Wow – where does the time go.  We apologise for the delay in getting August’s blog post out, it has been a very busy time.  You will have seen that our plans were suddenly changed in August when we realised that our UK driving license is only valid for 6 months and so we had to leave Turkey to get a new entry stamp in our passports.  What made it worse was Trudy had some technical issues and we broke down on the way!  After a very long drive (around 16 hrs) to Bulgaria, we re-entered Turkey and then drove all the way to Rize on the Georgian border, which is where we planned to be before the sudden change in plan.  

It’s been another great month, with our channel continuing to grow and it is so nice to see that you are enjoying our videos.  For those of you who have ever posted youtube videos, you will appreciated that producing 2 videos a week,  filming, editing and travelling is really a tough challenge – especially with extra time on the road.  Thank you to all of you for your continued support.

Our house was in between rentals, so we didn’t receive any rental income this month.  It was perfect timing that our other sources of income – such as youtube increased.  We also received some sponsorship income but more on that a little later.

We are VERY grateful to ‘RentnConnect’ for continuing to providing us with free and unlimited internet.  Your support has kept us online and sharing our adventures.

What to expect from future posts

A number of you emailed to ask if we are still producing these blog posts and in short YES we are.  They may sometimes be a bit late, but we will continue to produce them.  When we started planning our lifestyle change, we couldn’t find this sort of blog or information out there, so we thought we would share it to help anyone else who wants to do something similar.  It is also another way for you to experience this adventure with us.  Hopefully you will see our channel and income grow slowly as our channel grows and that will enable us to travel more and go to some more unusual and hard to go places !  

There really aren’t many travel vloggers that will share this kind of information with you.

 So here is Augusts income / expenditure report from the road!

August 2020 - INCOME & EXPENDITURE

INCOME

YouTube £618.40(Last month £769.15)

 July was a particularly good month as we had some videos that did unusually well and we were chosen by YouTube as one of their creators on the rise.  August saw a slight decrease in income, but still we are very happy with our channels performance.  It’s our second best month since we started. 

423k views and an additional 3,100 subscribers to the channel so if you are one of them – Welcome!  Income of £618 was very welcomed without any house rental this month. Thank you to all of you, for supporting us and watching the videos (and adverts) without you all the views would be zero !

 

This graph shows the growth over the past 1 year

Tread Tribe £156.95 (Last month £144)

It is so great to see each month we get a couple more members of the TREAD Tribe.  If you are one of them, then Welcome to the Tribe and a huge THANK YOU to all Tribe members.  Your support is appreciated more than you know ! You are helping keep us on the road, and  in turn allowing us to keep making you content.

 If you haven’t heard of the Tread Tribe, it’s our private members Patreon page, where you can support us to continue making content and be part of a really nice group.  We started the TREAD Tribe to create a platform for like minded people.  It’s a place for those who truly love what we do, and want to actually be part of it.  We always try to respond to every public comment, message and email that we receive, after all we love talking to everyone.  But in reality, as our channel grows it is getting increasingly hard to keep this up.

Being part of the TREAD Tribe we give you priority – you basically have more access to us.   We do live video hangouts on our TREAD Tribe facebook group.  Our TREAD Tribe private facebook group is also a great platform for people to chat together, and we are so happy that we created such a great group of lovely people.

At the time of this post we have 51 members  and if you are one of them  we want to say a HUGE THANK YOU, your support and friendship is really appreciated.

There are various levels of membership and in return we offer some added perks for example, access to the TREAD Tribe’s facebook group where we do live chats, and personal TREAD postcards from us on our travel.  Membership starts from $1 (£0.76) per month. 

For those of you who joined us for the live hangout on our Tribe Facebook group ($5 members and above), we really loved chatting to you and answering all of your questions – we’ll do another one soon.  

If you would like to know more about the Tread Tribe please

click here

House Rental £o - (Last month £1,281)

This is our main source of income but the reality of renting out your house is that there will be periods of time, when the house is not rented. We are going through one of those periods at the moment.

Merchandise Sales £229.40 (Last month £231.75)

We started selling merchandise following requests and as a way to generate some additional funds.   Each T-Shirt sold funds us for approximately 40 miles of travel and helps us fund this expedition.  

This month we have sold £229.40 in sales (note this is the sales and not the profit – we have to pay for the shirts – you can see details in the expenses below).

We use a print to order service, so we are still able to process orders from the road and we post WORLDWIDE !  

THANK YOU  to everyone who has bought one, and shared their photos on social media.

If you would like to visit our online shop to check out our exclusive merchandise then please CLICK HERE,

 

Contributions £177 (Last month £54.61

This month we saw a big increase in contributions from you.  It was my  (Chris) 50th birthday in August – I am sure you all saw the amazing video of message from family and friends. (thank you to Theo & Bee from the indie projects for editing the video). It was also our 24th wedding anniversary this month and a number of you sent us contributions for the celebrations.  

We are always so overwhelmed by your kindness and generosity, no matter how small or big your contributions are, or be it joining the TREAD Tribe, buying us a coffee, using Amazon links or a PayPal donation (on our web site) It is very humbling and nice to know that you enjoy coming on this adventure with us.

 We want to say huge thank you to those of you sent us a contribution  – xoxo

 If you want to see how you can help us then Click Here,

Buy Me a Coffee £69.85 (Last month £23.22)

Between long drives and hours editing videos – the coffee contributions keep us focused and awake !  We both love coffee and so we added a link on our website where you can buy us a coffee.  This month we received  £69.85

Someone asked us if we can drink that much coffee.  It’s  a way that people can support us and it doesn’t necessarily mean we always drink it all in coffee !!   Although this month I think we did!

We love it when we receive a message saying “We loved the video so much, we bought you a coffee to say thanks for taking the time to make the videos and share them”.  It takes us around  8- 12 hours to edit a video.  We often work into the early hours to make sure we release them on time as we know so many of you are waiting for them.

 

So thank you to everyone who takes the time to tell us what you think by comments on youtube, emails and messages.

Amazon Affiliate Links £16.63 (Last month £12)

We receive a small amount from our Amazon links, this month was £16.63.   If you’re one the the people that used our links then thank you! 

Lots of you have asked about which products we use or recommend, so we have recently create an Amazon shop.  If you would like to look at this, then please click here.

This is a very easy way for you to help us, and it doesn’t cost you anything.   If you want to buy another products, then just use our link then shop as normal.

TOTAL INCOME: £1,409 (Last Month £1,235 )

EXPENDITURE

Merchandise costs £102.76

Unfortunately to sell T shirts, you have to buy them and this is the cost of.  T- Shirts sold.  This month we generated a profit of £126.64

Vehicle Running Costs £206.78 (last month £148.71)

This month we did a lot of travelling  Here’s this months costs

Parking: £11.88

Fuel £156.09

LPG £10.94

Ferry £5.00

Road Tax £6.96 (for Bulgaria)

Border fees £5.41

Tolls £10.51 

TREAD Expenses £89.45 (Last month £515.38)

These are expenses that are specifically for TREAD the Globe. Whether it is for our website or to be able to publish content. 

Tube Buddy: £15 Monthly

This is a google chrome extension that makes any Youtuber’s life a lot easier.  It allows us to bulk change elements of our end screens and descriptions of all our videos, as well as lot of other perks. 

Tech Insurance: £12.49 (Monthly)

We have our Mac Book Pro insured – just incase.

Canva Pro: £10.20 (Monthly)

This is an online image creator and is great for us, we create all of our thumbnails using this software and effects like the diary cam on our videos.  

Epidemic Sound: £7.49 (Monthly)

This monthly membership which allows us to access lots of music for our videos, without having to worry about copyright issues.  We spend a lot of time listening to tracks to match the video.  We hope you agree, it really makes a big difference having good music.  Normally it’s £10 per month, however if you do have Tube Buddy then you get a discount – it all helps.

Site Ground Web Hosting: £14.35 (Monthly)

This is an ongoing cost, once you have a website built, you still need to pay a company to host it for you.

Mobile Phone sims / Internet: £10.27 (last month)

The reason this is so low is because we have been sponsored by Rent N Connect for our internet. This charge is to keep our UK sim going so we keep the same number and can make what’s app call to our friends and family.

Cloud Storage £0.79

Filming and equipment £7.88

This was for new batteries

Postcards £10.98

We make TREAD the Globe postcards and send some of our Tribe members a personal postcard. This depends on their membership levels – This is the postage costs.

Living Expenses £498.73 (last month £730.69)

Other: £4.20 (BBQ) – My B’day present!

Groceries:  £164.41

Eating out: £248.64

Netlix: £11.99

ATM Fees: £18

Medical: £51.48 (Needed to Covid test to go to Bulgaria)

 


Total Expenses: £897.22 (Last month £2,013))


Monthly Profit / Loss

Eeeek!! We made a profit of £512.14 this month

Last month we made a loss of £778 and so it’s great to see an underspend this month. 

It was always planned that we would live under our means, so we would be able to pay for the expensive shipping costs and cope if our house became unrented.

We hope you continue to find our expenses interesting and that the information given helps you make choices if you want to do something similar in the future. 

We always wanted to share the highs and lows of our travels so that you really do get to come with us on the journey.

If there are any more details you want to ask us, then go ahead and send us a message, email or leave a comment.

We want to keep sharing our adventures with you.  The good, the bad and the ugly !!   Any funds donated or generated go back into our adventures so we can bring you greater, more varied and exciting content.

Thank you for your ongoing support and most importantly, stay safe.  Sending you all virtual hugs 

Chris and Marianne

 xx