I’ve not been posting much, and there are those that are clamoring for more videos, which I have been remiss in getting done, but I have been working on a few things in the background.
As with all of us that would love to cruise full-time, the age old concept of earning a living while cruising is something that we must constantly work towards. A lot of us that own our own business have been hit by the bad economy that started back in late 2007. We may have spent a portion of our savings or retirement keeping the business going, or even ourselves alive. We may have had investments that tanked with the economy, and still others may not have had the chance to build up a nest egg for our later years. Any way you slice it the economy and retirement is not going to be what it once was.
One way that I have found to build up a small income, is to create websites that I can produce material for. I can then monetize these sites by inserting ads where appropriate. There are many ad agencies out there, Google being one of the major ones, so there will always be one that will suit your needs for displaying ads within your content and being paid for it. Is it lucrative? No, not really. Unless you own a really popular site with monthly visitors in excess of a million a month, you will probably not
be able to make a living. You also have to watch for having too many eggs in one basket. About two years ago Google Adsense changed its algorithms that decide what sites to show in a search, and the monthly visits on one set of sites dropped over 90% within a few days. I was not the only one hurt by Google’s decision – I’ve heard from many that were. I had to diversify as quickly as I could and incorporate other means of earning money on these sites. You should never rely on just one source for your traffic and money, especially Google. They are notoriously finicky, and really do not care about the little guy.
There are other avenues that one can pursue, including sites like Patreon and GoFundMe. I prefer not to use them at this point because I am still working, so it seems tacky to ask for other working Joes to support my chosen lifestyle. Now, when we cut ties and are cruising, that will be a different story. I may incorporate Patreon into our strategies to help offset the costs of cameras and other gear. And if sailing is our only source of income at that time, I would consider it justified and not just begging for money.
I have contacted several companies regarding T-shirts and coffee mugs to sell with our logo and “Sail Before Sunset” on them. We are also in the planning process of writing several books to highlight our endeavors to learn to be self-sufficient and off the grid. More on that later, but there is another source of income.
Bottom line is that at this point you will see a few more ads here and there on this site. I am testing the waters to see which types of ads are best for this site and which ad agencies pay the best for the sort of ads that we will be running. Right now these are not expected to supplement our income, but we are using them to see which directions we need to go in to support ourselves once we venture out. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks so much for visiting!