Hey there. You’re here because you’ve signed up to receive our monthly income reports so let’s not hang about!
First off, the primary goal of these income reports is to give you an idea of how we manage our online endeavours, and how to give you an indication of how much it costs to live and travel in the countries that we do. We figured they will also be a great motivator for us to keep striving towards bigger numbers in terms of income at the end of every month.
If you’re new to the blog, you’ll quickly see that our main source of income is our content production business that we created from scratch back in late 2012, you can read more about how we make money online here.
Anyway, let’s get down to business…
The report below is a breakdown of our total income for the month of May as well as a rundown of our expenses and it also states the final figure that we banked for the month.
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| INCOME | EURO € |
| Content Business | 8,815.62 |
| Direct Advertising on NextStopWhoKnows | 136 |
| TOTAL INCOME | 8,951.62 |
| EXPENSES | EURO € |
| BUSINESS | |
| Writers | 1,942.75 |
| Project X | 915.27 |
| Ebook | 9.10 |
| Last-pass 1 yr. subscription | 10.70 |
| Longtail pro software | 73.60 |
| Fiverr gig | 5.10 |
| Who.is Guard | 2.60 |
| New domain | 10 |
| Virtual Assistant gig | 27.35 |
| Tech Team | 24,75 |
| Facebook Advertisement | 9.81 |
| TOTAL BUSINESS EXPENSES | 3,031.03 |
| MONTHLY BILLS | |
| Rent on Apartment in Chiang Mai | 405 |
| 3 nights accommodation in hotel in Pai | 66 |
| Scooter rental | 71.50 |
| Sinet Wifi for apartment | 26.50 |
| AIS mobile Wifi | 24 |
| Electricity & Water bill | 42 |
| Freshbooks Accounting subscription | 37.20 |
| Hootsuite | 11.30 |
| Crowedfire App subscription | 9 |
| Google apps account | 8 |
| Netflix | 7.99 |
| TOTAL MONTLY BILLS | 707.49 |
| FOOD/DRINK | |
| Eating Out | 433 |
| Cafes | 151.60 |
| Groceries | 97.20 |
| Snacks | 20.35 |
| TOTAL FOOD&DRINK EXPENSES | 702.15 |
| EVERYDAY EXPENSES | |
| Fuel for car for road trip | 22.20 |
| Fuel for scooter | 12.80 |
| Household items | 18 |
| Clothes | 43.90 |
| Cinema | 12.80 |
| TOTAL EVERYDAY EXPENSES | 109.70 |
| TRAVEL EXPENSES | |
| Car Rental for 4 days | 110 |
| Parking | 1.35 |
| Taxi to Airport | 2.85 |
| Visa Extension | 27.50 |
| TOTAL TRAVEL EXPENSES | 141.70 |
| MISC EXPENSES | |
| Amazon gift card voucher | 93 |
| Amazon FBA seller account | 50 |
| Mailchimp | 9.20 |
| Bluehost | 8.15 |
| Credit Card Adjustment fee | 80.36 |
| Skype credit | 20.50 |
| Pedicure/Manicure | 24 |
| Family gifts | 397 |
| TOTAL MISC EXPENSES | 682.21 |
| TOTAL INCOME | 8,951.62 |
| TOTAL EXPENSES | - 5,374.28 |
| Profit/Loss for the month of May | +€3,577.34 |
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Comments;
INCOME
May was a pretty solid month for us income wise as we secured a few big deals with some of our regular clients, one of which was €1,200 in total. Score! Based on last years figures content wise, we’re not expecting June, July and August to be as busy as this but time will tell – hopefully we’re wrong.
Want to see some previous months income archives?
If you’d like to see what our figures were for each month from the start of 2015, then you can view the archive page over here.
EXPENSES
Each month our single biggest expense is our team of writers. You may think that this is a big outsourcing cost but without a team of writers behind us, then our content business would not be as scalable as it currently is.
Wondering about Project X? Although we don’t want to reveal what it is exactly just yet, what we will say is that it’s a new business that we’re currently working on. It’s not a get rich quick scheme and we expect to have to invest a lot more time, money and effort into it over the coming months, but we will reveal more as time goes on.
The fact that we spent a total of €151.60 in cafes last month shocked us – considering coffees in Thailand are priced at around €2, that’s ALOT of coffee! But, in our defence, we do spend most of our days in cafes for work so it’s inevitable that coffee, smoothies and fruit shakes are a big expense for us.
Given the figure that’s above for ‘eating out,‘ it may seem like we do nothing but wander around from place to place eating all day. And while this is not true (we swear), we do eat out at least once a day (mostly twice) as the food here in Chiang Mai is so ridiculously good and cheap.
Also worth mentioning is that we incur paypal fee’s from each transaction we receive from client – which weren’t included in the report. The income figures were “after” Paypal got their slice.
There are a few categories that will be readjusted for next months report as they ended up in the incorrect part of the table.
Profitable Month
It’s a great feeling to have had another profitable month. As with most online incomes, we’re always a little apprehensive as things can change drastically from month to month and while we were able to bank €3,577.34 this month after all our expenses, next month may be a whole different ball game. But, that’s the beauty AND the beast of having running your own online business. Nothing is guaranteed.
What are your thoughts?
Although we’ve been tracking our income and expenditure for the past few months using a very cool piece of software called YNAB, doing these income reports is new to us. We want to give you and all of our subscribers exactly what you want from these reports, so please get in touch with us if you’ve any questions or any comments on this report.
Think there’s something we can improve on? We’d love to hear it too!
To get in touch, you can send us an email to:
info(at)nextstopwhoknows(dot)com
And finally…
We wouldn’t be able to do these reports without the very cool and easy to use YNAB that I mentioned above. Getting this and incorporating it into our everyday life has literally changed the way we budget, spend and save our money. For the full lowdown on just how great it is, you can read our full review here.
And before we go, we just want to give a shout out to our good friend, income report ninja and fellow Irish blogger Niall Doherty, who was the inspiration for us to start tracking our finances in the first place. He’s just completed a 3.5 year round the world trip without flying and has been doing these reports for 4 years now. Check out his awesome blog over at http://www.ndoherty.com
