The year is nearly over and, as usual, I’m behind on my monthly income reports! This month I am extra excited to share my income details as I managed to hit a few targets and added a whole new job to my list of jobs to my Digital Nomad Job Challenge. Just like last month, I worked on many different jobs that together made up my November Digital Nomad Income.
So here we go, my November Digital Nomad Income Report:
Let’s break down my November Digital Nomad Income
Digital Nomad Job #1: Ghost Writer
One of my newest and most interesting jobs is ghost writing. I am very lucky to be writing for some awesome freelance writers who are so busy that they hired me to write some of their posts. Of course, I can’t tell you exactly what I’m writing, but it’s mainly WordPress related articles. This is a great opportunity for me to not only improve my writing and earn good money, but also to learn more about WordPress and marketing.
Number of posts written: 4
Total: $314
Hours it took me to write them: 50 (I have to do a lot of research and only just started properly tracking my time, so this is a bit of a guess)
Average hourly rate: $6.30
Digital Nomad Job #2: German-English Translator
November was the month that I finally managed to get the ball rolling on Upwork properly. I’ve been getting all my translation jobs from Upwork and have received many invitations to other jobs that I had to decline because they were too low paid or I was too busy. Not a bad problem to have. 🙂
Number of words translated: approximately 4600
Total: $284
Hours it took me to translate them: 20 (again, not sure but I’ve started tracking my time now)
Average hourly rate: $14.20
Digital Nomad Job #3: Website Designer
Uhm, sorry what?
Yep, you heard that correctly! My crazy skills finally landed me a client. Ok, ok, maybe it actually came down to new friends, luck and persistence, but I finally added website designer to my job list. I actually designed one client website a few months ago but as I didn’t get paid I didn’t include it in my reports.
So how did I get this job?
It’s a bit of a longer story, but basically, I made a new friend at TBEX, her name is Caro and she is a bit of a digital nomad wonder woman. Not only does she write an awesome blog called Breathing Travel, but she is also a Social Media Manager and budding web designer. Caro met another awesome nomad girl, Jane, at TBEX who asked her to redesign her travel blog for her, but Caro was busy with other projects and asked me if I’d like to give it a shot. And I did!! Jane was the BEST client I could imagine and together we managed to give her travel blog Scarlet Jones Travels a new and fresher look. Of course, I used my favourite theme ever, Divi by Elegant Themes.
Aaaaanyway, this was the most challenging and rewarding job of this month and I hope to get more opportunities to work with clients in the new year.
Number of websites designed: 1
Total: $500
Hours it took me: approximately 1 million
Hours spent in live chat with hosting company begging them to fix my issues: ca 20
Having an awesome client who is totally cool with the drama: priceless
Average hourly rate: Let’s say $5 but no idea actually
Digital Nomad Job #4: Ebook/Fiverr/SEO writing
With all the little bits and bobs on the side, I made another $20 or so. This includes one e-book sale, 2 SEO articles written and one Fiverr gig. I actually weaned myself off the SEO writing a bit in order to concentrate more on ghostwriting and translation which are much better paid.
Number of bits and bobs: 4
Hours it took: 2
Money made: $17.50
Average hourly rate: $8.75
Digital Nomad Job #5: Affiliate Marketing
Still one of my favourite income streams is affiliate marketing. I signed up a client and a friend who I’ve been helping with his website to Siteground Hosting and made $100 in affiliate sales this way. I have to say Siteground have been incredibly helpful during my redesign on Jane’s website, so big thanks to them!
Number of affiliate sales: 2
Commission per sale: $50
Total affiliate commission: $100
Total hours worked: 0
Total Digital Nomad Income for November: $1215
After Paypal/Upwork fees: $1189
And how much did I spend last month?
Living costs on Koh Phangan: $209
End of the month in Chiang Mai: $239
A few days in Penang for a border run: $79
Flight: ca $100
Total money spent: $627
It seems to low this month so I’ll add a margin of error of 10%: $690
Percentage of spending covered: 172%
Wooohoooo!!!! I’m so happy that I cracked the $1000 barrier for the first time! Thinking back to June when we arrived in Chiang Mai this seemed like an impossible hurdle and now I’ve managed to after only 5 months of trying myself at the Digital Nomad Life! It just shows: if I can do it, anyone can! I am so happy to share this with you and am planning to put much more time and work into my blog and challenge next year in order to share more useful info about how YOU can become location independent too!
Hi, my name is Jenny. I'm a scientist, turned world traveller, aspiring digital nomad and noodle soup enthusiast. This is my blog where I share my journey to a location independent lifestyle. Join me!
You are awesome, I love reading your income reports and shame on me I should really be doing something like that too but yer, lazi slacker haha.. I love your infographic at the top too, how do you do them? Go girl, keep up the great work!! x
Thank you Caro! You’re so sweet! I’m glad you like them and I’d love to read yours too. I think it’s so interesting and I learn a lot from writing them as well. I use Canva for the infographics, I LOVE Canva! It’s free 🙂
I heard your interview at the travel like a boss podcast. now that you’ve updated your income reports, it’s nice to see that you are doing so well! I’m also impressed that you did it in only 5 months! Keep it up!
Hi Matthias! Thank you! Yes, I’m pretty happy to have made it this far. Now I guess I need to ramp it up like Johnny FD 🙂 What about you, are you a DN, too?