There’s a lot out there about whether it’s possible to make a living blogging.  I enjoyed a rant recently from Andy Hobo about the current boom in people thinking they’re going to be able to pay for their travels with the Internet.  Can it be done?  Yes.  Is it easy?  No.  Here’s the downer - if you’re making your income from a blog or even a website, you’ll be WORKING while you travel.  If you just want to party and play, consider saving for a while and then taking time truly off.  If you don’t mind paying for your travel by taking longer so you can work while you go and not playing all day but setting aside several hours a day to work then you might try making money from blogging.
   Lots of people make lots of different amounts blogging.  This blog is not monetized and it is not my goal to make money from it.  I make my online money in other ways.  Some people can make over $100,000 a year from their blog but you better believe that they’re good business persons and marketers who employ other people to blog for them and who write to a large audience with 3-6 posts per day.  With some ingenuity and careful monetization and marketing strategies it should be within your grasp to make 1-3 thousand dollars a month from your blog.  Which, if you’re living or traveling in a cheap country can go very far. 
    To make money blogging you can expect the following: To post more than once per day, each and every single day.  Missing a day is death to a blogger trying to make money.  Death I tell you.  This is because if you don’t have a new post you will probably not get new traffic which will mean you won’t get new clicks on ads and your monthly traffic amount will go down.  Miss a couple of days or (like me) a month and expect to loose all but your most faithful blog readers. 
    You’ll also have to beef up your Google Reader account.  Or however you get your RSS feeds.  I recently switched to Google Reader because I read regularly about 100 blogs on travel that I comment on with links back to my site.  This is the number one way to build a community of readers and my faithful friends here are people I met because I read their blog first.  This is probably my favorite part of keeping up a blog.  If you don’t like it just have a blog for your own amusement and family to read.
    You’ll need to invest about 2-5 days of time (about 40 hrs to start) into learning how to write for Search Engine Optimization.  Then you’ll need to do it for each and every one of your blog posts even if you don’t want to.  This is where I slack of a ton at this blog.  SEO writing isn’t hard and it is a pretty scientific form of writing, but it takes time and effort and a different mindset.  Search Google for great tutorials, I’ve learned how to do it without ever buying an overpriced book at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
    Finally, you’ll have to make sure your ‘voice’ comes through loud and clear.  I’ve always had a strong written voice because I became a writer through writing speeches.  If you’re new to writing, get some books and learn to write for an hour every day just to develop your voice before you write anything that will be published or submitted in any form.  I especially liked Steven King’s book and Anne Lamont’s books on writing.
    If you think you’ve got it in you, go for it!  A word of warning to you though, your family and friends won’t know how to respond when you tell them you’re a professional blogger so be prepared to explain to Grandma what a blog is.  I love this type of work, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but it’s hard work.  To get a good idea of what you can make from your blog, do a Google search for “how much do you make from your blog” and you’ll find a group of people who include their monthly earnings as part of their blog each month.  Like I said, I don’t do that because I don’t run this blog for profit.
    Remember though, if you’re going to start a blog to make money you’re starting a small business.  And 7 out of 10 small businesses fail.  You’ve got a higher chance of success on the Internet because you’ve a larger audience potential, so it’s not like starting a restaurant, but you still need some business smarts to make it work.  And a lot of hard work.  Read Working Nomad’s ebook “How I did it and You Can Too” for the best step-by-step guide to paying for your travel through website development that I’ve ever read.  It got me started on thinking that this could be a possibility and now I telecommute full-time.  Not bad for working from a cafe outside Anaheim, CA while I enjoy the sun.

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    Adsense by Google is the most popular monetization strategy for blogs because it is very easy to implement and understand.  However, before you go putting dozens of ad blocks all over your page, consider the following pros and cons to working with the Google Giant.
    Pro: Ease of Use
        Like so many things Google, it’s easy to use and understand Google Adsense from a publisher standpoint.  Putting in the html links is easy, finding the space is easy, it’s all easy.  Add to this the fact that they will give you reports on your click through ratio (CTR) and make it easy to get paid and Adsense makes it easy to get started in blog monetization.
    Con: No control
        Because it’s easy and automated to set up, you have very little control over which ads get shown on your website.  You can choose what style of ad shows up but you don’t get to choose whose ads get placed there.  Not being able to control this means that you’re at the mercy of Google to determine how much you will make from your clicks when you get them.  Rest assured though that Google is good at finding relevant ads, so they’ll match your content.
    Pro: Everyone Does It
        You know what you’re getting into with Adsense, everything is up front and spelled out.  Google’s good about this. 
    Con: Banner Blindness
        With Adsense your CTR is what will make your money.  If you have 1,000 daily visitors and only 1% click through at 5 cents a click you’re not going anywhere fast.  Because everyone uses Adsense, people are so used to seeing the ads that they simply ignore them.
    Pro: Help in placement
        Google will help you determine how to get better returns on your ads through better placement on your site, free of charge.  Of course it’s good for them because they’ll make more money that way, but it does help with boosting your CTR.
    Con: Income dependent on clicks.
        With other types of advertisement advertisers pay for placement, not for each click they get.  If your site isn’t running a high CTR on your adsense ads, or if you can’t figure out how to disguise them well, you might consider another advertising method.

Adsense success takes time and patience.  Consider always keeping at least one block on your page just to see how it does.  If it takes off, consider adding more.  If not, move it around and see if you can improve it.  One of the best placements I’ve ever worked with was a Wordpress design that put the ad block directly between posts or in the upper left corner of the top post.  The best strategy for any blog monetization is always to try lots of things, track them all, and see what works best for your community.

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It’s easy to be told to save your money instead of use your credit card for things and vacations you want, but when it comes down to actual practice it usually easier for most people to put it on a credit card and pay it off.  Why is it so hard to save money for things, like vacations, that we know we want?  Why can’t we just say no to the cup of $4.50 coffee and put that five bucks into a savings account each and every time?  Is it because we’re not good at delayed gratification or are we just horrible at self control?
    I sometimes think to myself, as I stand in line at the coffee shop, “I have an espresso machine, I can make this at home for next to free” but I never turn around and leave.  The desire to save that money just isn’t large enough.  It was during my interview with Theresa a couple of weeks ago that I realized that I’m not applying the same goal-setting practices to saving for a trip that I apply to the rest of my life.  In my other life I write the blog ReallyBigGoals.com about how to achieve truly huge goals in your every-day life.  I felt so silly for not even thinking about applying the very same practice that I promote there to my travel savings goals. 
    Here is the way my thinking about saving for and planning a trip goes:
    “Self, hello?, I want to get out of the country/town/hemisphere”
    “That’s nice self, but we don’t have any money”
    “But I’m sick of being here.”
    “Well, let’s save some money up and then we’ll think about planning a trip.”
    “Ok, I’ll save some money for a vacation and when I have $2,000 I’ll plan a trip.”
    I asked Theresa if it was easy for her and her hubby to save the massive amount of money that they are going to need to travel the world for a year or so and also to re-integrate and find jobs when they get back.  She said that it got easier to save the more planning they did because they quickly realized that the $25 that they would normally spend on take-out when they were to lazy to cook suddenly equated to two nights in a South East Asia hotel.
    To set any goal, whether it is a Really Big Goal or a simple New Year’s Resolution, you need to define your goal in a quantifiable way and then break it down into bite-sized pieces.  Even if you’re not planning on taking a year long wander around the world, denying yourself cable becomes much easier when you realize that a year of cable will buy your family a week in a nice San Francisco Family Hotel.  Without a clear goal, you can know that you should save the approximately $1,200 that cable will cost you a year, but it just won’t seem worth it unless you know what you’ll get in exchange.
    What is the most helpful goal-setting tool you use in saving for your vacations?

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Ok, so it’s been a bit (read: a TON) crazy in my life lately.  My apologies to all my readers for the way that Startgo.com fell off the map this month.  Thank you if you’ve hung in there with me.  Several changing focuses at work have created less time for me to focus on this blog and it’s new direction over the past weeks.

In personal things, I’ve had several computer upsets.  After the death of our computer in February, I’d been using our roommate’s computer for work and online stuff.  Needless to say, since I sped about 8-10 hours on the computer doing my job a day they quickly felt like they no longer had their own computer.  It became necessary to find a computer of our own.  And by find, I do mean find.  While the hubby is looking for a job we’re existing on my freelance & independent contracting jobs.  This leaves us at about 2K a month, which doesn’t leave any room for a new computer.

Luckily, a daughter of a friend of my mom’s surfaced with a computer she was trying to get rid of.  We were wary because the last three ‘getting rid of’ computers we’ve been given/loaned haven’t been the best.  However, things are finally seeming to be looking up for us.   Our new computer is a rescue from a closing Internet gaming/cafe and seems to be quite powerful.  Plus, it’s got a glowing blue case that makes me feel like something out of Star Trek, which is always good.

So I’m back.  Thank you for hanging around or not unsubscribing your RSS feed.   We’re set with a month’s worth of articles now (plus a few back articles including the rest of the Create Your Own Website Challenge, so make sure to read them!) and at the beginning of May I’m going to post the whole series on website creation as a free ebook.

Our new focus is, as you may or may not remember, is the finances of travel.  We’re launching our new podcast “Traveling Money” this month which is interviews and suggestions from fellow travelers who have great advice and suggestions on how to make your travel dollars.  Our first episode, due to air on iTunes on April 5th, introduces us to Theresa Backinton who shares with us how she and her husband Jeff have been able to save enough money to travel the world for a year after his PhD defense this fall.

Finally, you’ll notice that we’ve got a new page!  I’m working on compiling a list of financial resources for travelers, don’t hesitate to check them out and suggest something if you know a resource I don’t.

Sincerely,

Susan Reed

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    I love the ING Direct commercials.  The little dollar bills that are laying around on the couch eating junk food that are whipped into shape and start jazzerscizing when they get with ING is just such a perfect illustration of my frustration with most savings accounts.  Thank goodness I say for the advent of the Internet!!!  Now, to compete with ING’s Internet-based checking almost all banks have high-yield Internet savings accounts that will give you 4-5% interest.  That’s a far cry from the passbook saving account I had with a credit union for years that gave me .01% and told me I was lucky.
    If you’re working hard to save money for your vacation, you should make sure that your money is working just as hard for you.  If you’ve got more than $1 saved for your trip you need to find yourself a high-yield savings account, and don’t settle for less than 4.5%.  You can get at least that from simply transferring your money into your PayPal account, which pays Money Market dividends.  I always suggest checking with your local bank first though because the online banking is all in one place then if they will give you a competitive rate.
    This isn’t professional financial advice, rather simple common sense.  You should make sure your account doesn’t charge any fees and that you will be able to access your money quickly if you’re going with a savings account.  If you’ve got more than $1000 in savings you should look into Money Markets and Certificates of Deposits (CD accounts) that can give you higher interest rates, although they have restrictions on when you can withdraw your funds.  Many these days will let you add more money at any time so you can get the same rate, so long as you wait till it matures to withdraw it.  Remember, the interest rate you get from these should be significantly better than the interest you get from your savings account, at least a percentage point.  Also, if you’ve got even more money don’t ever overlook the possibility of negotiating a higher rate.
    Check out Bankrate.com for sample rates from banks in your area.  Also, check out Credit Unions around you as they frequently can offer higher interest rates since they are nonprofit organizations.

** Check out Los Angeles Family Hotels from around the web**

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