Kirsty Henderson

Kirsty Henderson loves to travel. She lived in five countries before becoming nomadic. She published and monetized several travel websites.  She grew her monthly online income high enough to survive on it.  She quit her job in December 2007 and has been traveling ever since.  Kirsty travels the world while making money online.

Objective

Find somewhere inexpensive and fun to be her home base. Travel greatly. Build creative, helpful websites.

Background

Kirsty fostered a love of travel.  She grew up in Canada. She lived abroad in London, England from 2002 through 2007.  She has done working holidays in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland.

Kirsty became confident in her ability to make money online. She first made money with her websites in November 2004. She steadily grew her online income.  She networked with Tony Page and wrote articles on his Working Nomad blog.  She made $750/month online by July 2007. She established herself as an online money maker.

Kirsty, 30 then, committed to becoming nomadic in July 2007. She started Nerdy Nomad, in August, to share her experiences with online income and travel.  She bought a one-way ticket to Manilla, Philippines in November. She resigned from her job in December.   Kirsty had $13,000 in savings.  She flew to the Philippines in January 2008.

Travels

She relaxed in the Philippines, volunteered for “Hands On Disaster Response” in Bangledesh, and passed through Malaysia. She lived in China for five months and attended the Olympics in Beijing. She trekked through Myanmar and Thailand. Kirsty is now volunteering  for “Hands On” in Haiti.

Income

Kirsty had three breakthroughs in making money online: Google Adsense, link sales, and affiliate sales.

She first made money with Google Adsense. She added it to her lone website, Travoholic, in November 2004 and made $20 that month.  She published a second website: Living in London.  By March 2005, she made $90/month from both sites combined. She published two more websites in 2006: Working Holiday Info and Working Holiday Travel Insurance.  Her online income hovered near $100/month until 2007. Google Adsense was her sole source of online income for two years.

She started selling links on her websites in December 2006.  She had a breakthrough month in January 2007, earning $700. Most of her earnings were from link sales. Her Adsense earnings continued to plod along. She experimented with a mix of LinkWorth, Text Link Ads, and direct link sales. She found direct link sales to be the most valuable. Her online income crept toward $1000/month over the next six months.

Kirsty experimented with affiliates in early 2007.  She signed up with several affiliates–most notably: World Nomads. She added affiliate links for World Nomads and other affiliates on all of her websites. She earned nearly $500 from World Nomads affiliate sales in July 2007. World Nomads was the majority of her online income that month. It has been her top performer ever since.

Kirsty’s online income blossomed.  She broke $1000 in August 2007 and never looked back. Her earnings climbed to $2568 in April 2008.  She averaged $1770/month from September 2007 through September 2008. Her online income relies primarily on affiliate sales, followed by link sales, and then Google Adsense.

Costs

Kirsty’s costs were low during travel the first half of 2008.   She traveled through eastern Asia, where her money lasted long.  While she was admittedly not frugal, she balanced her earning and spending well enough; she only was down $1265 dollars after six months of travel.  She averaged earning about $1700 per month, while spending about $1900 per month.

Tools

Kirsty learned how to make money online from the Working Nomad and the Digital Point internet marketing forums.

What I learned from Kirsty

Publishing travel websites is a “set and forget” operation.  For example, Kirsty published a website about London, and now she rarely updates it.  Yet it continues to hold value and make money for her; its usefulness is slow to change. Most people probably need travel advice once per year, when they take a week or two of vacation.  Therefore, Kirsty only needs to update the website annually to stay current.

You don’t have to know everything about a location to publish a travel website. You can contract locals to write articles.  You pay upfront for quality, niche content to gain visitors (and money) later.

Kirsty outsourced the neighborhood guides in her London website. She lived in London for five years, but she didn’t know everything. So, she paid other locals to write guides about their respective neighborhoods.  As a result, her website became a definitive guide for living in London.  And she profits well from ads and affiliates on the website.