop spammers. Best money I’ve spent all year! I love the forum (miniBB) and the guy who created it will install it for you for a reasonable price and is on hand with questions. It’s easy for readers to use and looks good. If you’re in the market for a forum for your site, check it out!
- Ebook — $5 - Monthly cost to sell my ebook.
April in Rwanda is very low-key due to anniversary of the Genocide on April 7th each year. It’s a month of mourning and, while things are still open, I think loud music and partying are sort of outlawed. Plus, to add to the sad tone of the month, it always rains in April. Plus my best friend left yesterday for a couple of weeks. All of this adds up to what will be a lot of time spent inside hiding from the rain, no nights out partying (and therefore no hangovers) and the house to myself without many distractions. This will, hopefully, mean that I’ll get a lot of work done on new projects and creative things. The things that always get pushed aside in favour of being lazy.
Some projects for the month include getting my living in Kampala site up and running (I’ll be taking a trip to Kampala in 10 days to meet with my partner and content writer there which should be fun), starting a couple more ‘Stuck in…’ guide sites, finding an accountant and setting that all up (I’d like to incorporate in the UK… I’m hoping I don’t need to go to the UK to do this), finding an alternative to Linkvana for link building, possibly looking into hiring a personal assistant, writing a bunch of content for my Kigali website, and possibly writing more content for my blog and expanding it a bit to include more working and travelling information.
So April will be busy! I’m looking forward to getting back into work for the first time in awhile. It helps that I’m already off to a great start for the month… a nice motivator!
Hi Kirsty, another month of inspiring figures, well done! I’d highly recommend incorporating in the UK, it’s saved me a fortune over the years with various enterprises. You can do it all online although you’ll need a UK address (family? or accountant). One issue you might have is the bank account, for any business account with a High Street bank you’ll need to visit the branch. There are some banks where you can open accounts by post, Carter Allen is one, but they tend to have higher fees. Good luck!
Thanks for the advice! (And thanks too to Mo who emailed me with some accounting advice) I have a UK address and pay my taxes to the UK so hopefully it should be straightforward.
I’m guessing I’ll need to open a UK business bank account? UK banking is a nightmare! That might be the main problem… often you need utility bills etc to open an account and I won’t have any of that stuff. We’ll see. Nice Norway site, by the way.
Thanks very much, I’m in process of heavily expanding it. With earnings like that you’ll need to watch you don’t start having to pay VAT too, although a good accountant can advise if some of your income is non-VATable…
Deindexing means that all those backlinks that give you link juice, search results, and PR are now invalid. So let’s say you have a site that was 100% BMR. That site now has zero links.
And while it’s good to get while the getting is good, doesn’t it bother you that you’ve essentially turned all your sites into link farms? Your slowly just burning your site properties into the ground.
Are you asking me a question or just giving me yet another negative opinion of yours? Every time you comment, it’s the same thing. I get it.
…”you’re”
Asking a question/explaining BMR. I remember when we met in Bangkok and you had all these adsense and affiliate stuff going.
Congrats Kirsty. Hope you’re putting some of this money aside for a rainy day. Hiring an accountant is a great idea too. I’m getting some advice now to try and improve my bookkeeping.
Thanks Dave. How are things going with you? I don’t think I’ve seen an income report on your site lately.
Yep, I’m stashing some money away but also seem to find things to do that involve flying way too much and too far. That’s my biggest expense, I guess. I really should be investing more in new sites so I think I’ll get onto that.
I’m doing well. Two of the first three months this year have hit the $5000 (gross) mark, so I hope that’s a trend that continues.
I’m finding that the more money I make, the more I spend on travel (like the Galapagos last year) and improving my standard of living. That’s fine in some countries, but it can start to become expensive in a place like Buenos Aires, let alone Brazil where I hope to live at some point before the World Cup.
A big reason why I don’t attend more travel and blogging conferences is I want to keep my airfare costs low during the year. If I fly somewhere, I want it to be because I’ll be spending at least a few months in the region.
For accounting I’d really recommend Crunch.co.uk. They run their own browser based software for accounting which is really good (means you don’t have to get Sage and also means the accountant can see exactly what a problem is without you having to prepare and send loads of spreadsheets to them) and user friendly and you have your own account manager who always emails back quickly or passes more complex things onto the accountant. Great for people like us who don’t spend time in the same place very much so need a more internet based way of dealing with accounts! I’ve used them for about 18 months now and couldn’t be happier, they do everything for me: payroll, annual accounts, annual returns, VAT registration, general tax advice, etc.
VAT freshold just went up to something like £77k I think, but to be honest even if you don’t hit it with a business like ours being VAT registered is a good thing: all our clients are VAT registered so can claim back any VAT you charge them, and it means you can claim back VAT on expenses from EU firms. You can voluntarily opt in even if you’re no where near the freshold and it’s probably good business sense to do so.
If you want to save money on stockphotos try GraphicLeftovers, the small version of graphics (which is usually big enough for all web needs) are usually only a $1 each.
While I’m recommending stuff, check out ManageWP. I did a short blog post on them recently, found out about them I think from adsense flippers. Really saves time with managing multiple wordpress installs.
Congrats on another great month btw. I really need to learn how to do these individual advertising deals, none of my income currently is from them but I make similar amounts on adsense and affiliates plus some more from display networks.
Lots of great tips to check out, thanks Sean! I had a look at the Crunch.co.uk site and it looks like it’d be perfect. I’ll post about it if/when I get my accounting things in order.
Hi, As you are not living in the UK (definitely spending more than three months of the year outside the country from what I gather) then there is no need to run your taxes through the UK. Think about setting up a business in HK or Singapore.
http://www.lifestylebusinesspodcast.com/hong-kong-corporation-internet-business/
Hey Deano. Thanks for the tip but I don’t plan on ever living in Hong Kong or Singapore… or maybe not the UK either, for that matter… but I’m familiar with the UK, I have family there, if I ever wanted to have a baby or needed medical attention for something I’d be comfortable there. So that’s where I want to pay my taxes. I’m not really on the lookout for the countries with the cheapest tax rates. I keep hearing that the UK has a pretty fair tax rate so that’s ok with me.
Hearing about people getting out of paying tax makes me uneasy… how much money does one person really need? Well… that’s my view on it, at least. Thanks for the advice, though!
WELL DONE KIRSTY! That’s awesome and awe-inspiring. I find your posts a real inspiration these days and a kick up the ass that I need to fight off the fatigue of this type of work.
I’d stay away from link building services, we all know Google doesn’t like these and are aggressively targeting such sites. I am sure you’ll continue to get good natural backlinks as your content is quality and informative.
LTD / LLC
Def a good idea! Pay lower tax and as RTWDAVE mentioned you need to consider the rainy days, by going LTD you will be able to take your dividends out of the company over a number of years instead of all in one year, thereby triggering a higher tax liability. This means you can spread your profits out.
VAT
OMG this gave me a serious head ache that lasted months! Lots of confusion around whether you include customers from non-eu countries, eu countries etc Remember Google is Ireland for us so their payments count in the threshold calculation but not part of your VAT calc! Find some good advice is my advice!
Firstly make sure you don’t go through the threshold, its calculated on the previous 12 months rolling. Secondly find a VAT accountant who knows the advertising / online industry well, there are some specialists out there, I mailed you one Kirsty.
Thirdly, providing you are under GBP 150K, then you can join the flat rate scheme, meaning you charge 20% VAT and only pay 10% VAT to the HMRC, thus making 10%! You cannot claim back VAT on things you buy under this scheme but in our industry you stand to make a lot more this way and it’s completely legit.
As for advice about setting up elsewhere, if you maintain a UK address or your income is derived from the UK then the HMRC will still see you as a resident and be after you so tread carefully. The UK is a low tax country when it comes to corporation tax so I don’t see it’s worth the hassle to go offshore. Just my opinion of course!
Ahhh! So much to think about! But thanks for putting it all on my radar. I might just have to take a trip to the UK sometime this year and sort out these worries. In the meantime I’ll start researching!
congratulations Kirsty. I’m an avid follower and really learn alot from every thing that you share in your blog
Hey! That’s great to know. Nice blog. The Philippines is one of my favourite countries.
Congratulations Kirsty,
It is really inspiring to see you doing so well.
Do you mind if I ask a question? I am looking to make money from my site. How do you go about finding advertisers for your site? Do you have an email template that you use or do they come to you?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks Alex. As for advertisers, they always approach me so I don’t have an awesome email template to share, unfortunately. The only advice I can give is to make sites that rank well in Google and have good content that people can actually use. It also helps to network with other bloggers/website people to exchange advertisers. You’d need to have had a few deals though to get this started, I think.
Hi Kirsty! I just spent the last hour pouring over your blog
It’s so inspiring to see people successfully follow their dream of travel & writing. I just started a few months ago (still kind of nervous about it, btw) but your posts have really made me feel like it’s possible! Thanks for sharing 
I’m happy to hear you’ve gotten some inspiration out of my blog! Thanks for sharing and good luck with your own bloggy journey.
Congratulations on your continued success, Kirsty. Your focus and sticktoitiveness is inspiring…and…I enjoy tracking your progress and sharing it with our readers.
Here’s how to protect your business’ income since over 85% of your revenue is currently coming from advertising…
Beef up revenue from information product sales and add coaching to the mix.
Add new, higher-value products and test the pricing of your existing products. Are you split testing landing page copy and/or prices? An often overlooked way to increase revenue is to raise prices. Often you won’t lose sales at all. In fact, sales might actually increase when you raise prices.
The reason is because pricing is a lot more flexible than most of us think — especially with regards to information products where there really is no set pricing model in people’s minds.
Also, do you have a ‘how to make money online’ product or coaching program?
If not, that’s about the easiest thing you could possibly offer right now to your existing audience because you now have the all important true story of going from $0 to $10,000 a month.
I think offering a coaching program in the $300 a month range would be right on target. Put 30 people from your existing audience in such program and you immediately get an additional $9,000 a month in revenue. You probably wouldn’t have to spend a dime in advertising to get your 30 people because they’re already in your audience…waiting to take advantage of such an offer if/when it is presented to them.
Plus, you would be helping a lot of people get what they want by sharing the information that has helped you build your uncommon level of online income.
I hope these ideas are of some value. Keep building!
Hi Kirsty,
An awful long time not seen and congrats to your success! I had a look around and can’t fine an email subscription or newsletter subscription for your blog, am I blind? I don’t use RSS readers … SY
because you are using link building services did your sites were visited by Google “Penguin”
Wow, yet another fantastic month. I may have to stop reading this site as it just makes me a bit jealous. But slow and steady wins the race… right? Good job!
Seeing posts like this always inspires me to keep on trucking. Congrats on this month and it hope it continues