Ahhh! My earnings have dropped down to $885 and I have only myself to blame for some serious laziness. I have been blogging sort of reliably but I haven’t been doing much else. I know that I work best later at night when everyone is asleep but I’m usually too tired to think after about 10pm so I haven’t managed to be productive. I need a kick in the pants and hopefully this crappy month will scare me into doing some work.
Earnings breakdown:

• Google Adsense - $195 - Adsense is getting worse but I haven’t done anything about it. The good news is that so far in January, things seem to be back to normal.
  
• Affiliate Sales - $555 - Affiliate sales are diversifying but that doesn’t help much when my big earner takes a hit. If it’s an indicator for what lies ahead then I’ll be in trouble.
• Linkworth & Text Link Ads - $23 - I think this might be my final month for this category. TLA has been eliminated from my sites and Linkworth has cancelled their one remaining ad.
• Private Link Sales - $30 - I am riding high on my three monthly subscription payments for $10 and not much else. I have a few people to collect payment from but haven’t heard back. I think my PR for Travoholic.com has dropped to zero and many of my other sites are still stuck there. Emailing Google about this is on my agenda but, like everything else, I’ve been putting it off.

December saw a big drop in earnings but it was also the second full month in a row of doing no work at all. I have learned that being surrounded by people isn’t conducive to me being productive. I am going to attempt a late night working session tonight and see how that goes.

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First up, happy New Year to everyone! I had a great night here in Gonaives, Haiti after a bit of a crazy day getting back here that you can read about on Wanderstruck if you like.

Sorry I haven’t written in a little while, I’ve been taking a break from the mud and have just returned from a week in the Dominican Republic in a small tourist town called Cabarete. The place is everything someone who has been in Haiti for two months could want – easy, organized, stocked with great food and drink options, and equipped with a beautiful sandy beach to relax our sore bones on.

I left the computer behind and enjoyed a week of doing nothing but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t considering it as a possible working destination. On the plus side you have the beauty of the place, cafes and hotels equipped with reasonably fast wifi, lots of people around and decent nightlife, plenty of activities to keep you busy when you want to escape the internet, and a large number of rental options from hotels to apartments to a surf camp hostel.

On the downside, Cabarete is very touristy and accommodation is expensive and food was a lot more than I expected. I attempted to find accommodation on the internet but couldn’t find much for less than $17 to $20 per night. Once we arrived in town we found a place smack in the middle of the action and across the road from the beach for $10 per person. Cheap by most standards but not the bargain that Asia can offer. Plus, to get this price we crammed four people into two double beds. Had I been travelling by myself, I think I would have been lucky to get a place for $10 per night unless I tried to wrangle a long term deal or stayed in the off season.

All up, I had a great time in this place and it was the perfect way to unwind from the craziness of Haiti. Cabarete is small enough of a place to feel like a town rather than a tourist resort similar to the ones that can be found all around the Dominican Republic. People seem friendly and I think a stop here would be worthwhile, especially for people who are into kite or wind surfing.

I’ll post my December earnings tomorrow and I hope 2009 will see a turnaround in my sliding earnings. All the best in 2009!

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It’s official. Hands On’s deployment to Gonaives, Haiti has been extended until February 28th and I have some decisions to make. Expensive ones. I, once again, overplanned and bought plane tickets down to my supposed next destination, Buenos Aires, in advance.

I obviously didn’t learn my lesson from the US$500 I threw away on a deposit on a course in Thailand that I didn’t end up attending and now I’m set to lose out on about US$750 on plane tickets. Losing out on the money is annoying but not the end of the world. This thing that scares me is truly not having any plans after February 28th when the deployment ends. It’s so unlike me and I’m kind of scared about it, to be honest. Excited, but scared.

I do still really want to go to Buenos Aires afterwards but I’m thinking now that Central America somewhere makes more sense. I’m not really too interested in travelling down to South America at the moment and will be on the lookout for WWOOFing and volunteering type things but have nothing in mind so far.

As of right now, it looks like I’ll be throwing away my plane ticket fares. The flight from Port-au-Prince to Miami is changeable but would actually end up costing more to change it than the actual ticket. The flight from Miami to Buenos Aires is, I’m told by Travelocity, of the ‘use it or lose it’ variety. A few of the people here are telling that I should call their respective airlines and plead my case for a credit of some kind… does anyone have any experience doing this? I think the first flight is with American Airlines and the second is with Aerolineas Argentinas.

So I need to book my shuttle out of town tonight and that means I need to make the call now. It’s not the end of the world if I can’t go back on the shuttle because it’s full, but it’d be a pain in the arse. I am loving it here at the moment. My body is sore all over but I’m addicted to mud, loving the people that I’m here with and really can’t imagine leaving on January 12th. On the other hand, I had been excited to head to BA and I don’t really want to throw more money away.

Nobody here at the moment seems to want to leave and people are extending and even coming back to Haiti because they’re having so much fun. I think I’ve got a good thing going at the moment so staying seems like a no-brainer… why am I still having a hard time making the call?

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The other night I was chatting to a volunteer from Belgium about travelling, life at home, future plans, and all that good stuff and she asked me if I could ever se myself living back in Canada. This question always gets asked and the reply is quick and to the point - ‘no’. I asked her the same question and she replied that she couldn’t really see herself living anywhere else and that, as much as she wants to travel and see the world, Belgium will always be her base.Her main reason was that she has just a great network of family and friends and if she were to spend years away at a time she would feel like she’d be missing too much. Her answer sort of caught me off guard only because it’s something I had never really thought about.

When I return home after a year or two I am always surprised at how little has really changed. Things seem to tick along like clockwork and I am able to slot right back in to where I left off. Some friends have had babies and bought houses which are pretty major things, but life at home generally feels the same as it did 10 years ago. I don’t feel like things are passing me by if I’m not at home, I tend to feel the opposite. I feel like when I’m stuck at home, things in the rest of the world are passing me by and I can’t wait to get back out there and experience those things… whatever they may be.

I might feel differently if all of my friends were still living at home or if I had neices or nephews there or if a family member was ill but, as of right now, it just doesn’t feel like there’s much I’m missing. Does that sound really harsh? I’m not sure.

Do you feel torn when you travel because there are things going on at home you want to experience and be a part of or are you happy to let life at home keep on ticking on in your absence? Do you see home as a place you’ll return to eventually once you get travelling out of your system or are you happy to keep your time there to short visits and call a new place home?

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A while ago I bought the domain name http://www.london-2012-games.com with the hopes of starting up a simple site about the London Olympics. Yes… the domain name is kind of lame. It’s spammy and I know it but it has the keywords I want without using the term ‘Olympics’ which might get me into trouble down the road.

As you can see, I haven’t done a thing with the site beyond a couple of lame posts. Despite looking neglected, the site is high on my agenda for development. So far, according to Google UK, there doesn’t seem to be too much competition for my target keywords ‘london 2012 olympics’. There are some obvious sites on the main page including the official sites, official blog, Wikepedia and some unofficial sites too. There are also two BBC news story pages which I am pretty sure could be bumped if I build a good site and am smart about my SEO.

I tend to be able to rank on the first page of Google, often at number one, for terms I specifically target so I’m pretty confident in my SEO abilities. Of course, those terms probably aren’t nearly as competetive as the ones I’ll be targetting for the London Olympics, so I might be in for a nasty surprise.

I plan to keep people updated on the progress of this site and what I will be doing to sneak it up the SERPs. I’m still not sure if a blog or a static site is the way to go, though. I’ve never had much success ranking with blogs, but there are many advantages and the interactivity of a blog is attractive. On the other hand, I have done well with ranking static sites and, given that I won’t necessarily want to spend a lot of time interacting with people on this topic, maybe throwing up a static site will be the way to go.

I plan on getting started this week so feel free to check in on the site and explore. I will be using this site as an SEO case study type thing and will tell all in an effort to see what works and what doesn’t and to share ideas with you all.

It’ll be my first time attempting to play with the big boys and target what will become a mega popular search term in three years but I think getting in early and being smart about SEO will pay off in the end.

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At these volunteering projects there is always talk of possible extensions. The Hands On deployment to Peru in late 2007 was extended by a couple of months and the Bangladesh project in January 2008 went on for an extra month. Last night we were all informed that, if the stars align and partnerships with UNICEF and Oxfam pan out, this current project will go until late February, at least.

I would jump at the chance to stay for longer but, as things stand now, I have two flights lined up for mid January, one to Miami and then from there to Buenos Aires. I’m loving it here right now! I’m surrounded by a great group of volunteers, both local and Haitian, the work we’re doing is challenging and rewarding, and Haiti itself is a very interesting place. It sucks to think that I might have to give up on the opportunity to stay for the sake of a couple of plane tickets.

I seem to have found myself in this situation a few times since starting my travels in January and it makes me ask the question: How long should I wait before booking my onward flights? I only tend to book onward flights well in advance when my plans are set in stone or if I need one to make it through immigration for my next destination. I have since realised that no plans are set in stone and that’s how I like it. Unfortunately though, the reality is that waiting until the last possible moment to buy a plane ticket could potentially end up costing thousands.

I didn’t really want to buy my tickets out of Haiti, but it’s a very expensive place to fly from and I wasn’t too keen to get stranded here. I saw some cheap flights, bought them on the spot and, as a result, locked myself into a set leaving date. Is there a limit to the price you’re willing to pay for travel freedom? Is a super cheap flight worth giving up a bit of your flexibility? Maybe I should start having no plans whatsoever and just roam around willy nilly.

I am seriously considering staying longer here, even if I can’t change my current ticket. It’ll cost me a fortune on lost flights but, in the end, it’s only money. It would be a shame to leave a good thing early for the sake of a cheap flight.

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November saw my earning sdrop down to $1355 and I deserved for them to fall because I’ve done nothing to prevent it. November has been a pretty slack month and, besides partly building a site about Sydney, I’ve really done nothing to prevent a fall in income. Still, I can’t complain, especially since I haven’t done much work. I know that, with a bit more effort on my part, I will be able to kick things up a knotch but I think all of that good stuff will have to wait until I hit Argentina in January because Haiti isn’t really that conducsive to getting work done.

Earnings breakdown:

• Google Adsense - $240 - Adsense is poo yet again this month and getting worse. I’m not losing readers, in fact my sites are getting more visitors than ever, so I’m thinking it had something to do with falling payouts. Economic climate and all that stuff. Whoe knows. The city guides I’m building at the moment will be monotised at first mainly with Adsense so I hope that brings the monthly payments back up.
  
• Affiliate Sales - $1005 - I’ve started to spread the wealth a bit to a few different affilite programs but still not as much as I’d like. Each month’s performances with the various affiliates are a bit sporadic and I’d like to have things producing month after month, rather than having a good month one month and a bad one the next.
• Linkworth & Text Link Ads - $23 - I kicked Text Link Ads to the curb and I am missing out on the $75-ish monthly income… but not that much. The prices paid per link were dropping each month and I wasn’t happy that the ad space they were selling was going for as much as it should. I am hoping that, by removing TLA, I will be able to achieve higher PR on several of my sites but time will tell.
• Private Link Sales - $87 - It was a pretty crappy month with no new link sales and a few cancellations. I have a biggie lined up for December first though so here’s hoping December is much better in this area.

My bank balance is slowly creeping back up to a healthy level so I’m happy about that. I’m not making as much per month as I’d like but I ‘m not too worried about that. I am loving it here in Haiti but it’s a difficult place to get work done due to lots of interesting conversations going on all the time combined with the whole being super tired at the end of each day. I think as a minimum I will try to finish my living in Sydney site but mainly I want to enjoy the time I have here and worry about the work stuff later.

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I’m sitting in a little office-like room at my temporary home here in Gonaives, Haiti with a wicked fast internet connection and loads of stuff to do. Am I getting any work done? Hell no.

People who eagerly flock to supposedly dangerous places to shovel mud for weeks or months on end tend to be just a little bit crazy, and those are the people I usually get on with really well. The volunteering project I’m on right now has 22 people on it right now and the numbers will keep increasing from here on in until it ends in January. It might creep up to as high as 40 volunteers at once, all of whom are interesting in one way or another and most of whom enjoy chatting each night over a few beers.

It makes sitting here in this little office pretty tough. There are people to get to know outside and I am finding it hard not to pack up my computer and head out to join in the conversations. It’s really hard when the people I’m around are so much fun. It’s obviously a good thing but it makes getting work done pretty difficult.

People tend to come home and pass out for two hours during lunch so maybe I can use that time to get some productive stuff done. Unfortunately, I’d prefer to pass out durng lunch as well. I am going to set myself a goal of getting my living in Sydney site complete befor ethe end of November and then set another couple of goals for December. It’s the only way I think I will be able to motivate myself to sit in front of the computer instead of enjoying good company, a few drinks and the beautiful starry skys.

This working on the road thing is great but it can certainly be challenging at times like these. Ok, blog post done… time to go socialise!

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I was Twittering the other day and came across a tweet (is that what they’re called?) by Lea Woodward from Location Independent, a really good blog about taking your work with you on the road that I’ve been following for a while. She posted looking for contributors for her blog and I replied asking for more details.

I’ve written a few articles here and there in the past for small amounts of money and I’ve enjoyed it. I’m not interested in taking on a lot of paid writing projects, but I think having one or two on the go will be great for a few reasons.

• Money - Extra money is never a bad thing… that’s all I can really say about that.
• Diversifying my income streams - Most of my earnings are split between one affiliate program, ever diminishing Adsense earnings and paid links and I’d like to branch out a little bit more, even if just for a small amount each month.
• Publicity - By writing on other blogs associated with the working and travelling niche, I can work towards establishing myself as a bit of an expert in the area which might come in handy at some point.
• Backlinks - Getting inbound, one-way links from an established, popular blog will help my own blog with PR and search engines. At least that’s what they’re supposed to do.
• Sky is the limit - If a popular blog continues to do well I can write articles, forget about them and ride the wave of their success by reaching new readers and having very strong backlinks.
• Gets me into a routine - Normally I wouldn’t be too interested in being accountable for producing a set number of articles per month but I think a little bit of structure can be a good thing and I’m willing to give it a try.
• Force me to focus on my niche - Writing articles on living a location independent lifestyle will mean that I’ll have to know a lot about it. I think there are a lot of things I can write already but I would look most forward to doing some research and expanding my knowledge in this area.

I know loads of people who would dream about being able to make a living through their writing. I’m not one of them. I like writing but it’s not something I would want to spend day after day doing and certainly not under the pressure of having to make a living from it but I think throwing a few writing projects in here and there will be a big benefit to this blog and to my business overall.

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I made a post about my first week in Haiti over on Wanderstruck but I just wanted to add a wee bit on this blog too because I’m having an amazing time here and want to share my experiences so far with people.

Today saw a group of about 10 volunteers, half locals and half international, heading out to a mud-encrusted neighbourhood to deliver sets of tools to 50 families. Oxfam is behind this programme and the idea is that each set of tools (a wheelbarrow, 2 shovels, a rake, three pairs of boots, some gloves, a bucket and a pick) will be shared with five families who are nearby so that 250 total families in the community can work together in cleaning up the mess.

We had to wait a couple of hours for the truck with the tools to arrive and, in the meantime, the Oxfam group got the local kids singing songs about hand sanitation. It’s amazing how quick a child will learn a song about hygiene when there are balloons involved as prizes. The children in this neighbourhood are all really fun and smiley but the reality of the situation hits home after witnessing them fight over empty cardboard boxes that the rubber boots came in. People here have so little that even a box is considered worthy of a brawl.

It’s sort of a desperate situation in Haiti and the local volunteers will tell you so. They are the first to say that Haiti is ‘very bad’. Every Saturday we have a meeting for the local guys to voice their concerns, to keep them updated on news about the jobs sites and to award a volunteer of the week. I’m blown away each meeting at how well spoken, thoughtful and bright these young guys are. I’m told that, at first, their volunteering started as a ‘what can I get out of it’ sort of thing. In my first week of being here though, I’ve seen as much dedication and hard work from the locals as the international volunteers, if not more. They really love their role in helping out their own community and are able to see the benefit of volunteering beyond just what it’ll do for them.

I can’t really say enough about the locals we have working beside us and it is sad to think that there might not be much opportunity for them in Haiti, despite their intelligence, leadership skills and work ethic. Haiti is just a screwed up kind of place but I really hope that Hands On will be a stepping stone for some of them. One of the guys, Samson, recently got hired on by Oxfam as a Spanish to Creole translator and this is a perfect example of that. There is an opportunity tomorrow for them to volunteer with the UN and another chance soon to work with Save the Children. I really hope that they can use these sorts of hooks ups to their benefit and turn them into paying jobs.

So, as you can probably tell, I am once again blown away by my Hands On experience. If this sounds like your sort of thing, check them out and keep an eye out for volunteer opportunities in the future. I will post some photos soon!

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