Turning A Vacation Into A Profit Machine

Only$$$ said:

Hmm, it seems like you don't monetize your website yet, why not?

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All in due time. I make more than enough money now. I want this to be perfect before I start monetization.

Sherbert I hope you don't take this as an insult or anything negative, but don't you think it is better to leave this kind of things apart from your job? after all vacations are for taking a moment off, forgetting everything and just have a good time? When there's money involved we usually change our perception of things.

Just my opinion.

rafark said:

Sherbert I hope you don't take this as an insult or anything negative, but don't you think it is better to leave this kind of things apart from your job? after all vacations are for taking a moment off, forgetting everything and just have a good time? When there's money involved we usually change our perception of things.

Just my opinion.

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Trust me, I had an absolute blast on that vacation. It was the most adventurous, relaxing week I have had since our honeymoon over four years ago. I took some awesome pictures, and kept the site concept in the back of my mind and was able to switch off and just enjoy the trip, then switch back on once we got home and put the hammer down.

Want to know what's better than enjoying a $7,000 vacation? Enjoying a $7,000 vacation, and then writing most of it off as a business expense, while building a hopefully passive mode of income from something you truly enjoy.

Sherbert Hoover said:

Trust me, I had an absolute blast on that vacation. It was the most adventurous, relaxing week I have had since our honeymoon over four years ago. I took some awesome pictures, and kept the site concept in the back of my mind and was able to switch off and just enjoy the trip, then switch back on once we got home and put the hammer down.

Want to know what's better than enjoying a $7,000 vacation? Enjoying a $7,000 vacation, and then writing most of it off as a business expense, while building a hopefully passive mode of income from something you truly enjoy.

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That was one expensive vacation. Glad you enjoyed it.

Sherbert Hoover said:

All in due time. I make more than enough money now. I want this to be perfect before I start monetization.

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Great mindset, goodluck and I am looking forward to your next update!

Looks good so far. Some advice is that on Instagram you should always be switching up hashtags. If you keep using the same ones you can get shadow banned. And your post won't show up for any hashtag at all anymore.

Great idea. Never thought like that. Thanks for sharing and good luck.

Really cool journey, will follow this.

Interesting to read! Teach me your ways!

Nice thread I am looking forward to seeing you monetize it. I have always wanted to do something similar but just focusing on my country, traveling it and posting about the sights. So basically as I am a student it would just have to pay off a bit of gas and a little road trip money Will be following this.

Any updates?

Great journey and nice idea.
Now you just need to travel more and create more websites )

Fear not, I have not forgotten about this Journey.

I've still been working on the website in dribs and drabs. Still been contributing to the Iceland subreddit when I have the time. I have closed down my content writing service for now to regroup. I've got about 15 projects currently in various stages of "in progress". I plan to spend between now and New Year's getting them to fruition, and then shifting focus back to incorporating content development.

One of the forefront projects above is this Iceland brand. So here are some paltry but inspiring site stats:

Visitors per day from July 1 to present:



Other stats from the same time period:



Note the under 50% bounce rate and over three minutes per session. I'm very happy with that.

Audience geography:



All English speaking countries or Europe. That's high quality.

Instagram account is doing AWESOME. Still doing manual follow and unfollow, and recently they lifted the 40-follow chunk for me, so i've been hitting it hard. Currently at over 12,000 followers. That's in almost exactly 100 days since starting this account, so an average of 120 new followers per day, or literally one new permanent follower every 12 minutes around the clock.



I've been 100% hands-off for the Twitter account, pushing that Javascript following/ManageFlitter unfollowing and posting to a VA. The account has grown to over 3,500 followers, so is starting to pick up steam.

October there will be a major focus on getting more content up on the site. By Halloween I plan to incorporate AdSense into the mix finally. See what kind of money I can pull in with that based on low but ridiculously high-quality visitors.

More to come on that. Stay tuned!

Just went through this thread - great fun and a good use of your holiday! I disagree with the people who say 'just enjoy your vacation'. There's LOADS of downtime on a holiday and having something to do on a trip can make it more memorable.

So sherby how the things going on now? were you able to break even?

I am heading to Iceland in March. Staying in Reykjavik! Any tips or anything you can give? i dont think we will be hiring a car

Thought I’d give this journey a bump. See the site is still going and Instagram being regularly updated. Any updates on how it’s done in hitting your goals?

Sounds Like you would have been better off making a tumblr than a website, I dont see the need.

@Sherb, 12months later......

Where's the update, traffic & earnings reports etc?

Stop slacking and get the numbers crunched.

MisterF said:

@Sherb, 12months later......

Where's the update, traffic & earnings reports etc?

Stop slacking and get the numbers crunched.

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Haha the site and brand is still in the growing process. Earnings are still close to nothing, but traffic averages have been steadily increasing. I have rolled up all updates into my 2018 journey thread: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/sherbs-roadmap-to-365-000-in-2018.986713/