Welcome to the first stab at our monthly balance sheet. An inside look at how we are trying to build a business, move abroad and not totally collapse as a family. Each month we’ll be working to make this report more detailed and readable. For now, this is a basic overview of what we’ve spent and what we’ve brought in this October. We’ve broken down each piece of the pie in our business (Booked It Travel) and other side hustle income streams. This also gives a general breakdown of our family expenses. 💸
YouTube:
Just Booked It Ads- $432.78
Once you hit 1,000 subscribers on YouTube you begin to get paid for the ads that are served on the videos you produce. The amount varies on the industry and length of the video. For us you can see for about 115,000 views in October we made $432. Thanks for watching! This is a big step for us. Obviously we need more views and more traction, but for that to happen we need to keep creating better content!
Booked it Travel Ads- $31.87
This is our second channel that is monetized. We started this during a year long stint when we lived in a van and Geo tries to post travel content on here, although it is not super consistent at this time. We don’t give this channel enough attention and hope to find the time/resources to bring it back to life. In October we made $31.87. It helps to have this lever to pull, but does no good if it brings in less than $50 a month. Hopefully you will see this grow!
Sponsors- $0
If a company wants to pay to have an ad in our YouTube video they would give us cold hard cash in exchange for a commercial. We have our first brand deal/sponsorship secured for November! And couldn’t be more excited to have had that come through last month. Hopefully we will continue to see opportunities here.
Amazon Affiliate Income– $196.07 + $168.27
When you start an Amazon Affiliate account you get credit from purchases in your store as well as a kickback for getting people over to Amazon for anything else they may purchase. For each month we will have two revenue streams from Amazon- 1: from direct purchases and 2: from subsequent purchases that user happens to make if our link is what sent them to Amazon. There is a chart below that shows the amount of sales we pushed to amazon and our cut of the income via our Amazon storefront. This was a huge surprise to us as it was never a funnel of our original business plan. Putting up the links and creating the store is minimal work. While a small income at this time, there is potential and regardless, anything helps with the bottom line. Plenty more thoughts on pushing consumerism, it’s absolutely something we’re conscious of and we’re only ever recommending products we love.
Beehiiv– Newsletter Platform- $85.60
Beehiiv is the platform we use to send out our weekly travel newsletter. With Beehiiv we get an opportunity to place ads in our newsletter promoting a few products related to the travel industry. If you click on those ads we get a small commission. It is no extra cost to the reader, but helps us make a small amount. The reporting on Beehiiv is weak when it comes to charts and displays but the screenshot below captures all payouts from our September newsletters which and paid us out in October. This is small income stream that could scale to something big as our newsletter grows.
Other Income Streams and Side Hustles – $10,824.40
The main reason so much of this is possible, is because Geo is getting paid out from the sale of his previous business. He’s also doing some personal training on the side and this month did his first public speaking gig. Due to that speaking engagement our overall revenue in this category is much higher than it usually will be. So, if anyone needs someone to motivate their team with uplifting advice and stories from a small business owner, Geo is your guy!
As for me, Allie- I have a few things on the side burners also. I am still practicing as a Registered Nurse. I also have picked up some hours working an admin type position at my brother’s start up company. As you can see, we’re hustling both in Booked It Travel as well as outside gigs- anything to help pay our livelihood, specifically fund our family moving abroad.
FAMILY EXPENSES
We were hit hard this month with a tax bill that was from the sale of Geo’s business /a quarterly contribution on some of the money we are currently making above. Some of these income streams are not W-2, but 1099 so if you are impressed with that $85 I earned from Beehivv, remember Uncle same will bring that down to about $60. Dagger. Since it costs us $64 a month to send our newsletter on Beehiiv’s platform…yeah -$4. Hopefully we laugh at these #s one day. But today isn’t that day.
As far as the overall family expenses go we will break those down in further detail as we organize further over the next few months. We will have big adult bills coming in from Boundless Life– the school we enrolled our kids in. We will also be consolidating some insurances and cell phone plans to help with the transition. More details on all that fun stuff to come!
Overall, we hope this gives you insight into our cash flow, or lack there of! Everyone has a different prospective and relationship with money and we hope this little window into our world gives you an idea what we are trying to accomplish. As always, thanks for being here and stay tuned to see where we land next month.
