August was a relatively crappy month for earnings but considering the amount of work I put in, I should be pretty pleased with the $1388 I raked in. I am, actually! It’s great to know that I can do virtually nothing and still pull in enough to sustain myself in Asia. I’m heading to Australia early next year and this amount of money won’t cut it there so I’m pretty motivated to get my arse back in gear this month.

Earnings breakdown:

• Google Adsense - $324 - Ahh! Another fall in Adsense! Not good. This is my consistent earner and it’s been letting me down of late. It looks like things are back on track for September though so I’m not going to worry too much. Yet.
• Affiliate Sales - $747 - It was a pretty crappy month for affiliates as well with nobody coming through except the one usual good performer.
• Linkworth & Text Link Ads - $148 - Linkworth is coming in every month at $24 but revenue from Text Link Ads is slowly dropping month by month by a few dollars here and there. I think this could be due to a fall in PR. It’s not that I’m losing links, I’m just getting paid less per link each month.
• Private Link Sales - $170 - My $30 in monthly subscriptions came through as always but I only sold two links for $140 total. I didn’t really try to sell these, I just answered some emails and that was that. Pretty easy. If I had had the time to actively search for link sales I’m sure I could have boosted this.

So I didn’t earn much in August but if you look at it basd on the number of hours I put in, I might have earned more per hour this month than any other! But if you look at how much I spent (I don’t even want to guess) I’m certainly in the red, especially if you put the Olympic ticket fees into this month. But I had an amazing time and would sacrifice earnings any day to have as much fun as I did in the month of August.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

My friends have all left Bangkok and I spent the day doing annoying things like laundry, attempting to get a Myanmar visa, and heading to a massive shopping centre dedicated to electronics to buy a second portable hard drive.

Yesterday I was scare-mongered into doing something about the fact that all of my photos (about 100 gigs) from the past five years of my life are on one portable hard drive and nowhere else. If something were to happen to that hard drive I would be kicking myself into next week and my friends pointed this important fact out to me.

So I finally decided that backing up my backup was essential for my peace of mind and took a cab to this huge, impressive shopping centre for computer and other electronic goodies. The place is six or seven floors of chaos but has everything you could ever hope for as far as computer goods go.

I wandered around for a while before seeing the same model, a Seagate Free Agent, that I currently have. I figured sticking with a drive that hasn’t let me down is a smart move and picked up a 250 gig model for 3600 bath which is about $104 USD by today’s exchange rate. I think I paid about 80 quid a couple years ago for a 160 gig model so I can’t really complain about that price.

So now I’ve got some more annoying things on my plate for my last 24 hours in Bangkok. I’m about to back up all of my files to the second hard drive, tickets to Chang Mai need to be booked, Myanmar visas need to be collected and then tomorrow I’m off to the post office to send the smaller drive home to Canada for safe keeping. It’ll certainly be a relief knowing that my old photos are safe and sound and I’m looking forward to filling up another 100 gigs worth of new stuff.

I’ll be hopping a bus to Chang Mai tomorrow night to catch up with my friends again and have another week of fun before I will have to get down to some serious work. My August earnings update will hopefully be coming tomorrow and things should be getting back on track around here pretty soon. Who knew the whole work/travel thing would be so tricky?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!