Financial Update
Unlike some bloggers, we don't normally share a lot of details about our financial situation. Most who do are usually testing out various money-making schemes and then providing the details to their readers. And most of their readers are there in the first place because they want to learn techniques that will help them pay for their future travels. We're not that kind of blog.
We're the old kind of travel blog, where we just share the things we have seen and experienced. Some of you are following along because you are friends and family or co-workers. Others want to see if we can make it work, because you are also interested in retiring early and if we can make it maybe it gives you some hope. And still others of you are here for unknown reasons.
However, I do want to give you a small update on our finances for reasons I will detail shortly. For starters, we do not have any active, regular income. We quit our jobs and we are still several years from being eligible for pension or Social Security money. That is why there is a link at the top of our blog labeled "Our Crazy Plan." Glenn has made a few dollars doing some travel writing, and Bryn has made even more dollars doing some scoping and proofreading and other transcription work. But all of that has been very sporadic. On the expense side we were not originally planning on buying an SUV or a trailer, so that set us back a bit more than our original plan, not to mention repairs, maintenance and gas. However, a timely (aka lucky) investment has helped to offset much of the extra expense, so all in all we are right about where we had initially projected.
Going forward, our expenses will definitely drop next year when we stop paying for vehicle and RV insurance and gas and RV park fees. But we still need to find ways to make some money and offset our expenses for this crazy plan to work long enough so that the pension can kick in before we have to go back to a regular job.
As part of that, Glenn has entered this blog into a little competition called The 1000-1000 Travel Blog Challenge" Basically it is an experiment to see if travel blogs can work their way up to where they have 1000 visitors per day and make $1000 per month. A fairly lofty goal, in my opinion, but it is certainly something that we would love to see in the long run. Just to give you an idea of the challenges ahead, so far we've made exactly $0.00 from this blog! On the visitors side, we're doing a bit better. In August we had 522 unique visitors and 2,423 page views. That's still quite a long ways from 1000 unique visitors per DAY but at least we have some goals!
As a reader, you probably won't see much difference. We may stick some ads or affiliate links over on the side but we certainly don't want to beat you over the head with such. We also might make some product recommendations if we think it is something that you might like, but don't worry about a bunch of ebook or membership site promotions. I hate that crap!
So that's it for now. Thanks for reading!