Working Nomad

Yesterday we spent the day on a boat snorkelling off the Island of Ko Phi Phi and a few hours onshore. Phi Phi is notorious for the film ‘The Beach’ and of course the devastating 2004 tsunami that swept much of it away.
I visited Phi Phi two years before the events of Boxing Day 2004 and it has certainly changed (you could argue for better or worse). The Island is certainly moving up market.
How much of this money will actually benefit the locals who suffered most is anyone’s guess. Developers on the other hand appear to be making the most of the clear canvas.
.It is nearly month end and earnings report time. I have not done any figures so far but I reckon I might just be down on Feb. Yes that’s right - no record earnings! I think it will be close though. For some reason everything has gone crazy the last few days which is good.

I have arrived on Ko Lanta, Southern Thailand to find a very relaxed and peaceful Island. The Thai people here are slightly different to the majority as they are Muslim (normally Buddhist). I have to say they are some of the friendliest Thais I have met and their smiles are very much of the genuine variety.

It is so nice to be back in my own sleeping environment after two months of sharing dormitories and backcountry huts! I have my own bungalow yards from the beach for less than £5.00 a night. Sleeping to the sound of the sea is much more preferable to some older guy snoring is head off!

I am finding it quite easy to do work here. The laid back pace of life and the fact there is little to do is very conducive to work. I don’t know why I still refer to what I do as work because it rarely feels like it these days.

Things I would have done differently. My laptop has been a little star on this trip but I would have taken a larger model and not been so obsessed with size and weight. I travel light anyway so a few extra grams would not have made much difference. I have always been well under my allowance at airport check-ins.

Because my laptop is so small (and old) the battery life is pretty bad. I have two spare batteries but to be honest they seem to be giving me less and less power. Maybe they don’t travel well.

So my advice when looking for a laptop to travel is to focus on battery length. I am convinced that having a battery that lasts a long time would have made quite a difference to the amount of work I have done over the last few months.

I am in the departures lounge at Singapore Changi airport making good use of their free wireless Internet. I am on my way to Krabi in Southern Thailand.

It has just be announced that the flight has been delayed for 8 hours due to technical reasons! I guess when you’re backpacking flight delays are not a big issue and I am always happy where there is free wifi (and free food, thanks Tiger Airways).

Anyway I was thinking last night about adding a forum to this site. Primarily it would be a community bulletin board where people could ask me questions about making money from web sites. People do email questions all the time but I think it would be more useful to everyone if I answered them in a public forum.

I would also be happy to evaluate your web sites and give opinions on any ideas you might have. I am not an expert but this has been my profession for quite a while and I am more than happy to help people and we can all share each others knowledge.

Add a comment if you think it is a good or not so good idea! Bye for now.

It’s my last day in Melbourne and I am leaving on a big high. England won three gold medals on the track last night and I finally got to hear ‘Land of hope and glory’ (no thanks to Channel 9). It was just like being at the last night of the proms!&lt.
I also got to meet the decathlon champion Englishman Dean Macey and he gave me a high five in the tunnel after his lap of honour. Earlier in the night I sat with the father of the English bronze medallist in the 10,000m and shared his agony and then ecstasy (never had such a big hug from a man!).
I posted a comment on the BBC Commonwealth games site and got a whole heap of traffic to this site. It’s a good tip to try and get one way links from popular web sites as search engines like this.
I’ve had an awesome time here and will miss Melbourne and the atmosphere around the games. Tomorrow I’ll be waking up in Singapore and the second part of my Southeast Asian adventure will begin. Rock on!

I have decided that every month I am going to write a few tips that should help anyone looking for an online income. This month I am going to focus on established sites that are not getting traffic.

One of the frustrating things is that you put all that effort in to creating a web site and no one visits! I know this feeling myself. There are some ways to overcome this.

1. Build more useful content. Really focus your content on your audience and try and give them something they cannot get elsewhere. Make sure your content has a sprinkling of keywords that people are actually searching for.

2. Make sure you have submitted the site to MSN, Yahoo and Google. Don’t bother with those sites that promise to submit you to hundreds of search engines in one go. Do it one by one and don’t take short cuts.

3. Don’t underestimate offline marketing and gorilla techniques. Gorilla marketing is non-traditional tactics that attempt to encourage "buzz" or word of mouth communication. Remember the guy with the milliondollarhomepage.com - he used these techniques.

4. Write content for other sites. Try offering an established web site an article for free with a link back to your site. Make sure the article is well written and on-topic for your target web site.

5. Participate in online forums and build up a reputation. Don’t go wading in with links to your sites and self-blatant promotion. Offer the forum some knowledge and participate fairly.

OK that’s all for now folks. Remember the most valuable tip is to never give in.