I’ve spent seven hours solid editing The Water Closet Blog today. Seven excruciating hours, changing aspects of the design, subscription mailing lists and deleting crappy blog posts – such as entire posts for one quote. Terrible idea.
Why the cleanup now?
The Water Closet Blog is just over a year old now and my desire to travel is getting ever closer to my expected date of departure – March 2020. As mentioned previously, I intend to work and travel to attain life skills on farms and create a small income through more entertaining work such as bars, although it would be a real big help if my blog – my e-diary – could make me some money in the background. Not only that it can sustain my traveling, but also the blog and my podcast which I created to challenge depression – it would be a shame to stop providing content for people to relate to.
So I’m looking to expand the audience of the blog. I have social media – Twitter & Instagram, but I’m trying to reduce my activity on social media and that kinda defeats the purpose of expansion. I stumbled upon SEO. Search Engine Optimization.
I actually discovered it through investigations of a different topic – my journey to Australia overland (no planes). Iran and Pakistan appear to be difficult to travel through, but I’ll find a way. I will prevail.
I’ve read through so many blog posts now, detailing the amazing experience several different backpackers have had in Iran.
One of those backpackers was Will Hatton, author of thebrokebackpacker.com.
” I had my first taste of backpacking when I was eighteen and was instantly hooked by all the inspiring people I met whilst hitching, camping and couchsurfing my way around Europe.
– Will Hatton
Since then, I have trekked deep into the Venezuelan jungle, worked on bars in Laos, herded goats in the Holy Land and conquered the highest navigable pass in the world armed with a poorly drawn map and a packet of ritz crackers. “
After reading several posts written by Will I decided to read what else he was “selling”.
I came across ditchyourdesk.com
Now I’ve seen plenty of these “make money online” ideals, but never really trusted them. I mean, they sell this idea, but they make money from selling that idea, however “free” it appears, otherwise, they wouldn’t be spending time writing it. After all, time is money.
But I actually emailed Will, asking about potential advice for myself to travel through Iran and he politely, swiftly replied – although it wasn’t the response I desired, I was appreciative of the respect returned in the response.
So I figured Will is a cool dude. Let’s give this a go. I can’t for sure tell if this is all going to be worth it as I probably won’t find out for another year when my content becomes primarily travel – instead of these rambling diary entries. Will and his business partner Aaron Radcliffe – who also seems like a cool dude – have put a lot of time and energy into these SEO guides and so I do believe it will work. Like there’s way too much content for this just to be a hustle.
SEO is a fairly scary sounding initialism/acronym. Search Engine Optimization just sounds bloody complex – like the picture above.
Fortunately, Will and Aaron provide education on SEO in a simple, yet entertaining way. They’re just down to earth, successful guys… passing on knowledge – obviously, they’ll be making money through something, but I’m happy for these guys to make their riches.
I’m not forced to spend any money at this stage, and I’m only using the free tools that they’ve suggested and not the premium ones. I know this is going to make things harder for myself, but I don’t have the capital to invest yet.
Anyway, I will review the Ditch Your Desk free e-course for any other bloggers looking to make an online income. I will, however, give it six months before I review the e-course to give a realistic and true formal assessment.