I just thought I’d give a bit of a background on my experience with running websites so you can get an idea of the sort of stage I’m at. Forgive me if I’m blabbing on and on, I’ve still got to get used to this whole blogging thing! Ok, here goes…

I’ve had my main website, Travoholic.com, up and running in one form or another since March 2000 with the intent of providing a non-commercial resource among a sea of websites flogging Eurail passes and travel gear. At the time there were very only a couple of travel forums and most of the sites were painful to look at.

Hostel reviews were non-existent and that was to be my main focus. That summer I backpacked in Europe and came back with lots of ideas and motivation. But working full time at an electronics store and going to university full time pretty much sucked the life out of me and I didn’t do too much with my site for several years.

When I graduated in 2001 I headed to Australia for a year and then moved to London where I finally bought a laptop and started things up again.

A couple years ago I was put onto Adsense by the guy who runs 2Camels.com and this opened my eyes to the potential for earning substantial amounts of money from a website. I travelled a bit more for the next wee while and in May this year I bought a computer and set up my first net connection for 5 years!

Pushed in the right direction from information I’ve read on sites like Digitapoint.com and this site I’ve become aware that making a living online is very possible and have decided that it’s the lifestyle for me! I’ve got 6 domains registered, 3 of which are completed or nearly finished sites and 1 which is functional but has been neglected until I can finish the others. The other 2 are ideas in the works.

So that’s where I am at the moment… working hard at finishing my main 3 sites and trying to push up my Adsense earnings while finding other streams of income in the process. I think my sites have a lot of untapped potential, I just need to do the work! There’s always a catch…

Inspired by a Google Video I watched recently and the BBC show I am going to invite questions about the Working Nomad ideal and answer them in a video presentation!

All you need to do is contact me with your question on the topics below and include your name and where you are from (if you want) or leave a comment on this post.

- Web site design & creation
- Search engine advice
- Web marketing
- Travel and work - being a Working Nomad

The video will be out some time next month and I hope to provide lots of useful advice and visual demonstrations where possible.

I’ve been given the opportunity to ride on the coat tails of the working nomad for awhile in order to give his readers a different (less successful) point of view on the whole WN thing.

I’ve been doing the Adsense thing for a year and a half and have yet to break that magic $100/month mark though I’m starting to come close to it. I’ve used one affiliate for 3 years with limited success and keep meaning to explore the world of affiliate marketing but keep getting too lazy to actually do something about it. Plus I have a few other ideas up my sleeve in an attempt to make some cash off my sites.

Like most of you, my ultimate goal is to be earning enough from my sites to be able to pack in my job, find somewhere cheap and fun as a base and travel loads while continuing to build creative, helpful sites. I fully expect to quit my job well before I’m earning enough to live comfortably.

The plan is to save up some money to subsidise the first few months of the move and then I hope that by working on my sites full time I’ll be able to boost my earnings and be able to support myself soon after I make the move.

Webby has had loads of success with his sites and is a great example of how to do things right. I’m a work in progress and our hope is that you will enjoy reading about a relative newcomer’s attempts at web success and learn from my successes and failures along with me.

If I can manage to make a go of all of this I think it really will prove that it can be done!

My next European destination is the city of San Sebastian on the north coast of Spain. I am off their for a few days surfing before I embark on a week’s English teaching (of sorts) at Pueblo Ingles in Northern Spain.

Some of you this side of the Atlantic may have seen this place in the news. Basically you throw 20 Spaniards together with 20 native English speakers for a week, ply them with red wine and food and just talk in English! We get a free holiday and the Spanish get the opportunity to immerse themselves in a new langauage (and pay for it!).

It will be a nice change of environment and get me away from my keyboard! So I am working extra hard at the moment and I need to because I have had a poor start to August. In fact every month seems to start off slow for some reason. Don’t know if this is a wider Internet trend?

Finally, for those of you who might be interested I have uploaded a video of me on my day at the highest railway station in Europe, the Jungfraujoch.

Jungfraujoch, Top of Europe

The video is quite amusing as you can see I become increasingly jaded with the whole day and constantly fed up with all the crowds of people!

Well I hinted that I’d had a good month and I was not kidding. My earnings from all things web for the month of July came in at just under £2280 or $4350.

It is particularly satisfying as I set myself this goal back in March that when I got back to the UK in the summer I wanted to be earning £500 a week from the Internet (which is roughly what I was earning in the corporate rat race before).

Well despite a very poor June I actually go there, probably more by luck than judgement as the summer is normaly pretty dead!

It was just a distant dream back in 2004 when I started all this web stuff that I could ever earn this much from the web and equal my salary from the suited and booted jungle. If it seems like a distant dream to you then I hope this make’s you realise it’s all possible.

The opportunities for earning a living from the web are greater than ever before so keep plugging away because you can make it happen.

I get asked this question quite a bit so I thought it was about time I did something about it. How do I develop web pages on my laptop and get them live onto my websites?

> How Working Nomad works on the road

The Forum is still going along well with well over 1000 posts so thanks to everyone who is contributing. If people get to 100 posts their site get’s a mention here (providing they contact me and let me know!).

Our member called ‘Kirsty’ has reached the magic number and would like me to mention her site www.workingholidayinfo.com that is all about Working Holiday Visas for Canadians so check it out.

Earnings report will be up next and July was a record month, and by some distance in the end, so I can keep those corporate shackles off for now

I created a new site three weeks ago. It took me one whole working day (8 hours in the corporate World) and it is pretty much finished and maintenance free.

The site has already earned me one quarter of what I would have been paid as a corporate slave. So in theory in three weeks time the site will have paid me half. In nine weeks the site will have earnt me the same as my ex-employer paid me for the same use of my skills and time (minus the cost of travel and the commuting time).

This site will hopefully gain in popularity and traffic and earn me a lot more. If the site dies after 12 weeks then it has paid me what I am worth anyway. It’s a bit of a no brainer really!

Reminds me of the old proverb…

“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for life.”