Working Nomad

Back in Auckland now recovering from a very nice and chilly three days in the Tongariro World Heritage area in the centre of the North Island. Yes I had a white christmas downunder! There was probably more snow than in the European Alps.

Anyway I hope you all had a great Christmas and will catch up from the Bay of Islands where I intend to spend New Year

Category general

I finally have a car. I bought it via tradme.co.nz which is the NZ version of ebay. I won the auction and have a Nissan for NZD $530 which is not a lot of money. The car goes really well so far and I think I got a bit of a bargain as it only passed it’s road worthy test last week for 6 months.

So I am leaving Auckland, my base, for a few days in the volcanic centre of the North Island to do some trekking. Despite the fact it is officially summer here there is still some snow on the trail apparently!

The weather has been pretty awful the last few days but things should settle down in the new year. I am coming back to Auckland for a Christmas day on the beach booze up and then heading to the North for new years. Catch up with you on Christmas eve!

I have found a free Internet connection here in the YHA hostel where I am staying on Central Auckland which cool. Wireless internet connections are normally really expensive in NZ unless you are prepared to sign up for a year!

I am still on the look out for a car but I am going to attend a couple of car fairs this weekend and hopefully I can pick one up and drive off down to the Tongariro National Park and try out my newly broken walking boots.

I have had a very poor first half of December on the earnings front but things have picked up a bit over the last few days and I should at least be able to match last December.

I am still in Auckland and now I have my driving licence so I can actively pursue the purchase of an old banger to drive around in. I have never been downunder over the festive season and despite the better efforts of the retailers here it really does n’t feel like xmas, particularly on a hot sunny day like today!

The site has been having a few issues and has not always been working so I am urging people to let me know via this Forum thread if the site becomes unavailable.

I am staying in a really friendly hostel and have already organised Christmas and New Years with some other people. Christmas is likely to be back in Auckland and New Years in the stunning Bay of Islands. I love NZ!

Well I’ve sold my first link! I’ve replaced a link to ‘Which Budget’ to a similar site that I find just as helpful and easier to use… so I don’t feel like I’m selling my soul! The link is on my www.travoholic.com/euro/trans/plane.htm&quot Budget Airlines; page and I’ve charged $25/year. I have no idea if that’s a fair price or not but I’m happy with it, specially since it only took 10 seconds to change and it’s replacing a link I had already (so I’m not adding an extra outgoing link). Plus I just set up a Paypal account and it’s nice to see a balance in there… even if it is small.

I’ve had a committment of $5/month for a link on the front page of http://www.workingholidayinfo.com&quot but I just need to work out how to set up Paypal to accept automatic monthly payments. Any ideas? Otherwise I’ve been offered $50 for the year so we’ll see. I would prefer monthly though. Plus I’ve sold a link through Linkworth for $20/month so I’ll get 70% of that I think. I just need to work out how to set that one up and then it’ll be all good!

So I’ve got some money coming in (finally!) from sources other than Adsense and this is without much effort at all. I think there is a lot of opportunity for selling links directly just through people I find at http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=58&quot and will be exploring this more in the future. The links I’ve sold through the forum have been through answering people’s ads who were looking for sites to advertise on. I’m curious about what the response will be once I start posting ads myself looking for advertisers… just need to work out this monthly Paypal thing and set some prices!

I think this little boost is what I need to get my motivation back!