Well amazingly the month of May was spent in the same car park in Istanbul as April’s post.   In fact of of the end of May we have spent a total of 75 days parked in the same car park.  It’s amazing how familiar it all feels. It will, no doubt feel very strange when we do eventually leave.   All of the restrictions and self isolation has been a challenge for everyone. It is definitely going to be an interesting chapter of our journey and one we will all talk about for many years to come.

In May the borders heading east to Georgia are still closed and so carrying on with our adventure at this point is no possible.  Even heading back into the EU is not an option as the borders are still closed. The three main factors affecting our onward journey are 

1. Covid.   

Who know what the future holds we just have to ride the wave and take it as it comes. 

2, Travel Insurance

We have travel insurance until end of December 2020 and we are covered for everything other than Covid.  Unfortunately world pandemics are not covered by insurance companies.  So we want to be in a country with both good medical and one that if we had a life threatening Covid situation, we could be able to get treatment – Lucky for us Turkey has both.   The other concern is that at the moment insurance companies are not renewing or issuing new policies, and what would be do it we drove to the end of Russia and couldn’t renew our medical insurance?  It wouldn’t be sensible heading to the the USA without insurance – especially during a world pandemic. 

3. Visa’s and weather

We all know that Russia has very cold winters. It would be very irresponsible for us to end up getting stuck in sub zero temperatures in the far reaches of Russia.  We estimated that if we didn’t enter Russia by July then it would be too late for us to attempt the journey this year.

We did a live chat on our Youtube channel and gave all of you, the opportunity to decide on what we should do.  The decision was made to try and get some form of extended visa so we can wait it out in Turkey.  Watch this space.

We are VERY grateful to ‘RentnConnect’ for providing us with free and unlimited internet.  Self isolation would be a very different experience, without being able to keep ourselves busy online, posting videos and interacting online with family, friends and followers.  So again, I would like to say a huge THANK YOU to ‘RentnConnect’.

What to expect from future posts

We will continue to share with you our our monthly costs, as we self isolate or continue to travel.  When we decided to travel full time, there were very few content creators who shared their finances and social media income openly,  so we wanted to be open and honest about our financial journey as we travel full time.  You will get to come on all aspects of our adventures with us, and we hope that if you want to do something similar, or just understand the costs of certain aspects of our travels, that these posts help with that.  Hopefully you get to see how our incomes grow, as we increase our online presence  and we will share that journey and our decisions with you along the way.   There really aren’t many travel vloggers that will share this kind of information with you.

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

May 2020 - INCOME & EXPENDITURE


INCOME

YouTube £184.27 (Last month £122)

 We have had another good month on our channel.  Views of  150,000 seen last month are hard to achieve again.  They were so high due to the large number of TV interviews that we did. This month we had 135,900 which we are very pleased with.  It has been quite a challenge to make creative and interesting content when we are still in the same carpark!.

Interestingly despite having less views, which means that there have been less adverts watched the income has actually increased.  The money earned for the adverts is very unpredictable and is not fixed in anyway.  It depends on which country watches and how much the advertisers with Youtube agree to pay.  During the pandemic the income has gone down for everyone, and it is promising to see it starting to recover slightly. This should continue to improve over the coming months.

We had another 1,200 new subscribers to our channel in May.   So welcome if you are one of them and to everyone else who has taken the time to watch one of our videos (and the advert), then THANK YOU!, because without you watching the adverts, our revenue would be zero.

Tread Tribe £94.94 (Last month £81.70)

If you are one of the new TREAD tribe members that joined in May – then welcome to the Tribe and thank you for supporting our travels and creating 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 ever comment, message and email that we receive, after all we love talking to everyone.  But in reality, as our channel grows we know that it will be hard to keep this up.  We are only just keeping up with them now, and that’s whilst we are not travelling and exploring. Once we hit the road we will have even less time.   Being part of the TREAD Tribe we give you priority – you basically have more access to us.   Well 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 30 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 £1,356 - (Last month £1,356)

When we decided to sell everything and travel full time we wanted to make it sustainable and so decided to rent our our now house.  This gives us a steady income and is more reliable than Youtube advert revenue.  This month we got the full rent, however our current tenants are leaving after 2 years – it will be sad to see them go, as they have been awesome and actually become friends!  The agent is busy looking for new tenants for us.  They have said the rental market is good at the moment.  Our house is in the countryside and following the pandemic there are more people wanting to leave the cities.

Merchandise Sales £1,331.91 (Last month £177.54)

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.  

We have been keeping ourselves busy in the carpark by expanding our range of shirts and they have been very well received.  We sold a whopping £1,331 this month, compared to £177 last month due to the release of the new designs. 

(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 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,

 

Donations £200.33 (Last month £211.72)

We are always so overwhelmed by your kindness and generosity no matter how small or big your donations 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 received  £200 this month compared to £172 last month and is so high because we received a very generous donation from a family member.  We can’t thank you enough, and your very kind and generous contributions keep us on the road and making content, and for that ….. we are VERY grateful.

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

Buy Me a Coffee £94.28 (Last month £60.86

Yes that’s our coffee and caffine sorted out for another month.  This is a necessity to keep the concentration for driving and editing videos!  We both love coffee and so added a link on our website where you can buy us a coffee.  This month we received  £94.  

Someone asked us if we can drink that much coffee.  Although we do LOVE coffee donations, this is a way that people can support us and it doesn’t necessarily mean we drink it all in coffee !!   

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.  

Sometimes when we are rushing to get it finished and uploaded,  it’s easy to wonder why we do it, but we get so many messages and comments on the videos, that it keeps us going even if we burn the midnight oil to make sure they are out on time .  

So thank you to everyone who takes the time to tell us what you think.

Amazon Affiliate Links £16.96 (Last month £21.89)

We receive a small amount from our Amazon links, this month was £16.96.   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: £3,279 (Last Month £2,030 )

EXPENDITURE

Merchandise costs £571.88

Unfortunately to sell T shirts, you have to buy them and this is the cost of.  T- Shirts sold.  This month we generated an amazing profit of £760.03.

Vehicle Running Costs £180.65 (last month £185.53)

This month we have very little costs as we are not moving, however we do pay for our secure parking.   As you know normally we wild camp and don’t stay in paid facilities but during our self isolation we are in a great spot because we have access to all the facilities we need.  For example showers, toilets, electric & waste disposal.  It’s worth every penny !!   For the record … the owners did say they did not want us to pay, but we insisted as we are using the facilities and we are not freeloaders LOL !! 

Parking: £180.65

TREAD Expenses £407.86 (Last month £132.16)

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

Filming Equipment £335.95

We need reliable filming equipment to be able to keep producing our videos for you.  This month our Go Pro 7 camera died, which we use for walking and talking.  We had to buy a replacement.

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: £11 (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 (last month)£71.62

Having a good internet connection is one of our necessities or we can not post our videos or chat with you all on social media.  As we mentioned in last months blog post, we were lucky to get sponsored by ‘RentnConnect’ who provide worldwide mobile hotspots.  This has not only given us a continuous reliable internet connection, but is has also saved us some money as we don’t have to buy or top up our sim cards.

We have cancelled our UK data sim package as it can’t be used in Turkey  – last month was the final payment.  There is still a small charge as we keep our UK sim going so we keep the same number and can whatsapp call our friends.

Cloud Storage £0.79

Living Expenses £335.27 (last month £250.81)

Self isolating has helped us reduced our monthly living expense.  Normally we eat out occasionally so that we can share our experience with you, but obviously at the moment most restaurants are closed. This month we applied to a Turkish visa to allow us to stay in Turkey, whilst we decide what we are doing.

Visa application: £120.19

Groceries:  £190.40

Eating out: £5.69

Netlix: £11.99

ATM Fees: £7.00

Other Expenses : £0

This month all of the charges fitted nicely into a category so no other expenses 


Total Expenses: £1,496 (Last month £655)


Monthly Profit / Loss

Yipee!! We underspent this month by £1,783

Despite the world situation, this month has given us the biggest underspend so far.  With increased income with both youtube and our unusually high T shirt sales. We have saved the most we ever have.  

It was always planned that we would live under our means, so we would be able to pay for the expensive shipping costs.  For example shipping from Russia to the States is approx £5,000.   In addition with the unpredictable future we need to continue to underspend to ensure our trip is sustainable.  The 2 year around the world drive, is going to now take at least an extra year.  We are going to have extra costs such as visas, as we will have to fly back to the UK next year to reapply for our Russian visa.  There will be other additional costs as a result of the world pandemic.

We hope you continue to find our expenses interesting.  If you are planning to make a living being a full time Youtuber, then make sure you have additional streams of income – for us it’s our house, because as you can see from the figures you are not going to get a decent income quickly.  If you looked at the hourly rate of being a travel blogger you wouldn’t take the job!  That being said, if you are able to generate enough views, then Youtube does give you the possibility of earning a good income.  Also take note that the views and income are unpredictable and out of your control.

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

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