This opening section is the same as last month – When we started considering quitting our normal life to live full time on the road, the first question we, and all our friends had, was: ‘Can you afford to do it?’ We had heard that it was possible to earn money whilst on the road from various sources. Youtube adverts, Amazon links, Ad revenue are all ways that we’d heard you can generate income. So we started researching other full time travel bloggers / vloggers. Mosts sites and channels keep their financial situations a closely guarded secret. So you are left wondering, ‘How they can afford to live this nomadic lifestyle?’ But if they can do it, then what is stopping us from doing it?
The general lack of information on travel bloggers finances, was the reason that we wanted to share our finances with you. We want to make it clear, so that if any of you are planning to do a similar thing, it may help you make that BIG decision. We are realistic and know that to make our lifestyle fully sustainable, from making Youtube videos, or writing blog posts, is not easy and if it’s possible will take a lot of time and effort.
What to expect from future posts
As you know we are currently in the process of getting ready for our drive around the world, in ‘Trudy’ our campervan (aiming to set off Jan 2020). From now until the end of the year, each month we will share with you our income, and any costs associated with the preparation of the global trip, marketing, van preparation, equipment costs etc.
Once we set off in January we will share monthly, detailed income and expenditure of everything we spend, during the 2 year trip from food to fuel so you can get a real sense of the costs involved on such a trip.
August 2019 - Income & Expenditure
YouTube
Last month we announced that July 2019 was our busiest month on YouTube. We are delighted to tell you that in August we exceeded the views and income and August is now our best month, so far. with 156,000 (+27% from last month) views and these generated us an income of $378 (Approx £306). With this many views, it makes you realise just how hard it is to generate income on YouTube.
The reason for this month being our best so far is due to the views on our El Salvador videos. These video had more views than our others in Central America. Youtube is hard to predict and understand why some videos do better than others, often it’s down to how it’s promoted and how many people share it, which gives more exposure. I think in truth, the Salvadorans are more used to negative, dramatic videos due to the countries reputation, rather than a normal middle aged couple, having great fun and showing the best, not the worst of their amazing country. As a result, we gained a lot of support from them and yes for those of you wondering – we loved El Salvador.
As we finish off our backpacking Central American series and start to film the preparations for our around the world drive, we are expecting the viewing figures to fall in September, as we start to build an additional new audience – but let’s see – who knows?
Other Income
House Rental: £1,356
Paypal Contributions: £20
Buy me a coffee: $8.40 (£6.80)
Amazon Links: £0
TOTAL INCOME AUGUST: £1,383. ( July = £1,600)
Amazon links have been very slow and so far we have not generated any income. There are links on our youtube video descriptions to products and if you click the link and then shop on Amazon as normal, we get a small commission if you buy something. We have discovered that because the links are on Amazon UK, then we only receive commission from UK generated sales. We are currently in the process of researching and seeing how we can set up all the other Amazon platforms so it will work for worldwide sales. We discovered this when one of our USA followers tried to use the link to help us and then messaged us – so big thank you for pointing this out.
Expenses
August, we continue to research and get ready for the big trip. We designed and launched a new website, however the costs will appear in the September report. We also created some branded T Shirts to both wear, give the Tread Team (those helping us prep for the big trip) and to sell from the van. This was a bit of a gamble and hopefully we can sell our Vanlife UK shirts as we travel.
Few new tech items £13.98
Creating Map Animation of our world route £90.94
T shirt £461.87
We also have some ongoing standard expenses:
House Insurance: £25
Tech insurance £12.49
Website hosting . £12.50
(epidemic sound) Music for videos £10
Tubebuddy £15
FB Linker £5.18
Feedspot £16.12 (testing for increased exposure)
Data Sim £30.28 (more as change of contact and they crossed over)
Mobile £14
Total Expensese £707.36
Note at this point we are not including food, fuel and other day to day expenses these will be included when the world trip starts.
We hope that you enjoyed reading this post and it helps give you a better understanding of our financial position. If there is something that you want to know about our finances then comment or message us.
Although we are sustainable now, with the rental of our home and limited income above – we are trying to increase the income so we are able to travel and share more experiences with you. All of the money we receive goes towards our travels and equipment needed to produce our videos.
Thank you for your ongoing support.
Marianne & Chris
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