June 2015 MIR 2/7/2015

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 June 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!

—————————————————————————————————-

INCOMEEURO €
Content Business9,020.36
Blender Sale 15
TOTAL INCOME9,035.36
EXPENSESEURO €
BUSINESS
Writers2,828.67
Project X1,027.65
Copyscape9
Sumo App23
Tech VA5.52
TOTAL BUSINESS EXPENSES3,893.84
MONTHLY BILLS
Rent on Apartment in Chiang Mai400
Scooter 1 month rental72
Parking fine10.70
Puncture on Scooter6
AIS mobile Internet24
Electricity & Water bill2.50
Freshbooks Accounting subscription37.20
Bluehost 8.15
Hostgator 11.50
Hootsuite11.30
Crowedfire App subscription9
Mailchimp9.10
Google apps account8
Netflix7.99
TOTAL MONTLY BILLS617.44
FOOD/DRINK
Eating Out296.60
Cafes170.60
Groceries200.50
Snacks29.20
TOTAL FOOD&DRINK EXPENSES696.90
EVERYDAY EXPENSES
Gym sessions26
Resistant bands from Amazon45
Clothing36.50
Ebook 2.80
Cinema21
App - Relay Pro2.50
App - Pocket Casts6
Fuel for Car&Scooter30.35
Laundry1
TOTAL EVERYDAY EXPENSES171.15
TRAVEL EXPENSES
Indian Visas117
Trusted House Sitters Subscription84
Flights Chiang Mai to Phuket83
Taxi2.85
Flights from Dublin to Istanbul80
Passport Photos5.40
TOTAL TRAVEL EXPENSES372.25
MISC EXPENSES
Skype credit21
Medicine7.60
Hair17.20
Pedicure/Manicure9.50
Family gifts8
TOTAL MISC EXPENSES63.3
TOTAL INCOME 9,035.36
TOTAL EXPENSES- 5,814.88
Profit/Loss for the month of June+€3,220.48

—————————————————————————————————-

Comments;

INCOME

Despite thinking it was going to be a slow start to the summer months, the month went pretty darn well for us and we ended up pipping last months income total by a few €.

As we said last month, June, July and August are usually very quiet months for us business-wise going by our stats for the past years, so it’s cool that we’ve managed to keep a steady flow of business coming in.

We put in a ton of work this month in order to squeeze out as many orders as we could from our regular clients and thankfully that effort paid off.

EXPENSES

As usual, our biggest expense each month ends up being our team of writers. Again, they are the backbone for our business and without a great team of writers, then we’d not be able to scale as much as we do.

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.

We’ve invested just over €1,000 into Project X this month, so we’re hoping that sometime down the line the investments pay off. For now, it’s a sit, invest and wait game.

Our food expenses worked out at (take a deep breath!) €696.90.

Obviously, it’s possible to eat for a month on probably less than €100 per person in Chiang Mai but as we don’t party all the time and the likes, we don’t feel guilty about eating nice food and snacks and drinking (a lot) of coffee.

We cooked at home a few times as well during the month which is actually probably double the price of going out for a meal.

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.

You’ll notice as well that we paid for our Indian visas during the month, which was a struggle to secure – but we got there in the end. That trip commences on the 4th August and it will be interesting to see how our income report will change its pattern while we’re there.

We also booked flights to Turkey for next Feb as we’re going on a 2 week bus tour to kick start our European adventures in 2016.

Looking ahead for the next few months, we’re expecting a lot more expenses to creep up.

This will be mainly due to the fact that we’re going to be travelling again full time from next week onwards when we fly down to Phuket for a few weeks of chilling by the beach and exploring a few of the islands that we haven’t visited yet.

Profitable Month

We’ve finished off the month of June with a profit of €3,220.48 after all our expenses.

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.

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. 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