I really should have posted this update before my friend arrived on August 2nd and the Olympic chaos began, but it slipped through the cracks. But it hasn’t been forgotten and July turned out to be a great month coming it at nearly $2280. I hadn’t even realised I’d earned so much until just now when I pulled the numbers together. Considering how much I spent over the past month, that’s good news.

Earnings breakdown:

• Google Adsense - $359 - After falling last month, Adsense is slowly creeping back up but it’s still below the $400 mark that I reached a few months ago.
• Affiliate Sales - $1130 - I had a good month boosted up by nearly $100 in insurance sales through Clixgalore and $220 in van insurance sales.
• Linkworth & Text Link Ads - $150 - Same as last month. No changes to report which is surprising given my fall in PR across most of my sites that use Text Link Ads.
• Private Link Sales - $640 - Link sales came through this month with a few renewals and five new sales, all on my Working Holiday Insurance site. That site was miraculously awarded a PR5 (it has since fallen to PR4) and I decided to take advantage of that while I could and sold nearly $500 in new links as a result.

Ok it’s time for bed. I’m trying to cram work in anywhere I can. It’s hard when I’ve also got to catch up on emails and Facebook stuff. Too busy! One more week and I will be able to spend my days however I want to and that’ll mean a lot of time soaking up free wifi in cafes.

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My friend and I have decided to splash out a bit for a four star hotel in Bangkok in an attempt to recover from nearly breaking ourselves over the course of the Olympics. At least two events per day, crappy venue food, 50 cent beer and awesome parties each night means that we both really need to look after ourselves for the next few days.

I’m sitting in a hotel in Bangkok now called the Windsor Suite or something like that. The staff are great, breakfast is amazing and for around $50 per night for the room, it’s not going to kill the budget. Internet isn’t free though and at 600 baht per day, it’s actually pretty expensive. Plus there’s no desk or decent table so I’m sitting on the floor propped on a pillow and doing my work on a chair. Not ideal but I’ve got so much work to do that I’ll have to adapt.

The Olympics were fantastic. I had a great time and will post more about it over on my travel blog Wanderstruck but in the meantime here are a few of my favourite things about The Games.

• Volunteers - The volunteers were unreal. I have never seen people be that friendly before in my life and it was great. They all seemed to be having a blast as well and it showed.
• Spectators - Chinese people attending the Games were super friendly too and it was easy to get them cheering for your team or to get them to cheer along with you for China. Wearing China gear to events was a hit and we’d often have to spend an hour leaving an event due to all the photos people wanted with us. They taught us songs, gave us presents, and left us both with a great impression of Chinese people. Fans from other countries were great too and we discovered early on that cheering with a group of fans sitting nearby is a fun way to get into a sport if Canada or Australia weren’t competing.
• Venues - All of the venues were great and except for the occasional long line for the toilet or food stalls, everything went smoothly. It was great to get to see inside the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube. Those were both highlights. The Olympic Green could have been a bit more green and a bit less concrete but overall it was a cool place to spend the day. Except for the terrible food.
• Events - My friend and I have been planning this trip for over a year and as a result had lots of tickets to lots of different sporting events. She wanted mainly swimming, I wanted more random things and it turned out well for me. We only got one swimming ticket and filled the rest of our time with things like weightlifting (very fun), handball (awesome sport), wrestling (made some friends from Khazakstan) and other sports that don’t really get publicity any other time of the year. Got to see Canada win gold at rowing too which was pretty cool.
• Parties - I had two friends in town who used to be my roommates in London and we did our best to live up to those crazy days. The bars were rocking every night and everyone I met were in great moods and having a total blast. I’m not sure I want to see beer again anytime soon though.

So I’m a huge fan of the Beijing Olympics but Im glad it’s over… for four years until London at least. Actually, I think the Vancouver 2010 Olympics might be making their way onto my agenda too. I’ve got a week in Bangkok with my friends and then they’ll all be heading back to reality and I think I’ll be off to Burma for some low key travels for a month. I’ve got a couple days of work to cram in in the meantime although that rooftop pool is seeming pretty tempting at the moment.

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I’m busy and after a few months of cruising and doing a lot of lazing around, I’m certainly not used to it. I’ve got a friend staying with me who does a good job of dragging me out of bed to Olympics events and tourist attractions and also makes sure we hit the town pretty hard at night.

It means lots of early mornings and late nights and also means I have to think of someone else when I make my plans. Since I’ve always got somewhere to be, I’ve had zero time to devote to working which is why my blog posts haven’t really existed this month.

But it’s a good kind of busy so I don’t mind at all. It’s awesome to see my friend, the Olympics have been amazing and there will be plenty of time to devote to work and alone time in a few weeks so I’m going to live in the moment, enjoy the ride and hope that things don’t fall apart for me on the web front.

I sort of like this whole being busy thing. I’m almost laid back to a fault so having someone around to motivate me to get going and test how much I’m able to cram into a day has been a good learning experience, even if it isn’t work related. I’m not sure how much more I can take of it though!

Olympics updates to come at some point. I just got back from seeing Bolt set a new 100 meters world record which was very cool. Go Canada!

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Hey all! Sorry I haven’t checked in at all. I knew this would be a busy month because I’ve got a crapload of Olympics tickets and mainly because I have some friends in town which means I won’t really have much time to myself. It’s been great here in Beijing… I’ve met some great people, seen some great events and I don’t think I’ve been sober in a week.

But it go tme thinking… I’ve been blowing money like crazy! I’ don’t even think twice before taking money out of my bank accounts or buying dinner or paying for a cab. It’s been so much fun but my bank account is dying a death.

But because I know I’ll be heading to Thailand to do this course thing I’m not really worried abut it at all. It’s sort of fun having periods of spending and periods of saving. Obviously this Olympics will mean some serious spening but since I’ve already paid for a 10 week course in Thailand, I know I’ll mae that up and com eout with a skill to boot.

It’s an amazing thing to know that studying or volunteering can mean savings!I’ll check in soon with some Olympics updates. So far it’s been unreal! So much fun.

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I’ve noticed that posts made on weekends tend to get fewer comments. Maybe my weekend posts are super crappy? I don’t know. I think it has more to do with people reading blogs from work where they’re chained to a desk. On the weekends people tend to flee their computers which means less blog reading.

Not having a nine to five type job, I completely lose track of what day of the week it is and have never thought about saving my posts for mid week. But maybe I should fall in line with the rest of the world? It’s always nice to get comments and whacking up a post on a Saturday followed by another one before Monday rolls around means that it gets sort of hidden away. Switching to a Monday to Firday type blogging schedule it might also be a good way for me to keep track of the days of the week. Although I have to admit, it’s kind of nice not knowing.

On a completely unrealted note… I got a message from my Couchsurfing buddy John who has some free Olympics tickets to give away. He doesnt want anything in return, but he’d like you do a good thing for someone else in return.

I really like this idea. Some of these Olympics tickets are going for crazy amounts. I played poker last night with Finnish guy who paid 1700 euros (EUROS!) for an athletics ticket where his countryman is favoured to win at the javellin throw. That’s a lot of money to watch a guy throw a pointy stick! I love seeing people who aren’t tempted by the almighty buck and would rather have that warm and fuzzy feeling by doing something nice.

Kudos John, let us know who you decide to give your tickets to and what sort of good deed they have up their sleeve.

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I had loads of free time in June and did a wee experiment to see if commenting on other people’s blogs more than usual would have any sort of imapact on the number of visitors and RSS subscribers for Nerdy Nomad. I figured it was a pretty sure bet that commenting more would lead to higher traffic, more subscribers and more comments on my own blog which turned out to be the case.

On the flip side, I also wondered what sort of an impact not participating much in the blogging community would have on my site. I spent July travelling around and maybe left a total of five comments on other blogs over the course of that month. I was fully expecting that not commenting would have the exact opposite impact of commenting lots and was really surprised to see my traffic and RSS numbers rise substantially despite my month long vow of silence.

• RSS Subscribers - At the end of May my subscribers were at 129 and with all of my commenting they rose to 158 by the end of June. Now at the end of July they’ve jumped up even more and are sitting pretty at 225.
• 45n5 Top 100 Blog List - I started at 234, moved up to 205 and now I’m at 191. I had been up around 170 before Google dropped me from PR4 to PR3 which affected my ranking.
• Comments - I had 55 comments in May, 148 in June and 104 in July.
• Traffic - I jumped from 42 unique visitors per day in May up to 58 in June. July saw a further jump with an average of 62 unique visitors.

So… what does this all tell me? Not much! I’m confused. My best guess is that once you get the word about your blog out there, it takes a while for everyone to catch on and you can see the benefits of commenting for several months.

Who knows. Any thoughts? How did your blogs fare in July?

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It seems as though Google might have caught up with my link selling ways, or maybe they’ve just jiggled around their PR calculations - either way, I’ve been walloped. They updated their Pagerank a couple of days ago and all of my sites felt the wrath.

Travoholic is now at PR2. Oh the humanity! My beloved site that I falsely believed was also loved by Google has well and truly learned its lesson. Stuck in London is still, very mysteriously, a PR0. Nerdy Nomad has dropped from PR4 to PR3 which is annoying because I had been blazing a little trail up the 45n5 Top 100 List. My PR5 travel insurance site has dropped to PR 4 which is still pretty high for a site like that. The only good news is that Wanderstruck went from PR0 to PR1. Yep. That’s the best I can do.

I guess the good news, for me, is that I went on a little links selling spree before the PR tanked across most of my sites. Some people would say that could be the reason for the drop in my PR… I would have to tend to agree that Google might just be onto me after all these years.

I had stopped paying much attention to PR but now that things are collectively dropping, I might start giving it a bit more attention and do my best to get the sites back up to scratch. When link sales is such a bit chunk of my paycheque each month, I would be stupid not to try to boost it back up.

It’ll be interesting to see if people renew their links that are due to expire within the next few months.

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One of the major benefits of working online is that I have the freedom and time to explore old interests and discover new ones. Part of this is being able to devote time to learning about all of those things I’ve always meant to get around to but just never have.

One of these is sustainable living. I’ve been interested in the whole idea voluntary simplicity since university and really love the idea of creating a lifestyle that is sustainable. Working online creates financial freedom so learning skills to be able to rely on myself for other needs besides money is the logical next step. I’m not interested in dropping out of society and joining the ranks of the great unwashed, just in living a more simple and healthy life while building practical, useful skills.

So with that in mind, I’ve enrolled in an internship at Pun Pun farm near Chang Mai in Thailand. I’ve come across their website many times in the past but never really knew about the internship until now. I had been planning on visiting a neighbouring farm, The Panya Project, and stumbled onto it. Not only will it allow me to learn new stuff, it’ll also fill up a large portion of my time. I was wondering what to do with five months in Southeast Asia since I’m not really too interested in the backpacking trail at the moment so this is perfect.

It’s ten weeks long from November 1st and costs US$1400 which includes food and accommodation. This works out to be just under $20 per day which is an amazing deal considering I will be learning loads of new things and probably eating yummy, organic Thai food. I will probably end up saving money while I’m there which to me seems like the bargain of the year. The course teaches about adobe and natural building, seed saving, permaculture, water sanitation and lots of good stuff like that. It’s set in a farming community and I expect I’ll meet lots of interesting local people as well as other travellers.

I’m hoping to use my free time to learn new things as often as possible on my travels. I would be really upset with myself if I blew all my free time at the pub! What sorts of things would you study or take courses in if you had the time and money? Is there somewhere in the world you’d like to head to specifically to study something?

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Every once in awhile bloggers like to make little posts about their work spaces. They post photos of their massive monitors (sometimes two), super huge desks crammed with important looking things, and sometimes even a strategically placed snowboard or some other cool type thing in the background.

Sadly, I have no workspace. Happily, I have many! So I thought a post with photos and little blurbs about my workspaces so far might be interesting. Some of my working spots so far have been inspiring, some have been depressing, but the beauty is that I didn’t have to be at any of them from 9 to 5. One thing I have realised though is that working from anywhere isn’t always practical.

Here they are, most recent first:

Airport - Shenzhen, China
China never ceases to amazing me with its free wifi and airports always seem to have a free signal floating around which is great. Too bad I spent most of my time trying to nap away a hangover rather than getting work done. I wish other world airports would get going witht the free wifi thing… come on Heathrow!

Mix - Soho, Hong Kong
This place is great. Fresh fruit juices, healthy, tasty food, free wifi, comfy chairs, air-conditioning, friendly staff, and there are loads of other wireless workers here too so I don’t feel like a big nerd sitting by myself and typing away. They even have a guy playing live guitar on Saturdays. If there’s one in Beijing I am going to have to find it.     

Garden Hostel - Kowloon, Hong Kong
It ain’t pretty but it’s an ok place to stay and there’s a garden area to plunk down and do some work. The patio furniture isn’t exactly comfortable but it beats working on my bed. If you need some distraction then there is a martial arts school on weeknights and they bust out the karaoke machine on Sunday afternoons.      

Bingo Hostel - Fenghuang, China
My travel buddy and fellow wifi addict found this place after combing the streets of Fenghuang. I decided to stay an extra five days because of the great working environment. There’s wifi access in the room and space to work and all for 25 yuan per night (under US$4). Their smelly dog wanted to befriend me which was distracting.    

Peasant Hotel - Langde, China
Located in a tiny village that is popular with day trippers, there really was seriously nothing to do at night. So I hid away in my room, enjoyed the silence and typed away. Not the most exciting evening, but it’s good to have some peace and quiet now and then. I had the giant spiders to keep me company and the roosters in the (early!) morning.            

National Hostel - Chengyang, China
This place had no wifi but the rooms were cheap at 30 yuan per night, the setting beside the river was beautiful, and I managed to rig up a desk by pulling a small table over to my bed. The hostel did have a really fast net connection and the hugest monitor I’ve ever seen so uploading work would have been possible.                 

Cafe - Dazhai, China
This place served great food and it seemed like I was the only one ever in there so I got plenty of quiet time. No wifi but the view was one of the best views I’ve ever had while working. I was tempted to spend all of my time just staring out at the rice terraces though.    

Apartment - Yangshuo, China
I volunteered at an English school for a week in Yangshuo and got free accommodation thrown into the mix. The room was equipped with a desk but no wifi. My roommate was an artist and tended to take over the desk most nights but I usually spent my nights at the bars and worked during the day so it was no problem.                 

Apartment - Beijing, China
It seems like all of the wifi I’ve encountered on my travels is faster than what I have in my apartment in Beijing. I always have problems uploading files with FTP. Things seem to stall a lot. But I’m all set up there with a desk in my room, food in the fridge, air-con pumping and access to books and other resources that help me get things done.                 

Yes Inn - Hong Kong Island
This hostel had fre wifi that oozed into the rooms. I made a makeshift desk, sat on the floor and I was in a six bed dorm so had a couple of people around to keep me company. One girl put on some music and it was a great environment to get stuff done, despite my increasingly sore ass from sitting on the floor.                 

Travellers Friendship Hostel - Kowloon, Hong Kong
This place was a hell hole! Terrible staff, scary toilets, prison cell rooms. There was free wifi but you could only access it from the hallway in front of the elevators and there were no tables. I had to plunk onto the floor and use a plastic stool as a desk under the watchful eye of the evil owner. Never stay here!                

Matahari Lodge - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
A brand new hostel, this place was spotless. It had what looked like a nice working environment complete with a balcony but I did most of my work from my room. I’m not sure why because working on a bed is never comfortable and the room, as you can see with the modern look, wasn’t exactly inspiring.                 

Father’s Guesthouse - Cameron Highlands, Malaysia
A nice hostel with wifi, lots of spaces to work and some very rainy weather all meant that I got plenty done in the Cameron Highlands with a bit of hiking in between. Having lots of choice of where to work is great. The TV in the common room was noisy but there were lots of other nooks and crannies to escape to.   

D’Lagoon - Perentian Islands, Malaysia
Ah the hammock on a beach shot. It seems to be what people think of when they dream of working from anywhere. Let me be the first to tell you that it doesn’t work. It’s super uncomfortable and attempting to look at the laptop while sitting in the hammock totally killed my neck. But it certainly looks impressive.  

Trekker Lodge - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
I really liked this place despite it not looking like anything special. The staff were super friendly and the common area was filled with nice people. It just had a great vibe about it and I was surprised I enjoyed it so much. It had free wifi but I spent more time chatting with people than working.  

Some Hotel - Dhaka, Bangladesh
This place had no wifi but I had my handy, dandy net connection through my mobile phone so that was ok. They had great food and even a Western toilet but staff liked to come in without knocking. The do that in Bangladesh. I got lots done because I didn’t want to venture outside to the chaos that is Dhaka.  

Hands On Headquarters - Rayenda, Bangladesh
Of all the places I’ve been online, this has to be the most remote. I never would have expected to be able to get online from rural Bangladesh and I was amazed to get a signal from somewhere not even on any maps, not even local ones! The power cut out all the time but I still got lots done.  

Greenhouse B&B - Dhaka, Bangladesh
This place promised a net connection but I never did get it to work. It didn’t matter though because I was online in no time once I bought a mobile phone. The guesthouse was super nice complete with a Western toilet, meals with the family and a huge room with a giant desk. I felt like I was back at home. Who would have thought?  

Enigmata - Camiguin, Philippines
This was one of the most unique places I’ve ever stayed. Built into an old tree with loads of character, it had lots of places to escape to do work. It had great food and friendly staff to party with. The place has a really creative vibe and it’s impossible not to be inspired. If it had wifi I might still be there now.  

Nuts Huts - Bohol, Philippines
Another beautiful, peaceful place with great food and not much else to do besides meet people and get down to some serious work. No wifi here either though but I managed to sort out photos and do some writing. I did most of my work in the cafe which overlooks the forest but I forgot to take a photo of it.  

Frendz Resort - Boracay, Philippines
My first attempt at working in a beautiful, tropical location went well. This hostel was just far away from the beach not to have in tempt me, and had a good wifi connection, nice working area on the front porch of my room, and a bar nearby serving up tasty beverages. The owner is nice and it was a great place to get stuff done.   

Friendly’s Guesthouse - Manila, Philippines
I loved this place. The guy who runs it, Benji, is so welcoming and friendly. He puts on a free wine and cheese night every Saturday and always parties with the guests who all seemed to be really interesting when I was there. The balcony is a great spot to work and meeting people is easy. I’d go back there in a second.  

I wish I had more photos of my laptop poolside or on the beach, but the reality is that working without a desk is really awkward and unproductive for me. Although, that said, I seem to spend an awful lot of time working from my bed which is only good for one thing - easy access to napping. 

What’s the most beautiful, craziest or impractical place you’ve ever worked? Is there anywhere you got a net connection you never would have imagined would be possible?

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I’ve finally made some decisions about my old, neglected friend Travoholic. The site has been rotting away for years exisiting only as a billboard for link sales. The site is loved by Google and I’ve decided to start giving it a little love of my own once again.

I’m a bit wary of changing the site around too much because I don’t want to lose any of my rankings in the SERPs. But I have decided to add a new section for articles, country guides and hostel reviews for Asia. I might set the new section up with a new design that I prefer and see how things go. If I see that Google likes it and start to see the pages ranking well, I might convert the entire site to the new design and restructure the navigation and hope for the best. I have a lot of content to add and really think I’m capable of doubling the site’s traffic with some new articles and an Asia section.

My other major project has been my travel blog, Wanderstruck. I had originally wanted to make this site a huge guide, review, video, photo and blog type site because I really love the domain name. I’ve instead decided that I can do all the extra stuff over at Travoholic and will instead keep Wanderstruck as a travel blog only. I’m looking for some feedback on it. I’m not sure about the colours (mainly the brown) and am in search of plugins that work well for travel blogs. I really don’t know much about the world of plugins so don’t even really know what I’m missing. If anyone can point me to travel blogs you like, maybe I can get some inspiration. There are still lots of little things I need to do to the site including uploading photos to Flickr. am I the only person who thinks Flickr completely sucks? I will never understand why it’s so popular.

I’m not planning on monetising the site. It’s just going to be a way to keep in touch with family and friends and hopefully attract a few readers who I don’t know. I guess it’s more for fun and maybe getting my name out there into the travel blogosphere. I can’t believe I just used the word ‘blogosphere’.

Any feedback is appreciated! I’m looking forward to getting the travel blog up to scratch and am looking even more forward to seeing what kind of an impact adding new content to Travoholic.com has on that site. Once I get back to Beijing I’ll be hard at work on Stuck in Beijing so I’ve got a couple of days worth of hard work ahead of me here in Hong Kong.

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