Travel Blog Income Report Year 2 (Aug 2016 to July 2017) — Loss $54.47

On the surface, it looks like Year 2 is another year of failure because my bottom line was still in red. However, as I dig deeper, I realized I had created strong foundations for the blog.

Year 2 is also the year where big things happened in my life. Let’s skip the intro and jump straight into the details!

What Happened in Year 2

I thought focusing on my blog full-time will automatically bring success to my blog. Boy, how wrong was I. I hustled and hustled, trying to bring in some sort of income from the blog, but it was just simply impossible.

3 months after I left my job, I was still making $0 from the blog. Oh no, what should I do?

I decided to find a part-time job to make ends meet and to ensure I don’t dip into my savings any more. In August 2016, I started working part-time as service crew in an European restaurant. It was probably the lowest point in my life. I was getting paid $11/hour on weekends, and $8/hour on weekdays. Every weekend, I was so afraid that my friends would dine there and saw me in a waitress uniform.

Besides working part time in the restaurant, I also tried freelance writing. I might have a beginner’s luck because the first time I pitched a story to a local publication, it got accepted.

Soon after that, I became their part-time writer. Looking back, even though the pay was not much, I learned a lot about ideas generation, running a publication with established audience and how media industry works. My name and blog get exposure. I learned how to go deep in a niche. I learned to write faster than I used to be.

I went on my first press trip under the assignment from the publication I worked for. I ran the Gold Coast Marathon!

And also, I got married in Dec 2016, Jan 2017 and Feb 2017! Yes, I got married 3 times!

Year 2 Revenue = US$ 18.53

Affiliates:
Awin = US$ 6.31
Agoda = US$ 12.22
Total affiliates = US$ 18.53

Notes about Revenue:

• Revenue doesn’t include salary from my part-time jobs.
• On paper, it looks like I made money from affiliates. In reality, I never cashed out both Awin & Agoda because I didn’t hit the minimum threshold even until today (Year 2020)

Year 2 Cost = US$ 79

Premium hosting on wordpress.com = US$79.

I decided to upgrade from WP.com’s free plan to premium plan because the premium plan offers free domain, premium theme and removal of WP’s advertisement. I guess I learned that nothing is really free in this world, if you’re setting up a blog on a free plan, WP wants to earn something by putting advertisement on your blog.

Total profit / loss = (US$ 54.47)

Total blog posts = 31

Total page views = 43,050 (average 117.95 views/day)

Trips Taken

• Medan for my wedding
• Malaysia for my wedding
• Australia for job assignment

Lessons Learned

If you plan to leave your job to pursue your passion, you need to have a safety cushion (i.e. a fat bank account), otherwise, you’ll have to work part-time jobs to ensure you have enough money while hustling.

I learned how to write a post that solves a real problem! The idea to write this post came from my own struggle. This problem was my own, so I wrote this post to solve my own problems. It turned out to be a great post that Google loves. It’s still one of my top 5 posts many years down the road.

Mistakes made

Rejected by Adsense because I applied with two different emails. Ugh, I’m so mad at myself. As a result, I couldn’t monetize with Adsense at all even until today.

Achievement

Hit 1000 monthly pageviews in Month 14 (Sep 2016), and later hit 5000 monthly pageviews in Month 22 (May 2017).

I want to say I made my first dollar through affiliate. BUT… I didn’t cash out because I didn’t reach the minimum withdrawal amount. So, yes I earned on paper, but not in reality. Even until 2019, I haven’t cashed out both.

I wrote some articles that were getting lots of traffic: Taking bus from Singapore to JB (an evergreen content that I keep on updating every few months), my low-carb diet (this was a viral article among my friends and family), Changi Airport Staff Canteen at T2 (apparently many people search for this).

Conclusion

Failure is not the opposite of success, but it is an important step to get to success.

My second year in blogging was one of the hardest year in my blogging. I didn’t make any real money (I only made paper money), I was working 2 part-time jobs to stay afloat.

But it was through these tribulations that I learned how much I despise being a poor writer, how much I long for a comfortable life, how to persevere when the going gets tough, how to actually write articles that can help people and get organic traction.