Income & Expense Report – April 2016
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Hey everyone! We’re back with our Income & Expense report for April 2016.
If you’re just joining, we’ve been publishing these monthly financial reports since January 2016 as part of our overall commitment to transparency. You can read more about our decision to go transparent here. We’ve also created an archive of our past monthly reports if you’re interested in seeing our progression.
Okay, so a little about these April numbers. We were monitoring them pretty closely all month. We use Mint to keep track of our expenses, and we were checking it pretty much daily. We knew it was going to be close, but we felt confident that – for the first time since launching we were going to be able to post a month in the black. And……we were so so so close.
We lost $70 this month. That’s all. After all our expenses for the month, we were just $70 in the red!
And the truth is: we could have posted in the black if we wanted to, but instead we purchased a second camera, which inflated our business expenses quite a bit. The reason we got another camera was we really wanted to start producing video content. We think adding video to our repertoire will 1) Be a lot of fun, and 2) Open up new freelance opportunities. On a related note, we posted our first video already. You can subscribe to our Youtube channel, where we’ll be sharing both camp cooking & travel videos, here. So while the second camera was a big cost up front, we felt it was a wise investment that will hopefully pay itself off down the road.
But before we turn our optimistic gaze to May, let’s take a look at exactly went down in April.
April 2016 by the Numbers
Miles Driven: 1,265
Average MPG: 30.6
Nights Free Camping: 5 (read about how we find free camping)
Nights Paid Camping: 0
Nights with family & friends: 25
States visited: 4 (CA, NV, AZ, CO)
Number of days hanging out with the Bro’d Trip: 12
Income
Blog Income
-Affiliate Income $50 (we use Amazon and AvantLink)
-Sponsored Content $325
Freelance Work
-Digital Content $500
-Photography $1779
Total Earned Income $2,654
Business Expenses
We’ve been looking to purchase a second camera setup, and this month we finally bit the bullet.
– Food Expenses – $72
– Adobe Creative Cloud $9.99
– Canon 70D $899
– 10-18 mm Lens $279
– Rode Microphone $199
Total Business Expenses $1,459
Net Income: $1,195
Expenses
Gas $196
Food $616 (includes coffee shops for work & alcohol)
Camping $0 – You may notice we don’t pay much for campsites, find out how to camp for free here.
Car Maintenance & Repairs $143 (we had to replace our car’s battery. With a car at 224k+ miles, there’s always something!)
Insurance $167
Cell Phone $50
Gym Membership $35
Misc. Expenses $58 (toiletries, laundry, stove fuel, and firewood)
Total Expenses $1,265
Net for March ($70)
Amount from Savings $70*
*As you can see, our earned income from our blog and freelance work doesn’t cover all of our expenses. We saved a lot before this trip, so this represents what we had to pull from our savings account for the month. We hope eventually the income from our blog and freelance work will cover the cost of the trip and perhaps some day return a profit.
If you have questions about anything we have listed in this report, please leave us a comment below and we’ll try our best to answer your questions. Thank you for your continuing support!
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This is great! Thank you for the info… I have some questions about your freelance work. How are these jobs landed? Are you approached or do you primarily approach? Also, how were you able to earn so much for photography? Thank you again, I really appreciate the transparency, it really makes you guys stand apart from other bloggers.
Thanks for the support Paul! To answer your questions –
There’s a good mix of companies/PR agencies that reach out to us, and us approaching companies. When we first started out, we were more proactive in searching for companies to partner with, but as our portfolio expands and our name gets out there, we do have more projects that come our way. Most of the time, we land jobs because people have seen our work either on another brand’s site, on our blog, or via our Instagram.
The photography was a contract job for a project we’ve been working on. Freelance work is definitely feast or famine – we won’t replicate that in May. Though, our hope is to expand our photography work into something more consistent (being on the move is definitely a challenge in this regard).
I’m curious about the gym membership. Is it a national chain that you’re able to use in different locations you find yourselves? Or just one-off visits? How often are you able to incorporate gym trips in a regular week or month?
Hey Christina! So, we belong to the YMCA. While it isn’t technically a national chain, most branches participate in the “AWAY” program (Always Welcome At the Y), so we do get to visit Y’s across the country. The number of free visits we get depends on the location – some are as generous as 5 visits a month, others are more along the lines of 7 visits, period. But, when you’re moving from place to place, that doesn’t matter too much – we’ve never maxed out our guest visits in one particular place.
In terms of how often we go – it depends on whether there is even a Y in the area we’re hanging around. Some months we go once or twice a week, others, it’s less frequent.
Hi– great blog! Just a couple of questions… How do you guys find the freelance gigs? Where do you sell your photography? What did you do before you hit the road? My husband and I have just come back from backpacking 6 months in South America. We’re heading on a cross country road trip in 2 days. We’re always looking for freelance jobs or something we can do remotely but can’t seem to find anything legitimate or steady. Any tips would be helpful! Thanks—
Adriane
RoamandFind.com
Hi Adriane! Hope you’re having a great first day of your cross country road trip! How long are you road tripping for? (Just started following your blog BTW – we love reading about other road tripper’s experiences!)
Most of our freelance work is digital content creation for companies. Last summer, we reached out to a few companies that vibed well with our brand and offered to create content for their websites. We did this for free at first, which helped us build up a body of work and get our name out there. Once we felt confident in our work and had build our blog readership up, we stopped doing pro bono work and now offer digital content services to outdoor + travel brands as our freelance business. It’s not the easiest business model – many companies are only interested in providing compensation via product or “exposure,” but we have been able to form some great partnerships that are equitable and help us stay out on the road. I’m not sure what your skill sets are, but there’s definitely a lot of work that can be done remotely – we just chose to go with the “build your own business” route. Some other folks we’ve talked to have found creative ways to do this using their own expertise – whether selling e-courses/digital products, consulting, or setting up an online shop and selling physical products (art, prints, or local crafts). If you guys have a background in social media, digital marketing, PR, or design, a friend of ours recently turned us on to CloudPeeps.com and said she’s had a lot of success on there.
The photography was for a contract job for a project we’ve been working on. We don’t currently sell prints, mostly for logistical reasons. You could look into selling stock photos – there’s a lot of sites that do that and it can be a nice little side income.
Before hitting the road, we both worked corporate jobs. I (Megan) worked in business administration at a non-profit, and Michael did branding & communications for an apparel company. We didn’t make buku bucks, but by minimizing our monthly spending we were able to save a good chunk of change over the last few years to travel with as we build up our freelance portfolios.
Hope that helps. Looking forward to following along on your road trip!
Megan
Traveling so much, which gym are you guys members of ? Do you find it easy to get there on the road??
We’re members of the YMCA, which has many locations across the country. Unfortunately, not every city has one, so that pretty much determines how often we get to go. When we were in Arizona, we were able to make use of it in nearly every city we visited – but here in Utah we haven’t seen a single location!
Really love reading these breaking downs. I’m also curious about the gym membership. Since you are spending so much time outdoors how often do you find the need to use it?
We do spend a lot of time outside and hike a lot, so we get a fair share of exercise that way. Honestly, the gym membership is mostly because of the showers!! We didn’t have a gym membership the first six months, and getting regular showers in was tough (esp in the cooler months). It’s nice to know that in many of the towns we roll in to, we’ll be able to clean up (without having to pay for a campsite). But, we also enjoy using the weight rooms during our visits since most of our outdoor activities are primarily cardio.
You guys are awesome. Can’t tell you how much I appreciate the transparency! Taking the mystery out of how to live on the road is going to open up so many people’s minds to it- including mine! Thanks a bunch.
Love all of the info you guys are sharing about your experience. My girlfriend and I are also fresh off the grid in our 1985 Toyota Dolphin. We’ve been cruising California for the last 5 months. Looking at your expenses, I was shocked to see you are able to keep cell phone expenses at $50! Is that for the both of you? How?!? Do you share a phone? We also do work remotely, and ALWAYS need an internet connection. That has either meant expensive, large data plans from the cell phone companies or expensive unlimited hot spotting devices.
Hi Kelly, this is Megan. Regarding the cell phone bill: Michael is and has always been on a family plan, which of which he pays his share every month (that’s the $50). I am on my family’s plan too, but my current share is being gifted to me. I know, I know, it’s super embarrassing, but we weren’t in a position to turn down such a generous offer back when we started our trip (since we were burning through savings like crazy.) Now that we are no longer in financial free fall, I want to look into picking up my end of the bargain. I’d feel better paying my own way, and it would definitely make these reports more accurate!
As for your general question about data usage and freelance life. For 80% of the heavy data lifting, we’re either at a library or a Starbucks. While we would love to be doing all our work from the campsite, the reality is for major uploads (photos, videos, etc) we need to return to civilization and seek out proper wifi.