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It’s the end of November. In just three weeks it will 2017. I hope you’ve been having a good year, I know mine has been surprising. I looked at my diary and realized I’ve been traveling for 4 months. Wouldn’t have believed that if you asked me last year.
If this is the first time you’ve seen my income report, you might be wondering why I want to share these income reports online. In part these income reports are a way to track my progress. It’s nice to be able to look back and see what I achieved in November and what I wanted (and maybe failed) to do, but they are also a way to share my experiences
Over the last year I’ve managed to grow a business from my blog. I’m my own boss. I’m traveling slowly around the world. I look forward to working every day and the new places I get to see. If you haven’t started a website I hope this inspires you. If you’re already running a business then I hope you can avoid some of my mistakes and maybe learn from my experiences.
Blog Income November
I earn most of my money through my travel consultancy service, with B2B (business to business) commissions that don’t cost my guests anything.November was the end of the high season for tourism in Indonesia. I expected my income to drop and it has, but not as much as I thought it might.
I earned $1,973 from Discover Your Indonesia. Income from Agoda is still high. That’s because I’m receiving payout from hotel bookings in September.
My expenses this month are still high. Travelling costs a lot of money. Still my bank balance seems ok and I’m not too worried as December will be a busy month.
INCOME
Source Income
Travel Consultancy USD 1,600
Affiliate Income USD 250
Google Ads USD 123
Total USD 1,973
Expenses
Wages USD 325
Hosting USD 25
Total USD 350
I use Traffic Planet Hosting because Discover Your Indonesia is now receiving more than 40,000 unique visitors a month, so I can no longer used shared hosting. I recommend the service for anybody looking to upgrade their hosting provider.
A Month in Review
November has been quite busy. I left Sri in Goa and started traveling again. I visited Hampi, Jogfall Waterfall in Kerala, Kochi, Munnar in the highlands of Kerala and I’m now in Pondicherry.
After that month in Goa my battery is recharged. It’s been nice to be on the road again exploring India. Riri has been amazingly supportive and she’s doing more and more of the work answering emails from clients, which means I can focus on other things (I need to write an article one day about finding great colleagues and how to setup management systems).
I started reading business books in November. As soon as I started I realized I should be doing this a lot more. They made me realize I should be doing a lot more to systemize my business. For example…
Creating an Annual Business Plan
This sounds obvious, but I didn’t have an annual business plan. I had general aims that I wanted to achieve, but I didn’t have a real strategy to get there. It was a good exercise though. Once you have a business plan you can logically work backwards to see the steps you need to take to achieve those aims…
Make the Sales Pages Pop
After reading May I Have Your Attention Please, short read that I really recommend, I realized with a few small changes I could improve the website copy to give it a bit more personality. I’ve been experimenting with this on some of my most popular tours. I still need to do a lot of testing, but I’ve seen some pretty big jumps in conversion rate.
Improve User Flow
Before this month my Trello board was filled with template answers to the 10 most common questions for each tour. Answering these questions took up a lot of my time and my clients shouldn’t have to ask those questions. So I created a thank you page for each one of my tours that looks a little something like this. It took a lot of work, but it’s been a big timesaver when dealing with clients.
New Content on DYI
November was quite a slow month for content on the site. I spent a lot of my time reviewing older content and working on the thank you pages, but I still managed to get some stuff published. Here are the highlights:
- 7 Best Villas in Canggu for Under $100 a Night
- 15 Things to do in and Around Batam on Your Next Weekend Getaway
- 12 Best Hotels Near Borobudur Temple for Every Budget
- Beyond The Batimurung Waterfall
- 12 Incredible Places to Visit in and around Sulawesi
Plans For December
I’m heading to Sri Lanka on 6th December for a month. It’s going to be fun. Though I will be a bit sad, I’m looking forwards to visiting a new country and seeing some different sites. Next month I’ll just be reviewing the rest of the tours and trying to improve the copy. Oh, and I’m planning to take a break from work. I added that into my business plan for the year.
How did your month go? Are you planning to make a change in your life?
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