July 2015 MIR 3/8/2015

Howdy folks! You’re here because you’ve signed up to receive our monthly income & expenses reports.

The primary goal of these income reports is to give you an idea of how we manage our online endeavours, and 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 July as well as a rundown of our expenses and it also states the final figure that we banked for the month.

If you’d like to see our past Income reports then head on over here to check them out!

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INCOMEEURO €
Content Business9,596.31
YNAB Affiliate Referral10
TOTAL INCOME9,606.31
EXPENSESEURO €
BUSINESS
Writers2,200.05
Project X1,036.00
Online Software2.40
Skype Calls10.50
Namecheap registration for NextStopWhoKnows12.90
Tech Upkeep21.50
Custom redesign of NextStopWhoKnows218.52
TOTAL BUSINESS EXPENSES3,501.87
MONTHLY BILLS
Accommodation in hotels etc415.15
Scooter rental79.80
Electricity & Water bill50.10
AIS mobile Internet38
Freshbooks Accounting subscription37.20
Hostgator 11.50
Hootsuite11.30
Mailchimp9.10
Crowedfire App subscription9
Google apps account8
Netflix7.99
Bluehost 8.15
TOTAL MONTLY BILLS685.29
FOOD/DRINK
Eating Out425.85
Cafes129
Groceries49.30
Snacks54.70
TOTAL FOOD&DRINK EXPENSES658.85
EVERYDAY EXPENSES
Gym sessions3.80
Sunglasses5.20
Toiletries 9.70
Fuel for Scooter9.85
Umbrella2.65
Batteries2
Clothes50
Laundry11.20
Cinema: Southpaw & Kidnapping of Freddy Heineken23.30
Thai 1 day cooking course50
Headphones16
TOTAL EVERYDAY EXPENSES183.7
TRAVEL EXPENSES
Erawan National Park16.10
Taxis69.65
Flights: Mumbai to Goa125
Flights: Phuket to Chiang Mai 175
Bus: Bangkok to Kanchanaburi6
Bus: Chiang Mai to Bangkok44
Metro Card9.85
Visa: 30 day Thai visa extension111.00
Parcel Post Thailand to Ireland56
TOTAL TRAVEL EXPENSES612.60
MISC EXPENSES
Medicine14.50
Macbook cover18.80
Pedicure/Manicure24
Family gifts37.60
Charity Donation20
Galaxy Note 4 Smartphone409
TOTAL MISC EXPENSES523.90
TOTAL INCOME 9,606.31
TOTAL EXPENSES- 6,166.22
Profit/Loss for the month of June+€3,440.09

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Comments;

INCOME

Hitting €9,606.31 for the month of July was definitely not expected. We honestly thought the summer months were going to be pretty low-key going by previous years. Not complaining though – we’ll take it.

 

EXPENSES

Our single biggest expense is our writers every month. As we’ve said previously, they’re vital for us in order to generate the income that we currently do.

“Project X” is still moving along and we’ve invested just over €1,000 into it again this month.

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.

Our food expenses worked out at €658.85 which is slightly cheaper than last month.

We fly out to India tomorrow from Bangkok for a 3 month stint, so we’re presuming our food bill won’t be as high!

Also worth mentioning is that we incur paypal fee’s from each transaction we receive from clients – which weren’t included in the report. The income figures were “after” Paypal got their slice.

There were also a few unexpected flights this month – Phuket to Chiang Mai at the last minute and also Mumbai to Goa.

Profitable Month

We’ve finished off the month of July with a profit of €3,440.09 after all our expenses. This was about €200 more than last month’s profit – so we’re more than happy with July’s figures.

Our goal is to make a profit of at least €1,000 each month. This helps to keep us on our toes and maintain focus on building up our business.

Next months report will come to you from India where we’ll be travelling around for a few months. We’re super anxious about the whole WiFi connectivity there as we’ve heard mixed reports.

We’ve decided to not take on as much work for August in order to allow us to get accustomed to our new surroundings. The last thing we want is to be stressing out about finding an internet connection every day.

You may think “what’s the point of travelling if you need Internet the whole time”?

Well, without this mighty fine Internet thingy – we wouldn’t be going anywhere. We know that until we fully replace ourselves in our business that we’ll be bound to needing access to emails etc.

And we’re fine with that.

We’re trying to find that balance between work and travel on a full-time basis. It’s hard, it takes a lot of effort, but the rewards are there to be had.

If we can manage to pull off India and maintain a decent monthly profit at the end of it, then we’ll be more than satisfied.

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 software, doing these income reports is new to us. We want to give you 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, or any of our previous.

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@nextstopwhoknows.com

And finally…

We wouldn’t be able to do these reports without the very cool and easy to use YNAB software that I mentioned above. Using YNAB 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