September Income Report: Digital Nomad Challenge

Job #1: Review Guide Writer

A friend of mine in Chiang Mai got me a writing job for an online travel platform. They pay me to write custom guides of locations that I have spent a lot of time in. Luckily I’ve lived in 5 countries so I can write a whole bunch of guides for them. They pay $50 per guide plus an extra $10 if I add at least 5 high quality photos per guide. This month I was pretty busy so only managed to finish 2 custom guides, still good pay although it is a lot of work.

Number of guides written: 2

Pay per guide in US$60

Total: $120

Hours it took me to write them: 10 h

Average hourly rate: $12

Job #2: Video Transcription

This one is definitely my wild card job for this month. I’d been trying to land my first Upwork job for weeks and was SO excited when I finally got that first offer. The client needed me to transcribe the audio of a TV show in German. Sounds good, right? Watch TV and get paid to scribble down the dialogue? WRONG! You can read more about My Epic Upwork Fail here, where I describe why it took me 7 hours to earn 21 bucks and why I hate 2 Broke Girls.

Number of episodes transcribed: 2

Pay per episode: $21

Total: $42

After Upwork fee: $37.80

Hours it took me to transcribe them: 12h!!!!

Average hourly rate: $3.50

Job #3: Affiliate Links

Now, this is an interesting one this month. I only started signing up to various affiliate programs recently, in preparation for some services I will start offering (as part of this challenge) and also to include links to some of my favourite products and services on my blog. It’s a long story, but basically I am trying my hand at website design for the first time, and signed up two clients to the amazing Divi theme which I fell in love with and will be using on my projects.

Number of affiliate sales made: 2

Total pay: $89 Hours worked: 0 (I am just starting on the websites and count this as passive income).

Job #4: Ebook author

September was the second month that I made some money from my e-book, and although it wasn’t much, this month it was completely passive as I had already finished writing the book. By the way, my book is currently on sale, so grab yourself a bargain and get ready for Oktoberfest 2016! I’m planning my trip already; join me if you like, just leave a message in the comments!

Number of ebooks sold: 5

Total Pay: $25

After Amazon “fees”: $17.50

Hours worked: 0

Job #5: SEO writing

This is still the first writing gig that I landed when I first arrived in Chiang Mai. It hasn’t been a very busy month but still ok.

SEO articles written: 10

Total Pay: $78

After Paypal fees: $75.66

Hours it took: approximatel 5

Average hourly pay: $15.60

Total income in September:

$354

After Paypal fees: $340

My living costs on Koh Phangan added up to $460 in September, so I managed to cover 74% of my spending. Not quite there yet but we’re getting close. Stay tuned for October’s Income Report to see if I finally managed to break even!

Now it’s your turn! Are you making money online? Please share your advice in the comments below!

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item or service, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products that I have used and loved and would never recommend anything I don’t actually like. This way you get a great product or service and I get extra money for ice teas in the coffee shops I work from.